New version amid hacking drama!

Hi folks

A new version released today amidst my hacking drama - it keeps my mind off the huge amount of money that is not yet back in my bank account!
I have revamped Equipment Engineer and it is now running at about 60% functionality for mundane items - magic items will be added once I have everything nailed down.

Item creation, loading and saving are all enabled, and the viewport shows you your data. You can also import from and export to the NPC weapon list.Still to come: parsing to FG and importing.

Other ideas:
See all equipment in the current project as a 'Player's Handbook' style list of tables.Save equipment lists to allow sharing between users.Load equipment lists.Build kits.Build packs.

What do you think? Any other suggestions? Please limit suggestions to mundane items for now - magic stuff comes later! Enjoy, and let me know what you think.
Maasq

Itching to start something new!

Table Engineer is getting close to being finished. I have to do something with the autoranging (as I have avoided it so far, LOL!) but I think that is its last feature before Par5e support.

I've got itchy fingers to start on Parcel Engineer. The only problem is that it relies on Equipment Engineer being finished. Picture me looking like a surly teenager being forced to tidy his bedroom. *sadface*

Hey Ho. Equipment Engineer looks like being a big addition now that magical items are being rolled into it and one that a lot of people would like to see. Time to bite the bullet and get to work, I think. :)

Off to scratch my itchy fingers....

Maasq

Welcome our newest arrival: Table Engineer!

I've been busy this summer.

The small updates from the last post led to a full-on obsession again and I have been dreaming about code. It is probably unhealthy but it gets shit done!

So what shit got done? Well, I built a whole new element of Engineer Suite - Table Engineer! I wasn't keen as it meant I had to learn to work with tables in RTF, but it was such a necessary part of the creation of FG modules I felt I had to grasp the nettle. I'm pleased with how it turned out, however.

I was going to rant about how horrible RTF is as a format to work with, but long time readers will know this already. I'll just leave this here as a reminder :)

Let me know what you think of Table Engineer, and if you want any features added. It isn't complete yet, but it is most of the way there!.

Maasq

Small changes

Hi folks!

There's a new update today - v0.5.15 - and it serves mostly as a bug fix update. There are a couple of new features, though, just to keep things interesting :)

As ever after the early summer marking frenzy (I am a teacher), it takes me a little while to get going again. Having a few bug fixes to approach and a couple of small new features helps me back into the swing of things. My code isn't the tidiest on the planet, so it takes a bit of effort to follow how my thinking had been going when I wrote it. I wish I could afford an assistant whose job was to tidy my code and comment it after I'd finished working on it each night!

OK, off to edit a video for the Patreon site.
Stay happy!

Steph

Enjoying it again :)

I have finally got the bug again.

I am enjoying programming now. There were quite a few months there where I felt I'd hit a wall. The whole process seemed like work and every task seemed to be huge. Worse, the longer I spent away from the keyboard the less I understood my own code. It was a bit of a vicious circle and I was worried I'd have to pass the project on to someone else.

Thankfully, though, I found a way back in. The people on the Discord channel had asked for a couple of things and this proved to be the impetus I needed. I've made a raft of small improvements and added a couple of what feel to be significant features. I've also had a change of direction re: what is happening next; Table Engineer seems to be what I want to do. I'm also excited to push on with the XML validation task. A change is as good as a rest, they say, and I am sure I will come roaring back at Equipment Engineer in the near future.

Cheers to one and all for support and feedback.

Maasq

Back on track with some updates!

It took me a while to get over my setback, but eventually I crawled back to the keyboard. I found the issue and managed to correct it, and got the bug back again. The most recent update has a couple of requested features - an improved Languages section, and the ability to deal with Psionic spellcasters. There's a load of other tweaks too.

What are you waiting for? Go download it!

I've added a few more videos over at the Patreon site too for subscribers there. If you've donated to me in any way in the past, you can have access to these videos too - just PM me in Discord and I'll give you the user rights.

Thanks as ever for the support, folks!

Maasq

Setback...

Hey folks!

I've rolled back to version 0.4.41 as I found a bug I couldn't correct in some of my recent updates. It's taken me a week to roll back because I also discovered an issue in Github Desktop - it didn't allow for rolling back!

I had to download another Git GUI (Sourcetree) and work out how the hell to use it, then create a new directory and download everything...

I found out something about myself. I don't deal all that well with setbacks :)  Growth mindset though. Doing the updates a second time will allow me to improve them, right?

I'm back to a position I can try to move forward from again. I apologise deeply if you had issues with recent FG modules and they were caused by my bug. Try compiling them again with this version and everything should be safe.

As ever, any issues you find - don't hesitate; give me grief on Discord!

Cheers
Maasq

New update - minor bug fixes

After yesterday's post I felt it was necessary to get my arse in gear and do some work. A couple of minor niggles had been pointed out in the past 5 weeks or so, and so I got down to fixing them.

