Character sheet creation help

[mrbyte]

I need to create a fairly simple character sheet for 'Squadron UK'
unfortuneately I have no idea how to set about this.
can someone point my in the right direction and let me know what software I will require.
I understand I will have to create a new ruleset, its the actual coding part I know nothing about

any help appreciated

Thanks in advance

Steve

[Stuart]

The hardest part of making a ruleset is the graphic element of a character sheet. Paintshop and photoshop pro will give you the png that you need (just look at the default character sheet as an example). Having done that, you can then "pin" the code to the layout ... frankly, that bit is easier I think.

I think other people use GIMP as well which is free.

[mrbyte]

Thanks Stuart,
is there a step by step anywhere for this?
I can get the PNG no problems its the pinning part I'm a bit baffled with. :confused:

Steve
ps I assume the Saturday game is on this Saturday?

[Stuart]

Saturday game still on as per the boards - if you have a png ready to go and just need to add the code I can help you with this ... I'll catch you on Saturday ?

[mrbyte]

Brilliant !

I'll speak to you Saturday

Thanks :)

[mr_h]

I used gimp for my TSSI character sheet. Very hadny, though it takes a bit to learn a few of the features. Any graphics program that you can save into png would work fine.

Whichever one you use, learn how to use Layers. Layers are your friends....
(each 'section' of my character sheets have something like 20 layers...very easy to edit for the most part).

Oh, and leave room for text...15-20 pixel worth in between lines I found works pretty good.

[sloejack]

For what its worth, I found creating the character sheet graphics very easy, the hard part for me was sitting there and sorting out the cooridnates for the text areas. I had no problems with the x,y upper left of the text area. The trouble I had was with determining the x of the lower right since it didn't seem to map up to pixel width of the box (though the y did, so that was wierd).

[mrbyte]

Basically I have the same problem (though Stuart is kindly helping me) the graphic part isn't really the problem its the coordinates for the text areas that I can't see how you find.

[Toadwart]

Gimp to the rescue there too:
-select pencil
-Set the to 100% transparent and 1-pixel drawing size.
-Click on top left corner of the area - note: the coordinates are shown at the bottom left of the screen e.g. 132,114
-hold shift key and move cursor across to the right edge of the box so you are drawing a straight line across the top of the area. The bottom of the screen should now show the offset from the starting position e.g. 100,0. Thenmovecursor so you are drawing a staraight line down to the bottom of the area from the starting point and get the height e.g. 0, 16

Plug those into the xml e.g. <bounds rect="132,114,100,16">
I find that, if you have a square box around the field it's best to leave 1 or 2 pixels on the left/right if you are dealing with a text field.
Then view it in FG and tweak where necessary.