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chiefweasel
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Old August 18th, 2009, 11:14 AM
Hey everyone. Well I am back from Gen Con with lots of new ideas and games to play. For those who don’t know me I am the Chiefweasel at Cheese Weasel Logistics. I have been using the Hero Lab product for about a year now and find it one of the best on the market. The only problem I have found, other than my own lack of programming skills, is the lack of D&D 3.5 content. I do not blame the Lone Wolf folks for this because the only content they can use is the content from the 3 basic D&D 3.5 books.

In order to fill in the rest of the content the user community needs to supply it. To that end, I am offering to host all user created content on my website, www.cheeseweasel.net. I have already spoken with a few of the more active members on the forums about collecting the content and everyone seems to feel that a central point it needed and would be a help to the community. Over the new week or so, or as soon as I can get to it, I will post all the files that I have created on my site. I also encourage anyone who has created files to send them along and I will post them, give you the credit.

Along with maintaining the file repository, I also would like to be able to coordinate people or groups of people to work on projects. I know that a lot of effort is being duplicated out there. there isn’t any sense to have 5 different people working on the same list of spells from the Players Handbook II. If we can connect people together the content can b
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jonbartels
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Old August 18th, 2009, 06:37 PM
it would be nice if hero labs' automatic updater links to that central point.
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chiefweasel
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Old August 19th, 2009, 03:32 AM
Sorry, we wont be able to do that. All the content that will be hosted there is outside of the OGL and thus illegal for Lone Wolf to create and sell.
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chiefweasel
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Old August 19th, 2009, 11:22 AM
Hey all, it seems my original message got chopped off, lets try it again:

Hey everyone. Well I am back from Gen Con with lots of new ideas and games to play. For those who don’t know me I am the Chiefweasel at Cheese Weasel Logistics. I have been using the Hero Lab product for about a year now and find it one of the best on the market. The only problem I have found, other than my own lack of programming skills, is the lack of D&D 3.5 content. I do not blame the Lone Wolf folks for this because the only content they can use is the content from the 3 basic D&D 3.5 books.

In order to fill in the rest of the content the user community needs to supply it. To that end, I am offering to host all user created content on my website, www.cheeseweasel.net. I have already spoken with a few of the more active members on the forums about collecting the content and everyone seems to feel that a central point it needed and would be a help to the community. Over the new week or so, or as soon as I can get to it, I will post all the files that I have created on my site. I also encourage anyone who has created files to send them along and I will post them, give you the credit.

Along with maintaining the file repository, I also would like to be able to coordinate people or groups of people to work on projects. I know that a lot of effort is being duplicated out there. there isn’t any sense to have 5 different people working on the same list of spells from the Players Handbook II. If we can connect people together the content can be produced faster and made available sooner to the entire user community.

So if anyone has any user content they would like to send along to me and have me post just send it to chiefweasel@cheeseweasel.net. Be sure to include:

Your alias (I really don’t want to user people’s actual names).
The system the file is for

File Name
Type
Books it’s From
Date file was submitted
Author
If the File Complete/Incomplete
Contact for this project

An example is:
Kensai
Prestige Class
Complete Warrior
07/15/09
Chiefweasel
Complete
chiefweasel@cheeseweasel.net


if you wish to be included on a team of users creating content, please send along your information in the following format:

Book its from
Sub area you are working on (spells, feats…)
How far along you are with it
Your email address
Your alias


I will then take this information and connect you up with someone who will act as a team leader for the project. When the project is complete you can send the user file back to me and I’ll post it on the site. I think that’s about it. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at chiefweasel@cheeseweasel.net. Thanks.
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rob
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Old August 19th, 2009, 07:46 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by chiefweasel View Post
Sorry, we wont be able to do that. All the content that will be hosted there is outside of the OGL and thus illegal for Lone Wolf to create and sell.
There might be a half-solution for this that is significantly better than no solution. We call it the "secondary updates" mechanism and it is intended for use by playtest groups using our products during game development. In the case of Hero Lab, it can just as easily be used for accessing the various user-created data files for d20.

For details on how it works, you'll need to refer to the Army Builder documentation, since it's not currently documented publicly for Hero Lab. To access it, install AB, then open the Authoring Kit documentation (it's all HTML files for AB). Go to the bottom of the main page and click on the "Design & Playtest Support" link. Read the sections on Playtest Distribution and Updates Configuration File.

If you set this up on the cheeseweasel site, then any interested user can add the URL you setup as their secondary updates URL. After that, everything is integrated into the HL updates logic and it's all being managed completely separate from anything we're involved with.

Let me know if you have any questions about this stuff. I'll be happy to answer them.
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chiefweasel
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Old August 20th, 2009, 04:04 AM
Sounds interesting. Can the documentation be viewed with the demo version of Army Builder? Also if we do go forward with this option, would the information need to be in individual files or would it need to be in game systems, such as all the information for a specific book?

Thanks.
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rob
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Old August 20th, 2009, 10:15 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by chiefweasel View Post
Sounds interesting. Can the documentation be viewed with the demo version of Army Builder? Also if we do go forward with this option, would the information need to be in individual files or would it need to be in game systems, such as all the information for a specific book?
Yes. All the docs are installed with the demo version of AB.

The context would need to be packaged up into Hero Lab "import files". This is done using the HLExport tool that is installed with HL. It takes a collection of data files and packages them up into a compressed file that can be instantly imported into HL via the Tools menu.

You can have as few or as many data files as you want in a given import file. And those data files can have one thing or a thousand things in each file. Your choice.

The only important detail is that the import files should contain content that logically works together. So you could have one import file that contains all the content from Book X, or one that contains all the books from a series (e.g. Complete books). You could also just have a single import file for each game system that includes everything for that game. This is purely to keep things organized for users in some logical way. It's entirely up to you to decide on what logic you wish to use.
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ShadowChemosh
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Old March 17th, 2010, 11:56 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by rob View Post
There might be a half-solution for this that is significantly better than no solution. We call it the "secondary updates" mechanism and it is intended for use by playtest groups using our products during game development. In the case of Hero Lab, it can just as easily be used for accessing the various user-created data files for d20.

For details on how it works, you'll need to refer to the Army Builder documentation, since it's not currently documented publicly for Hero Lab. To access it, install AB, then open the Authoring Kit documentation (it's all HTML files for AB). Go to the bottom of the main page and click on the "Design & Playtest Support" link. Read the sections on Playtest Distribution and Updates Configuration File.

If you set this up on the cheeseweasel site, then any interested user can add the URL you setup as their secondary updates URL. After that, everything is integrated into the HL updates logic and it's all being managed completely separate from anything we're involved with.

Let me know if you have any questions about this stuff. I'll be happy to answer them.
I am trying to setup the above for my players that use HL and this Secondary URL feature seems just like the thing I need. I went over the documentation in AB and think I have it setup correctly, but I keep getting the following error from HL.
Unable to retrieve updates from secondary server. Please verify the URL is correct and try again.

Here is the URL I am trying to use:
http://www.shadowgameworld.net/pathf...ab/updates.xml

Going directly to the URL via a web browser seems to show it working correctly as the XML file is displayed. So I have to assume I did something else wrong in the XML file setup.

Any help would be welcome.
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Lawful_g
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Old August 19th, 2009, 06:30 PM
I am sending over some files. I am open to work on whatever.
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jonbartels
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Old August 20th, 2009, 04:47 AM
can that be extended to all games systems that aren't related to D20 like legend of the five rings.
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