Issues with Hero Designer

[Sir Whiskers]

/Rant alert/

I've finally started digging into this program, which is used for creating characters in 5th Edition Hero System. Since someone else asked for feedback a while ago, I thought I'd post my experiences so far.

1. The program enforces the rules, period. I tried to create a basic skeleton (from their published book Hero System Bestiary). The skeleton in the book has lowered two figured stats. It can't be done in the program. On the publisher's boards, a number of posters have asked that these hard-coded restrictions be turned into warnings. The response:

"Will not happen. Ever. The closest I may come to that is allow some of the "hard-coded" rules to be toggled on and off in a preferences screen."

While this is an acceptable position for the publisher to take (it's their product, after all) I'm terribly disappointed. I've yet to play in a Champions campaign that didn't have one or more characters bend/break the rules for effect. It also has the drawback of requiring the user to know the "correct" way to create a particular effect which, to judge by the message board, is by no means obvious to the average user.

2. This brings up a problem I have with the company support for the product. I lost count of the number of times a poster on their boards asked how to implement something custom, only to be told they'll have to jump through various hoops in the program to get it to work. Further, the responses are too often (IMO) curt, giving no justification, just saying "That's the way the program works - live with it" (see quote above). The entire program acts more like a straight-jacket than an aid. The Heromaker software from 3rd Edition is far more flexible and useful.

3. The documentation is abysmal. I've checked the boards to gain info on creating certain characters/creatures. On more than one occasion, the response from the designers is to toggle such-and-such feature, yet I can't find the toggle. It's not obvious in the program, and not mentioned at all in the docs. This program has a very steep learning curve, and the docs are very little help.

While I'm trying to use version 1.48, HeroGames has released a version 2 of the program, which apparently adds a few extra features, but in general does not address the straight-jacket issue at all. If anyone is considering purchasing this product, be sure to get the latest version. Personally, I'm so disappointed in the product, I can't recommend it. In fact, I'm considering using the 3rd Edition rules so I can use Heromaker. Otherwise, I'll just have to do things the old-fashioned way, using pen and paper.

If anyone else has had better experiences with the product, please feel free to disagree.

 

[Killer Shrike]

Hero Designer

OK, disclaimer: used HD v1 heavily right after its release and was an early beta-tester for HD v2. I dont work for Hero Games, and am a hard core HEROs gamer. So, everyone should be clear on where my bias lies.

Now that my bias is clear, lets hit a few points:

HD v1 has some fixed strictures, true, but it did what it was designed to do which was enforce the official rules of the game. In this regards it was an amazing piece of software. It was in many ways a learning tool and a calculator. It wouldnt let you do things incorrectly, which might be inconvenient for concientious home-brewers, but is invaluable to newbies trying to learn the system.

For the "Custom" minded every type of ability had a "CUSTOM" object to allow the definition of the not-in-the-rules bit you wanted to add.

As far as the specific of selling back characteristics, two bits: 1) must have been selling back 2 or more figured characteristics, which is illeagal. 2) HD v1 would still let you do it by taking the characteristic as a Power and taking it down to a negative value. v2 wont let you do it this way, but does have a toggle on the campaign guidelines to allow more than one figured to be sold back.

On top of enforcing the rules strictly, it was also pretty much bug free, and all bugs were fixed within a few days of being identified at worst and often the same day. Futher the application was altered on several occasions to accomadate FAQ rulings and erratta in an extremely timely fashion.

All in all v1 was a solid piece of software, and I still have a copy installed of v1 so I can deal w/ older characters if need be (not all of my players have upgraded to v2 frex).

The documentation is actually pretty good in my opinion, being a good blend of technical documentation and user documentation.



HD v2, released a few months ago, does not in any way fall into "adds a few extra features, but in general does not address the straight-jacket issue at all". Nothing could be further from the truth actually. v2 is a superlative product, and does in fact allow a vast amount of customizability. Many many many options are available, and plus since all the base files are done via inheritable XML templates editable in something as simple even as notepad, the program can be highly configured even beyond the toggles available via the interface.

