PCGen to DM Genie Export?

[Vascant]

Granted it is a simple matter of text but I can say from experience some of the things DM Genie has dealing with format are out of the normal. I can think of a few locations I have had to special flags catching if it is a DM Genie stat block being created.

I have never seen a PCGen stat block myself (that I am aware of) so can't comment if they are encountering the same issues I had when creating mine.

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

I'm not sure it's a matter of difficulty so much as a matter of no one trying it. PCGen can output a plethora of different stat blocks, some that are nothing more than text.

Granted, I know next to nothing about this stuf, so I could be way off, but it doesn't seem hard to simply make it output the same text in a different format.

 

[kingpaul]

Granted, I know next to nothing about this stuf, so I could be way off, but it doesn't seem hard to simply make it output the same text in a different format.

Once again though, do you know what format DMGenie needs something to be in so that it can import? The NPC Designer statblock was different than the DMGenie one.

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

Once again though, do you know what format DMGenie needs something to be in so that it can import? The NPC Designer statblock was different than the DMGenie one.

If you were going to do a conversion, I'd assume you simply need to figure out a way to get PCGen to output a text file that is in the same format as the DM Genie format I posted above.

I only posted the NPC Designer format to illustrate a format that was different from DM Genie's, but was capable of being imported.

 

[BarakO]

What Paul is asking for is a specification, not just a "here's a stat block that can be imported".

Do "Special Abilities" need to be separated from "Special Qualities"? How? How are multiple items in the same category supposed to be separated? Is there more than one way that will work?

The ultimate answer is that yes, PCGen can produce a statblock that could be imported into DMGenie, but they need a specification to build it to.

While an example is nice, it leaves lots of room for errors, where as if you have the specification/rules by which the program actually does the work you have a much better shot at getting it to work properly.

Vascant, how did you go about it for NPC Designer? Is there a specification somewhere or were you winging it?

When I used to be in charge of/do the output sheets for PCGen I would have been happy to try it, but would have insisted on aforementioned spec, as my time is too valuable to me to waste dinking around trying to make it work from an example.

To be honest, I really thought someone had done this already too...

And looking at the files on the Yahoo group, the one I'm thinking of is for DM's Familiar.

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

I'd love to tell you all the specifics, but I don't have a clue. I know next to jack squat about programming. The best I could do was offer an example, which I did. Maybe Vascant could share some notes, but I know he is very busy with NPC Designer.

I'm more than willing to post a bunch of examples, if that would help, but I'm afraid that's the extent of my usefullness.

 

[Vascant]

Vascant, how did you go about it for NPC Designer? Is there a specification somewhere or were you winging it?

When I used to be in charge of/do the output sheets for PCGen I would have been happy to try it, but would have insisted on aforementioned spec, as my time is too valuable to me to waste dinking around trying to make it work from an example.

There are no docs anywhere and my second thesis was on Reverse Engineering. Thats why he posted the stat block DM Genie produces and mine as an example, it was all I needed to create the format. It wasn't challanging and I think only took a week if I recall because I do not use DM Genie and they would have to test them out for me.

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

It looks like someone over on the DM Genie boards has given this a try. It works, kinda, but all ability scores come out set to 0.

Anyone willing to try fixing it?

 

[BarakO]

It looks like someone over on the DM Genie boards has given this a try. It works, kinda, but all ability scores come out set to 0.

Anyone willing to try fixing it?

Well, I'm not sure what they're trying to accomplish in the stat section, it's really messed up...

The first problem is that any |FOR needs to be the first thing on the line, and there are several places where it's not.

Secondly there are several |FOR in there but only one |ENDFOR|... you need one |ENDFOR| to go with each |FOR.

I'd probably change that whole section to be much simpler:

|FOR,%stat,0,COUNT[STATS]-1,1,1|
|STAT.%stat.NAME| |STAT.%stat|,
|ENDFOR|

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

Well, I'm not sure what they're trying to accomplish in the stat section, it's really messed up...

The first problem is that any |FOR needs to be the first thing on the line, and there are several places where it's not.

Secondly there are several |FOR in there but only one |ENDFOR|... you need one |ENDFOR| to go with each |FOR.

I'd probably change that whole section to be much simpler:

|FOR,%stat,0,COUNT[STATS]-1,1,1|
|STAT.%stat.NAME| |STAT.%stat|,
|ENDFOR|

That's all Greek to me. Would you mind posting what you think it should look like?