horizontal view vs vertical view

stubbdog · January 31st, 2007, 07:32 AM

Admittedly, I have not downloaded and looked at all of the ifferent available AB files, but I have seen a few and all of them that use damage track type systems to keep track of units, do it in a vertical sense. That is each damage track and all accompanying info are stacked on top of each other.

I am trying to author the files for Reaper CAV and the data card (ex. pinned below) as you can see runs horizontal. The reason it runs horizontal is because each weapon will have its own set of parameters and if you try to do that vertically, it would be a cause for a mess.

Hence my question.... How can I get the output, both in terms of the availibility, roster, and printed to look anything like the datacard below.

rob · February 9th, 2007, 08:16 PM

At 08:32 AM 1/31/2007, stubbdog wrote:

Quote:

I am trying to author the files for Reaper CAV and the data card (ex. pinned below) as you can see runs horizontal. The reason it runs horizontal is because each weapon will have its own set of parameters and if you try to do that vertically, it would be a cause for a mess.

Hence my question.... How can I get the output, both in terms of the availibility, roster, and printed to look anything like the datacard below.

AB will require a LOT of work to get it to output something even remotely like a CAV data card. I strongly recommend you NOT try to solve it that way. Instead, I recommend you solve it the way the original CAV data files were set back in the old AB2 days. A custom extension was used that read in a saved roster and output CAV data cards for each unit.

You can get an idea for how this works by downloading AB2 and using the demo version with the AB2 CAV data files. Create a few units, then print using the custom extension.

The full source for the original CAV custom extension should be installed with the AB2 Authoring Kit. The XML format of saved roster files has changed with AB3, so you'll need to adjust for that, but all of the concepts remain the same and the AB3 Kit contains full docs for the roster file.

-Rob