I'm currently making a slightly modified version of Amanda. I noticed that the official version of Amanda is considered unbalanced by Strange Eons. Am I missing something? If not, is there a way that I can turn off the "unbalanced" text? Thanks!

avec said:

All of the official investigators can be reproduced point-for-point in SE. The problem with Amanda is that she has a bonus focus Focus point to bump her Focus up to 3. If you select her special ability, the bonus point is included. (On the Special Ability tab, the option Balance Adjustment for Weak or Powerful Special Abilities .) If you edit the ability or enter a new one, you still have the bonus point but SE doesn't recognize it so it can't say the bonus is warranted. Therefore it marks the investigator unbalanced.

You can change the strictness with which SE marks Investigators in the Preferences dialog. (Choose Edit | Preferences , or under OS X choose the Preferences option in the app menu.)

Scroll down to the "Rules" section. Under Validation Rules, you can check Trust Balance Adjustments to prevent it from complaining about bonus Focus points. You can uncheck Validate Components to prevent it from marking investigators as unbalanced at all.

Cheers,
Chris

Thanks!

[extra characters so I can post]

I've recently created a number of Investigators based on my friends ~ however, I'm having one heck of a time trying to print them on 5x7 sheets of paper. I have a firaly top-of-the line printer (Canon MP610), but only a portion is printed, and the print results including the guide marks. Can anyone help???

the Professor

I guess you are using File|Print? I don't recall offhand what assumptions it makes about paper size, so there might be a bug there. Also a few people have had trouble with particular printer/OS combinations that are due to bugs in the Java printing subsystem.

I'd try creating a deck and adding an appropriate custom paper size. If that doesn't work, you could always export the card as images and print them from something like Photoshop. Or print them from the deck editor to a PDF file.

Cheers,
Chris

Hey, Chris, thanks for all your help so far. I've got another question for you. I have been adding icons to text, as you'll see below, and I'm wondering if there's a way to move the icon down a little, to put it more in line with the text. Here's an example:

I'd like the Sanity dot in perentheses to be adjusted down slightly. I've tried vspace and valign, but those didn't work. Is there a command to do that?

Thanks again!

You've asked a surprisingly complicated question.

Images are normally aligned to the baseline of the line of text that they appear in. But this takes into account the entire image: if the image has rows of transparent pixels at the bottom, the image will appear to float above the baseline because the transparent pixels will be aligned to it. And if you are using the horror damage image directly from the SE resources (res://monstertokens/hd01.png), then it does indeed have transparent pixels at the edges. So you'll want to make a copy of the original image and get rid of any transparent pixel border. (You can use Image|Trim|Transparent Pixels command in Photoshop to do this easily.)

At one point I did add a parameter to the image tag to control how images are aligned, but it was never tested properly, and so was never enabled in any public version. I will enable it for the next version (2.1 alpha 2). The keywords are top, bottom, baseline, hanging, and center. If no keyword is used, the default is baseline. The alignment should come after the width and height parameters (if any). For the last three types (baseline, hanging, center), you can add an additional measurement relative to the top of the image that defines the part of the image to align with. For example "baseline 0pt" aligns the top of the image to the baseline. If the image is 10pt high, then "baseline 5pt" would align the center of the image to the baseline.

Cheers,
Chris

thelric,

Just curious if you have any advice for me, given the printing dilemma? (see previous post)

theProfessor

Thelric,

Sorry, I didn't realize if you were answering Admiral142 or me...

theProfessor

The Professor said:

I replied in the post just after your question and just before the Admiral's question, on the previous page.

Cheers,
Chris

Regarding printing to unusuaI paper sizes: I did some testing and as long as the right paper size is set I have no problem printing to special sizes. I don't actually have any photo-size paper, so I printed to a PDF file using a special size and the PDF came out fine.

So I think the problem you had was not setting up a paper size. When you choose File|Print, the bottom of the dialog has an option to choose a paper size. You need to choose the correct size here, because this size is used to lay out the cards. (Behind the scenes, when you print this way, SE actually creates a deck with your card on it, then prints the deck.)

The real trick is getting the paper size you want to appear in this list. Currently there is no option on this dialog to define a new custom paper size, but I have added this for 2.1 alpha 2. This will be posted soon, but there is also a workaround in current versions: you can add your paper as a custom paper size from any deck editor. Choose File|New|Decks and Expansions|Deck of Cards. On the left side of the deck editor, next to Paper Size, choose Custom... and use the dialog to create your new paper type. Close the deck editor. You will then be able to select your custom size when printing components with File|Print as well. (Due to a bug in the current version, the print dialog doesn't update the paper list, so you may need to restart SE before the new size shows up.)

Cheers,
Chris

thelric,

You're magic!

So, I used the Deck Editor...wasn't sure what the Deck Editor could do for me...

Then, set-up Custom Setting for the paper: 5" x 7"

In the dialog box for my printer, selected Glossy Paper, 5" x 7" paper size, and High Quality ~ amazing Investigator Cards.

Thanks again ~ this is a truly outstanding product!

Cheers,

theProfessor

Well, I'm getting near to the end of my Price of Progress expansion. I'm having some trouble printing out the expansion board though. I've tried several ways to get it to print, but nothing is working so far. It's a standard expansion board size. I've tried selecting Standard Expansion Board (portrait) in the down on the game board editor, then selecting the split pages for smaller paper sizes button and using standard portrait in the dropdown. It will crop the first page (starting on the left) and export that, but it won't give me the other 2 pages. I'm thinking that it needs to be 3 pages long on 8.5x11 inch paper using portrait layout. I'm still using 2.00.8 release. My final attempt will be to export it as one big file, then use another program to crop it into 3 individual files. I'm sure there's an easier way to do this though, so that's why I'm asking.