Let me tell you this: the first half hour or so felt like I was wearing someone else's shoes or something. I had little clue what I was doing! It is amazing how quickly you de-skill if you don't work at something... Eventually, though, I got myself together and remembered both the structure of the app and how to write some code. I fixed four or five issues, and it felt GREAT! I have uploaded the fruits of today's work.

Next goal: more work on Equipment Engineer. Watch this space...!


Maasq

Starting up again...

Wow.... the Christmas rush, then the holiday period, then the post-holiday depression. 2 months have passed with no updates at all!

I've been hard at work trying to get caught up. I have added some videos to the Patreon site (https://www.patreon.com/engineersuite) and I updated the 1d6 Adventurer Compendium. I went through it all and standardised some of the presentation. It was a mammoth task, but it is done!

With those out of the way, it is about time I started programming again. That's where all of this started, after all!

Oh, and happy new year :)

Maasq

Equipment Engineer GUI finished!

I have started work on Equipment Engineer, and over the course of this week I have nailed down the GUI. This was always the biggest challenge of EE for me, as I couldn't quite see an easy way to do it. A tab for each type of item might have worked, but it would have been annoying. Cramming everything onto one page would be better, but confusing as not all items require all fields.

I settled on disabling all fields that don't pertain to the selected item type. This seems to work well, and early feedback seems to approve. I also moved descriptive text, No-ID text and item image to a second tab, freeing up plenty of space to work with.

A couple of decent discussions on Discord and the FG Forums helped distill my ideas, and threw up a couple of items that I knew nothing about. You'll now be able to set the crit range and the reroll trigger for a weapon. I also found out you can add more than one damage roll per weapon, and have multiple damage types. All of these new ideas show the benefit a 'hive mind' brings to a project, and it makes me grateful that there's a community building around Engineer Suite.

There are a couple of features I inend to build in that have got me excited. Firstly, weapons. NPC Engineer has a weapons table (for use by NPCs) and it makes sense to allow linking of these two areas. It'll take a bit of tweaking but I'll get there.

The other one is the ability to build a pack with items in it that can be dragged to a character's inventory. This isn't something you can do from within FG, so I am keen to get this enabled. As it will require a lot of data input to allow for a list to select from, this will be put off until the base load/save/parse functions are enabled.

So it seems I have some sort of creativity back, and I am enjoying my programming again. I have a roadmap. I feel all set to work EE through to completion in as short a time as possible.

Don't forget to check out the Patreon site for 'work in progress' videos that are freely available to everyone (and also the series of tutorial videos for Engineer Suite that are available to Patrons).

Let me know if anything is missing here, on Discord, on FG forums, on the Patreon site or on the Github issue tracker. :)

Thanks

Maasq

1d6A Compendium gets a massive update!

After a summer/autumn of avoidance, of programming and of video making, I finally forced myself to get back to adding monsters from the 1d6 Adventurers guys. Well, I found out that they don't slack off! I added just over 80 monsters over the last couple of days, and that really focuses your NPC building technique. So just in case you are new to Engineer Suite, here's what I think to be the best way of working. Note that preparation is half the battle!

• I downloaded the pdf for each NPC from the id6A Reddit site, loaded them all into PDFmate and left it for a minute or so to extract all the images from all the files.
• Next I named each image. This is tedious, but saves a tonne of time in the long run. Copy folder name, paste onto image name. Repeat nearly 100 times.
• Move all the images into a dedicated folder.
• Use TokenStamp2 to create a token for each NPC. Move all of these to the same dedicated folder.
• Load each image into an image editor, resize it, apply a background, apply a border, save.

That was day 1.

• Use 'Import' in NPC Engineer and copy the text from the PDF or webpage for each NPC. I find the web page easier.
• Add the token.
• Add the image. Copy-paste the attribution information (artist name and website). This is tedious but necessary if anyone else other than you is going to see it!
• Add the description last of all.
• Check that spells imported correctly.
• Save and Add to Project.

Done :)

Enjoy

Maasq

Patreon site launch

I have launched a Patreon site.

I don't expect to get rich from it - that isn't the goal of launching it. I am using it to keep myself motivated for an aspect of Engineer Suite that doesn't excite me - making video tutorials. There have been a few requests for these, though, and as Engineer Suite gets more complex they will become necessary.

So far I have just uploaded a single video (about the various program wide settings), and this was more to test out the video recording software, the video editing software, the animated intro, and my own ability to speak without stumbling over every second word! All of that (except the last) went well, so I'll give it a go. I reckon I have thrown between 10 and 15 hours at this so far, so I only need about 100 subscribers to reach minimum wage!

There are a lot of areas to work through, and I intend keeping the videos small and manageable. I don't have the Youtuber 'talent' to pad out 90 seconds useful content to a 30 minute video, so that'll help! If you can see any way to improve this offering, please let me know.