There are numerous features and customizable options, an incredibly extensive export template model that allows all kinds of character sheets to be designed in a variety of formats, support for all genres, incorporation of all "official" rules additions from the genre books, extensive ability to make custom preFabs and character Templates, and so on.

The modifier intelligence alone is worth its weight, dynamically changing the many modifiers possible for a power construct as it is being built. This system is such an aid to new players, and even an old hand like me will get caught out on some obscure rule that I had forgotten or misinterpreted -- but HD didnt.

The documentation for v2 could stand to be a bit more comprehensive, but it would be difficult for it to be 100% up-to-date because the program keeps getting enhanced with user requests and great new features.

Not a week goes by that at least one new wouldnt-it-be-cool feature gets put in. Like last week for example, I requested Conditional export tags to output and/or control the layout of Powers by their Type (Attack, Defense, Movement, etc), to allow me to make various GM's notes type exports of entire team rosters, spitting out all their defense values with powers on one printout for example. Within two days this major feature was added to the application and rolled out. I discovered a couple of inconsistencies, such as the behaviour of Compound Powers and the Talent Combat Luck which is a very common defense not being counted as a Power. Within a day Compound Powers count as a composite of all the types of the Powers involved in them, and Combat Luck will show up as a Defensive Power if bought on the Powers tab rather than the Talents tab. What kind of customer services is that? Unheard of, thats what kind.

As far as Dan Simon, the developer of the software, being curt: Yes, its true, Dan does not have the worlds greatest people skills. He can be curt, rude, and outright surly at times. Here's a news flash -- he's a Developer; he's not paid for his people skills. He's not an employee of HERO Games -- they contracted the software from him. He's constantly being bombarded by people asking for endless additions and mods, and many of these people are mostly confused or coming out of left field. He has a thankless and pretty much unwinnable position in all this. The application will never be "done" really, as there will always be one more thing to add, one more enhancement to put in, one more refinement to make. Well, lets just say I dont envy him the bs he has to wade through. Here's the thing though, despite the occasional crotchetiness, he obviously cares about and takes pride in the quality of his work. When he does things he does them all the way. He'll argue over a seemingly minor thing on the one hand that goes against his design philosophy, and then add in a massive new bit of functionality that no one even thought to ask for, but quickly realizes they really wanted. He's odd like that

All questions are answered fairly and quickly, and any actual problems are addressed rapidly. People that keep asking for the same thing over and over again after he's said no can expect the roughside of his tongue however. But hey, he's just a gamer like all of us, not a game designer or corporate lackey. Try not to get too upset about it. Its not that big of a deal. Plus, there is no more consistent way to apply the math rules of the HERO System than HD, version 1 or 2.

 

[Eosin the Red]

Well, Shike covered most of that pretty well.

I would just add that while I am nowhere in the "techinical know" like Shrike, I use version 1.4 and it works better than any of the other two Hero Creators have worked. I will admit to loving the ability to really manipulate the output - Html, pre-formated VBB language for posting to message boards, RTF, and one of the players is working on importing the text straight into excel which is what I have built 95% of my characters in so I have my fingers crossed that this works well.

I have no experience with the designer so I can't comment on that. My experiences with the rest of the Hero staff have been AOK. I got an email responce from Steve Long within 8 hours this week about a webpage issue so I know that they are curtious and responsive.

Overall, I like Creator but I don't know that I am gonna upgrade anytime soon.....Maybe I should ask Shrike if he thinks it is worth the upgrade?

 

[rjcurrie]

As the person who wrote the abysmal documentation for Hero Designer, I would like to make a some comments about that documentation:

1) The current policy is to only update the documentation at major release points (1.0, 2.0, etc.). Unfortunately, Dan often adds major new features in the updates between major releases. This can cause the documentation to fall behind. However, this may be changing and probably sometime in the next couple of months, I will issue an updated set of docs that will include most of the features added since 2.0 was released -- I only say most because I am sure that between the time I finalize the docs and they make it onto the Hero boards, Dan will have added something else

2) If you or anyone else have any comments on where or how the documentation can be improved, for god's sake, e-mail me and let me know. I will ceratinly consider all such comments when I am preparing the next version of the documentation. But it is really hard to try and satisfy user's needs, if the users don't tell you what they want.

