It seems like a good time to post some SE news, as there seems to be flurry of activity here lately (plug-ins and expansions and case books, oh my!).

SE News and Updates:

A few new features were carefully hidden amongst the little bug fixes in the "Release Candidates":

• a fold-up box (tuck box) pattern maker in the deck editor
• a partial Russian translation thanks to Artyom Nazarov, including better Cyrillic glyphs than the temporary stand-ins I provided with earlier versions
• scripting support in the mark-up renderer (which was added primarily to make the next item):
• an updated case book library (open any case book, including the dummy example, go to Publish and press Update This Library to the Current Version).
• the case book investigation editor prints the name of the index entry in the event tree, for entries that will appear in the index ([black Cave], [A1], [A2], etc.); the star-vs-dot graphic didn't provide enough feedback or context on its own
• case book style settings can be set per case book and be edited from the case book editor (Publish tab, Advanced panel, Edit Style Properties)
• standard page background art is included; the image can be changed (or disabled) by changing the case book style (previous bullet)
• a new interface into the scripting subsystem allows for some primitive debugging mechanisms; see the Basic Debugger plug-in (below)
• a few additional widgets have been made available through PluginContext.createInterfaceComponent()

Plug-in News and Updates:

• since this has come up twice in the last couple of days, I've posted a Clip Art Pack extension that includes an elder sign (res://cgj/clipart/black-elder-sign.png)
• the Image Resource Browser plug-in has been updated to browse both standard image resources and those embedded in plug-in bundles (this requires the latest copy of SE, but if you have an older version the basic browsing functionality will still work)
• the new Nothing Happens plug-in will automatically fill in the leftover location index entries in your case book.
• the new Basic Debugger plug-in provides some crude script debugging facilities via a Web interface; it can at least (usually) remotely terminate a script that has become non-responsive
• the new Ex Libris plug-in makes it easy to verify that your custom content is in line with mythos canon, or to find new inspiration
• the Arkham Nights Case Book Formatter has been updated to work with (or more correctly, ignore) the new case book style features

Plug-in Authoring Kit:

• includes a new version of the SE Text Resource Editor with a diff tool (especially useful for translation teams)
• source code to the Nothing Happens plug-in is included; this provides an example of manipulating a case book and how to create a dialog box using script code
• example extension #8 is an example of how to create your own clip art pack

Miscellaneous Odds and Ends:

• Philippe Vander Linden (pvdlinde) has kindly provided a French translation of the Gilman Memorial Exhibit deck
• I've updated the case book tutorial to a bit to make it clearer how events should be nested and to update the images
• I've put a quick tutorial-in-a-file up on making boxes with the new fold-up box component

Cheers,
Chris

I've been having this problem for a while now, I'm just going to assume it's the fact that my computer be old, but if it isn't...

Everytime I attempt to print anything on Strange Eons, my computer starts moving at a crawl for about 15 minutes while it tries to print it out. The information will reach the printer, and the printer will get a piece of paper ready but then not do anything for about 15 minutes and has an end result of prining out a blank piece of paper.

Is anyone else having printing problems with SE, or is it just me?

Shining Aquas said:

It's hard to say what the problem might be without further information, but here are a few things you might look at:

1. Check that your printer and graphics card drivers are up to date (also your Java installation).

2. You can verify if the problem is with the printer/printer driver or is somewhere else in the pipeline by trying to print to a PDF using Adobe Acrobat or one of the free PDF printer drivers. As a bonus, if you can print the document to PDF you might be able to print it to your printer from there.

3. SE works printers a lot harder than typical applications, especially if the printer must hold the entire page image in its memory (e.g., if it is a laser printer). Printing a blank or incomplete page could indicate that the printer does not have enough memory to hold the page image. Limiting the resolution of the card images sent to the printer might fix this problem. To do this, from SE choose Toolbox | Quickscript and paste the following line into the editor:

Patch.apply( "target-print-dpi-min", "150", "target-print-dpi-max", "300" );

Then press the Run Script button at the bottom of the dialog. You should see something like the following printed in response:

target-print-dpi-min = 150 (was: 300)
target-print-dpi-max = 300 (was: 600)
OK

Now try printing again. If that doesn't help, you could try reducing the resolution even further, to 150/150. Note that lowering these settings will reduce the quality of printed output, so if the problem turns out to be caused by something else, you will want to restore them to their original values.

