Hero Lab: Incomplete

[Unseelie]

Have you tried opening two copies of Hero Lab - open an editor in each, with the original in one and the new material in the other - that'll hopefully make it easier to use one thing as a reference while making another.

*smacks forehead*

No, it never even occurred to me. I come from the Mac world, so I just assumed you could only run one instance of Hero Lab at a time. I'd still rather be able to copy the file, but this is workable.

Thanks.

 

[Kendall-DM]

All in all, I found the UI to be fantastically simple to navigate, considering the breadth of features it supports. I can't say I'm particularly fond of the color scheme that was chosen, and there are a few inconsistencies in button layout/placing, but it's certainly no worse than Hero Lab's UI.

I may be misremembering the GUI, probably because I tried a few 3rd party tactical consoles. In any case, the not loading of the .por files was the killer for me. I could email the programmer to get my files to work, but an FAQ of common issues would have been a better solution. Again, I didn't put much work into finding out why my files didn't load, so I may have to give this another try and see what's what. I'll re-review it, stay tuned.

 

[Kendall-DM]

Right, I still have the same issues. It doesn't load my .por files. The interface is not intuitive enough for me to know WHY I can't load them, but I'm pretty sure it's because I'm trying to load 3.5 portfolios and it doesn't seem to support those (everything appears Pathfinder oriented). I understand it's the most popular d20 product right now, but I have continued with 3.5 with modified house rules (I don't run a high magic, high damage game).

Back to my original point. What I want to do is to make an application that uses the HL .user files as their context, and work from that. Not just the .por files and draw everything from an SRD (yeah, I know you can customize, but doing it again in CM is not the most optimal solution when there is alot to modify). I may be biting off more than I can chew, but I'm willing to give this a try.

 

[chiefweasel]

So are you looking to write a conversion program? from 3.5 to PF?

 

[Adam.Ormond]

So are you looking to write a conversion program? from 3.5 to PF?

I think he's talking about writing his own Tactical Console that could leverage all the work that's already been done in Hero Lab, by both Lone Wolf and the community. I wanted to do the same, because Hero Lab's Tactical Console is rather inadequate, but I don't think Hero Lab's extensible enough to support it.

You can create your own Game System, and create your own Tactical Console that way, but I don't think you ever get to write "real" code, so I'm not sure how far you could get with that. Even if that did work, you'd not be able to consume the .stock files, so you've got to create a lot of content.

As far as I can tell, Hero Lab does not support adding new tabs, dialogs, or really any GUI widgets to their existing game systems. You can create the data files for a new portal or whatever, but getting it into the existing data files wasn't particularly intuitive.

Trying to utilize the .user files and Hero Lab .stock files outside of the context of Hero Lab is pretty much impossible.

 

[Adam.Ormond]

I may be misremembering the GUI, probably because I tried a few 3rd party tactical consoles. In any case, the not loading of the .por files was the killer for me. I could email the programmer to get my files to work, but an FAQ of common issues would have been a better solution. Again, I didn't put much work into finding out why my files didn't load, so I may have to give this another try and see what's what. I'll re-review it, stay tuned.

I think we all assumed you were using the Pathfinder game system, considering this thread is in the Pathfinder section of the forums. And, yes, his application is Pathfinder-specific. I'm not surprised that the Pathfinder por file format is different from the d20 format.

 

[Duggan]

I'm pretty sure that .stock files are just .por files with a different extension. ^_^ And parsing .User files could be a bit dicey without a lot of knowledge of the underpinning rules (which I don't think are available in a readily accesible fashion. Still, I applaud the idea of finding ways to better leverage Herolab.

 

[chiefweasel]

I think they are al .por files, somewhere within the code itself does it say what system it is for.

 

[Mathias]

For this sort of thing, you may want to try writing a custom output that can give you the information you need, rather than trying to have your program parse the .por files.

