Where are the creatures?

Discussion of initiative tool.

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dorpond
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Where are the creatures?

Post by dorpond »

Jay,

I have been poking around for 15 minutes or so after loading up the latest InitTool. I am looking for the D20 creatures that you said are built in.

If they are in there, you DEFINATELY need to make it more user friendly accessing them. I can't for the life of me find them.

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Post by dorpond »

OK, I think I figured it out.

#1: I would add combatants but noticed that the lookup button was not activated.
#2: I would go into Game Settings and try to load any lists whatsoever, I would come up with nothing because it was taking me to My Documents.

Well I browsed to the InitTool folder and I found the lists in there.

Final comment: I am not at all fond of where the InitTool or Maptool (not as important) folders are by default. I think it is very difficult for a not-so-literate computer user to find. If for whatever reason we browse to a different location, then any lists you create will not be locatable unless the user know where to find InitTool.

End result: Well I loaded up the list but I am uncertain if other nessessities didn't load in the upgrade process. I must have browsed to the My Documents folder long ago in very old versions of InitTool and it remembered it in the new version *shrug*

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Post by torstan »

I did precisely this today and found the answer in an older post. The procedure is a little easier than you suggest:

Go to Tools-> Game Settings
Check game type is D&D
Go to miscellaneous tab
Click the Reload button beside the combatant look-up.

This is the main draw of initTool for me and I feel that it needs to be right there on the front page - not buried in the miscellaneous tab of the game options settings.

Would it be possible for initTool to ask the user to specify their rules system the first time it is installed? If the comabatants were loaded as part of this process it would do it once and for all.

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Post by dorpond »

The whole process leaves me wondering if I am an fact getting all the bells and whistles that I should be getting. Now I am double guessing myself - for example, I am looking for the custom properties of the creatures (AC,HP,STR,DEX,ETC) but I do not see any custom properties at all. So I am not sure if I need to load them also or if they are just not in there yet.

InitTool is definately a great product but I think it needs to be more in-your-face for first time users. If I loaded up InitTool for the first time, I would have never known that it was as cool as it is.

Hope this input helps Jay - I am only trying to help.

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Post by torstan »

All the stats are there for me (bar hp). Follow the steps I mentioned above to load the creatures and you should get all the bells and whistles - it's great!

This feature has really convinced me to use initTool now. It must have taken an age to get all that information in but it is definitely worth it. Thanks for all the hard work Jay.

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Post by dorpond »

Nope, I don't get the list of Custom Properties Torstan. Something must be screwed up since I have been testing InitTool since the beginning. My guess is that there is some previous settings interfeering with the latest stuff.

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Post by torstan »

Sounds like it. I only installed initTool on ths computer today so b16 is the first one it's known.

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Post by Phergus »

I think a slight modification to Torstan's procedure is needed Dorpond.

Start IT, go into Game Settings, click on "Init Tool Default D&D" and then click on Open. Now you should see the Custom Properties.

Even though it may be defaulting to showing the D&D settings file as the active one, I don't think it is actually loading them until you have manually clicked the Open button at least once.

Then go to the Misc tab and click on Reload.

That should get you going but, yeah, it could stand to be more automatic and obvious for first time users.

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Post by dorpond »

Phergus wrote:I think a slight modification to Torstan's procedure is needed Dorpond.

Start IT, go into Game Settings, click on "Init Tool Default D&D" and then click on Open. Now you should see the Custom Properties.

Even though it may be defaulting to showing the D&D settings file as the active one, I don't think it is actually loading them until you have manually clicked the Open button at least once.

Then go to the Misc tab and click on Reload.

That should get you going but, yeah, it could stand to be more automatic and obvious for first time users.
Yeah, that did it Phergus! Thanks :)

Wow - simplification is needed!

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Post by jay »

Everything should be loading automatically for a first time user. If it is not, that is a bug. I've tested it a couple of times, but I must have forgotten to delete the database before I tried.

If you loaded init tool build 12 or later it was just loading your saved settings on the first load. I can force it to start fresh, but I didn't want to mess anybody's data up. I'll add a full reset in the next build so that you can do that to get up a fresh init tool.

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Post by jay »

dorpond wrote:InitTool is definately a great product but I think it needs to be more in-your-face for first time users. If I loaded up InitTool for the first time, I would have never known that it was as cool as it is.

Hope this input helps Jay - I am only trying to help.
That is what I'm trying to accomplish, but I've just started working on it. :) It will get there. The bigfgest problem I am having is that init tool remembers all of your settings and reloads them when you start. Therefore you are getting everything you had the last time it was run and none of the newer stuff.

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Post by jay »

dorpond wrote:Final comment: I am not at all fond of where the InitTool or Maptool (not as important) folders are by default. I think it is very difficult for a not-so-literate computer user to find. If for whatever reason we browse to a different location, then any lists you create will not be locatable unless the user know where to find InitTool.
You shouldn't need to know where Init Tool is keeping it's data. That is just a cache for the default files and for the images. I will work harder to hide that from the user.
dorpond wrote:End result: Well I loaded up the list but I am uncertain if other nessessities didn't load in the upgrade process. I must have browsed to the My Documents folder long ago in very old versions of InitTool and it remembered it in the new version *shrug*
There are two files to get loaded. One is the 'Init Tool Default D&D' file and the other is the SRD data file. The second should be loaded when the first is loaded. If it is not doing this then there is a bug.

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Post by jay »

torstan wrote:All the stats are there for me (bar hp). Follow the steps I mentioned above to load the creatures and you should get all the bells and whistles - it's great!

This feature has really convinced me to use initTool now. It must have taken an age to get all that information in but it is definitely worth it. Thanks for all the hard work Jay.
Oddly enough the data I used to create the data set doesn't have an HP field, just a hitDice field. I need to fix that in the data. Any other fields that people would like to se added?

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Post by Phergus »

jay wrote:There are two files to get loaded. One is the 'Init Tool Default D&D' file and the other is the SRD data file. The second should be loaded when the first is loaded. If it is not doing this then there is a bug.
It appears that previous users of InitTool have to explicitly load the game settings file even though it may be shown as the default.

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Post by jay »

Phergus wrote:
jay wrote:There are two files to get loaded. One is the 'Init Tool Default D&D' file and the other is the SRD data file. The second should be loaded when the first is loaded. If it is not doing this then there is a bug.
It appears that previous users of InitTool have to explicitly load the game settings file even though it may be shown as the default.
That is true, it will try to load the last settings they used.

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