Cheers,
Chris

Appreciate the help very much, gonna try it tonight.

Hopefully I'll have luck printing out my latest "Shaggy" investigator (from Scooby Doo)

Great software, but I have a problem: When I export my board it only expors a portion of it. How do I export it all??

edit: nvm found out

I was wondering if you could add to the next version the option to do difficulty in evade and horror checks on monsters. You could make the blood tokens near the combat modifier on the right, and that way you will have space to make little mind tokens on the left to indicate the horror check's difficulty. As for evade, you could put little clue tokens (or something else) right under the awareness. I just think it would be cool if we could make monsters that require 2 or more successes to pass an evade and/or a horror checks.

So few monsters are going to have a difficulty 2 Evade or Horror check that hey can be adequately handled with a pice of text that says "The Difficulty of the Horror Check is 2." or whatever. Remember that there really aren't any weapons for Horror or Evade, so setting the difficulty to 2 is very similar to setting the difficulty to "impossible." The vast majority of monsters won't have 2+ difficulties, so there really isn't anything saved by having an icon for difficulty 2+ Horror or Evade checks - players won't see those icons often enough to not have to look them up.

-Frank

I think I asked this somewhere else in a bit of a throwaway comment, but it would be awesome if you could put in a Servitor card class, a la Rise of the Servitors: boardgamegeek.com/filepage/17142 . A couple of my group have expressed their interest in playing with them instead of a Herald, but the current state of the cards disincline us to printing them out. We'd also love to build some new ones, but we don't really feel like fiddling about with Photoshop or building them manually in SE. Thanks in advance.

Frank said:

Yeah, but what if I or someone else would want to make an expansion that does have weapons which add to evade and horror? openning up design space can't hurt now can it...

This ought to suffice.

Cheers,
Chris

Have a plug-in. Follow the included instructions to change the difficulty values.

By the way, with 3 dice, odds of passing a difficulty [2] check are ~26%—low but not impossible.

Cheers,
Chris

Much awesomeness and many thanks, oh wonderful Thelric!

Mant tnx therlic, but the difficulty on the combat check is redunant, because the monster's toughness is the combat's difficulty (e.g. a combat modifer of -2 and a toughness of 2 is the equilivant of (-2) [2]

kroen said:

Yes, but you can put any short text there that you want. Other people might want to use the space for something else.

Cheers,
Chris

I see.

By the way, can I please get a plugin to make an item type when making investigators? In my custom expansion there are Treasure Items, and I want one of my investigator to start with some treasure items, but the way the investigator-making is now it's impossible to do. I don't think it should be too hard to make a plugin for this, I would do it myself if I knew how.

Please?

Thx in advance,

I guess you mean a new category like Common, Unique, etc.?

Open an investigator, then open the Quickscript window and paste in and run the following:

Patch.card(
Component,
"exhibit-item-text", "Treasure Item",
"exhibit-item-pl-text", "Treasure Items"
);

From now on, Exhibit Items on this investigator will be listed on the card as Treasure Items. If you get tired of doing it "manually", it is easy to turn this into a plug-in that would apply the patch for you on a new variant investigator card. Have a look at the tutorials on the web site and download the plug-in authoring kit. There are several examples that do similar (but more extensive) customization.

Cheers,
Chris

Awesome, tnx, you are my hero!

Couple of things!

First: When I built the extension example3 (for the "Enemy" cards), and I restart SE (RC4) and create an Enemy card, the sample card isn't red, even though the graphic (checked via resource editor) is indeed red.. I has a sad.

