Installing SRD-D20 With Existing Campaign

[Jingo]

Hello Fellow RPGers,

I just bought DigitalAdventure's SRD-D20 and want to get it working with my existing "The Wizards Amulet" campaign, not a brand new campaign.

Is there information along the lines of "Installing SRD-D20 to Work with Existing Campaigns for Dummies"?


What exactly do I do? Detailed step by step instructions would be useful. I searched this forum and found some information on a previous post back in early 2005, but couldn't figure it out. Any help is appreciated.

Thanks!

[Ram Tyr]

Welcome to the show. It is best when asking a question such as this that you reference the threads that you have reviewed. Otherwise, other posters have no way of knowing if we are going to point you in the direction of something that you already looked at but aren't able to understand. (Nobody wants to come back after trying to be helpful and seeing a post claiming that we weren't helpful at all.) It also shows other posters the efforts you have made.

I made sure that I included posts from 2006, so I expect that this will help. The only 2005 post I include is actually the one by Ged, a developer at Smiteworks.

Other than what I can point to on the boards, I have no advice on this, having never attempted it.

On to your question...

Using Search for "changing ruleset campaign" (I note this so that this post will come up when that search is conducted in the future.)

I found:
A Few Comments on Rulesets by Ged (https://forums.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showpost.php?p=19263&postcount=27)
Changing Rulesets Thread (https://forums.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4407&highlight=changing+ruleset+campaign)
Changing rulesets on a campaign?? (https://forums.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?p=24113&highlight=changing+ruleset+campaign#post24113)

Devs, you should consider updating the information in Ged's post and then reposting it in the Modification Tutorial (https://forums.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2449). This question comes up enough that it should be included in that discussion.

One last thing, does the Digital Adventures SRD not include instructions on how to do this, Thore? It might be worth adding instructions in to minimize the confusion. You can crib the information directly from Ged's post!

Later.
Ramza

[Jingo]

Thank you! The "Changing rulesets on a campaign??" thread did it for me.

I didn't realize it was such a simple change.

All I did was open campaign.xml and change the "d20" to "d20-SRD".

I think a simple section in the PDF manual about changing rulesets would be useful.

Thanks again!

[Thore_Ironrock]

One last thing, does the Digital Adventures SRD not include instructions on how to do this, Thore?

At the moment, no. It does say to email me if you have questions, and I have "canned" emails for such replies. I supposed it is probably time to update the README file. I believe Ben's tutorial also covers this, and that is out in the forums as well.

Thanks for the purchase Jingo!

[Jingo]

At the moment, no. It does say to email me if you have questions, and I have "canned" emails for such replies. I supposed it is probably time to update the README file. I believe Ben's tutorial also covers this, and that is out in the forums as well.

Thanks for the purchase Jingo!


Hey, sure thing, Thore! Thanks for making a nice product, although, I mainly got it because I wanted the 'free' updated character sheet you offer on your site.

In any case, I've noticed one major problem with the SRD though which I hope there is a fix for: When you try to scroll text on a topic has a lot of text--for example, I looked up Tumble--and when you scroll, the text, when it disappears, doesn't scroll up at the top as expected, instead it scrolls at about 2/3 the way down the topic window.

I've uploaded a screenshot of what I'm seeing on my website here (https://home.comcast.net/~jareds62/FGWeb/srd_scroll_problem.htm).

And sometimes it's even further down, so that only two lines are scrolling at the very bottom of a certain skill. This makes viewing many items in the SRD next to impossible to work with... at least this is what is happening in my case.

[Thore_Ironrock]

Hi Jingo,

I cannot duplicate your problem. I do have two trains of thought on your issue though:

1) Resize the window. In case you didn't know, you can do that by holding down the CNTL button and grabbing the bottom right corner with the mouse to resize. This may change how your environment scrolls the page.

2) The actual "scrolling" feature is not something built into FG, but is a function that is taken from the Windows environment (I think). In your mouse properties you can (typically) change your scrolling size (that is what they call it for my Logitech wireless mouse) . That may also fix the problem.


I don't think there is anything in the code that I can change, but I will ask my more skilled developers. If you find out anything based on my above points let me know.

[Jingo]

Thanks for responding, Thore.

Unfortunately, resizing the window using CTRL + mouse dragging or changing my mouse properties (all I can change is the number of lines that scroll when moving the mousewheel) didn't fix this problem.

One interesting thing is that the scrolling text, I found, always scrolls up just below the point on the window that reads:

Reference: SRD 3.5 CombinedSkills

With something like the Survival skill where this is at the very bottom of the window, I cannot see the rest of the skill description by scrolling without first resizing the skill window to some obscene size.

Any other ideas? Anyone else experiencing this?

[Thore_Ironrock]

Hi Jingo,

I think there may be some confusion as to the issue here. The text beneath the feats and such is supposed to scroll. That is what that up-down arrow control is used for. To see the rest of the text all you have to do is use the arrow tool or the scroll wheel on your mouse. That will show you the rest of the text.

Is that what you mean? Else I'm still confused as to what your issue is.

[Jingo]

I'm not explaining myself well enough, I guess. I created a small video (11 mbs) that shows what I'm seeing.

[Download Here] (https://home.comcast.net/~hessmess1/srd_bad_scroll.zip)

This video demonstrates what happens when I try to scroll the text of the "Survival" skill.

