E-Tools Character XML converter

[teknohippy]

Hi new here, first post and all.

Just bought FG the other day, very impressed with it nice look and feel, and as an ex OpenRPG user, glad to see the shared maps work!

Well I use E-Tools a lot so I started looking for something that would save me and my players some typing and help get E-Tools characters into FG.

I didn't find anything? Did I miss anything?

Don't think I did.

Anyway so I made something.

https://www.teknohippy.com/et2fg/et2fg.zip

It'll take the XML from E-Tools and convert it to a FG character.

Not 100% working yet, but I'd appreciate some feedback from E-Tools users.

There's probably a few bugs so consider it an early beta.

Most major thing missing at the moment is support for spells from two spell using classes. Also each spells level is not yet sorted.

Oh you'll have to have the 2.0 .net framework to run it, sorry about that but it's all I've got on me dev machine here at home at the moment.

You can of course get that easily from microsoft here:

.NET Framework Version 2.0

Of course I spose I could make it run online easily enough, but I don't have any .net 2.0 hosting. I'll see what I can do about that.



Cheers
Iain

[CMP Mynex]

Hi new here, first post and all.

Just bought FG the other day, very impressed with it nice look and feel, and as an ex OpenRPG user, glad to see the shared maps work!

Well I use E-Tools a lot so I started looking for something that would save me and my players some typing and help get E-Tools characters into FG.

I didn't find anything? Did I miss anything?

Don't think I did.

Anyway so I made something.

>snip lots of words<

Cheers
Iain

Iain,

Please don't make this publically available at the moment.

Get with me in email so we can work this bit out... I think it's a great idea, I'm all for it, but we have to watch out for legal issues here.

I'd like to see this get done, it's something we were going to be working on ourselves, but time is short... so, get with me in email and we'll see if we can't get this thing worked out in an official capacity and get it released eh?

thank you in advance.

[teknohippy]

Removed for now then.

[Steel_Wind]

Hmmmm. The lawyer in me is narrowing my eyes a little. Given that the data is something your customers bought (and I'd be one of those customers who buys and continues to buy the data); it isn't for WotC or CMP to say how the customer should use that data. That's the customer's purview.

[CMP Mynex]

Hmmmm. The lawyer in me is narrowing my eyes a little. Given that the data is something your customers bought (and I'd be one of those customers who buys and continues to buy the data); it isn't for WotC or CMP to say how the customer should use that data. That's the customer's purview.

Sorry for not answering your email yet Techno, been busy, but this pot will give you an overview of what I was going to put into my email response.

Well, let me try to answer this without inciting a flame war... (i.e. a legal war).

Keeping it short...

e-Tools is Wizards proprietary software. The data, the content of said data, is their Intellectual Property. Converting from one format to another _may_ cause issues over that.

So we're just covering bases.

That said, this little project is NOT dead, now will it be 'consumed by the evil monoplostic company that is CMP' (<-- Tongue firmly planted in cheek)... We'd just like to make sure that any utilities like this (which we're ALL for btw) are clear of any issues...

What will likely happen here, I'll get Techno hooked up with one of our coders and/or our output sheet guy to make sure he's got all the tokens he needs to get a 'clean' conversion to FG.

Once it's been set up, tested, beat to death with a dead horse, then we'll get it up onto our files section to make sure any issues over 'legality' are covered (since we're licensee's of WotC's... just avoids potential issues).

So relax there Mr. Lawyer-simian.... we're not trying to 'squeeze the little guy' here... we're trying to prevent that.

[ashman]

as long as it falls under the Free downloads section, its all good. The only better place for it to be available would be here on the fantasy grounds download page..

[richvalle]

as long as it falls under the Free downloads section, its all good. The only better place for it to be available would be here on the fantasy grounds download page..

A link here will be just as nice I think. As long as we have access to it.

rv

[CMP Mynex]

as long as it falls under the Free downloads section, its all good. The only better place for it to be available would be here on the fantasy grounds download page..

A link here will be just as nice I think. As long as we have access to it.

rv

The idea is to host it in our freebies section (thus making WotC happy) and then having the links from here or other places (adventuresome dreams?) to the download.

That work for you simians?

[richvalle]

Sounds great!

A link at adventuresomedreams would be very nice.

rv

[Snikle]

Ok, first let it be said that I am a CopyRight NOob.

"It'll take the XML from E-Tools and convert it to a FG character" I am looking at this and I am curious. If a person creates a character in E-Tools(I am assuming here, I do not have E-Tools) and then uses some free converter that someone has made, how is this copyright infringement? Is the XML that E-Tools out-puts copyrighted? Is the XML coding copyrighted, or just the data strings in the XML, or the entire thing? Hypothetically speaking if the entire thing is, then do they own the character that was made? What portion is copyrighted and what is not, I can 'get' the coding is copyrighted, but the output? Makes me wonder if Macromedia or Adobe could somehow claim that all things created with their software is thus theirs.

See, there is a good reason I hate lawyers and would never want to be one. :wink: