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stubbdog
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Old May 30th, 2007, 02:39 PM
I am willing to pay for development time. Talking about Reaper Warlord 2007 datacards. I have been having a bugger of a time trying to convert the 1.2 datacards into the 2007 datacards.

I am willing to pay handsomely for say a dozen or so cards, and then I should be able to handle the rest on my own, once I see and understand how you have started things.

It would not be prudent to just blurt out a number here before discussing it with the potential developer. So, reply if you are interested and give a realistic number for such a task.

I am not asking to program the entire game, just enough to give me a decent understanding of how to do it. So, some datacards, some upgrades, some troop rules, etc...
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Mathias
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Old May 31st, 2007, 10:02 AM
Stubbdog,
I own a hardcover copy of the Warlord rules, and the Nefsokar starter set that came out with their army book, but I've never actually played, so I haven't actually been following any rules changes that might have happened.

Do you have a spoiler of the proper cards to use?

If you can provide me with the materials to work with, I'm interested. I've built two datafiles for AB3 so far.
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stubbdog
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Old May 31st, 2007, 08:07 PM
if you go to www.reapergames.com (and have to register there) then under the warlord section, you can download all of the new datacards.

I had done a ton of work with the old version of the datacard. I had used Russell's start to guide me and I had all the cards done for version 1.2. But, the change in how the new cards work, i was never able to figure out a way to make it work. I have the thought processes easy enoug, but the problem is i am just not that good translating my thoughts into this very difficult to understand software.

The old datacards (which would fit your book) are easy cause it is simply a model with multiple tracks and some special abilities. All upgrades affect the core model.

In the new version of the cards, there is the core model with it's set of tracks, but then they have segmented off items and attack types and movement types off into their own sections and each with their own set of special abilities and possibility for upgrade.

Hence why i have been thrown off and why I am willing to pay someone who is better with this software to get it started.

Then I should, depending on how you do it, I should be able to go back and take all the work that I did in the earlier datacard versoins and pull it in (related to troop build rules and thigns like that).
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Mathias
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Old June 1st, 2007, 12:07 AM
Even if the MAV and RAV are now presented as separate lines in the new version of the card, that doesn't actually seem to invalidate what you have - although it does look like there's quite a lot of revising to be done (comparing a card for Chosen of Sokar, pretty much every value changes, and they add a damage track, but there's not actually anything that couldn't be done in the current rules, as far as I read them.

So, could you give me some more detail about what has changed? Maybe a specific example of something that stumps you?

P.S. I noticed a few things while trying to compare versions - for example, the Nefsokar army book has an army list for Khamsin only - is that not available? Also, I have the data cards and miniatures for Ammat Devourers, and they're in the 2007 data cards, but not in the current version.
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stubbdog
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Old June 13th, 2007, 06:49 AM
Forgive the delayed ersponse, work has bitten me lately.

First, here is my AB3 zip that I have done all my work on:

http://www.exodus-road.com/files/ab3...d1-10-2007.zip

That way you have what I have. It was just about everything from the 1.2 rules and datacards.

If it were just an issue of adding a damage track and a changing the SAs, I could do that. My difficulty has mainly been related to the change in philosophy of how the abilities and SAs are presented. In the 1.2 file All SAs are associated with the model. In the 2.07 file some SAs are associated with the model, but many are associated with the newly introduced secondary stat lines (melee weapon lines, ranged attack lines, magical abilities lines, and nonstandard movement lines).

It could very well be that it is a very easy migration. I am just personally not sure how to pull it off.

Both in the doing as well as the having it show up in a correct manner in the Army builder screen while building armies.

There are follow up issues related to getting some of the faction special abilities to work also, but i figure tackle one problem at a time. First I need to be able to create the datacards, then afterwards, I can worry about getting those FAs to compute.
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Mathias
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Old June 13th, 2007, 10:48 AM
My thought was that the separated MAV/RAV/MOV/CP lines don't actually need to be separated from the main stat block when displayed in AB. Ignore the SAs for a sec, and read down the 0 column of a card - that column has the same information you're already presenting in your stat block. Each of the other damage levels simply becomes one of the damage tracks.

The question then is can we rotate the information when displayed - at least for the printout. I'll read through AB and look for some printout options.

Basically, I think the problem is that AB just doesn't support displaying information in the same way as Reaper's data cards do. So, I'm trying to think of a way to present the same information within AB's display model.

