Another Character Generator

By OggDude, in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG

Just a thought, but would you ever consider the possibility of incorporating an image select option into GM Tools for adversaries? It would be pretty handy in the long run, although, as I have 0 understanding of coding at all, it's probably something that's far more work than worth.

That would be a great addition. I've been making do with copy/pasting the stat block into Word, where I also import a picture. But having everything all right there would be nice.

I actually started out with images for adversaries, but didn't find a real use for them. Basically, adversaries are used in encounter sheets or in stat blocks. Pictures aren't needed in encounter sheets, and stat blocks are designed to be used in your own adventures or documents to mimic the look and feel of blocks found in other publications. I suppose they'd be useful in a stand-alone adversary sheet, or in adversary cards, but the apps don't currently support those.

Cut-n-paste of the formatted TEXT of the stat block would also be nice for Adversaries.

This way if you’re trying to create a nicely formatted PDF as an adventure (or whatever), you don’t have to re-type all the text with all the appropriate fonts and everything, in order to get it to look nice in the resulting document.

Just sayin’. ;)

You can sort of do this now. The problem with adversary text is that it includes symbols that are images. These images are stored as resources and used by the web browser control to create nicely-formatted blocks. Unfortunately, these symbols would not come over if you just grabbed the text.

However... in the adversary pane where it displays the current adversary, you can copy the text by selecting it and hitting control-C. You can then paste it into a document. I added alternate text to all images that should show up as Unicode symbols that, at least somewhat, represent the look of the images. You can actually do this in any block that displays information on an item, such as in the equipment pane or vehicle pane.

For instance, here's the Unarmed "weapon" that I just clipped out of the equipment pane:

Damage: 2
Range: Engaged
Critical: ωωωωω
Skill: Brawl
Qualities: Disorient 1, Knockdown, Stun Setting

Note how the Advantage symbols have been converted to a Unicode symbol that sort of looks like Advantage. Here's an X-wing that I just copied from the New Vehicle dialog:
T-65B X-Wing Starfighter
Please see page 267 of the Age of Rebellion Core Rulebook, or page 261 of the Force and Destiny Core Rulebook, for details.
Source(s): Age of Rebellion Core Rulebook, Page 267, Force and Destiny Core Rulebook, Page 261
Hull Type: Starfighter
Categories: Starship
Hyperdrive: Primary Class 1
Navicomputer: No
Sensor Range: Close
Ship's Complement: One pilot, one astromech droid
Encumbrance Capacity: 10
Passenger Capacity: 0
Consumables: One week
Cost: 120,000
Rarity: 5
Customization Hard Points: 1 (1 Remaining)
Weapons:
(1) S-Foil Mounted Quad Medium Laser Cannon (Fire Arc: Forward; Damage: 6; Critical: ωωω; Range: Close; Qualities: Linked 3)
(1) Forward Mounted Twin Proton Torpedo Launcher (Fire Arc: Forward; Damage: 8; Critical: ωω; Range: Short; Qualities: Blast 6, Breach 6, Guided 2, Limited Ammo 6, Slow Firing 1, Linked 1)
And since we're talking about adversaries, here's the detail section that I just clipped out of the Stormtrooper description panel in the Adversary pane:
Skills:
Athletics (◇◇◇), Discipline (◇◇◇), Melee (◇◇◇), Ranged - Heavy (◇◇◇)
Weapons:
Blaster Rifle - Skill: Ranged - Heavy (◇◇◇) Range: Long, Damage: 9, Critical: ωωω, Qualities: Stun Setting
Vibroknife - Skill: Melee (◇◇◇) Range: Engaged, Damage: 4, Critical: ωω, Qualities: Pierce 2, Vicious 1
Frag Grenade (2) - Skill: Ranged - Light (◇◇◇) Range: Short, Damage: 8, Critical: ωωωω, Qualities: Blast 6, Limited Ammo 1
Light Repeating Blaster - Skill: Ranged - Heavy (◇◇◇) Range: Long, Damage: 11, Critical: ωωω, Qualities: Auto Fire, Cumbersome 3, Pierce 1 Attachments: Weapon Sling (1 Quality (Cumbersome -1) Mods)
Armor:
Laminate - Soak: 2
Gear:
Utility Belt (Gear Features: 1 Increase Encumbrance Threshold by 1 Mod), Extra Reloads
And a Stormtrooper Sergeant:
Skills:
Athletics 2 (❀❀◇), Discipline 2 (❀❀◇), Melee 2 (❀❀◇), Ranged - Heavy 2 (❀❀◇), Leadership 3 (❀◇◇), Ranged - Light 2 (❀❀◇), Resilience 2 (❀❀◇), Vigilance 2 (❀❀◇)
Talents:
Adversary 1 - Upgrade difficulty of any combat check targeting this character by 1 per rank.
Abilities:
Tactical Direction - May spend a maneuver to direct one Stormtrooper minion group within medium range. The group may perform an immediate free-maneuver or add a □ to their next check
Weapons:
Vibroknife - Skill: Melee (❀❀◇) Range: Engaged, Damage: 4, Critical: ωω, Qualities: Pierce 2, Vicious 1
Frag Grenade (2) - Skill: Ranged - Light (❀❀◇) Range: Short, Damage: 8, Critical: ωωωω, Qualities: Blast 6, Limited Ammo 1
Heavy Blaster Rifle - Skill: Ranged - Heavy (❀❀◇) Range: Long, Damage: 10, Critical: ωωω, Qualities: Auto Fire, Cumbersome 3
Armor:
Laminate - Soak: 2
Gear:
Utility Belt (Gear Features: 1 Increase Encumbrance Threshold by 1 Mod), Extra Reloads

