I've been working feverishly on the next release. I think I have it completed. Homesteads will need to wait, however; I started adding the data, and it's going to be a bit more complex than I had originally thought, and I want you guys to get the new Stay on Target features as quickly as possible.

Here's what will be in the next release (so far). If I'm missing something, please let me know.

• Added all new data from Stay on Target, including species, specializations, signature abilities, talents, duty, motivations, weapons, armor, gear, vehicles (including images and silhouettes for almost all vehicles), vehicle attachments, droids, riding beasts, and new astromech vehicle actions.
• Added an import for Stay on Target for droid and riding beast adversaries.
• Added droids from Far Horizons and Stay on Target as purchasable gear.
• Added riding beasts from Stay on Target as purchasable gear.

• Generator and GM Tools now has support for Stay on Target's Signature Vehicle feature. The Signature Vehicle talent will allow you to choose a Signature Vehicle from among the character's personal vehicles, as well as vehicles belonging to any group that the character belongs to. This will create a special attachment for the vehicle that contains all of the mods accessible from other Rigger talents and apply them to the Signature Vehicle. The Overstocked Ammo talent will also add 1 to the Limited Ammo quality of all applicable SV weapons. The GM Tools is also Signature Vehicle-aware and will apply any character's SV talents to appropriate group vehicles.
• Option choices for species always included an internal method for adding or subtracting from starting XP, which is now being used for the new Dressellian species. This method is now also supported by the Species editor so that option choices can be configured to have an XP cost, or give bonus XP. Additionally, such choices will now be displayed in the character generator as having "XP Cost" or "XP Bonus".

• Species selected for a character weren't including any sub-species's talent modifiers, if any. They will now be included properly.
• Superior quality for armor was adding one to soak, but not reducing encumbrance by one. It will now do this.
• Mod for thermal cloak was incorrectly added and did not show up. It will now show up.

It should scale. Can you send me a snapshot of the screen that shows the problem?

It wasn’t a problem on screen, it was a problem with the output. I can see if I can replicate the problem, but then I’ll have to scan the output back to PDF in order to be able to send it to you, and I’m not sure how well that will show you the problem as it is appearing on my end.

Would you like me to try anyway?

It should scale. Can you send me a snapshot of the screen that shows the problem?

It wasn’t a problem on screen, it was a problem with the output. I can see if I can replicate the problem, but then I’ll have to scan the output back to PDF in order to be able to send it to you, and I’m not sure how well that will show you the problem as it is appearing on my end.

Would you like me to try anyway?

You can install a PDF printer driver and have the generator print to it directly. I use something called DoPDF, but there's a number of free ones available.

You can install a PDF printer driver and have the generator print to it directly. I use something called DoPDF, but there's a number of free ones available.

I did install CutePDF, so that I could save a PDF version of the output, but since all of the other pages printed just fine I have to assume that this issue was somewhere else. And since it’s an issue with printed output, the options are somewhat limited regarding how to get those examples back to you to help demonstrate the problem.

So, we can generate the output, then scan the output back to PDF and see what that looks like compared to a direct print-to-PDF, on a page-by-page basis.

Or did you have something else in mind?

Just as a request for the next time you're mucking around in the ship section, could you increase the Encumbrance limit in the Data Editor from 10,000 to a larger number? When I was making up a few 'special' bulk haulers they where capped at 10k and wanted a few with a larger cargo.

Cheers, thanks very much for this

You can install a PDF printer driver and have the generator print to it directly. I use something called DoPDF, but there's a number of free ones available.

I did install CutePDF, so that I could save a PDF version of the output, but since all of the other pages printed just fine I have to assume that this issue was somewhere else. And since it’s an issue with printed output, the options are somewhat limited regarding how to get those examples back to you to help demonstrate the problem.

So, we can generate the output, then scan the output back to PDF and see what that looks like compared to a direct print-to-PDF, on a page-by-page basis.

Or did you have something else in mind?

Ah. So what you're saying is that it looks OK when printed to the PDF, but it messes up when printed on your printer? And it looks OK in the print preview as well? That sounds like a printer issue. When you set up your printer in the VM, are you sure the driver you selected is compatible with your printer?

Just as a request for the next time you're mucking around in the ship section, could you increase the Encumbrance limit in the Data Editor from 10,000 to a larger number? When I was making up a few 'special' bulk haulers they where capped at 10k and wanted a few with a larger cargo.

