A great journey...

[Czarisyn]

...begins with a single step.

What is your first step in creating a ruleset?

Whenever I look at the directory of the example, I get a little overwhelmed and don't know where to begin.

[drahkar]

A lot of people have their first step in building out a character sheet. Once you have that, then you just focus on one task at a time. Character sheet, graphics, tying character sheet into combat tracker, and verifying all of the functions on the most basic sort work. Once all of those steps are there. Then you can work on adding features, customizing how things work, giving it a more complete and unique feel.

That's sort of the steps I've been going from. When you break it into smaller segments, it really reduces the 'Wow, there is so much to do' overwhelming feeling.

[Moon Wizard]

Or alternatively, people will try adding features to existing rulesets in order to focus on a smaller goal first and to learn how rulesets work.

Cheers,
JPG

[Czarisyn]

I printed out a character sheet and made some notes to separate what should go where. It is a derivative of D20 so I am modifying the one I downloaded from this site.

Looking through the xml files and reading the guides, I am still unsure on database nodes (i.e. abilities.dexterity.score).

Am I right when saying that the database nodes defined in the source tags are created as they are defined and not polled from another file?

Also, even though it is D20, I still want to at least comment out all the prewritten fields in the character sheet and gradually modify -> and uncomment as I go, but it seems when I comment out everything besides the
templates and main file from the character.xml, it doesn't like that at one bit.

Any suggestions are appreciated, and thank you for the help so far.

[Moon Wizard]

When I first started, I found it easier to slowly remove pieces from the character sheet, rather than try to clear it all out and re-add pieces. It will make it easier for you to identify where the problem is.

Any "field" types (i.e. numberfield, stringfield, diefield, etc.) will automatically create the underlying database node to store their data. By default, the name of the control will be used as the name of the database node, and it will be created in the current database context for the sheet (i.e. character, npc, ...). If a "source" attribute is specified for the field tag, it will be used as the relative path to create the underlying database node instead. The "source" path will be relative to the current database context for the sheet you are working on.

Try creating a character in the default d20 result, set some values, and then look at the db.xml file to see how the values are mapped from the XML into the database.

Cheers,
JPG

[Czarisyn]

ah so when source is defined as abilities.strength.score, it saves it in the db.xml as:

<abilities>
     <strength>
         <score></score>
     </strength>
</abilities>

Right now, I've got the first tab done and after looking at it, I thought I was putting too much data on one page. So now, I'm thinking of just showing static numbers and have them edited in other pages. Also, I'm thinking of just build it with fields with no automation and then put in the scripts and tweaks. Final part would be the custom graphics.

[Czarisyn]

I can't seem to find the control for the tabs on the side of the character sheet. No matter what I comment out, the tabs are still there.

[Moon Wizard]

Make sure you find a text editor that can search over multiple files for a string, then look for "tabcontrol". That is the template used to create and manage the tabs on the side of the sheets.

Cheers,
JPG

[Czarisyn]

found the tabs, but when I take them out, the sheet is blank.
What would need to be set to replace <subwindow> so tabs are not needed?

[Moon Wizard]

The subwindow control is essentially a control that is a scrollable view to another windowinstance with its own windowclass. Subwindows are used to create tabbed windows where you want to be able to display different control sets within a single window.

If you want to remove the subwindow/tabcontrol completely, you will need to migrate all of the controls and script code from the subwindow windowclass definition into the main window windowclass definition.

Cheers,
JPG