One trick when doing this: paste into a text editor of some sort and NOT into something like Word or WordPad that recognizes HTML clipboard entries. If you do, it'll show broken links for the images, and the alternate text symbols may not show up. If you want some of the fancier-formatted displays, such as displays with tables and the like, then you can use Word and just remove the bad images.

Heya! Is there any documented reference or complete example of a character's import/export XML somewhere? Several people have suggested that as a feature for SWSheets.com . I'd generate one myself but I don't have access to a Windows machine.

Thanks!

SP

Wouldn't mind to pitch in on such development. I am well versed in web app design.

I agree, it would be a very cool feature. I don't have documentation on the XML, but it wouldn't do you much good if I did because exported characters are not complete. They contain references to item archetypes, such as weapons, armor, characteristics, etc., which are linked into the character from the main data to create a complete, workable character. In order to do an import, you would need to create a utility in .NET that would use my DLLs to load in the main data, then load in a character, which would then be properly linked and calculated. From there, you could use the character object to map to the format that you use. You can even get the portrait from the character object, as well as all modded equipment, skill boosts, and everything else that characters support.

Unfortunately, if the character requires custom data, and you don't have the custom data on your system, any such items would be removed from the character. It'll all work, just the custom items won't show up.

Alternatively, I could create an XML file that includes all of the main data links. In that way, you could just create an XSL/XPath transformation to do the conversion. I would have to look into this, however.

Currently, when making the crew roster a space encounter for the party, I have to recreate their ship and then add the players to said ship under the Encounters tab under GM tools. When the group started out with one or two ships this was not so bad. However, things have gotten "knida" out of hand. My group of eight players now has small fleet, each one modified out to the 9s. And they LOVE to constantly switch back and forth between ships depending on what is going on in the story. So creating an accurate roster of who is on what ship (and what bonus they get) on the fly has become "problematic".

Is it possible to add the roster feature from the Encounters tab to the Vehicle section under the Groups tab? In other words, it would be awesome if I can grab any one of their ships and create a roster limited to just the party.

Make sense?

Yeah, makes sense. What I might be able to do is include a feature for encounters that links to a ship in either a group or a character. Instead of the encounter actually containing the ship, it would just have this link which would be found when the encounter is printed or edited. In that way, the most recent version of the ship would be included. If the ship can't be found, it's just removed from the roster. Since PC adversaries are updated each time the GM Tools is run, the PC's are always the latest versions, anyway.

This may actually be more difficult than it sounds :) so I'll have to look into it.

Ive come across a problem with the color scheme of the printout for the career skill "tick" I am mildly red-green deficit color blind which is the most common type of color blindness. For a bit of background color blindness itself affects approx 10% males (who only require one parent to carry the color blindness gene) and 1% of females (who require both parents to carry it). The most common types red or green deficit which means that colors like red green and brown, when mixed can took very similar.

When the tick is on a green background I have extreme difficulty seeing it, given how mild my own color blindness is, this means that those worse thanks will have the a worse problem.So you may want to rethink the color scheme, up to you of course, regardless though this is awesome work.

If you are interested here is some further info on the types of color blindness and how people are affected by it ( I still remember a school teacher shouting at me because they used blue chalk on a purple blackboard and asked me to answer the question and I kept answering that I couldn't read it, only discovered why about 2 years later)

If you like, tell me all the places that would be hard to read for someone with color blindness, and an alternate color that would show up better, and I can add a color blind feature to options that could swap out the images when printing sheets. In the mean time, you can use the "Simplified" sheet style for your characters, which should solve your problem as well.

Currently, when making the crew roster a space encounter for the party, I have to recreate their ship and then add the players to said ship under the Encounters tab under GM tools. When the group started out with one or two ships this was not so bad. However, things have gotten "knida" out of hand. My group of eight players now has small fleet, each one modified out to the 9s. And they LOVE to constantly switch back and forth between ships depending on what is going on in the story. So creating an accurate roster of who is on what ship (and what bonus they get) on the fly has become "problematic".

Is it possible to add the roster feature from the Encounters tab to the Vehicle section under the Groups tab? In other words, it would be awesome if I can grab any one of their ships and create a roster limited to just the party.

Make sense?

Yeah, makes sense. What I might be able to do is include a feature for encounters that links to a ship in either a group or a character. Instead of the encounter actually containing the ship, it would just have this link which would be found when the encounter is printed or edited. In that way, the most recent version of the ship would be included. If the ship can't be found, it's just removed from the roster. Since PC adversaries are updated each time the GM Tools is run, the PC's are always the latest versions, anyway.

This may actually be more difficult than it sounds :) so I'll have to look into it.

It would be worth the wait, I think. :)

For my latest group, it's been a split decision on my end--one player owns the ship, but I'd like it to be included in the group info, as well. Had to pick, though, whether it would go under the character or group.

So, if this software was implemented as a web page, I would refer the developer to the “tota11y” [1] tool.

Regretfully, this software is implemented with old Windows .Net code, and I strongly suspect that everything you see on screen is rendered as a bitmap off-screen and then moved on-screen once it’s rendered.

Which means that even the stuff that looks like text to most humans would look like colored pixels to a screen reader program for the blind.

Re-writing this code to properly handle things like readability is going to be more … challenging … to say the least.

Still, it doesn’t hurt to bring these things to OggDude’s attention, to see if there is something less complex that he can implement in the short-term.

[1] https://khan.github.io/tota11y/

For printouts, yes, everything is a bitmap. But for the apps at large, text is either straight text in something like a text box or combo box, or HTML rendered text, which should also show up as text. Even labels should show up as text, depending on whether or not the tool supports EXE's and not just web sites.

Question: How do you create a printable GM Adversary sheet?

I've messed with the stat block function. It creates an image that I can paste into Word/etc., but the scaling on it seems borked. Is there something I'm missing? (Sorry if this has already be asked).

Thanks.

Should work fine. There's a bunch of customization features for the stat block. If the description is really long, you could try using a smaller sized font. That should compact it somewhat.

Hey guys, i am not able to import any dataset cause when i click import it gives me an error, only me with this error?

What's the error? If it's a third-party data set, I really can't help much because I have no idea what's in it, or which version of the software it was created with.

Question: How do you create a printable GM Adversary sheet?

I've messed with the stat block function. It creates an image that I can paste into Word/etc., but the scaling on it seems borked. Is there something I'm missing? (Sorry if this has already be asked).

Thanks.

Should work fine. There's a bunch of customization features for the stat block. If the description is really long, you could try using a smaller sized font. That should compact it somewhat.

Problem is I can't get the Block to size right to be readable. When I mess with the Stat Block, the whole Block is a single image, which gets held to a single page, so the sizing is off.

But, I did just read above about the Highlight/Copy from the preview window for an Adversary. That I should be able to make work, even if I have to clean up the symbols.

Thanks.

Heya! Is there any documented reference or complete example of a character's import/export XML somewhere? Several people have suggested that as a feature for SWSheets.com . I'd generate one myself but I don't have access to a Windows machine.

Thanks!

SP

Wouldn't mind to pitch in on such development. I am well versed in web app design.