 

[Adam.Ormond]

I'm pretty sure that .stock files are just .por files with a different extension. ^_^ And parsing .User files could be a bit dicey without a lot of knowledge of the underpinning rules (which I don't think are available in a readily accesible fashion. Still, I applaud the idea of finding ways to better leverage Herolab.

Ah, yes -- the .stock do appear to be the same as .por files. I was thinking of the .pkg files. I believe that is where a large amount of the functional game system lies, and how to interpret what is in a .por/.stock/.user.

 

[Adam.Ormond]

For this sort of thing, you may want to try writing a custom output that can give you the information you need, rather than trying to have your program parse the .por files.

I think what we (users) all would like is a means of using HL output in other applications, make modifications in those applications, and then import the data back into HL.

All of this is being explored, due to the limitations of HL itself. HL, as a character/monster builder, is a fantastic tool. However, its abilities outside of that realm are limited. Other tools either already exist, or could be created, to fill in the gaps that HL doesn't close, but unfortunately HL is not capable of reading its output files designed for external applications, and external applications are incapable of making meaningful use of HL's native file types.

If Hero Lab were able to parse its own exported XML files, this issue would be resolved. I can't say this would increase HL's sales, but it certainly stands to reason that it could, as the user based of Combat Manager is separate from Hero Lab, and if CM edits could be reintegrated into HL, that seems like a pretty strong feature for both applications.

 

[Kendall-DM]

Correct, there is alot of the code that I could not access in HL, and I don't intend to. And I'm not entirely sure how I would ensure parsing order in all the scripting (though making something that can parse the HL scripting language is something I've done on far more complex languages before, getting it to work is another thing). What Mathias suggested is more in the vein of where I was heading, parsing the language into a format that can be read into an application I create, that then runs a tactical console. I don't intend to run a true representation of the characters in HL, as that product does a fine enough job for that, I just want to make certain combat related issues work as expected or intended.

Now, that brings up another point. I could make an application that works hand in hand with HLs tactical console, an effect tracker, a duration tracker, spells, but I would need to know alot more about what is going on under the hood. Since HL is a proprietary property, I don't expect that to happen, so I'm left dreaming up this possible 3rd party application. I haven't decided to do it just yet, because I'm not entirely sure how much I have bitten off, so to say, I'm just in the software planning stage. When and if I feel like I can accomplish this, I will, but until then, this is just a thought exercise for me.

As for parsing the files themselves, it's not that difficult if you understand XML and XPath technology, however, I will still have to know what tags I am looking for. That will take some time to figure out, as I am sure there are many tags that are not in much use, and there are tags that are obsolete (but still hang around in legacy mode), and there are tags in some systems that are not in others (the difference in tags between PF and d20 along is an ever-widening one). And that's another issue altogether, because though there is much standardization in the XML structure, its 3rd party flexibility and efficiency are extremely limited the more it deviates from system to system. Which is why CM is strictly PF based.

 

[Colen]

Thanks for everyone's feedback in this thread. I know some of this has been addressed by Mathias and others, but I'd like to address a few of the questions that have been asked.

• Non-implemented feats & class abilities: Some of the new abilities in question, like the archetypes which give you multiple minions and special weapons to use, are going to require some changes to Hero Lab and the core Pathfinder data files before we can make them work. As a result, until now they've taken a back seat to entering new content, like (initially) Ultimate Magic and (now) Ultimate Combat. Those books have a whole lot of new stuff in them!
  
  This is a major concern of ours that we'll be looking to address after Gen Con, once we have Ultimate Combat completely entered. I can't promise that we'll fix all of the non-implemented stuff, but we'll do our best to tackle all that we can, especially since some of these abilities are becoming more and more common as time goes on.
  
  
• Tactical console: The tactical console does a great job of helping GMs run encounters, but there's still a lot that we could automate or make easier / more convenient there. This is something that we had originally hoped to add to Hero Lab 3.7, but other factors like custom output, working on the Mac version, and incorporating all of the new Pathfinder content that's arriving forced us to push it back. It's still on our to-do list for a future update.
  
