Siberys
Adventurer
I've been looking at computer aids for quite a while. Each one has little things that bug me, though, and none did precisely what I wanted. As I'm passably familiar with Visual Basic, and really need to brush up on it anyways, I built the following program.
The program is intended to be used simply as scratch paper (hence the name) , but without the huge use of paper, and in a more organized fashion.
FEATURES;
Spaces for tracking a PC's;
• usage of powers
• HP, surges, and temporary hit points
• Magic item usage
• A notes portion, for miscellaneous information like the duration of effects
• Whatever is typed in the name textbox on the player pages is also entered as the name of that particular tab
Spaces for tracking a monster's;
• HP and Temporary HP
• encounter and recharge powers
• A notes section for miscellaneous information like action points or durations
A turn tracker
The turn tracker just indicates which round of combat it currently is; I write durations as, for example, 4.e.dragon (end of the dragon's turn on round 4) or 6.b.carius (the beginning of carius' turn during the sixth round).
Scratchpad can track only one campaign, which it loads on startup, and can track up to four characters at a time, in addition to up to six different monsters or groups of monsters.
On the turn tracker, choosing next simply moves to the next radio button; restart moves it back to 1. If you push next while on 19, the program instead moves to 1 and a popup notifies you of such.
Now, as for improvements, here's a personal wish list I have, and I'd love to take suggestions. Just keep in mind that I'm a self-taught amatuer, so anything complex would likely be difficult for me to pull off.
• Allow for up to six PCs. I didn't do this, because I have a three-man group right now, but since five is the suggested size, and six is fairly common, I'll set this up. It's not hard, but coding the save and load is boring and repetitious.
• Allow for the saving and loading of multiple campaigns. This one seems complex to my limited understanding; I'm not quite sure how to code a full save and load dialog.
• Make a more robust initiative tracking system. I tried thinking of ways to make a dynamic initiative list that could account for things such as readying and delaying, but it was difficult, so I dropped it. I really only needed to know the round number, anyway. Still, this'd be looking into.
• Some way to choose and apply conditions. One of the programs I played with, inCombat 4e, did this, complete with descriptions of the condition, and I REALLY liked it, but it seemed difficult to program.
I have a virtual character sheet program much like this, but with full character capability (albeit for one PC at a time). It's kind of buggy, though, as I'm working on adding some features. I want to set it up with compendium viewing capability, and some in-program way to make HTML pages containing compendium-lookalike entries for 3PP material, or else power card images made with MSE. For example, there's be a form for races, which you'd fill out if your character was a Xax, so that when you clicked the revelent button it would show you info on that race in the compendium style. I have the basics hashed out, but having the program do that fully would require a fair bit of time. I'm also experimenting with different save-load interfaces on this program. If I could get this finished, get some sort of combat tracker working, and combine it with scratchpad, that'd cover everything I could ask for, as well as reduce my printing costs on DM copies of my player's character sheets.
Anyways, feel free to critique and make suggestions.
INSTALLATION INFO;
It's pretty simple. First, this will only work on a Windows machine. Sorry, Mac users.
Extract the contents of the ZIP to a folder named Scratchpad. Move the folder into your program files. Open the Scratchpad folder, right click on the Scratchpad 4e shortcut (it should look like a black d20), and choose 'send to -> desktop (create shortcut)'. It should then work, unless I'm somehow mistaken.
The program is intended to be used simply as scratch paper (hence the name) , but without the huge use of paper, and in a more organized fashion.
FEATURES;
Spaces for tracking a PC's;
• usage of powers
• HP, surges, and temporary hit points
• Magic item usage
• A notes portion, for miscellaneous information like the duration of effects
• Whatever is typed in the name textbox on the player pages is also entered as the name of that particular tab
Spaces for tracking a monster's;
• HP and Temporary HP
• encounter and recharge powers
• A notes section for miscellaneous information like action points or durations
A turn tracker
The turn tracker just indicates which round of combat it currently is; I write durations as, for example, 4.e.dragon (end of the dragon's turn on round 4) or 6.b.carius (the beginning of carius' turn during the sixth round).
Scratchpad can track only one campaign, which it loads on startup, and can track up to four characters at a time, in addition to up to six different monsters or groups of monsters.
On the turn tracker, choosing next simply moves to the next radio button; restart moves it back to 1. If you push next while on 19, the program instead moves to 1 and a popup notifies you of such.
Now, as for improvements, here's a personal wish list I have, and I'd love to take suggestions. Just keep in mind that I'm a self-taught amatuer, so anything complex would likely be difficult for me to pull off.
• Allow for up to six PCs. I didn't do this, because I have a three-man group right now, but since five is the suggested size, and six is fairly common, I'll set this up. It's not hard, but coding the save and load is boring and repetitious.
• Allow for the saving and loading of multiple campaigns. This one seems complex to my limited understanding; I'm not quite sure how to code a full save and load dialog.
• Make a more robust initiative tracking system. I tried thinking of ways to make a dynamic initiative list that could account for things such as readying and delaying, but it was difficult, so I dropped it. I really only needed to know the round number, anyway. Still, this'd be looking into.
• Some way to choose and apply conditions. One of the programs I played with, inCombat 4e, did this, complete with descriptions of the condition, and I REALLY liked it, but it seemed difficult to program.
I have a virtual character sheet program much like this, but with full character capability (albeit for one PC at a time). It's kind of buggy, though, as I'm working on adding some features. I want to set it up with compendium viewing capability, and some in-program way to make HTML pages containing compendium-lookalike entries for 3PP material, or else power card images made with MSE. For example, there's be a form for races, which you'd fill out if your character was a Xax, so that when you clicked the revelent button it would show you info on that race in the compendium style. I have the basics hashed out, but having the program do that fully would require a fair bit of time. I'm also experimenting with different save-load interfaces on this program. If I could get this finished, get some sort of combat tracker working, and combine it with scratchpad, that'd cover everything I could ask for, as well as reduce my printing costs on DM copies of my player's character sheets.
Anyways, feel free to critique and make suggestions.
INSTALLATION INFO;
It's pretty simple. First, this will only work on a Windows machine. Sorry, Mac users.
Extract the contents of the ZIP to a folder named Scratchpad. Move the folder into your program files. Open the Scratchpad folder, right click on the Scratchpad 4e shortcut (it should look like a black d20), and choose 'send to -> desktop (create shortcut)'. It should then work, unless I'm somehow mistaken.
