Character Sheets

[Adam.Ormond]

Under my License Associations, it indicates my original license was Issued on 4/3/2011, and reassigned on 4/3/2011. I don't remember installing the application twice, nor activating it twice on the day I bought it.

My second license was issued on 5/6/2011, and has not been reassigned. I just upgraded, it the website now says my second license was reassigned today.

[CapeCodRPGER]

I am having the same issue, lic. issues after update. Great job, Lone Wolf, you are tops.

[CapeCodRPGER]

I got my lic. issue taken care of. I can't find how you can customize the character sheet in an easy way. I go to custom output and click help and tells me about all these file types, ect..

I just want a simple tab where I can choose what gets printed out on the sheet. Or drag and drop, or something like that. I don't have the time nor do I want to learn how to reprogram HL.

When they said custom character sheets this is not what I had in mind.

[chava]

I think (and I suck at programming, so don't take me at my word) that you need to write the xml file for how you want the output to look first, then you can select the output that you (or someone else) has designed.

Which is why I'm waiting for someone who understands the HeroLab lingo and xml to make a character sheet and be kind enough to share it with the community.

Hopefully, I'm be able to use my ranks in Computer Science: Monkey See in order to smush it into more of what I like.

[CapeCodRPGER]

Thats just great, so it turns out you do need programing experence to set that character sheet the way you want.

I already have a 40 hour a week job and famiy to take care of my time in addition to what little RPG time I can manage to get in. I don't have time to learn how to program to get a character sheet to look like the way I want to. Nor should I have to learn to program for something like this.

When Lone Wolf came here and said that custom sheets would be possible with the next update I figured they meant it would be an easy interface to set it the way you like.

But I guess thats too much to ask.

[chava]

They were very clear on the point that they would allow for customizable xml sheets. In my mind that means exactly the situation that I described. As I said, I can't program, which is why I'm patiently waiting for someone who has a skill set that I don't have to make my life easier.

However, the implementation of allowing custom xml sheet to be used is something that they didn't have to allow ~ and what they allow is the best that any gaming program I know has. Lone Wolf has said that they do want to create the option for drag and drop created character sheets ~ and that will be amazingly awesome if/when they do ~ but frankly, they basic sheets that they have work pretty darn well, since I have two players who are brand spanking new to pathfinder who don't have any problem finding what they need on the sheets. Customizing the sheet to limit the weapon printed and customizing the output of the special ability is great and I'm looking forward to either thanking the person who does so, or finally manning up to doing it myself.

Let me be very clear in this, however, I know that Lone Wolf is a small company. If they have to choose to spend man hours on a visual display customizable character sheet or on the implementation of mechanics for the game, like: Eldritch Heritage or Words of Power or multiple familiar/animal companions, no contest ~ I want them on my mechanics.

Edit: I apologize for the tone. But I can't think of a more diplomatic way to say this, which means that it's time for me to step away from the internet and go blow some steam in the real world. If this post goes beyond the boundaries of this forum, I am sorry and I hope that a moderator deletes it.

[CapeCodRPGER]

I understand what you are saying. But the average person should not have to wait for custom made stuff from the commuinity to use a product like they want. Custom made stuff should be optinal not manditory.

The only thing I don't like about HL is the lack of custominzation with the character sheet. I have seen cheaper character programs with better options for sheets. I expected more from a professional company. The people that pay for the product should not have to do the companies work for them.

[kfeltenberger]

While I'd love to see a drag and drop, or maybe even a DotNetNuke style layout option for the character sheet, I'm cool with what comes with the base package. If someone else can develop a better format, cool. If not, cool, I can live with it. This software already does more, easier, and more intuitively than any other application I've seen.

Truth be told, this software is why I decided to get involved with Pathfinder and do more than just buy the basic rule book. It annoys the hell out of me to have to have to carry a shelf full of sourcebooks just to play my character and HL gives me the ability to manage the character with an easy interface.

So if the printed character sheet isn't perfect, I'll live.

