Hero Lab 3.0 and Authoring Kit Preview

[LWDPressRelease]

Hey everyone! In a few short weeks, we'll be releasing Hero Lab 3.0, and with it the long-awaited Authoring Kit update. (This will be a free update for all existing Hero Lab users.)

Following in the tradition of Lone Wolf's other products, Army Builder and Card Vault, the Authoring Kit will let you add support for all your favorite role-playing games to Hero Lab. We'll include documentation to guide you through every step of the process, and we'll even be including the core Savage Worlds game system as an example of how it's done! (More details on Savage Worlds next week.)

Until then, we've assembled a preview of what you can do with Hero Lab's Authoring Kit for a game system like the new Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition. Click here to go to our new Authoring Kit page for some preview screenshots!

 

[azhrei_fje]

Hero Lab looks really interesting, but I have a couple of questions first.

What is the external file format? Is it XML? If so, then I could write an XSL transform that converted it to the format required for tokens in MapTool. (That would rock! )

What language is it written in? While being fully configurable is great, it would be even better if there were some plug-in architecture already supported or that could be supported in the future without too much trouble.

Last question: how realistic are the system requirements? I noticed it says "Pent-3, 64MB" (although 128MB is recommended). Those seem like very low specs -- will the program actually be useful in that configuration?

Thanks! I think I'll grab the demo and try it out. Do other ENworlders care to give their opinions of this product? I'm particularly interested in any integration abilities with MapTool and/or DM Genie (although it looks like this could replace 95% of what DM Genie does).

 

[Mercule]

Does this mean that I'd be able to mod the WoD core and add Mage, Changeling, etc. Or, would I have to start from scratch?

 

[Ed]

I use HeroLab for my games.

I only play Mutants and Masterminds right now but I have found the tool indispensable for the campaign.

First, the company releases a patch for HeroLab about every two weeks and for the DataFiles (at least for M&M) at the same time. All of these patches cover bug reports which the company takes by email or (in the case of M&M) online at the AtomicThinkTank forums and their own Lone Wolf Studios forums.

The company also adds new features when we request them if they're able to do, even if it requires work.

From my experience, I have never seen software supported so well by a company. The guys at Lone Wolf are responsive and interested in user input and work very, very hard to meet the needs of their customer base.

I LOVE DMGenie. It's one of the greatest campaign aids I've ever picked up. When I ran D&D 3.5, I relied heavily on it to help manage my games.

Hero Lab (at least for M&M) does a fair job at running a game and most of what I'd see added to the program with regards to that are just that: additions.

It could do more but the company seems to be focused on getting out a broad product base of datafiles before working on adding large amounts of features that would obviously be labor-intensive to produce at this time.

Simply put, you should check out the demo version of HeroLab, there's nothing to lose by doing so.

I would like to reiterate that all my comments above are tailored to my experience using the M&M system. I've not used HeroLab or messed with it in regards to d20.

Regards,

Ed

 

[Mercule]

Thanks for the input, Ed. It looks like my group will be starting up a nWoD game in January, but we'll lean toward Mage, Changeling, and Hunter. Those don't look supported out of the box. I'm pretty confident that there are three licenses that could be sold to my group, but only if preparing and sharing a dataset for Mage, Changeling, etc. are pretty easy for me to work up and easy for my players to utilize.

 

[Ed]

There has been some work done of the WoD stuff but I can't speak to the particulars since I don't play it and thus don't use it.

The license files are very reasonable in price and they update them as well.

For example, when I bought the M&M expansion, I got Ultimate Power and the Masterminds Manual. As they add content from additional books, they will provide those updates under the same license so, as I understand it, there won't be an additional charge.

Keep in mind that WoD books are more rules heavy than the majority of the M&M supplements (i.e Book of Magic, Golden Age, what have you) and I haven't looked at that side of things so check it out yourself and don't take my word on it.

All I can say is that the program is worth the money right out of the box and it's value keeps getting better with every update. I rarely endorse this kind of stuff but this is my one exception.

I'll shoot Colen an email in a bit and have him pop in here and maybe you all can pose your questions to him directly as he's obviously more qualified to answer them.

Regards,

Ed

 

[Scorponok]

Hi there! I'm Colen McAlister, one of the developers of Hero Lab. (Thanks for pointing me to this thread, Ed.)

Hero Lab looks really interesting, but I have a couple of questions first.

What is the external file format? Is it XML? If so, then I could write an XSL transform that converted it to the format required for tokens in MapTool. (That would rock! )

What language is it written in? While being fully configurable is great, it would be even better if there were some plug-in architecture already supported or that could be supported in the future without too much trouble.

Last question: how realistic are the system requirements? I noticed it says "Pent-3, 64MB" (although 128MB is recommended). Those seem like very low specs -- will the program actually be useful in that configuration?

Thanks! I think I'll grab the demo and try it out. Do other ENworlders care to give their opinions of this product? I'm particularly interested in any integration abilities with MapTool and/or DM Genie (although it looks like this could replace 95% of what DM Genie does).

Hero Lab does indeed save files in XML. It also supports plain-text output and can save to PDF.

Hero Lab is written entirely in C++, and implements its own custom scripting language. There's an integrated editor that let you define new feats, classes, weapons, armor, magic items, special materials, equipment, languages, skills, and more. We have a simple visual basic-style scripting language that lets you write scripts to make them do interesting things.

Finally, since we're written entirely in C++, Hero Lab is very fast. The last time I tested it, when 100 (yes, one hundred) heroes were loaded, Hero Lab took up about 150mb of memory. Hero Lab with a single hero loaded should take up only about ~40mb or so - as long as you have a computer running Windows 2000, XP or Vista, you should be able to run Hero Lab comfortably.

Hope this helps!

 

[Scorponok]

Does this mean that I'd be able to mod the WoD core and add Mage, Changeling, etc. Or, would I have to start from scratch?

You could theoretically add the Mage, Changeling, etc supplements once the authoring kit came out, but it would be a lot of work. We're planning to work on Changeling for WoD as the next expansion for that game system, but we don't have a specific release date set yet.

 

[Mercule]

You could theoretically add the Mage, Changeling, etc supplements once the authoring kit came out, but it would be a lot of work. We're planning to work on Changeling for WoD as the next expansion for that game system, but we don't have a specific release date set yet.

I don't mind buying the datasets, either. I only saw Vampire. Do you have Mage, too?

 

[azhrei_fje]

Hi there! I'm Colen McAlister, one of the developers of Hero Lab. (Thanks for pointing me to this thread, Ed.)

And thanks for coming over to answer some questions.

Hero Lab does indeed save files in XML. It also supports plain-text output and can save to PDF.

Excellent. I'm going to grab a demo right now. If I can automate the conversion into a MapTool token, this will become my tool of choice for building NPCs for the Paizo AP I'm currently running.

Hero Lab is written entirely in C++, [...]

Which means I won't be able to run it natively on my Mac unless you're using a cross-platform framework, such as Qt or wxWindows. The first of those has a nice enough GUI, but wxWindows is kinda ugly, so I'm guessing it won't run on Mac OSX. Not a huge problem since I've got both Parallels and VMware, but I try to avoid booting up a VM if at all possible.

That's some great information, Colen. Thanks again for replying!