RPTools.net

Yes, essentially that's what we'd end up with. A configuration for CharTool that can read all of the data sent by PCGen.

Then have individual output formats (did you call that printing support, jay?) for each MapTool framework.

Regarding the input from PCGen it seems the easiest thing (at least for a first shot) would be to simply popup a JTextArea and let people paste in the contents of the PCGen file. If the parsing produces error messages that include line numbers, this technique allows for easy tweaks while trying to get something that works.

If you're thinking of leaving CharTool as-is and having it read it's own file format (what does it read now? I don't recall the filename extension) then leaving it as a zip isn't that big a problem. There can be a zip file with the necessary pieces and just running zip -r zipfile.zip content.xml will replace the existing XML and leave everything else alone. Or are you thinking of a different issue?

Progress!

I have been working with InitiativeTool 1.1.b8 which runs the d20 3.5 game settings without error and have made some head way. I really like how the program has evolved, the different views for PC and NPC are nice and detailed and the one click dice rolling on some of the stats is really neat. The amount of detail goes beyond the custom properties I have made for myself and really eliminates the need for adding any additional custom properties, I can write directly for the built in 3.5 settings.

I'm about halfway through reverse engineering the group file format into a PCGen export sheet and so I see that I'll be able to reach my original goal of creating an updated sheet for the latest version of InitiativeTool in short order.

One secondary goal was to be able to get PCGen characters into MapTool and I found that InitiativeTool now has an export token function in the file menu that does exactly that, fantastic!

I don't know about frameworks and macros having not been around much but I support any effort to make it easier to use PCGen with RPTools. I also see that RPTools are using more data now with CharTool and the InitiaitveTool monster lookup, PCGen has quite a bit of data that could probably be transformed without much effort into files usable by the Tools. I'm sure we have some synergies there.

I'm particularly interested in Pathfinder support, it would not seem difficult to create a game setting file for Pathfinder from the 3.5 file, there are only a few minor changes that would be needed as far as the notecard displays go. PCGen has just recently completed coding the Pathfinder Bestiary so it's possible we could help round out that game setting file by providing the Bestiary lookup tables.

I'm working on making the data easy to edit from CT & IT now. That should make it fairly easy to import data from other programs like PCGen and DDI as well.

I have started on one, and even did a little work on it for the skill checks, but it isn't finished. I've not had a lot of time to work on stuff due to RL issues, but that may change here in a bit.

This will likely be framework-dependent since much of the combat tracking stuff (hps, etc) won't necessarily be stored the same way by all frameworks. But again, some templates for each framework would be doable; and honestly, once the data is in InitTool it's really not necessary for the PCGen folks to continue trying to push the data around (except perhaps as a curiosity!).


Did PCGen ever transition to XML data files? I signed up on the Y! group (was it d20xmlsrd?) that was discussing how to do it and I believe PCGen was the focus of that effort... Last I looked I still saw mention of LST files though.


Cool. I'd love to have a way to automatically convert that data into tokens for my ongoing PF campaign. Right now I have a statblock parser built using regular expressions that can extract fields understood by the framework and insert them into the token. This makes it pretty easy to copy/paste from the module PDF. But there is still tweaking to do so having a pre-built (and pre-tweaked!) monster dbase would be a huge benefit for me.

No, that project never made it off the ground, every thing is still coded in LST format.

That would pretty much be the end result of this project. We have something called default monster kits in PCGen which basically recreate the monster presented in the books stat block. You just hit new character, click add kit, select a default monster kit and PCGen then added all the feats, skills classes, etc.. that the book calls for and you're done. Add one more step of outputting it into the InitTool group file format and bringing it in to InitTool then exporting it to a token and you have a fully detailed monster as presented in the book right there in MapTool.

I was looking at the lookup files and they are formatted very similarly to the group file format, I'm sure I could make an output sheet for PCGen that would spit out exactly what is needed for the lookup database. It would then just be a matter of loading up each one and cranking them out.

Success!

I've completed an export sheet for PCGen that works for InitiativeTool 1.1.b8 in d20 3.5 mode. I've uploaded the sheet to my gallery for anyone interested in trying it out.

It's in the same section as the original sheets I made (has it really been 3 years?) so make sure you get the new one. I also uploaded a sample group file containing a dragon and a demon so you can see how the exports look without downloading PCGen, I only changed the tokens after importing it (PCGen can only use local images).

Thanks! I guess you didn't need my help after all I am waiting for the next version to come out and then start bothering jay to explain to me how to add Lindsay's FW to CT & IT. I am still trying to learn how to build the LST files for 4E as the ones provided by PC-Gen are very generic.

If you (and jay!) have such discussions, how about adding a section to the wiki that covers the end result? I'm sure this is something everyone else would like to know about too!