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- The Lone Wolf Development Team
Hero Lab Community Repository for Shadowrun 5th?
- Thread starter cndblank
- Start date
'A shared data repository would be awesome. Is there anything like this already?'
Not to my knowledge.
If nothing else we need to get a shared google drive or something like that.
I think we need to agree to use good naming convention on the NPCs.
Archetypes and race are good things to include in the title of the NPC.
Omae for Chummer is awesome. A searchable data base of NPCs is really useful.
We might want to also do PDFs of the NPCs for when someone doesn't have all of the Herolab shadowrun content.
I should have a nice collection of Spikes Troll Go Gangers. I have Prospects, Patched members, and Chromed Patched members. Plus a few heavy hitters for special occasions like a Spike Fighting adept and a Spike Combat Biker rigger.
Not to my knowledge.
If nothing else we need to get a shared google drive or something like that.
I think we need to agree to use good naming convention on the NPCs.
Archetypes and race are good things to include in the title of the NPC.
Omae for Chummer is awesome. A searchable data base of NPCs is really useful.
We might want to also do PDFs of the NPCs for when someone doesn't have all of the Herolab shadowrun content.
I should have a nice collection of Spikes Troll Go Gangers. I have Prospects, Patched members, and Chromed Patched members. Plus a few heavy hitters for special occasions like a Spike Fighting adept and a Spike Combat Biker rigger.
ShadowChemosh
Well-known member
Hey all. I am the person who runs the d20 (3.5), Pathfinder and 5e D&D repositories. I just saw this thread by chance but figured I could give some information.
The first step is to use a source code repository tool like GitHub. HERE is a link to the Pathfinder one currently in use. This is very helpful as it allows multiple people to make changes to the .user files and to be kept in sync. In addition it has communication tools for collaboration and even bug tracking. The really great part is that its 100% free as long as you are ok with your source code being seen by anyone. This is perfect for such OpenSource tools like HL addons. Take a look at Pathfinder Community Standards post I did for Pathfinder and GitHub as it has some information including desktop software to make things easier.
The second thing is the ability to create a .hl file which is a Hero Lab install file. This file is a compressed file that can contain .por, .stock, .user files and even custom output files. It also is designed to work with version numbers so that it notifies people when a new higher version is available. HERE is an article from LW about creating the .hl file for the iPad. But the .hl can be used with any HL software.
Third you need a static URL address to host the file so that gamers can get to the install file. For this I actually provide a server to all three community groups. I would have no issue adding a fourth for Shadowrun. What I do for Sendric for d20 I gave him his own user id/password that allows access to a single subfolder of my server. He then uses a FTP Client to easily change the .hl file and .xml file when a new version comes out. This works out really well and means one less thing for me to do.
HERE is an article I wrote up for others on how to use DropBox, hl install files, and how to craft the URL xml. That should cover allot of the specific details that anyone could have. I don't recommend DropBox for large scale repository as DropBox under heavy use will shut down the link. For small gaming groups it works perfect but in example my Pathfinder repository can get 10,000 downloads in a month. Dropbox would shut that down with a quarter of those downloads.
The last and most important part of this is the PERSON who is in charge. For d20 its Sendric, for Pathfinder myself, and for 5e its daplunk. But you need one person to take charge who going to be around and available. They need to be able to take the reins and run with them. I don't hang out in areas outside of the D&D stuff on these boards so I don't know who that would be here.
I will try and monitor this thread. But feel free to PM me with questions also.
Step 1 Set up GitHub. Owner David Blank - Start Date Evening of 02/07/2017.
You can also do releases through GitHub directly like we do at PCGen.
So what are we looking for here?
I was hoping to share be able to share NPCs, contacts, and player characters with other GMs.
Conversions from an earlier shadowrun edition to 5th would be great too.
I think with the info provided we can move forward with Github.
Right now I just want to be able to share NPCs and PCs.
Can we do that individually or do we need to create data packs for them?
We also need either some sort of good naming conventions (Group, Race, Archetype, or something like that) or some sort of data base where we can search like Omea.
Being able to do a search on a Yak Troll melee Adept would be nice.
Any other suggestions or concerns?
Three day weekend coming up so I'll work on step 1.
I was hoping to share be able to share NPCs, contacts, and player characters with other GMs.
Conversions from an earlier shadowrun edition to 5th would be great too.
I think with the info provided we can move forward with Github.
