Will there ever be proper Hero Lab support?

[darkling]

Hey there.

I really think there should something done so we can export things directly from Hero Lab to Fantasy Grounds. I simply don't have the patience to manually edit statblocks for HOURS trying to get the parser to read them properly and import them. I mean, that's great that there's a parser for copying and pasting statblocks from modules and stuff! But Hero Lab exports in a dozen formats, why can't any of them simply be imported into FG without some irritatingly picky external tool that never works quite right? I'm completely sick of the hassle of editing stat blocks so the ultra-picky parser can handle it. This isn't how this should work. This wastes so much of my preparation time. Every time. I have grown to actually hate preparing for a session for this reason.

This feels like a basic feature that's being ignored in favour of what... a port to Unity? Why are you even doing that?

[darrenan]

I'm assuming you're talking about exporting NPCs rather than PCs? How hard would it be to modify the existing character converter tool to give an option to import as either a PC or an NPC? That way you could always export to .hlfg format, and then choose how to perform the import. I think that would remove some of the frustration posted above.

[Trenloe]

The Fantasy Grounds format of data PCs and NPCs is considerably different - therefore modifying the current character importer to cater for NPCs as well would essentially be writing a whole new import process for NPCs compared to PCs.

darkling - I suggest you add your request to the FG wishlist so the devs can track it and people can vote on it: https://fg2app.idea.informer.com/

As an FYI - Unity as a platform will provide a lot of new possibilities for Fantasy Grounds and will introduce more efficient network communication, among other things. Certainly there are some very good reasons for the move to Unity...

[hawkwind]

you can always use herolabs out put to stat block and then run the resuting text through Trenloes rather excellent Parser

[viresanimi]

Why are Smiteworks "required" to make their program compatible with something another company has made? Seriously... If they do. Fine. I don't mind. But I'd rather see them work on their stuff rather than others'.


Vires Animi

[Trenloe]

Why are Smiteworks "required" to make their program compatible with something another company has made? Seriously... If they do. Fine. I don't mind. But I'd rather see them work on their stuff rather than others'.
Yeah, it's not an easy thing to do - and requires both companies to agree upon a standard of data exchange so that if either company change anything in their base product the process isn't broken (as long as the change keeps the data exchange standard). Moon_Wizard mentioned a while ago (last year?) that a few companies got together (including WolfLair, the makers of Hero Lab and SmiteWorks) to discuss open standards for data exchange to allow things such as export/import to be much more robust and the group basically fell apart when they all realised the amount of work needed and how it might impact their future development plans.

Any conversion process relies on data being passed in a specific standard. I'm guessing the "ultra-picky" and the "irritatingly picky external tool" that darkling mentions in the original post is the Pathfinder creature parser. The reason that darkling is having issues with this is that the Hero Lab statblock export doesn't adhere to the Paizo statblock standard, it's getting better in recent HeroLab releases, but it still doesn't follow the standard completely. Hence why it is being viewed by darkling as "ultra picky", because the HL export requires some editing to make it adhere to the standard the parser expects.

It's a lot of work to create any conversion application, and keep it maintained over different product versions. I'm sure that if darkling's request was added to the wishlist and enough people voted on it that SmiteWorks would look to include the functionality in future. But, because it is not even in the wishlist, I'm guessing that this is not such a "basic feature" requirement for a lot of the FG users out there - it would be nice, don't get me wrong... :)

[dulux-oz]

Yeah, it's not an easy thing to do - and requires both companies to agree upon a standard of data exchange so that if either company change anything in their base product the process isn't broken (as long as the change keeps the data exchange standard)....

Any conversion process relies on data being passed in a specific standard. ... the Hero Lab statblock export doesn't adhere to the Paizo statblock standard ... but it still doesn't follow the standard completely. ... because the HL export requires some editing to make it adhere to the standard the parser expects.

As a general note, if there is an agreed upon "standard" for something, and one party complies with the standard and another party doesn't, then any "fault" (as it is) that occurs is generally considered to lie with the non-compliant party.

This is, of course, the reason for standards in the first place.

This was also the cause of a lot of the "bad old webpages" in the past, when webpage writers would insist on using non-standard "stuff" and then wondered why their site would only work with some (or in some cases only one) type of browser - like it or hate it, I've never done a webpage that can't be read in any browser that is "standards-compliant" - and I've had less trouble with IE than anything else.

But I digress...

If people are having trouble with HL's output and conversion into FG, then as HL is not compliant with the "standard" I'd take things up with HL, not FG.

Just my $0.02 worth

Cheers

[Nylanfs]

And HL doesn't put out a lot of info for their statblock, Lee Jackson found this out when he made his android tablet app that supports both HL and PCGen. We came out way ahead BTW. :)

[Carthar]

I've found FG2 to be great for running campaigns, but it does lack tools for GMs setting up campaigns, but that is another story.

I sat down and worked up a PCGen output sheet and modualizer to export/import NPCs from PCGen into FG2. It took me a good week to learn all the PCGen output syntax and troubleshoot. It has saved me more than twice that in prep time, especially with it setting up the spells for me. So it has been a good return on investment.

I would suspect that something similar could be engineered for HL. If you are willing to put in the time.

[damned]

Hi Carthar - great work on the output sheet. Is it something you can share with others?
Im sure it could be done for any program but if the source program isnt consistent in its output it makes it bloody hard!

Is there anything you need help with or find particularly hard in your campaign setup? If you put your issues up someone might have some good suggestions/tips/ideas to help.

[Trenloe]

Hi Carthar - great work on the output sheet. Is it something you can share with others?
https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?21025-Updated-PCGen-exportsheet

BOOM! :)

[damned]

it turns out I gave Carthar some reputation for that way back... when he posted it!

[Carthar]

Trenloe linked my updated PCgen PC output sheet by accident.

This is the link to NPC output sheet and utility.


https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?21480-PCGen-export-to-NPC-Module-utility

Making an output sheet takes some time getting the formatting right but it isn't that hard. You should be able to modify the existing HL PC output sheet. There are a few fields that you don't need and only a few ones you need to add.

Once you have the xml output proper you need a way to get it into FG. The NPC/personalities list doesn't have an import "+" icon like the character section does. So I wrote a quick and dirty VB program to take the xml sheet and make it into a module. PCgen allows you to run a command line for post processing, a trick I learned from moon wizard's work long ago for another VTT, so I have it pass all the info I need and then modularize it automatically. You should be able to use the utility for HL as well, as it is system agnostic, it just needs an xml sheet and to be passes the right variables. If HL doesn't do post processing I can toss anyone the source code and they could easily modify it to be stand alone.

Carth