[rob]

Originally Posted by CapeCodRPGER

I understand what you are saying. But the average person should not have to wait for custom made stuff from the commuinity to use a product like they want. Custom made stuff should be optinal not manditory.

The only thing I don't like about HL is the lack of custominzation with the character sheet. I have seen cheaper character programs with better options for sheets. I expected more from a professional company. The people that pay for the product should not have to do the companies work for them.

Everyone has their own opinion on what we SHOULD focus our energies on next. The reality is that we simply can't do everything as quickly as everyone wants, so we have to prioritize things. At that point, we have to decide what to add now and what to defer until later, so it's a given that someone is going to be unhappy with our choices. Some folks are simply not going to get the features they want, and there's nothing we can do about that.

Our primary objective is to satisfy the largest percentage of users first. When we've asked users over the years whether they would rather have us focus on getting all the crunch into place or make things pretty, they have overwhelmingly voted for the crunch. Consequently, that's where we end up focusing our energies - much to the chagrin of those who feel differently.

The character sheet output is functional. Is it great? Nope, and we're the first to admit it. However, it is functional. So then we have to compare making the character sheets super spiffy versus the options of developing a native Mac version, keeping up with the deluge of Pathfinder content, adding support for a huge game like Shadowrun, and a host of other projects. The majority of users keep telling us that they want one of those other things more than custom character sheets, and we have to listen to that.

However, we didn't want to completely abandon the custom character sheet output idea. So we gave it some thought and came up with what we felt was a good compromise solution. There are dozens of people out there creating their own custom spreadsheets for RPGs. The work involved in doing that is vastly more complex and intensive than writing some XSLT code. So we figured that there would be a fair number of Hero Lab users who would be thrilled to dive in and create their own custom sheets if we made that possible using standards like XSL.

We realize that customizable output that any user can play with is what some users want. The reality is that adding that capability would entail MONTHS of work. That would have meant abandoning one of the other big projects we're working on that are wanted by vastly more users. So it simply wasn't prudent, unless we wanted to disappoint an even larger number of our users.

At this point, there are at least a handful of users I know of who are already embarked on creating their own custom sheet output, and it's only been two days since we released V3.7. Before decrying our approach as wrong, give it a chance to see what comes of it. If we're right, then there will be a variety of custom character sheet options available for Pathfinder (and other games) this summer, and the vast majority of users will be happily using one of those options. Hopefully, one of those options will even work well for you.

[Nikmal]

Originally Posted by CapeCodRPGER

I understand what you are saying. But the average person should not have to wait for custom made stuff from the commuinity to use a product like they want. Custom made stuff should be optinal not manditory.

The only thing I don't like about HL is the lack of custominzation with the character sheet. I have seen cheaper character programs with better options for sheets. I expected more from a professional company. The people that pay for the product should not have to do the companies work for them.

No one is doing the work for them. They gave us the option for custom character output. It is not the form that you or some others like but it is custom AND what they said they were going to do. It is in the xml or xsl format and with a Tutorial that is pretty straight forward on how to do a custom sheet. They said that they were going to do this in xml and that is precisely what we got.

The average person CAN do it if they go in and do some experimentation it is not that difficult to do. While there is a learning curve it is not much that it can't be overcome.

The cheaper programs have a much larger learning curve just to use the program so please explain how they are better then Hero Labs? Just using a program like PCGen and customizing most of the character crunch in the PCGen is dang near impossible. While XML is not the easiest thing to use it is pretty straight forward and not technically a true programming language. It is not anything near like C++ or vbasic or some such. So if you would like to do custom sheets for right now and with Hero Labs, you can go through the tutorial and acclimate yourself to the xml a little more then you have done in the past or have some patience and wait a little for someone to come out with one of their own that they are willing to share with us.

Be glad this is not PCgen or another "free" character generator as they are still trying to catch up with how far Hero Labs has come AND have as good an interface as Hero Labs too. Not to mention you WILL need to know programming to do any custom input.