4e Fan Creations and House RulesWorking on variant powers? Statting up a PC race or your version of a monster? Creating or converting an adventure? Put it here!
I've released version 0.6 of my Encounter Manager tool. The URL can be found in my signature, or here. All constructive comments and feedback are welcome.
When adding entities it would be nice to not have to click in the name box but have the cursor start there. It starts with the OK button selected. It would be nice if hitting the enter key was equivalent to pressing the okay button - right now it's one extra tab after entering the initiative number. It is handy that hitting esc cancels the entry box.
Saving and loading encounters would be nice so that they can be set up in advance. Same with saving and loading the adventuring party.
When adding entities it would be nice to not have to click in the name box but have the cursor start there. It starts with the OK button selected. It would be nice if hitting the enter key was equivalent to pressing the okay button - right now it's one extra tab after entering the initiative number. It is handy that hitting esc cancels the entry box.
Saving and loading encounters would be nice so that they can be set up in advance. Same with saving and loading the adventuring party.
I've made available version 0.6. It adds saving and loading encounters, loading saved encounters as groups into the current encounter, and a good number of other improvements.
Cool stuff, Pfhoenix! I can't believe all the work you must have put into your character sheet!
One suggestion... The name "encounter manager" seems a bit misleading to me. I was expecting something like what WotC's just put out, which helps you build encounters. This is something I'd describe more as an initiative tracker. Just a minor quibble, of course.
Just out of curiosity, what are you using to save the encounters, serialization?
In the general sense, yes - serialization is the process of taking structured data and converting it to serial (linear/stream) format (and in this case storing to file). More specifically, I use .NET's excellent XML support, and I save/load XML fragment files.
WotC's Encounter Builder does exactly what it says - it builds an encounter for you. Encounter Manager does exactly what it says - it manages an encounter for you. It does more than track initiatives - it tracks status effects and turn-based effects as well, which I would think are far more troublesome than simply writing down the initiative order for an encounter.
Nice that the encounters can be saved and loaded now.
Edit entity would be helpful for when character's init bonus has changed or you messed up on entering a monster's info.
Bug - If I create a new encounter but don't save it and then go to create anther it asks if I want to save the state but does nothing in the way of a save and clears the window.
Bug or WaI? - I can't manually enter an init roll (some players want to roll their own) - I get an error dialog "Invalid initiative value. Please enter a value within the specified range."
How about showing the initiative roll in brackets after each mob?
i.e. Orc Drudge (8) <turn>
Orc Berserker (4)
Last edited by Norwolf; 9th August 2008 at 01:15 AM..
1) You can always select an entity and click on their initiative button (shows the value of their total initiative) to change their initiative values.
2) if there aren't any entities defined, no saving will happen, period
3) Right now, the quickest way to change initiative order is by dragging entities by their name up or down the list. The next version will add support for allowing modification of the initiative order by modifying the initiative values directly (resetting the encounter works this way, but I don't do that for mid-encounter initiative changing currently).
People that were experiencing crashes were doing so because of mismatched versions of their .NET 3.5 assemblies. This has been fixed in the sense of requiring .NET 3.5 SP1 for all my projects from now on. SP1 fixes some issues with 3.5 anyways, and it's a good baseline for production. It's also now mandatory for my D&D tools.
Hey there, great work on the app and the character sheets.
I'm getting ready to run a game on Sunday using this for the first time, and I was building my encounters ahead of time, and practicing with the system...
Question... Is there a way to treat multiple grups of the same monster as one entity as it relates to initiative, or do I have to treat each monster independently? They're all supposed to roll at the same time...
There isn't support for adding a group of monsters at once without pre-arranging a group of monsters with the same initiative and saving them out as a separate encounter file and then inserting them later into your actual encounter setup. Even though the monsters (I'm guessing minions?) have the same initiative and act relatively at the same time, they still actually act one at a time. I'll think about support for changing the initiative of multiple entities at once, resulting in the same initiative for all selected.
I don't have plans to create data files for material beyond the core sourcebooks. However, I do plan on implementing an external data file loading system that will allow people to make their own data files with custom content for use within Character Sheet. That's fairly high on my list, almost immediately after finishing up equipment and magical templates.
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