I agree, it would be a very cool feature. I don't have documentation on the XML, but it wouldn't do you much good if I did because exported characters are not complete. They contain references to item archetypes, such as weapons, armor, characteristics, etc., which are linked into the character from the main data to create a complete, workable character. In order to do an import, you would need to create a utility in .NET that would use my DLLs to load in the main data, then load in a character, which would then be properly linked and calculated. From there, you could use the character object to map to the format that you use. You can even get the portrait from the character object, as well as all modded equipment, skill boosts, and everything else that characters support.

Unfortunately, if the character requires custom data, and you don't have the custom data on your system, any such items would be removed from the character. It'll all work, just the custom items won't show up.

Alternatively, I could create an XML file that includes all of the main data links. In that way, you could just create an XSL/XPath transformation to do the conversion. I would have to look into this, however.

I'm on it, although its not my turf, but I guess I'll have to delve into foreign lore :P

Ive come across a problem with the color scheme of the printout for the career skill "tick" I am mildly red-green deficit color blind which is the most common type of color blindness. For a bit of background color blindness itself affects approx 10% males (who only require one parent to carry the color blindness gene) and 1% of females (who require both parents to carry it). The most common types red or green deficit which means that colors like red green and brown, when mixed can took very similar.

When the tick is on a green background I have extreme difficulty seeing it, given how mild my own color blindness is, this means that those worse thanks will have the a worse problem.So you may want to rethink the color scheme, up to you of course, regardless though this is awesome work.

If you are interested here is some further info on the types of color blindness and how people are affected by it ( I still remember a school teacher shouting at me because they used blue chalk on a purple blackboard and asked me to answer the question and I kept answering that I couldn't read it, only discovered why about 2 years later)

If you like, tell me all the places that would be hard to read for someone with color blindness, and an alternate color that would show up better, and I can add a color blind feature to options that could swap out the images when printing sheets. In the mean time, you can use the "Simplified" sheet style for your characters, which should solve your problem as well.

My best suggestion would be to use black for the career skill ticks on the printed character skills print page. The problem is that the red of the tick and the green background can lead anyone with the most common of the 2 of 3 types of color blindness, other combinations to watch for are green/red/brown/orange especially when mixed. Blue with purple, light grey with pink. The only problem I had was seeing the ticks on the every alternate line where the background was green.

I'm by far the worst example ,but my wife gets confused when she points out red flowers on a field of grass (or bloom in trees) and I can't see it for love nor money, there with will be others worse than me as I could pass an old style electrician test for color. As mild as it was the ticks all but disappeared in normal light.

I meant to link more info and here is the webpage. http://colorvisiontesting.com/color2.htm

The closest example I can give is if you have a look on this page http://colorvisiontesting.com/what%20colorblind%20people%20see.htm

To me the tick and the background merge, once printed and appear to be the same color.

Thank you for taking an interest in what can only be decribed as an, albeit major, minority problem, and one that can be frustrating to try to explain to other people, after all vision is vision. Strangely in day to day life the only color that gives me a problem every time I see it is purple which to me, unless it is strong, looks blue

Edited by syrath

Currently, when making the crew roster a space encounter for the party, I have to recreate their ship and then add the players to said ship under the Encounters tab under GM tools. When the group started out with one or two ships this was not so bad. However, things have gotten "knida" out of hand. My group of eight players now has small fleet, each one modified out to the 9s. And they LOVE to constantly switch back and forth between ships depending on what is going on in the story. So creating an accurate roster of who is on what ship (and what bonus they get) on the fly has become "problematic".

Is it possible to add the roster feature from the Encounters tab to the Vehicle section under the Groups tab? In other words, it would be awesome if I can grab any one of their ships and create a roster limited to just the party.

Make sense?

Yeah, makes sense. What I might be able to do is include a feature for encounters that links to a ship in either a group or a character. Instead of the encounter actually containing the ship, it would just have this link which would be found when the encounter is printed or edited. In that way, the most recent version of the ship would be included. If the ship can't be found, it's just removed from the roster. Since PC adversaries are updated each time the GM Tools is run, the PC's are always the latest versions, anyway.

This may actually be more difficult than it sounds :) so I'll have to look into it.

Thanks!

As always, your effort and our appreciate go beyond words.

Edited by Arrakus

I hope it's not to forward of me, but can I suggest that an option to view group resources such as bases and vehicles be accessable through the character generator? Also a way of printing such a sheet aswell?

Thank you for such an awesome tool btw, I have tremendous fun just building characters in it.

You can do this through the GM Tools. Just create a group, add your characters and resources, then print out a group sheet.