3) There is at least one area where I myself consider the documentation to be abysmal and that is in the area of creating export templates. There are a couple of reasons for that. One, I am not an expert in that area and the little work that I have done with export templates has been mainly in the area of fiddling around with existing templates to meet a need they don't currently serve. I have asked a couple of times on the Hero Designer forum for advice from others who have done more work in this area on what exactly should be covered and I have not received any responses. I will be asking again as I prepare to do the proposed update and I hope that this time I will get some help.

I think that's about all I have to say on the subject at present. I look forward to any feedback.

Rod Currie

 

[Killer Shrike]

Well, Shrike covered most of that pretty well.

and one of the players is working on importing the text straight into excel which is what

Ya, I wrote a CSV export template for my own use in populating the database that drives my spells page. It's pretty straight forward; took me about 5 minutes to make if IIRC. It just doesnt like lists much, but otherwise works fine.

Overall, I like Creator but I don't know that I am gonna upgrade anytime soon.....Maybe I should ask Shrike if he thinks it is worth the upgrade?

Absolutely worth it, 100% and most definitely!

 

[rjcurrie]

For anyone who is interested in version 2 of Hero Designer, a free demo of v2.02 is available from the Hero Games website at:

http://www.herogames.com/FreeStuff/HeroDesignerV2/demo/index.jsp

This version contains the v2 documentation and most of v2's features. Some features such as saving or exporting characters or loading existing characters have been disabled.

Rod Currie

 

[Sir Whiskers]

KS, Eosin, RJC: Thanks for posting your viewpoints. Part of the reason I started this thread (besides wanting to vent a bit) was to see if my perceptions matched others.

A few comments:

1. I already guessed that Dan is the somewhat stereotypical techie, who can do wonders with software, but could use a visit to a charm school. This should not be taken as a knock on the guy: everyone has strong and weak points, and programmers are usually hired for their programming skills, not people skills (project leaders are a different kettle of fish, of course). That said, I found his posts on the boards many times to be very off-putting, not at all what I've come to expect from Hero Games in general.

2. I based my comment on version 2 from what I read on the boards. I freely admit I may not have read a full list of new features, especially since KS mentioned that features are changing on a regular basis.

3. I still don't like game aids which insist on enforcing the game rules to the point that the program will not then allow me to create a creature as printed in an official supplement. It's one thing for the program to let me know when I'm breaking the rules - it's quite another for it not to allow it at all, even in cases where the publisher did so. I read a number of comments on this feature, so I'm not the only person to notice this, and Dan's response was very disappointing. I'm pleased to hear that version 2 has added a toggle for one rule, but I still believe the customer base would be better served if such toggles became the norm, rather than the exception.

BTW, I did try the negative characteristic solution, but didn't get it to work (the program wouldn't accept a negative number). Since you say it can be done, I would conclude I just couldn't figure out how - which is one difficulty in the program, both with the interface and the documentation. This is a program that requires a real commitment from the user to learn it. Designing a simple "brick" is a breeze - it's the custom stuff that's hard. But it's also the custom stuff that is much of the attraction of the Hero rules in the first place.

4. Along these lines, I'm not sure about the focus of the product. KS, you say the program is invaluable to newbies learning the system, but the program doesn't do much, if any, of the expected hand-holding for that target audience. An interactive tutorial that walks the user through many of the features would be outstanding - and probably expensive to create, so I don't expect it. But this program really needs a way to ease users into the product. As it is, it seems to me that's it's really only for the hard-core fans who are willing to figure it out, no matter how long it takes.

5. BTW, how easy is it to customize the export if a user doesn't know HTML? One thing that was a breeze in Heromaker was adding extra lines, organizing powers on the page, etc. What I've seen so far in HD is that I'll have to learn (at least passably) HTML to get what I want. Even then, I noticed a couple requests on the boards that Dan admitted simply aren't possible as the program is currently designed. That said, the fact that Dan is adding to this functionality is commendable and appreciated.