Thanks, Chris!

Exporting always produces one image per page. The page is only split when you use File|Print. For distribution, you might print the map to a PDF file (using the Adobe Acrobat printer driver or one of the free printer drivers for Windows, or the Save PDF option in OS X).

As for the partially cropped page you described on export, I'm not sure what that would be. Perhaps you are encountering the following bug, which was fixed in 2.1a1:

- Fixed: Deck editor: fixed a bug in the print/export system that could cause certain very large PageItems to be clipped incorrectly.

It is also possible, especially if you export at high resolution, that you are running out of memory.

Cheers,
Chris

Hi Chris,

Love your work as usual. I have a request for a future edition - how about an option where it could directly export to a website like photobucket without having to export, unpack and then upload. I don't even know if this would be possible but sure would save a lot of time.

I gotta look at how to put custom expansion symbols on my cards they always look poo (espeically the images on the back of the investigator cards like items). One day I will get there!!!

Many thanks as ever,

Hal

Airborne XO said:

I wrote a plug-in, Export to Web, several months ago that does just this.

Cheers,
Chris

Howdy, Chris! I recently updated to 2.1 alpha 3, having skipped alpha 1 and 2. I'm having some trouble running the program. It seems that Java is taking up all my cpu slices when I'm running SE. I ran the memory log in SE to see if it was just using all the memory, but that isn't the case. It could just be because my computer is older, I'm running an AMD Athalon 64 3200+. Could it be that, or is there something wrong with my Java? Hope you can help me make sense of this!

Thanks so much!

Admiral142 said:

I haven't made any changes recently that I would expect to change CPU use patterns. Maybe Sun has been tinkering with the JVM. They've been putting out a lot of JVM updates recently, though from what I can tell these are fixing issues from security audits and shouldn't affect performance much. I havce noticed lately that my development tools are very jerky when run with the 64-bit Java runtime.

Adjusting the JVM options, especially for garbage collection might help. I don't think it is part of 2.1a3, but Windows versions will soon include a text file in the installation directory that you can edit to control these, along with some hints on how to set them.

One thing that might help, especially if performance improves after the first several minutes, is to disable the image cache preload. When you start SE, it will start loading all of the card backgrounds and other images in a separate thread. This can decrease the delay when you create a new component, but it does require CPU and IO time (and memory) up front. One way to control this is with the TweakSE plug-in.

I'll do some profiling when I have a chance and see if anything turns up.

Cheers,
Chris

I've updated the top post to include the features in the current work-in-progress release of 2.1. There are also links to some tutorials (with video) to get you started.

As a heads up, when you download 2.1 alpha 8 or later you'll see that it is much smaller than previous versions. This is (sort of) a trick.

SE now supports automatically listing, downloading, and updating plug-ins. The reason that the main download got so much smaller is that several "core components" are now split out into their own plug-ins. In order to create or load a given card type you'll need the matching core component. The idea is that you download these core components once, as opposed to every time you download a new version. So this will be a bit of a pain until you install all of the core components, but afterwards updates should be much quicker.

More information on the new plug-in catalogue system is available here .

This new system is complex and required some low-level changes to SE. Please let me know if you encounter any issues.

Cheers,
Chris

Quite a while ago I got a report that CPU use was jumping to 100% while using Strange Eons for some people. I've finally been able to isolate this problem and it should be fixed in the next update. However, the next update is a major one and won't be available for some time. Until then, installing the following plug-in should correct the issue:

cpu-hotfix.seplugin (3.71 KiB)

You can also install the plug-in from the plug-in catalogue if you are using the work-in-progress build.

How do I know if I need this hotfix?

So far I have only seen this issue on Windows Vista and Windows 7 based machines. You can use the Task Manager's Performance tab to monitor CPU usage before and after creating a component if you want to verify whether the issue exists on your system. However, you don't have to verify the issue before installing the plug-in. It won't hurt anything to install the plug-in if the issue does not occur on your system.

Is there any risk if I do not install the plug-in?

Not generally. Your computer's overall performance will be reduce. The overall effects are not much different from playing a video game that taxes your system. In extreme cases it might lead to your CPU overheating, in which case your computer may be halted to prevent damage to the hardware. (If this happens then it suggests that your computer's cooling system may not be running at full efficiency. For example, your cooling fan/heat sink may be full of dust.)

Cheers,
Chris

Hi Thelric,

I would like to improve some translation in french (especially for the bookcases). Can you help me by pointing to the langage files (I cannot find them really I searched for them ???) so I can translate some of the english terms ?

I advance, I thank you so much for the help

amikezor said:

Hi there,

Sorry I didn't answer your question earlier, it's bit hectic around here at the moment. Anyway, I assume that you unpacked the .jar file. If not, let me know and I'll explain that step.

The text for the user interface is in the resources/text/interface folder.

The text for the (English) case book library is in resources/text/EN/casebook-library.txt.

Let me know if there is something else that you are looking for.

Cheers,
Chris

that is of great help.

I will play with it around a bit and ask new questions if needed. Thank you for your answer.

best

What version do people prefer to use? I got the stable release (2.00.8) should I have gotten 2.1 regardless? I am new to the custom content scene still

Hi Thelric - Do you have any plans to update SE with content for Mansions of Madness.

My wife is a total Clue/Cluedo head and I wanted to make her a series of MoM characters based on Col Mustard, Prof Plum etc to play MoM with when it comes out?

Cheers

Kadath