DDI Character Builder and OS X (or Linux)

[Trevalon Moonleirion]

I've accepted the fact that I'll probably never see an OS X native version of the only good electronic product I've ever seen WotC put out, and run it in a virtual Windows machine. That said, I'd prefer, especially when on my laptop, to not have to run an entirely separate OS for the purpose of viewing characters created with it.

Is there a way--other than printing the Character Builder sheets as PDFs--to view the files in OS X?

Any other suggestions for Windows-hating gamers looking for 4e software?

 

[Enforcer]

I haven't found one... I run the Character Builder through Vista on my Mac courtesy of VMWare Fusion, and print to PDF (with CutePDF in Vista) for viewing on my Mac. It's a pain, and though clearly Windows over Mac was the right choice for WotC to make, I still don't understand WHY THEY HAD TO EVEN CHOOSE considering the viability of a web-based platform. Sigh.

Despite the annoyance of having to run a virtual machine just to use the Character Builder, however, I will say that it's totally worth doing. The Character Builder is sweet. And at the gaming table, having just one program running is actually ideal (though I could run more thanks to VMWare Fusion), I would argue, as the Internet and other crap provides only distractions from the gaming.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

[sblock=Rambling on Running the CB on other systems]
It will probably never run on Mac OS X or Linux. The application uses .NET with WPF. While .NET is implemented for Unix/Linux via the Mono project, the Mono project has publicly stated they will not implement the WPF part of .NET. (I kinda understand why - it would probably be enormously difficult to do so, since the OS foundations are so different).

I also get why the WotC developers used .NET and WPF. It's awesome to work with it. (I do it at work.)

Unless someone at the Mono project has a change of heart or decides to create a "spin-off" with WPF, you can't hope for much.

Another hope is that something like Wine or Crossover manage to replicate enough of the Windows platform so that .NET works there fully. But that sounds no easier than the Mono thing.

And the third hope would be that the WotC developers would throw away their entire coding base and interface design and implement the app in Java or even something native with tweaks to run it on multiple systems (there are applications like that, and there are also frameworks like QT that can help you there.) A twist that might allow them to retain much of the codebase and also design might be to switch from WPF to Silverlight, plugins for which should be available for Windows, Linux (via Mono, IIRC) and Mac OS X.

On Mac OS X, Parallels might be able to deal with .NET and WPF applications, but I am not sure it does so. Parallels uses a Virtual Machine to run Windows in and has only limited graphical capabiltiies. BootCamp definitely works. Both solutions require buying a Windows License, and Bootcamp requires you to reboot.
[/sblock]
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I am not sure, but aren't the files XML? Theoretically, it should be possible to create an application that displays these files on screen. But that would not replicate you the look and feel of the files. Maybe you could try using a CSS file to do that, but that's still a lot of manual work to implement first. I don't think anyone has tried that so far, and it might not be sufficient.

 

[Stormtalon]

<edit> Bah, never mind, saw the thing about Mono not supporting part of what CB needs after I posted....

 

[Vicente]

I haven't found one... I run the Character Builder through Vista on my Mac courtesy of VMWare Fusion, and print to PDF (with CutePDF in Vista) for viewing on my Mac. It's a pain, and though clearly Windows over Mac was the right choice for WotC to make, I still don't understand WHY THEY HAD TO EVEN CHOOSE considering the viability of a web-based platform. Sigh.

Building web stuff is harder than building windows stuff. They choose the easiest solution that covered the biggest part of the market, they did a perfect decision from my point of view.

If they had chosen a web-based platform, then this thread would be about how it doesn't look right on a browser who is not IE or why choosing Silverlight or something along those lines...

 

[seanlb]

i'm having a really hard time installing it on my parallels partition. i have os x and use xp via parallels. will that not work?

it gets hung up at the .net framework part.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

i'm having a really hard time installing it on my parallels partition. i have os x and use xp via parallels. will that not work?

it gets hung up at the .net framework part.

I found an entry in the Parallels Knowledge Base:
KB Parallels: Installation of Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 Service pack 1 fails

I am not sure it would be helpful to you, though. Is it really just the Service Pack for .Net 3.0 that is causing an error for you? Or is it the entire framework?

Basically, you have to open the file described there in a text editor and edit it to whatever is correct. (Probably the opposite of what is standing there, e.g. if it says UTF-8, make it UTF-16, and vice versa.) Usually before doing such things, you should create a copy of the original file to restore it later if the solution fails or creates new problems.

 

[Trevalon Moonleirion]

Still annoyed by the clunkiness of printing these character sheets to a PDF and printing them elsewhere (or just viewing the PDFs). Any idea if WotC has any plans to have a built-in export feature in an upcoming update?

(As an aside, I've got the character builder running on my MacBook with the Windows 7 RC and I'm pretty impressed with Microsoft's upcoming offering. That said, I'd still love some OS X love from WotC. I can dream.)

 

[JohnSnow]

I've got the Character Builder running on my 13-inch MacBook Pro with Parallels and Windows XP. I can print character sheets directly by just connecting the printer to my mac and using the Apple Laserwriter printer driver. It's slow, but it works

On the other hand, the formatting is a bit wonky and I lose the bottom line. I'm considering picking up Crossover Mac. I just don't know if it will work with the Character Builder. Anybody used it?

 

[Alan Shutko]

I go CutePDF and store the PDF. It's the best way I've found.