Supressing qty and cost of item.

[Warmonger]

Ok, I'm working on some datafiles for another game than my typical, and I was hoping there is a way I can do the following:
I want to be able to suppress the quantity and cost of items, so that the description spread out more on the line. All of the quantities and costs are irrelevant, so this would be extremely handy in cleaning up the look of the roster.

 

[rob]

At 09:25 AM 6/1/2007, you wrote:

I want to be able to suppress the quantity and cost of items, so that the description spread out more on the line. All of the quantities and costs are irrelevant, so this would be extremely handy in cleaning up the look of the roster.

Hmmm. The name, quantity, and cost columns are hard-wired into AB as always present. Everything else is author-configurable, but not those three. We never considered that a game would want to exclude the quantity or cost, and I'm still having trouble conceptualizing why you'd want to do that. Even though the quantity might typically be one for everything in a game, I'm sure there are exceptions where some items can be multiples, in which case the quantity is applicable. And for cost, I'm concerned that running text through that column in the roster view will break up overall readability of the roster.

What game is this for? Give me some more details on how you see this working and why it's a "good thing". It's possible we can make this stuff controllable in V3.2. There may be assumptions built into the code that made it difficult to do, but also might be relatively tractable. However, I need to have my concerns allayed first, before I look into the complexity.

-Rob

 

[Warmonger]

The game I'm working on is Dark Age. Models can have different Attack Groups for their weapons and abilities. Many can have up to four attack groups, which must be separated out, and an attack group can have multiple weapons or uses of each weapon underneath it.

example force list here: http://www.dark-age.com/Downloads/QuickStart/BroodQuickstart.pdf

Some of the stat lines can get too long when the weapon has multiple notes on it, causing word wrap in the short text area, causing excessively long rosters. I have also tried setting everything up as options, but assuring that everything is on its own line that way causes problems too. I am looking to include all details needed to play the game from an army builder roster (with the full support of Dark Age Games) but can't really get AB tweaked just right to show the layout as it appears in the game. If you look at the site, you can also see the older cards that were used, such as in confrontation and warmachine etc etc, that will show a similar look to hat I'm trying to achieve.

There is not a lot of customization allowed in the game, as each model is set in what it's armed with, with no variation possible really. Attaching each line as an item seems ideal to me, as it assures a separate line for the weapon stats and since you can't vary it, the quantity and cost are completely irrelevant.

Hope I made that as clear as mud.

 

[harkan]

I'd back up what Warmonger is saying here, As a further example games system like 40k can get away with setting the game items to AB options only.

For a game like Inquisitor though when there can be a massive amount of game items that arent costed or the quantity is not needed but do have a lot of detail needed, then seperate lines in the print out with the character would be idela, but without the cost, quantity etc

 

[Warmonger]

Here is the html output when done as options:

http://www.warmonger23.com/SampleRoster.htm

Each attack group heading, and each weapon entry is an option. All of them, in this case begin with a {br}, to space them down one line from the previous. If you use standard names, but print options on a separate line, then you get 2 move lines on this roster. (never fear, never panic and non living unit goes from currently 1 line to 3) This also causes the problem, that within AB, the options panel on the right, shows no names as it line breaks them out of view.....

The other option I tried, is the items. But as you can see, if the text were constrained to be only within the columns between qty and cost, then it would add quite a few more lines as well.

I can also see this as being EXTREMELY useful for the Battlefleet Gothic files. As there, the ships come with set stat lines, that it is super useful to have broken down like this as well.

At this point, to get the right output, I'm thinking I'm going to have to create 2 options for each entry, or something similar. One for display within AB (design) and one for rosters (output). Which of course would be a ton of work...

Another possibility, might be making the options panel on the right hand side capable of ignoring line breaks? {br}

 

[Mathias]

At this point, to get the right output, I'm thinking I'm going to have to create 2 options for each entry, or something similar. One for display within AB (design) and one for rosters (output). Which of course would be a ton of work...

A thought - use less options - use a single option that's only visible in a printout, and is formatted correctly, and have the options that exist during roster design not show up during printout. Of course that's not as nice if multiple units share an attack, and you have to copy the text out many times, and can't just link to the same option.