Cheers, thanks very much for this

Thanks for reminding me about that I ran into that when I added the Secutor-class battlecarrier from SoT. I upped it to 1,000,000 encumbrance, so there shouldn't be a problem now

Ah. So what you're saying is that it looks OK when printed to the PDF, but it messes up when printed on your printer? And it looks OK in the print preview as well? That sounds like a printer issue. When you set up your printer in the VM, are you sure the driver you selected is compatible with your printer?

I installed the CutePDF driver after I encountered this issue, and I have not gone back and tried to replicate the problem with CutePDF.

At the time, I found that if I removed my custom picture and instead went with the default picture you provide, then the “fuzzy” nature of the output went away for that page, and I have not yet gone back and done any further debugging.

The rest of the output has been crystal clear — all the other pages for that character were fine when I had this problem on that one page, and all the times I have printed that character since have come out clean. My VM is finding my printer with the appropriate description even though I didn’t do anything special to configure it, so I have to believe that the problem exists somewhere before the output hits the printer driver.

[EDIT]

Oh, and I think the print preview also looked “fuzzy” on that page. But I’m not 100% certain.

I've been slacking...

Big thank-yous go out to Jozef Recska, Steven Law, Phillip Maiewski, and our own Brad Knowles for their generous donations! You guys rock!

No, YOU rock! That’s why we’re happy to donate money!

I've been working feverishly on the next release. I think I have it completed. Homesteads will need to wait, however; I started adding the data, and it's going to be a bit more complex than I had originally thought, and I want you guys to get the new Stay on Target features as quickly as possible.

Here's what will be in the next release (so far). If I'm missing something, please let me know.

Release 1.3.6.0 (Upcoming)

New/Changed Data:

• Added all new data from Stay on Target, including species, specializations, signature abilities, talents, duty, motivations, weapons, armor, gear, vehicles (including images and silhouettes for almost all vehicles), vehicle attachments, droids, riding beasts, and new astromech vehicle actions.
• Added an import for Stay on Target for droid and riding beast adversaries.
• Added droids from Far Horizons and Stay on Target as purchasable gear.
• Added riding beasts from Stay on Target as purchasable gear.

New Features/Enhancements:

• Generator and GM Tools now has support for Stay on Target's Signature Vehicle feature. The Signature Vehicle talent will allow you to choose a Signature Vehicle from among the character's personal vehicles, as well as vehicles belonging to any group that the character belongs to. This will create a special attachment for the vehicle that contains all of the mods accessible from other Rigger talents and apply them to the Signature Vehicle. The Overstocked Ammo talent will also add 1 to the Limited Ammo quality of all applicable SV weapons. The GM Tools is also Signature Vehicle-aware and will apply any character's SV talents to appropriate group vehicles.
• Option choices for species always included an internal method for adding or subtracting from starting XP, which is now being used for the new Dressellian species. This method is now also supported by the Species editor so that option choices can be configured to have an XP cost, or give bonus XP. Additionally, such choices will now be displayed in the character generator as having "XP Cost" or "XP Bonus".

Bug Fixes:

• Species selected for a character weren't including any sub-species's talent modifiers, if any. They will now be included properly.
• Superior quality for armor was adding one to soak, but not reducing encumbrance by one. It will now do this.
• Mod for thermal cloak was incorrectly added and did not show up. It will now show up.

I think armor is stacking when it shouldn't. It should be optional but default to working rules as written

Hey Ogg, I ran into a weird problem with the character generator this morning. After using it for a few hours yesterday, I made five characters for a named campaign and added some data on talents. When I loaded it up this morning to work on a new character for a different campaign, I was able to get all the way through the character creation process, but ran into a snag when I went to save the character.

I hit save, the program acted like I'd saved and the save button went gray, but the character didn't show up in the character listing. I went to close the program to refresh it and the program told me that my current character wasn't saved, so I hit save, closed, reopened, and no character or newly named campaign. So, yeah. My program isn't saving new characters. Any ideas?

Quick Edit - It looks like it saves characters fine when I enter the campaign name on the previous five characters (I've only got one campaign). I just filled in a campaign name to group these characters together, and I did it through the "Campaign" slot under Description. Is there a way to create a new campaign without doing it in a character's description?

Quick question where the answer may be buried in here; I'm getting my players to help me fill in the information from the book into the Data Editor screen.

Let's say I have Player A fill in the talent descriptions for the Hired Gun Trees

Player B fills in talent descriptions for the Ace Trees

Player C fills in descriptions for the AoR Force Powers and Upgrades.

And I've filled in 5 Talent Trees from Force and Destiny Beta.

They all save them as <Player A/B/C> Custom and send me the zip file.

Is there a way for me to merge the data from all of those different zip files to my custom file?

