Adding to Default Monster List

[Blakey]

I have had a brief scan but can't find a way to do this. So I'll ask here.

I'm preparing for a new campaign. I've got a few new monsters to add in and would also like to add in certain flavours of monsters like "Bonecrusher orcs" rather than standard SRD orcs, and so on. So how do I go abouts adding monsters to the list which gets popped up when I press the "Lookup..." button?

Cheers!
Blakey

[Phergus]

Make a copy of the existing "defaultMonsters.rpdat" file to be found in C:\Documents and Settings\{user_name}\.inittool and add your changes to it. Tell InitTool to use your copy instead of the default.

Don't change the default unless you want it overwritten by the next version.

[Blakey]

Cheers.

I had a look at that and its an XML file. Are you suggesting just edit the XML file by hand? I'm happy to do that by the way, just curious if that was the suggested approach?

Seems a shame there isn't a built in method to add creatures to the database...

Blakey

[Phergus]

I had a look at that and its an XML file. Are you suggesting just edit the XML file by hand? I'm happy to do that by the way, just curious if that was the suggested approach?

Don't know about suggested approach but it is currently the only approach.

Seems a shame there isn't a built in method to add creatures to the database...

Feel free to check out the source code and add that capability to IT.

Or you can wait until Jay gets a chance to add it in.

The monster database was only added to IT within the last couple of releases.

[Pfhreak]

If Jay isn't planning on adding this feature in the near future, it wouldn't be hard for me to whip up a quick web form that you could fill out, and it would supply the xml for copy pasting.

[Blakey]

If Jay isn't planning on adding this feature in the near future, it wouldn't be hard for me to whip up a quick web form that you could fill out, and it would supply the xml for copy pasting.

Sounds ace - I'd be willing to test for ya!

Can I suggest a form which allows multiple creatures to be added to one destination XML file - for ease of use would be cool to be able to input lots of new creatures and then generate XML to be added to the main XML database.

Cheers!
Blakey

[Pfhreak]

Sure, that'd be easy enough. I'll give Jay a day or so to let us know what his development plans are before I cut my teeth on this project.

[jay]

I do plan on adding an editor, I even think there is a tracker for it. Not sure when I will be doing this however. It will be after the 1.0 RC release which shouldn't be too much longer now.

Sorry it took so long to get back to you, I've been on vacation and just got back into town.

[Blakey]

I've actually gone through and added all my monsters and NPCs into this database now and added some extra fields whilst I was at it, so I don't need it for the current module I'm working on.

However I'll still volunteer to test this functionality out when its added to IT - as I'll be porting other modules in future and this could save loads of time.

Blakey

[RPTroll]

If Jay isn't planning on adding this feature in the near future, it wouldn't be hard for me to whip up a quick web form that you could fill out, and it would supply the xml for copy pasting.

You know, you add a character sheet information that produces xml readable by init tool and you've really got something

[kat2cute]

I want to add common monsters to the Monster Database too, but I don't know how to edit it. The file is defaultMonsters.rpdat, of which I made a copy of to do my editing in Excel. However, even though I can read all the entries in excel (though they are a total mess) and add a new row to the end of the existing monster list, it will only save it as an excel file, not a .rpdat file. If I try to remove the .xls tag so that only the .rpdat file is there, it warns about the file not working, and lo-and-behold, it then doesn't work when I assign my new file as the default in the settings pane. If noone has made an easy method of adding monsters yet, what is the correct program/method of editing the defaultMonsters.rpdat file?

[jay]

I've not gotten around to making an editor for .rpdat files. The files are XML so you can edit them with a text editor or an XML editor. Just copy a monster and then edit it's values. A monster consists of all the XML between the <monster> and </monster> tags inclusive.

[kat2cute]

Thanks, I was able to successfully edit the Default Monster List in WordPad. It takes a while to edit, and everytime you edit the list you have to completely reselect the same list in Tools:game settings for some reason, but it will more than hold me over until a faster application is made. I still had the problem with the file not working when it tried to save as a .txt or other formats, but it was fine with I overwrote this in the save window with .rpdat.

[jay]

The .rpdat files are copied into a database so that they can be accessed faster. The place where you list the default monster file in the Game Settings dialog has a reload button you can use to load in your new monsters w/o reloading the entire game settings file.

[drswoboda]

Thanks, I was able to successfully edit the Default Monster List in WordPad. It takes a while to edit, and everytime you edit the list you have to completely reselect the same list in Tools:game settings for some reason, but it will more than hold me over until a faster application is made. I still had the problem with the file not working when it tried to save as a .txt or other formats, but it was fine with I overwrote this in the save window with .rpdat.

You may want to check this out http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm if your on Windows. It is a nice free editor that can display the .rpdat files in XML format, which makes editing easier. Wordpad might add 'junk' to a file unless you saved as plain text.

-David