Fantasy Grounds 5E db.xml character cycler OBS widget

[mlesnews]

My idea of minimalist would be along the lines of what LordEntrails mentioned, and verbose would be all available information (full stats). Perhaps a mixture? For my OBS overlay, I like the idea of seeing each player, their discord name/character name, whether they have inspiration or not. Here is a rough idea, inspired by anothers overlay I saw.

[st4lk3r87]

I'd really love if you release this totally open source and leave to people the customization option. I don't know how this is actually implemented.

[shadzar]

each player, their discord name

there is a problem with this. FG does not store Discord names as a default for 5e character sheets. Someone alsked off-site about twitter handles and such also, but again, this is not something FG supports in the db.xml where this data is all acquired from. since it is autosaved every 5 or 15 minutes or something, so any changes made during play would be updated live as FG resaves the data with a simple widget refresh.

i fully understand the need, but by default FG doesn't support a "2nd player name" for 5e characters.

[LordEntrails]

there is a problem with this. FG does not store Discord names as a default for 5e character sheets. Someone alsked off-site about twitter handles and such also, but again, this is not something FG supports in the db.xml where this data is all acquired from. since it is autosaved every 5 or 15 minutes or something, so any changes made during play would be updated live as FG resaves the data with a simple widget refresh.

i fully understand the need, but by default FG doesn't support a "2nd player name" for 5e characters.

Why not just parse the Notes field of the character sheet for a standard something like "Social Name: Xyz"?

[Moon Wizard]

Or bundle an extension to add extra fields.

JPG

[shadzar]

if it was going to be an extension it could just appear as part of FG itself...

this is just made to read the db.xml and put the data into an OBS widget.

if someone else can and wants to make an extension to do it within FG, then it will not be independent of FG to fit in the OBS overlays, and people would just have to make sure to not cover up that space with other parts f the overlay.

this thing really is just an XML reader and parses it into a table. fast and simpe. FG could add a 2nd player name field to its default sheets also, then there would be data to read.

[shadzar]

Why not just parse the Notes field of the character sheet for a standard something like "Social Name: Xyz"?

that would be possible so long as the players didnt keep their own notes there. i will have to check a newer saved campaign hen i get one to see if it will parse simply enough to just pull that from the notes field.

is there a place on the 5e character sheet that a DM can write and the players cannot that goes to the db.xml during autosave, so it is guaranteed to have the correct data without extraneous stuff in it? if that exists, then the DM could put anything and it could even parse to the social media icons for various things like Twitter, Facebook, etc. otherwise it would have to be simple and jsut text ont he screen from the data.

[LordEntrails]

that would be possible so long as the players didnt keep their own notes there. i will have to check a newer saved campaign hen i get one to see if it will parse simply enough to just pull that from the notes field.

Don't take the whole notes field, just a portion of it (i.e. look for a specific string and then take everything after that until a space or another specific string. BUT, I'm not a coder, only know enough to be dangerous

is there a place on the 5e character sheet that a DM can write and the players cannot that goes to the db.xml during autosave, so it is guaranteed to have the correct data without extraneous stuff in it? if that exists, then the DM could put anything and it could even parse to the social media icons for various things like Twitter, Facebook, etc. otherwise it would have to be simple and jsut text ont he screen from the data.

No
At least not that I know of.

[shadzar]

that would be possible so long as the players didnt keep their own notes there. i will have to check a newer saved campaign hen i get one to see if it will parse simply enough to just pull that from the notes field.

Don't take the whole notes field, just a portion of it (i.e. look for a specific string and then take everything after that until a space or another specific string. BUT, I'm not a coder, only know enough to be dangerous

that is the right track, the problem is the players... if it was like BBcode, then a player edits something wrong and it gets screwed up and would just end up being discarded and not display on screen.

[twitter]@FredFlintstone[/twitter] for example would be really easy to mess up just forgetting the / or spelling the site wrong in either the opening or closing tags.

[LordEntrails]

that is the right track, the problem is the players... if it was like BBcode, then a player edits something wrong and it gets screwed up and would just end up being discarded and not display on screen.

[twitter]@FredFlintstone[/twitter] for example would be really easy to mess up just forgetting the / or spelling the site wrong in either the opening or closing tags.

I get it. If that's a big enough concern, then would have to go with Moon Wizards suggestion.