Second: One thing that would be nice to have is a way to make a "Custom expansion" extension out of existing elements. For example, if my project used Servitors, Enemy cards, and Exhibit Items, I'd LOVE to be able to put them all in one extension/category in an easier way. I'm currently learning to do this by hand, but I imagine such a feature would be handy. Or maybe not. >.>

----------

And that's about it! I think that this program is EPIC! The only downside is now I think I'll have to get a nice photo printer so I can do colors. And invest in some good card stock, hey! Thanks for this bit of awesomeness; I was awake all last night playing with it.

- Gio

Thanks for spotting that. This example was the first one that was written and it is out of date now. The second to last line (line 44) of resources/cgj/create-enemy-card.js should read:

editor.replaceEditedComponent( enemy );

If you start the SE Text Resource Editor, you'll find some templates (File | New From Template) that provide good skeleton scripts for a variety of tasks, including creating a custom component. I'll update this example to follow the form of the template script.

As to your second question, I am not quite sure what you are asking. Do you want to combine multiple extensions into one .seext file, or place more than one kind of component in the same category in the New Component dialog (File | New), or both, or something else?

If you mean the first thing, you can combine multiple plug-ins into a single file. Just add a line for each one to the eons-plugin file. The case book formatter example does this with three different formatter plug-ins.

If you mean the second thing, you can do that in the class map. A given kind of component can be listed multiple times under different categories, so all you would need to do is add a class map with something like:

resources/yourname/fav-extension.js:

----------------------
uselibrary( "extension" );

function getName() {
return "My Favourite Cards";
}

function getDescription() {
return "Adds a category containing just my favourite kinds of cards.";
}

GameData.parseEditors( "yourname/fav-class-map.txt" );
------------------------

resources/yourname/fav-class-map.txt:

------------------------
# add a category with just enemy, misc. large, and servitor cards
My Favourite Cards
Enemy Card = script:cgj/create-enemy-card.js | cgj/enemy-icon.png
@app-new-misc-large = MiscellaneousLarge
Servitor = script:cgj/servitors/create.js | cgj/servitors/servitors.png
------------------------

Cheers,
Chris

Thelric said:

Actually, that is another problem I was having.. when I try the text resorce editor it just goes "ding!" and nothing happens.

- Gio

Gio said:

Okay, I fixed that! I have no idea what the issue was, but I reinstalled SE and the plugin kit, works fine now.. *boggles*

Everything going fine on my end so far!. ^.^

- Gio

What is the point of the option to give bonuses to focus based on weak special ability if whenever it is used a big "unbalanced" flags the character? I know it doesn't show it when choosing exisitng abilities, but there's no point of making characters with used abilities. I just made an investigator with a huge bad ability and I can't give him +1 bonus to focus.. is there a way around it? and also, why did you give that option if it can't be used?

The main purpose of the UNBALANCED stamp is to provide feedback to novice designers. Because it is stamped in a location that is likely to be the last place they will attend to before printing or exporting the design, they are unlikely to miss it. In looking back at their design to find the source of the "problem," they are likely to find the consequences display if they did not see it or pay attention to it earlier. More experienced designers can turn the stamp off (it is a setting in the preferences dialog) and rely solely on—or ignore—the consequence display.

By the way, a lot of people make investigators that use one of the standard abilities. Usually they are beginners who are not confident in their design skills yet, or people who are using the software casually—for example, if they are making investigators based on their friends. I wouldn't say that either of these uses is pointless. At least, no more pointless than other ways of using the program.

Cheers,
Chris

Thelric said:

This made me chuckle.

You can actually set the options so that it trusts your judgement and doesn't write UNBALANCED in big red letters across your character. Which is ideal, because as you've noticed you aren't actually allowed to give out 3+ random uniques or characters with matched fixed uniques and all kinds of other crap unless you write it in yourself and that option comes up unbalanced as well.

The basic answer to your question is to go into the options and turn it off. I forget whether it makes you restart the program or not.

-Frank