Greetings! I have toyed around with several programs similar, but I am almost brand new to IT. As such a noob, I'll bet that I am overlooking something pretty obvious, but I can't seem to get IT to save the new monsters I create.
I am using 1.0.b23. I have tried following the standard procedure listed in the documentation, and lots of variants (including adding the monsters directly into the 'add combatants' dialog, clicking on the 'edit' button in the 'add combatants' dialog and editing them in the 'edit group combatants' dialog that pops up and clicking 'save' when finished, and completing the corresponding steps after having called up the 'groups tool).
In all cases, here is what happens: I successfully create new monsters for an encounter, and run the encounter without any problems. I can even save the encounter and reload it later, and all of my monsters remain; but no matter what I do, the monsters I create (by whatever method) are not added to to the defaultMonsters.rpdat file. I have even gone through the 'game settings' dialogs and created custom monsters.rpdat and .rpgame files in other directories, located far, far away; but still, my new monsters aren't saved in a .rpdat file.
Of course, if I open the .rpdat file directly with an xml editor and enter a new monster from there, it appears in the 'lookup combatants' chooser. But this can't be the only way to add and edit monsters, so I must be overlooking something - or am I? Is editing the .rpdat file directly the only way to add new monsters to that file, or is there something I have missed that would allow me to use IT's slick interface to manipulate the .rpdat data?
Problem Saving New Monsters?
First off, welcome to the boards VgnFrnd!
Unfortunately the only way to add new monsters is to edit the XML. One of the things that I'm supposed to add to the 1.1 version is a way to edit all of the data files and there is already a tracker for it. However I've not got there yet.
If you do edit that file make sure you save a copy somewhere besides where the default is stored. That will get deleted when new versions of IT are available.
Unfortunately the only way to add new monsters is to edit the XML. One of the things that I'm supposed to add to the 1.1 version is a way to edit all of the data files and there is already a tracker for it. However I've not got there yet.
If you do edit that file make sure you save a copy somewhere besides where the default is stored. That will get deleted when new versions of IT are available.