Quick question where the answer may be buried in here; I'm getting my players to help me fill in the information from the book into the Data Editor screen.

Let's say I have Player A fill in the talent descriptions for the Hired Gun Trees

Player B fills in talent descriptions for the Ace Trees

Player C fills in descriptions for the AoR Force Powers and Upgrades.

And I've filled in 5 Talent Trees from Force and Destiny Beta.

They all save them as <Player A/B/C> Custom and send me the zip file.

Is there a way for me to merge the data from all of those different zip files to my custom file?

How I handled this was my datafiles set to a shared folder on DropBox, then I had them all point their data path to this folder. Viola.

Hey Ogg, I ran into a weird problem with the character generator this morning. After using it for a few hours yesterday, I made five characters for a named campaign and added some data on talents. When I loaded it up this morning to work on a new character for a different campaign, I was able to get all the way through the character creation process, but ran into a snag when I went to save the character.

I hit save, the program acted like I'd saved and the save button went gray, but the character didn't show up in the character listing. I went to close the program to refresh it and the program told me that my current character wasn't saved, so I hit save, closed, reopened, and no character or newly named campaign. So, yeah. My program isn't saving new characters. Any ideas?

Quick Edit - It looks like it saves characters fine when I enter the campaign name on the previous five characters (I've only got one campaign). I just filled in a campaign name to group these characters together, and I did it through the "Campaign" slot under Description. Is there a way to create a new campaign without doing it in a character's description?

Not sure, but I think you may have come across a rare glitch that I've seen and have no idea what causes it (yet). I had a similar issue while debugging the upcoming release where it wouldn't save the character correctly and it wasn't showing up in the list. After closing the app and running it again, the character showed up. It only did this once, so it's a tricky bug. I'm still investigating this one.

The campaign setting is there mainly to allow filtering for the character list, which can become unwieldy after awhile. It has a similar use in GM Tools for filtering encounters. You don't need to add one; it'll just show up in the list as "No Campaign".

Oh, and I really liked your segment on the last Order 66 podcast! Not that I listen to it, or anything...

Quick question where the answer may be buried in here; I'm getting my players to help me fill in the information from the book into the Data Editor screen.

Let's say I have Player A fill in the talent descriptions for the Hired Gun Trees

Player B fills in talent descriptions for the Ace Trees

Player C fills in descriptions for the AoR Force Powers and Upgrades.

And I've filled in 5 Talent Trees from Force and Destiny Beta.

They all save them as <Player A/B/C> Custom and send me the zip file.

Is there a way for me to merge the data from all of those different zip files to my custom file?

Like kaosoe said, the applications work really well using cloud storage for the data folder. Just give everyone access to a directory, then have them change the data path to point to their local cache directory for the storage (you'll need to install your cloud storage provider's client app to get the cache directory). Everyone will then have access to the same data, characters, etc. This is exactly how I do it with my group. One caveat if they add descriptions this way: make sure they're not adding descriptions at the same time, because they could write over someone else's changes

As for what you're currently doing: after importing a data set, you can merge it with your own data by clicking on the proper list (such as Talents for Player A) and checking the "Move/Copy Mode" box. When you do this, you'll see all talents from all sources, along with a checkbox and the name of the data set they belong to. You then check the boxes for all of the talent descriptions you want moved over and click the "Move to Current" button. Make sure that you've selected the data set on your end where you want the data to go ("<Default>" is your main DataCustom directory). You can continue doing this for any of the data that you've imported. "Move to Current" will remove the description from the original data set, while "Copy to Current" will retain the descriptions in the data set. When you've moved everything over, you can just remove the unneeded data sets.

Hey Ogg, I ran into a weird problem with the character generator this morning. After using it for a few hours yesterday, I made five characters for a named campaign and added some data on talents. When I loaded it up this morning to work on a new character for a different campaign, I was able to get all the way through the character creation process, but ran into a snag when I went to save the character.

I hit save, the program acted like I'd saved and the save button went gray, but the character didn't show up in the character listing. I went to close the program to refresh it and the program told me that my current character wasn't saved, so I hit save, closed, reopened, and no character or newly named campaign. So, yeah. My program isn't saving new characters. Any ideas?

Quick Edit - It looks like it saves characters fine when I enter the campaign name on the previous five characters (I've only got one campaign). I just filled in a campaign name to group these characters together, and I did it through the "Campaign" slot under Description. Is there a way to create a new campaign without doing it in a character's description?

