Announcement: E-Initiative(tm) Initiative Tracking Tool Website

EDIT: 6/15/2007

Version 1.0 is now available for download at http://www.e-init.com/.

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Announcing the launch of the official website for E-InitiativeTM at http://www.e-init.com/, which is a new initiative tracking tool for the d20 system. The “EIA(tm)” tracks initiative order, rounds left for spells cast, and hit points left. It also gives the DM the ability to roll dice electronically, which includes saves associated with each particular character.

Right now, a beta version is available for download, which is basically an unregistered copy of version 1.0 that I won’t allow you to register yet until it’s suitable for shipment. Version 1.0 should be ready to go by June 15, but in the mean time, the beta version will provide an excellent view into how the EIA(tm) works.

There are a handful of initiative trackers for sale, right? So what’s the difference between all those tools and the EIA(tm)? Although the EIA(tm) is a 100% stand-alone program, it interfaces with the popular character generator tool, E-Tools*. After exporting an E-Tools character to XML format, that XML file can be read into the EIA(tm) so that the character’s hit points, initiative and save modifiers, and spells known are available to the EIA(tm). In the alternative, you can use the EIA(tm)'s character creation screen to create your own characters. As other character generator formats are brought to my attention, those will be supported in future versions.

I’ll be using my WotC thread (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=859270) to answer any questions you may have, and from that give and take, I’ll develop a FAQ.

* The E-Tools(tm) application is intellectual property of Wizards of the Coast®. Robert E. Bodine is in no way associated with Wizards of the Coast®, Code Monkey PublishingTM, or any of their affiliates or subsidiaries. Robert E. Bodine does not endorse any of the products or services of either of those companies, nor has Robert E. Bodine received or been made aware of any endorsement of his products or services by those companies.

Interesting. Are system requirements posted somewhere? I'm not seeing them.

heruca said:

Interesting. Are system requirements posted somewhere? I'm not seeing them.

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I'll add them to the download page sometime today or tonight.

BTW, someone suggested that I allow the EIA to read in files from PCGen. I don't know if PCGen allows you to export to a text, XML, HTML, etc. format, but if it (or any other character generator) does, this will eventually be added to the product. I edited the original post to reflect this.

Frylock said:

BTW, someone suggested that I allow the EIA to read in files from PCGen. I don't know if PCGen allows you to export to a text, XML, HTML, etc. format, but if it (or any other character generator) does, this will eventually be added to the product. Whether this is part of the current or a future version remains to be seen.

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PCGen can export to all those formats, I've most recently created output sheets to export to RPTools initTool and rpgwebprofiler which are both xml formats. I could probably make a sheet for etools xml format if I had a spec for it, getting ahold of that these days is difficult since the program is no longer available.

If you were to send me a spec for the xml format you need I would be happy to create a sheet for inclusion in PCGen and distribution on your site.

How are you importing data from eTools? XSLT or a custom reader?

Import

Anurien said:

How are you importing data from eTools? XSLT or a custom reader?

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-- Output E-Tools character from E-Tools in XML format.
-- Built in procedures parse the XML file and read it into the EIA.

So your answer is that the EIA is itself a custom reader. It may be a pain in the neck to code, but it's probably much faster than it otherwise would be.

Thanks. Did you manage to get hold of a schema document for eTools XML output or did you just figure it all out yourself?

Xml

Anurien said:

Thanks. Did you manage to get hold of a schema document for eTools XML output or did you just figure it all out yourself?

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I figured it out for myself. I just opened up the XML file and saw how the tags were organized. Because most of the parsing was extremely simple, there's a low chance of errors, but for some of the calculations (e.g., Flat-footed AC), there's certainly a possibility.

Ok, thanks anyways

RPGXplorer

Anurien said:

Ok, thanks anyways

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RPGXplorer appears to have XML output. Could you email me a comprehensive sample of your XML output so I could support it? By "comprehensive" I mean a high level character that uses the most complicated calculations for AC, saves, etc. if that's appropriate.

EDIT: I downloaded the program. I'll install it and play with it myself. I'd like to have PCGen and RPGXplorer supported with the current version.