6. To be fair, I should have mentioned the lack of bugs. I've yet to encounter a single one - that's truly amazing considering the normal state of software.

As always, IMO, YMMV, etc.

 

[Killer Shrike]

KS, Eosin, RJC: Thanks for posting your viewpoints. Part of the reason I started this thread (besides wanting to vent a bit) was to see if my perceptions matched others.

A few comments:

1. I already guessed that Dan is the somewhat stereotypical techie, who can do wonders with software, but could use a visit to a charm school. This should not be taken as a knock on the guy: everyone has strong and weak points, and programmers are usually hired for their programming skills, not people skills (project leaders are a different kettle of fish, of course). That said, I found his posts on the boards many times to be very off-putting, not at all what I've come to expect from Hero Games in general.

If you check I think you'll find that his more "colorful" posts have been secodary or tertiary replies to subjects where a question was asked and answered, and then asked again by the same person, often several times. Dan, for all his strengths, doesnt seem to handle interactive discussions well; he seems to get agitated when he says "NO" and someone says "BUT,...". We all have our idiosyncracies, and Dan's seems to be the "NO MEANS NO, NO DISCUSSION" mindset.

I've been on the receiving end of it, as have others. I dont see any point in taking it personally; people are just different is all.

To offset this however, if you approach Dan reasonably and respect his opinions, I think you'll find that he is a very skilled developer, and turns out a very high-quality product. He can do tremendous things in a very short period of time. So, you can either be put off by his personality or take the good with the bad and respect him for his "mad dev skillz".

Granted, Im a developer and have worked around a lot of other developers, and we're all a little crazy in our own ways, so maybe Im just innured to edgy coders. When you pound caffeine all day so you can get an extra 3-4 hours of coding in, you can get a little agitated

2. I based my comment on version 2 from what I read on the boards. I freely admit I may not have read a full list of new features, especially since KS mentioned that features are changing on a regular basis.

Well, a lot of the features are subtle and difficult to describe. They are enhancements and improvements, additional under-the-hood intelligence, and things of that nature. The interface still looks largely the same, for instance.

One of the main improvements is the performance. v1 suffered from some Java related memory hog issues. v2 doesnt -- I regularly work on 10 or more characters at once without slowing down.

Other improvements lay in the expanded Export Templates. The v1 Export Template capability was really good, the v2 model is absolutely fabulous AND retro-compatible so that v1 ETs still work with it.

Also, v2 features the Combat Export Template, which allows you to select from the open characters and then output data for each of them, allowing the quick creation of speed charts and a wide variety of other team or group oriented outputs. Ive been working on expanding the number of CETs myself, and thanks to Dan's willingness to expand the Export Templates by request, have added 15 different ones to date (though a couple are still being tweaked, 13 are available for other's use). Everything ranging from Disadvantage sheets, Defenses Sheets, Combat Ability w Martial Arts Sheets, Movement Sheets, Skill Sheets, and combinations thereof, with and without powers in cases where that is appropriate. It's extremely cool.

Editable Campaign Rules, with numerous toggles and the ability to set AP and Category point caps if you wish to.

Save As Template, a major addition, allowing you to make a character and then at any point save it as a Template which can then be used to create new characters off of. This is great for making variant races for Fantasy and Space games, for doing iterative buildups off of "base" agents (make the "base" a template, make a new character off of it & add to it, make that an "expert" template, and so on), or any of a number of overloading to do things like Character Versioning and baselining.

Plus, for those a little more technical, Dan also added in an extensible Template model allowing the creation of custom templates that change the rules of the game, like altering Normal Characteristic Maxima, adding new abilities, and the like.

3. I still don't like game aids which insist on enforcing the game rules to the point that the program will not then allow me to create a creature as printed in an official supplement. It's one thing for the program to let me know when I'm breaking the rules - it's quite another for it not to allow it at all, even in cases where the publisher did so. I read a number of comments on this feature, so I'm not the only person to notice this, and Dan's response was very disappointing. I'm pleased to hear that version 2 has added a toggle for one rule, but I still believe the customer base would be better served if such toggles became the norm, rather than the exception.

