Imnporting ERA characters into FG?

[Frunobulax]

The ERA character creation system sold by Iron Crown is a lot more detailed than what can be done in the Fantasy Grounds RMC ruleset. Character creation, leveling up, and skill development are all far superior and with the add-on content, many more races and skills are available. It does have a feature to export characters to XML, but apparently it is not in the format that FG's character importer recognizes. That kind of sucks. I guess I could manually type in all the stuff, but that's a real PITA. I know Iron Crown and FG supposedly work together - perhaps they could make it possible for FG to import characters created with ERA (and hopefully vice-versa). This would be such a huge help! Thanks.

[kevinbalentine]

Seconded. I was looking into this myself and this would be a great help to my Shadow World campaign.

[Dakadin]

Unfortunately, XML files from different programs won't likely work with another program since they will refer to things and organize them differently.

Can someone post a couple sample XML files so I can at least see what the differences are?

[kevinbalentine]

I've attached a character from ERA in XML.

[Dakadin]

I've attached a character from ERA in XML.

Thanks. It is definitely stores things differently. Let me think about it a bit and see if I can come up with a way to convert them to a version that the RMC ruleset can import.

[Frunobulax]

Thanks for looking into it, Dakadin. I have attached another example character export. There are some things (namely Backgrounds) for which there is no place on the FG character sheet, but you could just throw those into the "Notes" field.

I can think of a number of ways to do it manually, but it looks like the best thing to use is something called XSLT.

Here are a few links I found that might help:
https://www.codeproject.com/Tips/793437/Transform-from-one-XML-structure-to-another
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms766462(v=vs.85).aspx
https://www.xmlbook.info/9-XSL-XSLT.phtml

I know you're busy. I really appreciate you taking time to at least look at it.

[Dakadin]

Thanks that will give me something to compare with the other character.

[Frunobulax]

No problem, I can upload as many as you want. I'm not an expert, but looking at the file it appears to me that there's tons of stuff you could just ignore since it will (I think) be calculated/looked up by FG (bonuses, prime stats, dev point costs, etc.) - at least for the classes included in FG. Not sure about how to handle classes from the supplements that aren't in FG, but I'd be happy with just support for the base classes. Some stuff is no big deal, like inventory (easy to add later), but if you could just get only basic stuff like name/profession/level, stats/pots, skills and ranks, spell lists, backgrounds/abilities (as notes) then that would be fine. It doesn't have to be every last detail. Also, you could contact the developer of ERA if you don't already know him. I can give you his username on the Iron Crown forums). He's a really nice guy and might be willing to make some minor changes if you need them.

Thanks again!

[Dakadin]

Do you have a sample of a hybrid spell user?

[kevinbalentine]

Here's a sorcerer. Hopefully this has everything you need.

[Dakadin]

Thanks.

[Frunobulax]

Here is one with some spell lists too.

[Dakadin]

Thanks. I still need to look at how to do those.

[Frunobulax]

Thanks. I still need to look at how to do those.

Thanks. I really appreciate any time at all you spend on it!

[Dakadin]

I opened a separate thread so this would be easier to find: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?39041-Converting-ERA-XML-Characters-into-FG-RMC-XML-Import-Format

[kevinbalentine]

Dakadin,

This is awesome! I tried it out this morning and it works as described. Excellent work, sir, thank you so much for taking on this task!

Thanks!
Kevin

[Frunobulax]

Excellent! Superb! ThankYouThankYouThankYouThankYouThankYou! Works a treat!

I would only add one step to the instructions that I had to figure out:

1.5) Copy/Save the XSL files to the /FGCharacterSheetPrinter_Data/StreamingAssets/XSL sheets directory, based on where you installed the Universal Character Sheet Printer.

We really appreciate the time you took to do this, Dakadin!

[Dakadin]

Excellent! Superb! ThankYouThankYouThankYouThankYouThankYou! Works a treat!

I would only add one step to the instructions that I had to figure out:

1.5) Copy/Save the XSL files to the /FGCharacterSheetPrinter_Data/StreamingAssets/XSL sheets directory, based on where you installed the Universal Character Sheet Printer.

We really appreciate the time you took to do this, Dakadin!

Good point. I added it to the list above.

[Dakadin]

I made some adjustments that will handle the skills better. You will no longer need to adjust the calculation and the dice should appear on the skills now with the appropriate type. I moved it to a new thread to make it easier to find: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?39041-Converting-ERA-XML-Characters-into-FG-RMC-XML-Import-Format