Not sure, but I think you may have come across a rare glitch that I've seen and have no idea what causes it (yet). I had a similar issue while debugging the upcoming release where it wouldn't save the character correctly and it wasn't showing up in the list. After closing the app and running it again, the character showed up. It only did this once, so it's a tricky bug. I'm still investigating this one.

The campaign setting is there mainly to allow filtering for the character list, which can become unwieldy after awhile. It has a similar use in GM Tools for filtering encounters. You don't need to add one; it'll just show up in the list as "No Campaign".

Oh, and I really liked your segment on the last Order 66 podcast! Not that I listen to it, or anything...

Ugh, and now my response can't be read in the forums. What a terrible interface.

" Ah, right on. Yeah, I kept poking at it and now it's working, so at least I've got that going for me. That's what I figured about the named campaigns, and like I said, everything is working now so I'm not going to worry about it.

And thanks for the kind words regarding O66. I'll be on again soon, probably end of this month. Also, this character generator is pretty great, man. Thanks for saving me a ton of work and effort! "

I think armor is stacking when it shouldn't. It should be optional but default to working rules as written

When I added the ability to equip multiple pieces of armor, I did it rather grudgingly because I didn't think you were supposed to do it. However, I later realized that it doesn't really matter, because there's already a rule in place that says soak and defense from the same type of source doesn't stack. Unfortunately, I forgot to change the code to reflect this.

So... it will now take the highest soak/defense from the armor you've selected and use that instead. Good catch

I was only able to read Jason's comment by highlighting the text. I feel as if I'm reading a spoiler on TV Tropes.

Not sure what you did there.

Oggy, Great Job!

Would you consider open sourcing this project & putting the source up on Github?

I'm a C# programmer and would love to help you out with pull requests if you needed assistance.

The new release is now available. It includes all the features of Stay on Target, plus some other enhancements and fixes. As always, you'll need to wait about 20 minutes for Google Drive to be ready...

• Added all new data from Stay on Target, including species, specializations, signature abilities, talents, duty, motivations, weapons, armor, gear, vehicles (including images and silhouettes for almost all vehicles), vehicle attachments, droids, riding beasts, and new astromech vehicle actions.
• Added an import for Stay on Target for droid and riding beast adversaries.
• Added droids from Far Horizons and Stay on Target as purchasable gear.
• Added riding beasts from Stay on Target as purchasable gear.

• Generator and GM Tools now have support for Stay on Target's Signature Vehicle feature. The Signature Vehicle talent will allow you to choose a Signature Vehicle from among the character's personal vehicles, as well as vehicles belonging to any group that the character belongs to. This will create a special attachment for the vehicle that contains all of the mods accessible from other Rigger talents and apply them to the Signature Vehicle. The Overstocked Ammo talent will also add 1 to the Limited Ammo quality of all applicable SV weapons. The GM Tools is also Signature Vehicle-aware and will apply any character's SV talents to appropriate group vehicles.
• Option choices for species always included an internal method for adding or subtracting from starting XP, which is now being used for the new Dressellian species. This method is now also supported by the Species editor so that option choices can be configured to have an XP cost, or give bonus XP. Additionally, such choices will now be displayed in the character generator as having "XP Cost" or "XP Bonus".
• Changed the maximum encumbrance in the Vehicle editor to 1,000,000, up from 10,000, so you can now make very large-capacity cargo vessels.
• Modified the way the vehicle sheet looks. The defense dial now has space to change the default value for each of your shields. Also, there's now a speed tracker you can use to keep track of your current speed. Zero and your max speed are marked specially for convenience. Some things were shuffled around a bit to accomodate the new features.

• Species selected for a character weren't including any sub-species's talent modifiers, if any. They will now be included properly.
• Superior quality for armor was adding one to soak, but not reducing encumbrance by one. It will now do this.
• Mod for thermal cloak was incorrectly added and did not show up. It will now show up.
• When a rifle with the pistol grip was displayed on the first page of the character sheet, it would correctly show Ranged-Light as the skill, but would use Ranged-Heavy for the dice pool. The dice pool will now correctly show the Ranged-Light dice pool.
• Soak and defense of armor no longer stack. The best soak and defense of any piece of equipped armor is used instead, as per RAW.
• There was a chance when two or more instances of the character generator were accessing the same data (such as using cloud storage for your data directory) at the same time that one of the instances could crash. I believe this was caused by the main thread and the file change worker thread trying to access the main SQL connection object at the same time, which caused corruption. The change thread now uses its own connection, so this shouldn't happen anymore.

By the way, this is my first release after installing Windows 7 64-bit on my computer. This could have some impact on the deployment process, I don't know. If something is screwy with the installs, let me know.

Thanks for the update!