The HERO System is a very complex rules-heavy game. Many people, myself included, find value in a program that prevents players from either accidentally or purposely breaking the rules. Hero Creator was a good piece of software in its day, but it was easy for a player that knew what they were doing to hack the way things were calculated to make illegal characters and it could be difficult to detect. This led to a lot of hesitancy by many regarding characters produced by that application. HD does not have this problem -- if the character is using one of the built in templates, they are almost certainly "book legal" or within the realm of "GMs Permission" options as presented in the rulebook.

As far as not being able to model a character in a book, its possible that the character as printed is in error. You might want to check the erratta or post a question to Steve Long about it. Or post a question in the HD forum asking if anyone else has encountered the same character with the same problem and if so how did they deal with it.

As far as toggles, v2 has added toggles for many rules actually.

BTW, I did try the negative characteristic solution, but didn't get it to work (the program wouldn't accept a negative number). Since you say it can be done, I would conclude I just couldn't figure out how - which is one difficulty in the program, both with the interface and the documentation. This is a program that requires a real commitment from the user to learn it. Designing a simple "brick" is a breeze - it's the custom stuff that's hard. But it's also the custom stuff that is much of the attraction of the Hero rules in the first place.

Actually, I just tried it in v1 and you are right, even using the negative characteristic as power trick it still catches the Figureds and wont let you do it. However, Im assuming you are talking about the skeleton? The Skeleton only has 1 sold back characteristic -- END. It doesnt have any STUN at all because it's an automaton. Use the Automaton template (FILE->SET TEMPLATE->AUTOMATON) to make it and give it the "AUTOMATON->TAKES NO STUN (looses ability when it suffers BODY" power. It doesnt have 2 sold back figured characteristics; the Automaton Power removes it's STUN bcs as an unliving creature it feels no pain.

4. Along these lines, I'm not sure about the focus of the product. KS, you say the program is invaluable to newbies learning the system, but the program doesn't do much, if any, of the expected hand-holding for that target audience. An interactive tutorial that walks the user through many of the features would be outstanding - and probably expensive to create, so I don't expect it. But this program really needs a way to ease users into the product. As it is, it seems to me that's it's really only for the hard-core fans who are willing to figure it out, no matter how long it takes.

I have 3 HERO System newbies in the group currently. They all bought HD v1 on my advice, and all 3 were very pleased with its ability to protect them from their own ignorance and do all the math for them.

Personally, I dont know how you would hand-hold in the HERO System -- the whole purpose is there are many ways to do just about everything. How do you wizard a open ended system with tons of options? Poorly at best IMO.

Personally I find the program to be extremely simplistic. Each type of ability gets its own tab, all the tabs look the same with lists of options on the right and things you've bought on the left. All the buttons are in the same place from form to form, and high degree of consistency exists throughout the program.

5. BTW, how easy is it to customize the export if a user doesn't know HTML? One thing that was a breeze in Heromaker was adding extra lines, organizing powers on the page, etc. What I've seen so far in HD is that I'll have to learn (at least passably) HTML to get what I want. Even then, I noticed a couple requests on the boards that Dan admitted simply aren't possible as the program is currently designed. That said, the fact that Dan is adding to this functionality is commendable and appreciated.

Well, HTML is only one of several file types that the Export Templates can be used to create. However if you want to make an HTML ET, then you would need at least a little bit of familiarity with HTML, which seems reasonable to me. You can even use a WYSIWYG editor for the layout, put placeholders where you want things to be, and then edit the actual HTML replacing the placeholders with the appropriate Export Tags. The Export Tags are formatted as HTML comments, so you might even be able to use a comment insertion option in some editors. Personally I just create the HTML raw so I cant point you at an editor, but I know that MS Frontpage can be used on an HTML Export template because I used it once to rearrange some table structures on an existing Template quickly rather than hand code them and it didnt hack up the Export Tags.

Also, there are dozens of Character Export Templates provided. I myself have done around 10 for HTML alone, and so have others. You could always just ask in the HD v2 forum if someone would make a certain Template for you. Youd be suprised at the response more often than not.

