Problem using Authoring Kit

[geoffnsandiego]

Hello,

I've been using Herolab for several years now and I've started to become interested in creating aa, HL file for my favorite game that has not yet been created in HeroLab - The Dark Eye. It is a German import and the fifth edition was just released in English last year. There are quite a few tools out there in German but none in English. So I decided I'd create the necessary DAT files myself. Now I am hopelessly lost. I tried modifying the skeleton files and produced nonsense. The game system itself isn't that complex but I think I'm going about it the wrong way.

I would like three things in the first version...

1) Attributes - There are eight of them and they are purchased using Adventure Points, so not much different than the CP system already in the skeleton file. I tried adding two to the data file and...yeah...garbage. There are also a few calculated Attributes.

2) Skills - These are also purchased with APs. Each skill is linked to 3 dice rolls (each to an Attribute) but this part can wait.

3) Abilities - There are quite a few of these and while I'd love to automate what they to various Skills and Attributes, that too can wait. I mainly want this first version to be a calculator of AP cost for characters, not something used during combat necessarily.

So where do I start? My fiddling around with the skeleton file was not successful. Should I not start with the Thing Attribute Data file?

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Geoff

[Farling]

Have you run through the tutorials? They explain how to work on attributes first, and step you through the different parts of building a new system.

[geoffnsandiego]

Farling,

Thanks for the advice to go back to the tutorials. I successfully have the Attributes and Skills in. They work fine.

Any ideas on how to do a system using CP to build characters but where the costs scale as attributes go up? Additionally, the cost of skills are not all the same, there are four broad categories and each has a different cost formula.

Thanks,

Geoff

[Farling]

I haven't worked in the authoring kit for a little while, but isn't there a way to have the cost of a thing can be expressed as an expression instead of a fixed value? The expression could then look at other things if required.

[TCArknight]

Easiest way would probably be to set up a procedure (or even a different one for each different cost scale) which is called from script for each component. I'm not at home right now, but I can see if can dig up an example when get home tonight.

[joelcifer]

How do you even start using the Authoring kit? How do you open it?