Hey Longshot, I see it’s been over 3 years since you posted this. Who knows if you, your remaining Rumble brethren and the man himself even reads these anymore(?). Regardless, I just wanted to let you know that I finally got around to trying your importer. I tried a few monsters and it’s very impressive stuff indeed! I’m not a fan of importing by regex but your work looks pretty solid. Lifting out the Aftereffect stuff into separate macros is way cool!
Actually, I thought the original F9 importer worked fairly decently so I was wondering why you didn’t tackle the far more useful task of replacing the faulty F5 (doesn’t properly import InitBonus or ability scores from the OCB) and F6 (doesn’t recognize conditions properly, can’t import leader powers, etc) functions for PCs. When my former group tried forcing me to use Rumble, this was the main issue that made me say,
“I don’t think so, guys. I’ll write my own, thanks. Count me out.”
That doesn’t mean Rumble is not a seminal work in the annals of MT history. On that note, examination of its origins from a technological perspective was of interest to me in the same way automotive engineers of today might study Henry Ford’s designs from the 1800s. Besides, MPB development has kind of hit a wall in that I simply can’t think of anything else to add to it. By going through the forums, I was able to implement a few of his users’ feature requests I hadn't thought of. I then came across this post from the v4 days:
Rumble wrote:
ScottMcG wrote:
Rumble wrote:
It occurs to me just now that the .dnd4e file generated by the Character Builder is just XML, and it contains a fairly clearly tagged set of data that a) would be easy to parse (if tedious) and b) could give you all the details AND the powers with basic to-hit numbers and whatnot.
The problem with the xml data contained in the dnd4e is that it doesn't embed any of the result numbers (as you'd see on the character sheet output),and relies heavily on the code logic in the character builder to generate useful numerical output for things like to-hit and damage for particular power with a particular weapon, and XYZ class feature. Still, it is clean, good xml.
Looking at it again, I'm going to give it a pass. I knew the details weren't there; I was hoping it was easier to read. It's more a performance issue - the XML file is large, and it killed MT once when trying to work with it. The other thing is - and this is just an annoyance thing, but the "basic" portion of the XML (where it puts name, race, level, etc.) doesn't include class. So instead I have to go figure out what ID number each class has...anyway, nice XML file, not worth the effort.
Rather than “give things a pass”, I rub my hands together, crack an evil grin and hiss, “Oooh, a
challenge!”.
My immediate reaction was to say:
Been there.
Done that.
I released that edition of the MPB many years ago. I recall this feature being met with a wall of deafening silence from the Rumble community. That’s OK! I figured that was because most of them had migrated to the MPB camp so it was understandable. When I read the above post, I wondered if it would be possible to paste the MPB into Rumble’s campaign and call those routines directly. I had a few hours to kill so I came up with this:
MPB/Rumble PC Import Bridge
The first procedure on that page is represented by the videos you see above. The second is the brand new "Rumble native" method which you can try out … or not. Either method should address Avalanche’s concerns above nicely. I fully expect a second wall of deafening silence but since this was merely a technical POC experiment then that’s still OK. The important thing is you and I have made advanced, relatively bug-free NPC and PC importing a reality for DDI users under Rumble.
Rumble wrote:Edit: Forget it. Not worth the aggro.
Sorry dude, it’s nothing personal and didn’t mean to offend. Just like you superseded the 4e offerings before you, so have I done now. There’s no shame in that and it doesn’t lessen your or their contributions. Thanks for reading.