Custom Cavalier Order – Need Guidance

[AlexAugunas]

Hello!

My name's Alex Augunas, and I'm the publisher of Everyman Gaming, LLC. I recently acquired HeroLab and I'm looking to start fiddling around with custom content. I'd like to start with creating NPCs for a project I'm working on, but long-term it would be pretty neat to get skilled enough to actually convert entire books of my work into Hero Lab files.

That's why I'm here: seeking help.

I wanted to start with creating a new Cavalier Order, so I read through some Hero Lab editors' guides and got to work. I copied an existing cavalier order (the Order of the Cockatrice to be precise) and began fiddling around. Eventually I went to try and test my new order in Hero Lab, but I got the attached error message and couldn't figure out how to resolve it. Any help in this matter (as well as general advice on what to do and what not to do when creating a cavalier order) would be very much appreciated!

Ps Even after this question is answered (I'm hoping it will be), I'm planning on keeping this thread open so I can continue to ask questions on this topic in a consolidated place.

[AndrewD2]

Well what is the text in the description box for that item?

[Aaron]

I believe some tabs can cause problems when in a description, so be on the lookout for those.

[Aaron]

Also, welcome to the forums!

[TheIronGolem]

Three cheers for dealing with character-encoding issues!

*crickets chirping*

[ShadowChemosh]

My other suggestion of note is to add a two-digit unique character to the name of all your Things "now". This is VERY important for those that plan to sell or distrubute there work. Because HL has to have that Unique ID be "unique" across all addons. If it does not it will clash and cause HL to fall into safe mode. In example see THIS thread about the FGG Rappan Athuk files that has the same Unique ID of a skill LW added.

What exactly does this mean? It means if you where adding the feat "Dodge" it would default to a unique id of "fDodge" "f" means Feat and "Dodge" is well its name. So instead you would do "fEGDodge". Where "EG" means "Everyman Games" and would cause you to have a totally unique ID that LW would never use.

To make this easier the Editor has a new setting. So from inside the editor go to "Tools->Set User Identifier..." and then the HL editor will auto add your two digit values for you.

Originally Posted by AlexAugunas

keeping this threat open

Is this a World of Warcraft thing were you have to keep your threat/aggro up so that we don't close the thread?

[AlexAugunas]

Originally Posted by ShadowChemosh

Is this a World of Warcraft thing were you have to keep your threat/aggro up so that we don't close the thread?

Gosh, you'd think that the moderators wouldn't approve my posts if I'm running around making threats the very first time that I post!

[AlexAugunas]

Originally Posted by Aaron

I believe some tabs can cause problems when in a description, so be on the lookout for those.

Tab as in indentation? Like the "tab" key? There are no indentations in what I'm seeing in the description box, but I did copy/paste my text directly out of my product....

Similar line of questioning, could the fact that I used the enter key to put spaces between items of text cause the issue?

[ShadowChemosh]

Originally Posted by AlexAugunas

Tab as in indentation? Like the "tab" key? There are no indentations in what I'm seeing in the description box, but I did copy/paste my text directly out of my product....

Assuming that it was a "PDF" document you can get strange characters. What I do is copy into TextPad first and then copy out of TextPad and back into HL. This makes sure that all those "invalid" characters get removed.

Originally Posted by AlexAugunas

Similar line of questioning, could the fact that I used the enter key to put spaces between items of text cause the issue?

Nope that should be totally safe. It would be the extra characters from the PDF most likely causing the issue.

Easiest method is to copy everything "out" of HL and into NotePad or TextPad and make sure all "extra" characters are gone.

[Aaron]

Originally Posted by AlexAugunas

Tab as in indentation? Like the "tab" key? There are no indentations in what I'm seeing in the description box, but I did copy/paste my text directly out of my product....

Precisely.

Originally Posted by AlexAugunas

Similar line of questioning, could the fact that I used the enter key to put spaces between items of text cause the issue?

I don't think I have ever heard of linebreaks causing a problem.