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resplendenthawk
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Old December 18th, 2007, 04:45 PM
Any way we can get the ability to add custom skills? I really want to use this tool for my Requiem for Rome campaign, which functions fine except for the replacement of 4 modern skills with 4 archaic skills. Ive gone through the tutorial several times and I cant find anything regarding making custom skills!!
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Aldaron
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Old December 19th, 2007, 01:41 AM
I agree it would be nice to edit existing stuff. As it is, we can add new skills via the editor - or once a .dat file is created, you can go in and directly edit the file (it's actually XML code, so if you know XML, it's easy enough to play with). The problem is that all the original stuff is apparently stored in .pkg files and impossible to edit.

I'd like to be able to get into them in order to customise some of the stuff that we use in a campaign.
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resplendenthawk
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Old December 19th, 2007, 03:48 AM
Yeah, unfortunately I don't know XML, so I seem to be without a method to add a skill through the editor, which seems to possess a tab for nearly everything accept skills!

Also as you said, it would be nice to be able to edit the existing skills or somehow make sure that skills that arnt valid for a particular campaign dont show up on the sheet.
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Aldaron
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Old December 19th, 2007, 04:48 AM
Actually, having just checked it again, I found I was mistaken...skills are about the only thing not in the editor! (which you pointed out, of course!)

I just assumed that because nearly everything else was there, that skills were as well!

*points to developers* Guys? This'd be a nice thing for 1.4...
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rob
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Old December 19th, 2007, 09:52 PM
At 05:45 PM 12/18/2007, you wrote:
Quote:
Any way we can get the ability to add custom skills? I really want to use this tool for my Requiem for Rome campaign, which functions fine except for the replacement of 4 modern skills with 4 archaic skills. Ive gone through the tutorial several times and I cant find anything regarding making custom skills!!
There is currently no way to add skills via the Editor. Why? Because when we started on this process there was no known way in the game system to muck with skills. Everything used the same skills. Same for attributes. So there was no need to let users add or edit them.

Then along comes a new book that White Wolf hasn't yet provided to us. Of course, it gets released at almost the exact same time as the WoD files for HL, and it just HAS to be the exception that proves the rule! <sigh>

After seeing this post, I investigated a little bit and found out the basics about the changes in RfR. It should not be difficult to get what you need added, so I'll make it a priority to get added to the Editor. Once it's in place, you should be able to add the new skills pretty easily. You can also get rid of the old skills if you want.
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rob
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Old December 19th, 2007, 10:26 PM
At 02:41 AM 12/19/2007, you wrote:
Quote:
I agree it would be nice to edit existing stuff. As it is, we can add new skills via the editor - or once a .dat file is created, you can go in and directly edit the file (it's actually XML code, so if you know XML, it's easy enough to play with). The problem is that all the original stuff is apparently stored in .pkg files and impossible to edit.

I'd like to be able to get into them in order to customise some of the stuff that we use in a campaign.
You can already do this via the Editor! While you can't modify the core material, you CAN create new material that HL uses in place of the core material. So you can swap out the core material with your own changes.

This is accomplished via the "Replaces Id" field within the Editor. Start by creating a copy of something in the Editor. Then specify the "Replaces Id" as the original thing you copied. HL will replace the original with the new thing you've defined. You can use the same name or a different name, as you deem appropriate.

For example, let's assume you want to change the Fast Reflexes merit to have a maximum of three dots instead of two. Within the Editor, create a new merit as a copy of Fast Reflexes. Assign your own unique id. Change the Maximum Dots to 3. Now look to the far right, just above the various buttons for Bootstraps, Conditions, etc. You'll see a field labeled "Replaced Thing Id". Enter the id of the original Fast Reflexes merit ("mReflexes"). Now save your changes and add your new thing to the data files. Go to the Merits tab and look at Fast Reflexes. You'll see it now has a maximum of 3 dots. Add it and you can increase it up to 3 dots. Voila! You've replaced the core material with your own.

Note that the core material STILL EXISTS. It hasn't been deleted. Instead, your new material masks the core material from the user. But you can still find the core material in the Editor and use it as the basis for creating something new. Similarly, if you decide you want to have both the old and new material available concurrently, just clear the "Replaces Thing Id" field and save your changes. Now both will appear.

In general, the WoD files have been designed so that you should *not* need to edit any XML files directly. You should be able to accomplish everything you need via the Editor. I'm sure there are wonky special cases, but the Editor should let you do 99.5% of all the stuff you'll want to do.

Hope this helps!
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rob
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Old December 19th, 2007, 10:44 PM
At 04:48 AM 12/19/2007, you wrote:
Quote:
Also as you said, it would be nice to be able to edit the existing skills or somehow make sure that skills that arnt valid for a particular campaign dont show up on the sheet.
You can hide things from the data files if you wish. Unfortunately, you can't do this via the Editor, but it's very simple to do with a text file. It's actually an XML file, but the syntax for hiding stuff is so simple that you honestly don't need to know XML to do it. :-)

Details on this will be found in the Authoring Kit docs included with the product. In the section on Data Files, follow the link at the top to Hidden Things. Each "hidden" entry identifies a single thing to be omitted from access by the user.

Let's assume you want to hide the Fast Reflexes merit. It has a unique id of "mReflexes". So the complete file needed to hide the merit would look like the following:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<document signature="Hero Lab Data">
* <hidden id="mReflexes" type="thing"/>
</document>

Save the above contents to a file with a ".dat" file extension. Be sure that the file is placed in the directory with all of the WoD data files. By default, that would be "C:HeroLabdatawod". Then re-load the data files. Now go to the Merits tab and Fast Reflexes should be missing from the list.

If you wanted to hide multiple things, just clone the line starting with "<hidden" above and change the value given by the "id" attribute. In other words, replace the "mReflexes" text with the id of whatever thing you want to hide.
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Aldaron
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Old December 20th, 2007, 03:25 AM
Excellent, Rob - thanks for the advice re: "Replaces ID". I hadn't mucked about with that because I wasn't sure what it did, but now I'm rubbing my hands together...

(Consider this a "Thanks!" for your advice in the other thread, as well)

Cheers, mate.

Al.
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Aldaron
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Old December 20th, 2007, 03:28 AM
**double post**
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