As far as there being some things the program cant do natively, well yeah. All programs are finite. Some things are outside the scope of any program. There are things that people want sometimes that are outside the bounds of what the application does. This is true of any program.

6. To be fair, I should have mentioned the lack of bugs. I've yet to encounter a single one - that's truly amazing considering the normal state of software.

Yeah, it's a big deal. Its refreshing to get a piece of software these days that isnt bug ridden. I blame off-shore outsourcing, but Dan's from Chicago IIRC so maybe that explains it

 

[Sir Whiskers]

...Granted, Im a developer and have worked around a lot of other developers, and we're all a little crazy in our own ways, so maybe Im just innured to edgy coders. When you pound caffeine all day so you can get an extra 3-4 hours of coding in, you can get a little agitated

Yep, we all can. I've worked with a number folks, including programmers, who can be a bit overwhelming at times, so I understand. I was just surprised to see it on a public board for a Hero Games product.

...Also, v2 features the Combat Export Template, which allows you to select from the open characters and then output data for each of them, allowing the quick creation of speed charts and a wide variety of other team or group oriented outputs. Ive been working on expanding the number of CETs myself, and thanks to Dan's willingness to expand the Export Templates by request, have added 15 different ones to date (though a couple are still being tweaked, 13 are available for other's use). Everything ranging from Disadvantage sheets, Defenses Sheets, Combat Ability w Martial Arts Sheets, Movement Sheets, Skill Sheets, and combinations thereof, with and without powers in cases where that is appropriate. It's extremely cool.

These are some of the things I was looking for. The threads I found indicated this wasn't available, but keep in mind - I was looking in the version 1 threads. Also, I may have just missed these.

...Save As Template, a major addition, allowing you to make a character and then at any point save it as a Template which can then be used to create new characters off of.

This single change makes templates much easier to use (IMO). I take it this is version 2 only?

...This led to a lot of hesitancy by many regarding characters produced by that application. HD does not have this problem -- if the character is using one of the built in templates, they are almost certainly "book legal" or within the realm of "GMs Permission" options as presented in the rulebook.

Fair enough. I've never had this problem in a campaign, so I prefer the flexibility.

...Actually, I just tried it in v1 and you are right, even using the negative characteristic as power trick it still catches the Figureds and wont let you do it. However, Im assuming you are talking about the skeleton? The Skeleton only has 1 sold back characteristic -- END. It doesnt have any STUN at all because it's an automaton. Use the Automaton template (FILE->SET TEMPLATE->AUTOMATON) to make it and give it the "AUTOMATON->TAKES NO STUN (looses ability when it suffers BODY" power. It doesnt have 2 sold back figured characteristics; the Automaton Power removes it's STUN bcs as an unliving creature it feels no pain.

I used the automaton template, but still had two issues. One, where in the world do I toggle Takes No Stun? I just couldn't find that option in the menu, or on any of the tabs. Two, the skeleton has 15 Str, only 2 PD. It's minor to have to sell off 1 PD, but it's very irritating to then find I can't do it (at least, it's irritating to me).

...Personally, I dont know how you would hand-hold in the HERO System -- the whole purpose is there are many ways to do just about everything. How do you wizard a open ended system with tons of options? Poorly at best IMO.

Actually, I was thinking of just a tutorial to walk new users through the program. A full-blown help system, while very useful, would be a real chore. Of course, so would the tutorial I want, so...

...I blame off-shore outsourcing, but Dan's from Chicago IIRC so maybe that explains it

I'm not going anywhere near the whole outsourcing issue. Nope. Not gonna do it.

 

[Killer Shrike]

SNIP for brevity

Ya, all the features you express interest in are v2.

As far as the Skeleton, there is an "AUTOMATON" power object. That object has a drop down for the various levels of Takes no STUN.

As far as the 2 PD, you are forgetting that anything w/ Takes No STUN has the cost of their defenses tripled. So, the 3 points of PD provided by a 15 STR is 1 PD bcs the characters PD costs 3:1. Then Steve or whoever designed the skeleton gave it +1 PD for another 3 points. If you check the costs column you can see this in action.

Told you HD would catch you out on an esoteric rule