I am uncomfortably aware that some people have already been very generous with their donations, and I can't find a way to make Patreon let these people in for nothing. I am keen that no-one should be paying me via both avenues, so if you have 'bought me a coffee' already you can send me a note of your name and email address (PM on Fantasy Grounds forum, email, Discord PM, any other way you wish) and I will email links to private versions of the videos as and when they become available.

The Patreon site is https://www.patreon.com/engineersuite - I hope to see a few of you there!

Maasq

More tidying up, and still nothing on Equipment Engineer.

Hi folks.

I have uploaded a small update. Mainly it adds things to Spell Engineer to advance it towards perfection(!), but a global option to change how long the tooltips stay visible was added. It was good to work on these items, as I am drying up again.

I have been trying to add a filter to NPC Engineer for Roll20, and I have been stymied at all angles. The frustration of this is eating at me; I might have another go yet, if I can find another avenue. Browser extensions might be my last option.

I also have 'white page syndrome' for Equipment Engineer. I think I need to talk it out with someone on Discord just to get my head in order. Once I have a clear picture of how I want the GUI to look, I'll knuckle down and right the bloody thing. Feel free to harass me on Discord about it, particularly if you have ideas!

I don't even have much to say here just now either.... I have writer's block!


Maasq

Big changes afoot

Hi folks

I know, it has been a while since I posted anything here. Shut up. I've been busy, honest! Mainly I have been tidying up small bugs in NPC Engineer and Spell Engineer, readying Equipment Engineer's framework, and tying all the modules together into one unifying program called Engineer Suite. You should be able to jump between modules if you wish (although you'd be better to close one module and open the next from the main window). This has advantages going forward. Much as I liked the idea of a whole suite of individual programs, the integration and shared code seemed like a better idea. It makes it easier for people to update too.

Here is a screenshot of its main interface - this will grow as I add modules to it:

There should be no changes that affect your data, but you'll note that the version number indicates a beta again. You'd be advised to keep a backup of your data for now in case of crashes. I don't expect any, but then I never do!

Please feel free to get in touch about any issues. I hope there are none!

Maasq

Importing, what a load of work!

I started working on the 'Import' function of Spell Engineer today. I see the 'Import' part as being the USP of the Engineer Suite - to take a chunk of text and automatically sense where everything should go so that transferring a Spell, NPC, etc to Fantasy Grounds is the work of 2 or 3 clicks. It is fundamental to what I want the package to do.

Spell Engineer has been done in entirely the opposite order to NPC Engineer, and for the most part has benefited from that.

NPCE started life as a script for extracting information from a text file. It didn't even have a GUI in its earliest incarnation, and certainly no way to enter all the information from scratch. Slowly, it grew - GUI for the Import, GUI for all the information, user input for everything, graphical whizzbang then parsing.

SPE knew it was going to do all of the above from day 1, so the first action was to create the GUI (to inform me of the information needed), make it user friendly, then deal with the output and parsing so that it was functional. Now I have to build in the import and it feels so much harder! There's a fair bit of coding just to even see the results of anything I do, and 2 buttons to click each time, and so on. I am glad it's a relatively small data set otherwise I'd need to find a neater solution to my workflow.

Pfffft, first world problems, eh? I'll shut up and get on with it :)  The news here is that 'Import' is being worked on!

Maasq

Damn bugs, creeping into our software, creating all our jobs....

I've posted a new version tonight. A couple of people spotted a seemingly-innocuous bug, but it is actually quite nasty. I'd cocked up some code, and traits couldn't be deleted. That's the innocuous part. However, the code was deleting actions instead, which is the nasty part.

I'm really sorry about that, folks. Check any NPCs you recently edited in case you inadvertently deleted an action or two. :(

Maasq

Loving my new computer!

After a couple of months of work-related stuff, I have finally got back into the programming. One of the bars was the fact my old system was taking 15 minutes or more to be usable through disk thrashing, and I was getting the odd blue screen of death. The system was basically unusable, and certainly no place to trust coding to!

Luckily, all the extra work came with some extra money, and the donations I had received from some of you fine people helped enormously too (you bought my lovely new monitor, in fact!) I spent the last week or so building the system and installing everything (and having great fun in the process), and so now there was no excuse to put off programming!

I jumped straight in with an issue that has been annoying people since I started NPC Engineer - the enforced alphabetical sorting of Traits and Actions. I'd had ideas, and I felt they were achievable. I met with success, and so I got the bug again :)

There's been a couple of other additions and improvements, so be sure to check out the change log!

Maasq

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

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

Reference Manual

For as long as I have been programming NPC Engineer, people have been asking for a reference manual generator. I have taken the first tentative steps to helping in this regard.

If you enable 'Reference Manual' in the project management interface, you will get a reference manual page for each of your NPCs. It will have a statblock, image, callout boxes..... oh, why don't I just show you? :)

This is a feature that I hope to improve and deepen, and for this to lay the foundations for a proper 'Reference Manual Engineer'. Let me know what you think, and what you'd care to see in this section of NPC Engineer!

Maasq