Another update!
Latest version: 0.8.1
Release date: 8 October 2017
Most recent change: Lair Actions; bug fixes; preparation for parsing; editing of npcs.json file.
Hi folks
Quite a big update today. I have been struggling with how to implement parsing, and I decided I didn't like the way that Par5e did it. So while NPC Engineer will still output the files needed for Par5e and FG5EParser, I have gone another way. This took quite a chunk of programming and refactoring (AGAIN!), but I am now ready to start trying to implement parsing functions.
NPC Engineer will store all its data as a JSON file - npcs.json in this case, with a further json for each data type I get round to implementing. JSON files are nice - they can be read easily in a text editor, and minor changes made if need be. The indentation helps reading. More importantly from my point of view is that I can have all my data saved as a single sortable object, allowing me to (hopefully) write neat code to parse it.
As part of this rewrite, I decided that it would be useful to edit or delete NPCs out of this master file, and so I have allowed for that in a menu item (options/manage npcs.json). I think this is a powerful solution as it means most editing will be done within NPC Engineer, and so less parse errors should crop up. Note that this functionality is ONLY available for the JSON object - in other words, only for projects set up to use NPC Engineer's parsing.
I decided to go ahead and implement Lair Actions too. I'm writing the parser so there is no reason for them not to appear where they are meant to :)
I'd appreciate feedback on saving and loading characters, and also on adding them to the json file (and editing/deleting). All seems to work beautifully here, and I am really pleased with it.
Cheers
Maasq