Right now I just want to be able to share NPCs and PCs.
Can we do that individually or do we need to create data packs for them?
We also need either some sort of good naming conventions (Group, Race, Archetype, or something like that) or some sort of data base where we can search like Omea.
Being able to do a search on a Yak Troll melee Adept would be nice.
Any other suggestions or concerns?
Three day weekend coming up so I'll work on step 1.
Hey guys,
If you want to see how the Community Packs work for the other game systems you can just use Hero Lab to test it.
As an example:
Open Hero Lab > Select D&D 5e > Download the official pack.
You will be able to open it in Demo mode. Have a poke around and you should be able to assess that it is rather limited in contact due to the copyright restrictions.
Go back to the Select A Game screen and hit the Find Updates button. Click Add Source and copy the URL below in as a new source. It will download and prompt you to restart Hero Lab.
Do that and then jump in and have a look at all the new content. Remember to check the source options at the player create screen. You will notice that the bulk of the content is player options.
Now reading through the thread it doesn't sound like this is what you are trying to do.
What you can do though to include NPCs, PCs and Creatures is create stock files. These are just Hero Lab portfolios that are saved with the *.stock portfolio. You then put it in your data folder and restart Hero Lab to make them available in the encounter builder.
You would then package it up like Shadow described which would give you a URL that people could add just like the process above. When an update is make Hero Lab prompts the user to update.
Anyway, hope it helps and goodluck. Who ever takes on the responsibility of owning the content be prepared. It can be a bit of work. Sometimes an official patch changes how things work and we need to go back through and change things or we introduce a bug and break things for people and need to provide support.
One of those with great functionality comes increased responsibility situations.
Totally worth it though tbh
If you want to see how the Community Packs work for the other game systems you can just use Hero Lab to test it.
As an example:
Open Hero Lab > Select D&D 5e > Download the official pack.
You will be able to open it in Demo mode. Have a poke around and you should be able to assess that it is rather limited in contact due to the copyright restrictions.
Go back to the Select A Game screen and hit the Find Updates button. Click Add Source and copy the URL below in as a new source. It will download and prompt you to restart Hero Lab.
Code:
http://www.shadowsoftware.net/herolab/5e/updates.xmlDo that and then jump in and have a look at all the new content. Remember to check the source options at the player create screen. You will notice that the bulk of the content is player options.
Now reading through the thread it doesn't sound like this is what you are trying to do.
What you can do though to include NPCs, PCs and Creatures is create stock files. These are just Hero Lab portfolios that are saved with the *.stock portfolio. You then put it in your data folder and restart Hero Lab to make them available in the encounter builder.
Code:
C:\ProgramData\Hero Lab\data\shadowrun5You would then package it up like Shadow described which would give you a URL that people could add just like the process above. When an update is make Hero Lab prompts the user to update.
Anyway, hope it helps and goodluck. Who ever takes on the responsibility of owning the content be prepared. It can be a bit of work. Sometimes an official patch changes how things work and we need to go back through and change things or we introduce a bug and break things for people and need to provide support.
One of those with great functionality comes increased responsibility situations.
Totally worth it though tbh
ShadowChemosh
Well-known member
If you can its news to me. Because I don't see how you would get gitHub to host the updates.xml file in a format that HL can read. In addition you would have to store the .hl file in the repository itself.
Let me know if you can trick GitHub into doing that.
ShadowChemosh
Well-known member
I assume "contacts" things stored in a .por file like NPC/PCs are? If so what you would want to do is combine these together into a single .por file and place them into the Shadowrun data folder. This is where the encounter builder tool expects to find the files.
Then you can include .por files or .stock files into the .hl updates file. The one issue here is that .por/.stock files can get really big. For Pathfinder I am over 1.3 gigs already. If the files got that big you would need to start finding alternative hosting options. In addition you would want to break it up in multiple downloads. Not many people are going to be happy to download half a gig in data...
But if these are not that many its a good place to start. But if any of you have .user files that make those .por files then you need to include the .user file in the .hl file when its made.
I've created a repository
https://github.com/runnerblank/Community-Hero-Lab---Shadowrun-5th
Now I need to figure out what I'm doing
https://github.com/runnerblank/Community-Hero-Lab---Shadowrun-5th
Now I need to figure out what I'm doing
manchuwook
Well-known member
I've made encounters for Pathfinder, but it has been a few months.