NPC Engineer

[Maasq]

Traits tab now fully implemented. The 'base stats' tab was reorganised slightly to make better sense and to leave room for a couple of checkboxes that needed added. Tooltips have been added to both of these tabs, and will be added to the rest of the program as time goes on. I see these as a huge boon to the usability of the program.

Looking forward to hearing what you all think of it!

Maasq

[Maasq]

Small update to add some more tooltips and fix a bug or two.
I also uploaded a proper manual, and cut down the first post to make it more readable!

Maasq

[Maasq]

Hi folks

Quite a big update this time

1. More tooltips added.
2. Some actions produce balloon tips as feedback (down next to the clock).
3. A field for adding a token image to the NPC. This can be anywhere on your drive and have any name. It will be copied to the correct directory and renamed to match your NPC when you click 'append'.
4. Project management. Create a new project, save and load them as ini files. This creates the directory structure and adds blank txt documents for each required area.

5. The project management screen certainly suggests I'm intending going for a full-blown parser now. My arrogance knows no bounds. I expect ridicule if I fail, and bottles of bourbon if I succeed
('Do', or 'Do Not'. There is no 'try'.)

I'm getting excited by this project - I never thought I'd get this far, and I have IDEAS!

project management.jpg

[JohnD]

I can't give you more forum kudos, but keep up the good work!

[Maasq]

Cheers, John. I'll not be stopping any time soon - this is the most fun I've had with my computer in years!

[BubbaGrim]

Let me add my praise, this is literally the most useful FG tool I've seen. You have saved me hundreds of hours, when you decide to go commercial with this one I'll be the first in line to buy it (well I might have to fight other people to be first).

Chris

[kp9911]

I expect ridicule if I fail

We can both cry together!

[Maasq]

Another update - many bugfixes (SEVEN!) all caught by LRB. He only flagged up 3 but they led me to find the other 4

More importantly, I have finally implemented the 'gender' dropdown and the 'unique' / 'name' toggles. You can now have the proper gender-specific pronouns for a Drow Queen, or refer to 'Borf, Ruination of Orcdom' as just 'Borf' in the descriptive text. It was fairly simple to do as well... I wish I hadn't waited so long. It's a nice wee 'quality of life' addition, I feel.

I haven't implemented it in the 'Traits' tab because there's a lot of difficulty in the range of inputs. If there's a clamour for it I can do it, but I feel that the way traits tend to get written, it's easier to just type "Elminster waves his wand...." than use codes: "<NU> waves <GL2> wand..." (noun uppercase and gender lowercase, pronoun 2 in case you were wondering).

Have fun!

Maasq

Next up: More work on the 'description' tab, including NPC pictures, and maybe I'll start on that bloody 'actions' tab...
I am getting very close to v1.00.00!

Any suggestions? Parsing comes later - it is HARD. Show some love to KP9911.... we NEED his parser in the community!

[Maasq]

Hey folks

BubbaGrim spotted a bug in the program. Several text boxes don't clear when you click 'new' NPC. The ones that might be most problematic are the skill bonuses down the left-hand side of the 'skills' tab.

I'll get on to this today and have an update posted tonight. Sorry about any issues this may cause you

Maasq

[Maasq]

It turns out the issue I am having actually might be an issue with the way the language treats text boxes in a roundabout way. This requires a major rewrite of the GUI. On a simpler program it might not be too bad, but with the number of GUI elements in NPC Engineer.... well, they say pride comes before a fall!

There won't be an update tonight. I have a tonne to do and I'm determined to get it right. An upside to the new code is that it will make the program faster, especially at load-up.

Workaround? Once you click 'New NPC' quickly check through the tabs for anything that remained set. It should only be text boxes, but remember that the ones with UpDown controls count as text boxes too.

Fixed code as soon as I can.

Maasq