Editor Question

[dartnet]

Is there plans to make the editor more user friendly for us GM's that aren't professorial programmers. I am really struggling with boot straps, and Pre-requite info in trying to build some races and classes and feats for my game. Is there any way you can put a tab in there were I can just for instance choose the perquisites? Like there is a edit button that pulls up a menu that lets me choose the skill(and skill levels), races, alignment, and feats one needs for the prestiges class. Or if i am trying to make a class can there be a button that allows me choose if there are bonus feat and at what level and what feat or type of feat allowed. I love your product and the spell editor is great why can't the rest of the editor be hat easy?

[rob]

At 01:33 PM 5/4/2007, you wrote:

Is there plans to make the editor more user friendly for us GM's that aren't professorial programmers. I am really struggling with boot straps, and Pre-requite info in trying to build some races and classes and feats for my game. Is there any way you can put a tab in there were I can just for instance choose the perquisites? Like there is a edit button that pulls up a menu that lets me choose the skill(and skill levels), races, alignment, and feats one needs for the prestiges class. Or if i am trying to make a class can there be a button that allows me choose if there are bonus feat and at what level and what feat or type of feat allowed. I love your product and the spell editor is great why can't the rest of the editor be hat easy?

We've been steadily improving the editor and we definitely have plans to continue that process. There are a number of specific things of the todo list that should make the process even easier. Given that there are only two of us developers here, we can't do it all at once, so we've been iteratively evolving the editor.

One of the key hurdles with the editor is that it can't be specifically tailored to d20. Hero Lab is designed as a generic tool that supports all game systems, and we've got data files for multiple games coming out in the upcoming months. So the editor has to work equally for all game systems. This makes it a more complex task to add some of the functionality we've been adding and intend to add, which means it takes longer to complete than if we focused exclusively on d20 support.

All that being said, I can probably help de-mystify some of the confusion you're having with bootstraps and prereqs. The documentation is not as detailed or friendly as we want it to be (another item on our todo list), so perhaps I can explain things more clearly here to get you running smoothly. Give me some of the bootstraps and prereqs that are causing difficulty for you. Also point me to the exact classes, feats, etc. that you want to add - that way, I can refer to the book for complete details. I'll then do my best to walk you through the process so that you're comfortable adding them yourself. It's also possible that Colen will join the discussion, since he is the guru of the d20 files and may have more insights into certain areas.

[dartnet]

Thanks,

I spent a couple of hours last night working on it and think I got it. I will post any problems I have.
You guys do good work.