Or at the very least being able to view the group ship in the character generator.

Could I make a feature request? It would be really handy to be able to print out a custom weapon, or armour item, by itself, so I could hand it to a player "you find this".

However I realise this might be a niche feature and not worth the effort :)

Would anyone else find this handy?

Could I make a feature request? It would be really handy to be able to print out a custom weapon, or armour item, by itself, so I could hand it to a player "you find this".

However I realise this might be a niche feature and not worth the effort :)

Would anyone else find this handy?

I would be okay with this. I would get some use of this. I'm always writing gear out on cards and giving it to players as they find them.

You can sort of do this now. The problem with adversary text is that it includes symbols that are images. These images are stored as resources and used by the web browser control to create nicely-formatted blocks. Unfortunately, these symbols would not come over if you just grabbed the text.

However... in the adversary pane where it displays the current adversary, you can copy the text by selecting it and hitting control-C. You can then paste it into a document. I added alternate text to all images that should show up as Unicode symbols that, at least somewhat, represent the look of the images. You can actually do this in any block that displays information on an item, such as in the equipment pane or vehicle pane.

Cool. This will definitely help with future publications from RPG. ;)

Hi, firstly I'm really loving this program, but just wondering if there's a way to remove the page number footer when printing character sheets? I'm playing in a homebrewed game with a few extra skills so now the "Page 1 of 5" is covering some text :(

Also I tried using the search function in this topic but couldn't find anything so sorry if this has already been answered

Hi, firstly I'm really loving this program, but just wondering if there's a way to remove the page number footer when printing character sheets? I'm playing in a homebrewed game with a few extra skills so now the "Page 1 of 5" is covering some text :(

Also I tried using the search function in this topic but couldn't find anything so sorry if this has already been answered

If you change the Sheet Style, when you print, to either "Full Color, No Background" or "Simplified" you should not have any issues with page numbers printing over text.

Hi, firstly I'm really loving this program, but just wondering if there's a way to remove the page number footer when printing character sheets? I'm playing in a homebrewed game with a few extra skills so now the "Page 1 of 5" is covering some text :(

Also I tried using the search function in this topic but couldn't find anything so sorry if this has already been answered

If you change the Sheet Style, when you print, to either "Full Color, No Background" or "Simplified" you should not have any issues with page numbers printing over text.

Oh sweet, that's really good for a plan B (and what I'll probably end up having to do), but do you know if it's all possible to do it with the nice full color background?

Hi, firstly I'm really loving this program, but just wondering if there's a way to remove the page number footer when printing character sheets? I'm playing in a homebrewed game with a few extra skills so now the "Page 1 of 5" is covering some text :(

Also I tried using the search function in this topic but couldn't find anything so sorry if this has already been answered

If you change the Sheet Style, when you print, to either "Full Color, No Background" or "Simplified" you should not have any issues with page numbers printing over text.

Oh sweet, that's really good for a plan B (and what I'll probably end up having to do), but do you know if it's all possible to do it with the nice full color background?

Not that I have found.

Hi, firstly I'm really loving this program, but just wondering if there's a way to remove the page number footer when printing character sheets? I'm playing in a homebrewed game with a few extra skills so now the "Page 1 of 5" is covering some text :(

Also I tried using the search function in this topic but couldn't find anything so sorry if this has already been answered

If you change the Sheet Style, when you print, to either "Full Color, No Background" or "Simplified" you should not have any issues with page numbers printing over text.

Oh sweet, that's really good for a plan B (and what I'll probably end up having to do), but do you know if it's all possible to do it with the nice full color background?

Not that I have found.

All good, thanks for your help :) I'll go with one of the simpler versions then

Is there going to be a Special Modifications update? or is 1.6.3.0 the last version that is going to happen?

There will be an update, Oggdude is just working on it to make sure the update is worthwhile before release. I too cannot wait, but it will come when it will.

Is there going to be a Special Modifications update? or is 1.6.3.0 the last version that is going to happen?

See below:

Yeah, sorry about the delays. I've been working with reporting, and it's one of the more complex parts of the app that I've added so far. When I get done with it, I'll add SM and do the release.

And speaking of reports, thought I'd preview what I've done so far. When creating reports, it'll be done as a wizard, similar to how Inquisitors are created. So far, here are the steps:

SWReport1.png

SWReport2.png

SWReport3.png

SWReport4.png