Sunday 22 April 2018

Updates

Time flies when you are having fun...

I realise that these posts are getting pretty sparse these days, and that's mainly because I am too immersed in the writing of code to write a blog. So what's been happening, I hear you ask? Well....

The NPC reference manual is nearing completion. The index page is up and running, bar some tweaking of the automatic layout into 2 columns. It looks great, even if I say so myself! No title/credits page yet, as I need to get the rudiments of RefMan Engineer running for that. It won't be difficult though (I hope!). All the elements for what I want to do exist elsewhere in the program suite already.

I've gone back to NPC Engineer and tidied up a few things. It makes the program nicer to use overall. There are many small improvements; read the changelog for them. Casting/Innate casting import has been tightened up, though, so far less errors should occur.

I've been looking at how to change things to allow for Warlock casters. I still have no real clear way forward here, and it is annoying me.

I've also been looking at allowing re-ordering of traits and actions, an oft-requested thing. It is a tonne of work, though, and I am struggling to get my head around it. I think I am going to have to go ahead and build a new system rather than tinker with the current one. *sad face*

Work on the 1d6 Adventurers module continues apace, and it is going to be a cracking wee advertisement for NPCE. Many of the improvements I made recently were as a direct result of meeting little issues as I worked on this.

Finally, I might not be around too much over the next two months - work commitments. I'll try to keep working on little aspects of the program though, as this is now my main way of relaxing. Well, this and shouting at football!


Maasq



Tuesday 10 April 2018

More on the reference manual

I've got quite into making the reference manual pages look as good as they can. I now have a footer with automatic art attribution on the pages that have art, along with a wee plug for NPC Engineer!

My next goal for the reference manual is to make an automatic contents page, with NPCs listed by type and clickable. This will have some nice artwork as part of it. Following that, I want a title page with credits incorporated. This obviously needs to be edited somewhere, so it looks like a version of RefMan Engineer will have to be born to allow for this. It can grow bit by bit as I add other modules.

Spells need some sort of love in this area too, so there will be spells listed alphabetically (page per letter), and eventually a clickable index of spells by caster and a title page.

After that, I can start to look at  other reference manual pages and functions.

Onwards and upwards, as they say!

Maasq