  As ShadowChemosh suggested, you can check out Combat Manager if you want a more encounter-focused tool right now. I believe it reads in Hero Lab portfolios, so you should still be able to use the encounters you create in Hero Lab with it.
  
  
• Adventure Path Monsters & Encounters: We've been trying to squeeze these into our schedule for a long time; unfortunately they've so far been eclipsed by all of the other Pathfinder content that we have to handle. This is something we evaluate every time that we have our "OK, what next" meetings, and we're trying to make it happen with our limited resources. I agree that it would be awesome to have.
  
  
• Third-Party Software: If you're looking at making third-party software interoperate with Hero Lab, we recommend using the new custom output mechanism to do that. You can either read in the raw XML generated by our custom output, or you can write your own custom output type to invoke your application directly when the user wants it.
  
  Someone requested that we provide the capability for external tools to read in a Hero Lab portfolio, make changes to it, and then write it out again in a way that can be read by Hero Lab. First, let me say that this is incredibly complicated. The Hero Lab saved file format is very complex, and not something that a third-party application can reasonably modify without us reworking it from the ground up.
  
  However, we've recently decided to approach this problem from a different angle which will hopefully have much the same result for users. It'll be a while before we can say more about this, but it is on our radar.

A lot of the above are things we'd really like to do, but simply don't have the bandwidth for right now. This is something we're working on addressing in the future - everything above is on our long-term Hero Lab roadmap, and we want to incorporate as much as we can.

Thanks for your comments and feedback, all!

 

[Dgrm44]

Thanks for the reply Colen. Looking forward to the updated Tactical Console being added to Herolab. Combat Manager is a less than optimal solution.

 

[egg_green]

AP Monsters

Just my two cents on the inclusion of monsters from the Adventure Path bestiaries: I don't know if this would make a difference, but I, for one, would gladly pay for an "AP Bestiary Package" that covers these creatures. I don't know if breaking it out like that would make sense for you, but it's an approach to consider.

Thanks!

 

[CapeCodRPGER]

Just my two cents on the inclusion of monsters from the Adventure Path bestiaries: I don't know if this would make a difference, but I, for one, would gladly pay for an "AP Bestiary Package" that covers these creatures. I don't know if breaking it out like that would make sense for you, but it's an approach to consider.

Thanks!

Paizo has included the monsters from the first couple of adventure paths in Beastary 2. IMO does not make sense for HL to put out another package with them. You'd be paying for the same info when the new beastary comes out.

 

[Dgrm44]

No one really knows that for sure.

 

[Unseelie]

Paizo has included the monsters from the first couple of adventure paths in Beastary 2. IMO does not make sense for HL to put out another package with them. You'd be paying for the same info when the new beastary comes out.

Not all of them though... for example, the Chupacabra from the Legacy of Fire AP is in Bestiary 2, but the Schir Demon from the same Adventure Path was not included. There are enough of these that it would be welcome, in my opinion.

 

[Nikmal]

Paizo has included the monsters from the first couple of adventure paths in Beastary 2. IMO does not make sense for HL to put out another package with them. You'd be paying for the same info when the new beastary comes out.

The thing is though, I would rather get them as a package and get ALL of them rather then get them when a Bestiary comes out and get a few from SOME of them. There are way to many unique creates/monsters in the Adventure Paths that it would be a shame to leave them out of the Hero Labs make-up by Wolflair rather then have one of us mock one up and hopefully make it right and settle for what we can do.

So in my opinion it MORE then makes sense for them to do so and I know of many and I mean many people that would buy the package should Wolflair do one for Hero Labs Pathfinder.

 

[Leonal]

AFAIK not all of the monsters in the older APs are OGL and some were only licensed for that specific AP, so that's also an issue.