Monster Importer Into Vegiesama?

Framework(s) for D&D 4e, including Veggiesama's.

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Sando
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Monster Importer Into Vegiesama?

Post by Sando »

Hey guys,

Still new to the Maptool scene. Am attempting to start a 4e campaign with friends, but was curious as to whether or not any pdf parsers etc would allow me to quickly import monster stats/attacks into vegisama's framework?

If this is redundant or not necessary, let me know as well :)

Any helo would be great, thanks,
Sando

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DDK
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Re: Monster Importer Into Vegiesama?

Post by DDK »

I asked this same question awhile ago and got no responses. I just noted in the READ THIS FIRST post that you're supposed to frame post titles in a certain way so that may be why it was ignored.

Apparently there is an importer that works independently of framework here: http://forums.rptools.net/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=13237

I haven't used it so I have no idea how it works or if it's any good. If there is a way to make an importer to work specifically with Veggie's, I'd be all over that in a second.

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Rumble
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Re: Monster Importer Into Vegiesama?

Post by Rumble »

JamesManhattan's importer creates a self-contained token that has clickable dice rolls and so forth. I've modified his work (this was a while ago) into an importer for my frameworks; Travist627 modified it into an importer for DeviantNull's framework - so, it can be done. However, I'll say that it requires a lot of work if you want it to create fully-realized Veggiesama tokens (e.g., with powers/properties/etc. all set up to smoothly integrate with the framework).

You'll basically have to custom-write the parsing to take the information present in, say, a pasted monster summary from the Compendium, and parse out the different elements (to hit, action type, damage, effects, etc.), and then store them in the proper type of variable and property.

Please feel free to look at my frameworks - you'll want to look at the token "Lib:RegExParser" - which has all of the macros that work together to parse and convert monsters and character summaries into tokens. Obviously the data structures aren't the same, but the parsing elements probably can be re-used (that is, the regular expressions that "read" the data would be the same, it's just what you do with it that changes).

Doktor Avalanche
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Re: Monster Importer Into Vegiesama?

Post by Doktor Avalanche »

Rumble, when you say it is difficult to do what do you mean?

I have been using the parser for several games with veggie (see the campaign and specifically the Githyanki Blademaster which is my generic token for importing stuff). Am I missing something or are you talking about a more complicated automatic importer? Mine works by just copying the data from the compendium and using f2 to display the monster sheet. I thought that was all the parser did.

I have no doubt you are right and I am missing something - no way would I challenge your comments given your knowledge.
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Rumble
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Re: Monster Importer Into Vegiesama?

Post by Rumble »

Doktor Avalanche wrote:Rumble, when you say it is difficult to do what do you mean?

I have been using the parser for several games with veggie (see the campaign and specifically the Githyanki Blademaster which is my generic token for importing stuff). Am I missing something or are you talking about a more complicated automatic importer? Mine works by just copying the data from the compendium and using f2 to display the monster sheet. I thought that was all the parser did.

I have no doubt you are right and I am missing something - no way would I challenge your comments given your knowledge.
Ah, yeah - I am talking about something significantly more complex, although it may not be necessary with Veggiesama's framework (I have never used the Veggie framework, so I don't know how its internals work).

The basic function of the parser that JamesManhattan made is what you're doing (and it's not "basic" except in comparison to what a couple of us did with it as inspiration) - you import the monster, hit F2, and you get the monster's frame and it's all good. What I did was took the basic parsing part of that, and had it finely parse out a pasted compendium entry, and then convert that into a fully-statted token compatible with my frameworks. So for instance, in my framework powers can impose status effects, and my modifications to the parser read the monster's statsheet and then convert it to a format that my framework understands.

I also took the parser and modified it to import characters as well, so you can paste in a character summary (or, well, you could - I'm not a DDI subscriber and I don't know if it works with the new CB) and have it take that and convert it into a framework-compatible token.

The essence of the modification is that where the basic parser is looking for powers and dice rolls and building an HTML frame to display the statsheet, mine is looking for things like power range, attack bonus, damage, conditions and their durations, power use frequency, and so forth, and slotting them into the right token properties to make a fully-functional token for the relevant framework. Travist627 did a similar thing to make tokens for DeviantNull's framework, but I don't think anyone's done it for Veggie's framework.

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