ruleset modification and combat tracker

[DNH]

there are any number of posts on these pages about writing new rulesets, modifying existing ones etc etc, most of which are very helpful. i am currently working on the character sheet for a 2e AD&D ruleset and am learning a bunch of cool things all the time (so much so that i often go back and add a new feature to an earlier section!) ... BUT i am a bit concerned about the combat tracker.

i admit that with a little xml/scripting knowledge, a willingness to experiment and do research, a ruleset can be made up fairly easily but how simple is it to modify the combat tracker? indeed, is it necessary (scratch that question; it must be)? is it merely a case of renaming the various fields (hp, attacks)? or do you essentially have to start from scratch? and how much is "generic" scripting (ie non-d20)?

aw, i am probably just panicking! best i roll up my sleeves and take a look at it now!

[joshuha]

Well for a project I am working on I am completely rewriting the combattracker from scratch but depending on your needs you can get away with just modifiying the fields and what fields get added with drag and drop operations.

Basically, all you really need is a way to change for AD&D is probably what fields get mapped over when you drag an entity into the combat tracker.

Rewriting it is fun though, I just keep the round counter and build everything else up from the bottom. I really don't need the fancy hover events that expand the additonal fiels like AC and what not but those wouldn't be too hard to recreate.

[DNH]

i was right ... i was panicking. i won't pretend it was all straightforward, but being methodical about it and making sure i covered everything has allowed me to have a working combat tracker for my 2e ruleset. there are still things that need doing, of course. one is the attack roll for the npcs - in d20, you can drag the fullatk entry to the chat window to make the attack. i have tried to construct my own attack entry to be able to do that but no joy so far.

what surprised me the most was how easy it was to change from d20's counting down from high initiative to 2e's counting up from low initiative - i merely had to change a less than to a greater than in the onSortCompare function of combattracker.lua and that was it!

let this post serve as encouragement to anyone thinking of diving in and messing with the combat tracker (especially when changing it from d20, i mean) - it can be done!

cheers