As you can see, only two lines of text is visible for scrolling at the very bottom of the window! Very difficult to read! I figure I have a fairly standard configuration:

Hp Pavillion Ze5700 Laptop
2.6 GhZ Celeron Processor
512 MB RAM
WinXP Home Edition
64 mb video card
1024 x 768 screen resolution

[Thore_Ironrock]

Thanks for the video Jingo, that explained the issue.

As I said before, you can resize the window to make all of the text viewable.

Example here:

https://www.digitaladventures.net/jingo.jpg


One thing I did notice is that you run your resolution at the minimum setting. That means that the entry would take up most of your screen. If you can, I would bump up your resolution a bit. That will help in making more room on your desktop.

If this is still not acceptable and you would like to know how to change the XML code itself, let me know and I'll find out what needs to be done.

Thanks,

[Jingo]

As I said before, you can resize the window to make all of the text viewable.


Resolution changing isn't an option for me. I think I'm at the optimal size for my monitor / card right now. Any bigger and my desktop doesn't fit within my screen size.

I know I can resize the window, but I feel these windows should work like any other scrollable window in a Windows software (ie, the text should scroll behind the very top of the window, not somewhere near the bottom of the window where it currently does). The default d20 ruleset scrolls normally if Iremember correctly. I would expect the SRD to do the same.

Thanks for any help you can offer.

[Thore_Ironrock]

The default d20 ruleset scrolls normally if Iremember correctly. I would expect the SRD to do the same.


OK ... well ... that is the default we used for that skills tool, and you're the first person to even mention it. People actually seem to like it with all of the feedback I've had, and in the year I've had the product for sale this is the first complaint. You can't change it unless you change all of the code. If you want to know how to do that please email me and I'll have one of my developers email you how.

[Toadwart]

The default ruleset does use this layout (for spells).
I think the real issue here is that some skills have a lot of text to fit in at the top which leaves very little room for the descriptive text at the bottom.

[taalas]

Resolution changing isn't an option for me. I think I'm at the optimal size for my monitor / card right now. Any bigger and my desktop doesn't fit within my screen size.

I know I can resize the window, but I feel these windows should work like any other scrollable window in a Windows software (ie, the text should scroll behind the very top of the window, not somewhere near the bottom of the window where it currently does). The default d20 ruleset scrolls normally if Iremember correctly. I would expect the SRD to do the same.

Thanks for any help you can offer.

Hello Jingo,

actually it is not a matter of resizing your desktop resolution, just a matter of resizing the appropriate window inside FG: as was said before you can change the size of FG internal windows by grabbing a corner (lower right e.g.) and dragging them while holding the CTRL button on your keyboard. This resizes the window inside your FG workspace.

As for the scrolling: Only the bottom part (the reference text) is supposed to scroll. The top part should stay so to be visible while browsing through the reference text...

[kalmarjan]

I agree with taalas.

I use the 800 x 600 resoulution myself, and I occasionally run into this problem. Using the resize is fine for me. It doesn't stop there though, with the default set, when you get higher level monsters, you also have to resize the window, or the information gets cut off as well.

Just let me say that the CSRD is one of the most popular rulesets that I know of, and it really enhances what you get as opposed to what you get with FG out of the box. It may be a nuisance to you to resize the windows, but that is a better alternative to having one big document to scroll in. Take it from me, I have played over 50+ sessions with FG, and I like the format as it is.

Hope that helps you out mate,

Sandeman

[Zane_Marlowe]

Hi Jingo,

I built the CSRD for Digital Adventures last year, and I built that specific interface you're referring to. The reason things are scrolling that way in the individual skill frame interface is because the information above the description text is written as a series of "groups," which is FG's way of keeping label and multiline information vertically aligned at the same Y-position. Obviously some entries (like survival) are going to take more space because they have more ancillary data surrounding the description, and this in turn is going to squeeze the space available for the description text because all the groups have to fit within the defined windowclass for the skill interface.

Unfortunately you can't scroll the whole group complex, you can only scroll individual text controls with the multiline attribute, which is why I can assure you that there is no way to create the kind of scrolling change you're asking for unless SmiteWorks rewrites the rules of their interface. If you've seen it otherwise, it's because you saw only one control with the multiline text that included formatting and the whole content of that skill entry.

That wasn't the approach that I took in designing the CSRD because I wanted to make it possible for individual skills to read like spells, and so make it possible for people to leverage the improved interface possibilities that you can already see in the Spell interface in the default ruleset. There have been a number of custom character sheets at this point, but I'd have to go back and look to see if anyone has included this functionality. Hopefully you won't hold it against me that I developed the skill interface to give users more control over the individual skill entry than a simple blob text feature would have allowed.

That said, your options for showing the things you want are these:

1. You can use CTRL+Mouse to grab the bottom corner of the skill frame and expand that frame (as illustrated by earlier pictures).

2. You can rewrite the default dimensions of the skill frame for more vertical space. Do a search for the "skill" windowclass in the d20_reference.xml file in your ruleset's root folder and you'll see the defaultheight setting in pixels.

I hope that solves the issue for you. Option (1) should work most days with the screen resolution you specified, but bear in mind that this isn't windows software technically, it's a windows executable parsing an open standard text file, so windows UI standards are not enforced.

[kalmarjan]

Just to chime in here as well...

This issue is not limited to the CSRD. The default ruleset will have the same problem for you with some monsters, as the information on those windows exceeds the default graphic space. You will have to resize those as well. NPCs of higher level will give you the same issue.

I believe this is why the devs instituted the ctrl drag functionality, as opposed to forcing a user to have a higher screen resolution. :)

Sandeman