Best Way to Enter Custom Monsters?
Submitted by Merlin on Mon, 2010-04-05 02:42
What is the best way to enter custom monsters? I'm guessing the answer is to import something similar from D&DI, rename, and then hand edit until it is right. Is this correct? Also how do I control the burst, ranged, melee, etc symbols on powers? I must be overlooking something because I'm not seeing it yet.
Thanks for the wonderful tool. I really like the 1+ versions. I've been successfully using VCC for 9 months now. It really improves the play experience. If only Wizards was half as talented. :)
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What I would do...
Thanks for your support, I'm happy it's working well for you.
As for editing, I think you got it right. I would:
Alternatively you could copy the base stat block to a good XML editors. I use Notepad++ on Windows, and used the menu: Text FX > Text FX HTML Tidy > Tidy: Reindent XML. This make the file still work and much more editable. When you placed your data cut and paste it back to dialog editor. This is not 100% but makes life easier.
I think the stat block generation could generate something easier to manually edit (like adding well placed line breaks). As for the icons, they are represented as:
<img src="s2.gif" >You can use any images in the
fs-wc/imagesdirectory (found in the VCC directory). If you use a Mac this is hidden from you, but you can see what gets shipped here: http://code.google.com/p/virtual-combat-cards/source/browse/vcc#vcc/trun...Alternately
"You can use any images in the fs-wc/images directory (found in the VCC directory)."
After seeing this I got an idea. Use the Monster Builder option to "Copy as Image" and save the copied image as a gif to the fs-wc/images directory under the monster's name. When entering the monster in the compendium, in the stat block generation area enter only the tag < img src="____.gif" > where ____ corresponds to your monster's name.
It just links to the image you saved. Quick and dirty, and with perfect quality.
Many thanks
Nebulorum,
Thanks for the feedback. I created about 10 custom creatures yesterday. It took me about 2 hours. The biggest factor that takes so much time is the initial stat block generation is very ugly (sorry) when it comes to formatting. It takes the majority of the time just to clean it up. A simple suggestion that makes things much easier to edit (cut and paste powers) is to make each each pclass a separate line. It would be even nicer to break the first and last pclass sections up by the break syntax in XML (). This then makes it much easier to edit in my experience and wouldn't take a lot of effort to format. I guess I could write my own Perl code to do that (Sorry I don't know Scala.)
Alternatively one could develop a graphical front end that parses the XML schema into a really easy to edit form. This would be the best solution and also allows the data and stat block sections to be filled in without replicating data entry.
Just some thoughts. I only recently updated from 0.95.2 which I used for months to great effect. It never once crashed on me. I haven't used VCC to track effects yet, but I'm going to give that a whirl with this new version.
Feature request created for this
Merlin I created a feature request on your behalf. Turns out that adding the breaks may be really easy. I did some quick test on the code. Will track this discussion on the feature request: #167: Add line breaks to generated Stat Block.
I'm interested
Nebulorum,
I'm happy to give it a whirl if you'd like me to do some testing. Jest let me know.