Starting to make custom stuff

[Brolthemighty]

Alright, so after a long hiatus from doing any kind of custom files for my HL, I'm back to needing to do so. When I had originally done it before, it was a mess. I was making stuff for my home Pathfinder games, but the file organisation and such was just...out there. It made it difficult for stuff like exporting for use on iPad and such. So I figured I'd ask for help this time. Here's my questions:

When starting to create my own custom files and content, what's a good way to organize it? For instance, making the content "selectable" in the Configure Hero Settings options.

What's a good naming scheme or somesuch for each custom piece. I always had a hard time coming up with ThingID when I was doing it before.

I'm sure I'll have more questions as I tackle each project (custom faerie dragon, and sidekicks so far) but that's it for now. Essentially, what did you wish you did when you first started out making custom files?

[dungeonguru]

As far as organization goes, I find that the simplest options are best.



If you havent' found out yet, the new length for thingIDs is 17 characters, so naming is a bit more easy.

The community usually sticks to an abbreviation that includes the community ID (5C) and a 3 or 4 letter abbreviation for the source (Curse of Strahd = COS) so you'll see stuff like:

ra5CCOSAnimTab

So basically after your personal ID, you can use an abbreviation that lets you know what file/book you're using if you want it and then use 7 or 8 characters to abbreviate long names.

A good rule of thumb is to use the first letters in a pattern. Single words use up to 8 characters (ex. longword = w5Clongword) and then you break up the 8 into patterns like 4-4, 3-3-2, 2-2-2-2 using the first letters of each word in a thing's name.

As far as things learned. I learned to declutter. All of my items are in 3 large files - 1 is for PC stuff, 1 is for NPCs/Monsters and 1 is for magic items/equipment. That means if I can easily find and modify code that might be shared a lot faster in notepad++.

[Brolthemighty]

Sorry it took so long to get back, been a bear at work. I really appreciate the tips. I wouldn't have even though of breaking it up into 3 different files. Same with the thing ID's. I just kinda winged it before. I'm sure I'll end up making more posts when I start needing help with specific things, but I really appreciate you taking the time to answer.