Think about the alternative for displaying units in AB - every unit would consist of a unit and 4-7 children (Dmg, Mov, Dis, etc.) - although that would allow you to access every stat in a unit, it would look pretty bad when displayed in AB. (of course there are always some of the big monsters, whose stat blocks are going to be just as long displayed on the cards as they would be displayed on their side).
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stubbdog
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Old June 19th, 2007, 05:49 AM
So, bascally what you are saying is that for Army builder, it may be that we have to keep displaying it just like the old cards, where al the SAs are clumped under the main card and not under each sub-section.

for 90% of it, that might be ok. But, there are circumstances I can think of where for example, a MAV might get a particular SA, but the RAV does not and the model has both. Would have to be able to differentiate which the SA is representing.


As far as the unit with 4-7 children on every unit looking bad. That, to me, is what hte little expand contract thing is for. You can expand the children when you want to look at the details, just like in the current version.

In the upper window, it crrently only gives the main unit, without the children.

Ok, maybe I can pull this off after all, if I just live with the current dsplay and not try to recreate the actual datacard look.

But, if you can figure out how to actually recreate the datacard look for the printed part at least (I think it would be ok to have on screen be one way), but would prefer the printed look more like the new datacard.
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Mathias
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Old June 21st, 2007, 10:56 AM
To identify Melee and Ranged SAs, would this work:

Melee SAs: ... Ranged SAs: ...

Also, for clarity, possibly separate the items in the .def file's Categ into Melee, Ranged, etc.

I'll keep working on how to alter the display for printing,

Oh, and the unit ID convention for your units; PLEASE use something more readable than the reaper ID. May I suggest:

NFAhradi1 (Ah'radivh)
NFAmmat1 (Ammat)
NFAmmatd1 (Ammat Devourers)
KHLancer1 (Khamsin Lancers)
KHMounte1 (Khamsin Mounted Archers)

(two letter race code, first 5-6 characters of the name, then a number in case more than one unit has the same set of letters, or for units that need to be doubled up for some reason.


Then, Ah'radivh's damage tracks become:

DTAhradi1A
DTAhradi1B
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stubbdog
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Old July 19th, 2007, 01:43 PM
ok, give me a week or so to redo my datacards that I have to best match the new stats, then we can re-start this thread in terms of trying to take it past a simple data update. But, at least we can do it from the most up to date info that I can get it to.

As for the naming scheme, I was just using what the original creator had started with, but I figure I can try to incorporate a better name scheme during the update process.
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stubbdog
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Old July 27th, 2007, 06:45 AM
Here is my progress so far. I have the core program working now with the new info. But, still trying to figure out the display issue. I have an idea on how to make it work, but my initial attempt failed so, undid it for now so I could post working files.

I prefer to work directly with the files, and not thru the interface. So, it took about 15 hours simply to get things re-organized and readable. But, now its all nice and pretty in there so any changes that need to be made should be easily findable and made quickly.

http://www.stubbdog.com/stuff/ab3/2007/s007.zip

I have included the warlord.def file, common.dat, and reptus.dat. Someone else is helping me port over the rest of the datacards over. Manually doing it would take a few hours with each fction, and he said he could write a script in Perl or C# that coud do it much quicker. So, should have that shortly. But, I did the reptus so that I could have a working one to go on.

I still have a few things to do with these files. Like updating some of the spells, affects of some of the equipment, and update the affects of some faction SAs. But, overall its working now.

Related to the SA split idea, I will see i I can explain my take on it. I dont kno the technical jargin of xml so, I can just talk based on the current and proposed variable names. If you look in the files you will see that all of the SAs are basically set to type"c_ability" and then the c_abilty uses o_ability to move them down to the bottom of the list when it has multiple DTs. Well, I am thinking that we may not be able to achieve the horizontal layout of the datacards, but we could at least split up the abilities into four types: c_mability, c_nability, c_rability, c_cability - model, melee, ranged, casting. and then have four examples of the o_ability too: o_mability, o_nability, o_rability, o_cability. Each doing the exact same thing the original one file was suppose to do, but each with a different index or priority level, such that you could stack them at the bottom. My first attempt at this create an error, something about PCData error on a link to PCData... I cant remember the exact error. I just wanted to bounce this one off you and talk more on whether my thinking is straight.

I will talk more on this idea after I have finished cleaning up the last few things on te current files.
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