Shop & Town Extension for 3.5E / Pathfinder / 4E

[Blackfoot]

The golden rule for any extension written for CoreRPG, but running in another ruleset layered on top of CoreRPG, where issues are seen is to test it in a purely CoreRPG campaign to see if the issues occur in CoreRPG itself.

My thoughts exactly, and yes, the graphical issues are part of the Town Extension.
The scrollbar is covered by the tabs at the right of the Main Tab.
The Main Tab scrolling position is off and scrolls out of the top of the box.
The 'Shops' and 'NPCs' Tabs are double spacing. Less spacing would be good visually and allow for more Shops and NPCs per town without scrolling.
And there is no 'Close Box' for the Towns.

The focus clearing issue seems to be a problem in 3.0.2.. not related to the extension.

[Blackfoot]

Also.. the extension's fonts are overwriting ruleset/extension fonts. I realize that you need to include the extra font types because they are not part of CoreRPG... I'm not sure if there is a good solution for this.

[Trenloe]

Also.. the extension's fonts are overwriting ruleset/extension fonts.

Extensions are always going to have the possibility of overwriting other extensions. Which extensions are you seeing a clash of font names in?

A quick look at the current 3.5e, PFRPG, 4E, Call of Cthulhu and C&C ruleset (all the major commercial rulesets layered on CoreRPG) shows that they don't contain the font names used in the town extension - so there is no clash for these rulesets.

Which rulesets are you seeing a clash of fonts in?

When it comes down to it, the font names used in the town and shop extensions are the direct mapping of the similar fonts in FG 2.9 rulesets, and they use the CoreRPG supplied fonts so they are not actually "overwriting" fonts.

There will always be the chance that such a generic extension as these (and other extensions written for CoreRPG) that there will be a clash somewhere.

[Blackfoot]

Any theme that does major Font control is going to have an issue with it. I'm not sure that there is a work around.. other than it defining it's own font unique labels for the fonts it wants to replace/add.

[Trenloe]

So, no specific themes or rulesets? Your comment was just Generic?

[Trenloe]

Any theme that does major Font control is going to have an issue with it.

I actually disagree with this comment.

Assuming a theme that "does major Font control" is replacing the base .fgf font files to change the actual look of the fonts.

If such a theme uses the same font file names as CoreRPG then extensions like the town and shop extension will use the new theme font files (as long as they are located in the usual place: graphics\fonts) - which is what you would want to keep a universal look/feel with different themes.

[Blackfoot]

I'm seeing the conflict in my Champions ruleset because I've done a complete font overwrite as part of the theme... hence I can see the generic issues this can cause.
There is no great solution for it, I guess you could put in some sort of check to see if the fonts exist before overwriting them somehow... but simple would be just to call those fonts something else. When I open the window though, half the fonts are going to look like 'Comic Book' fonts and others will look generic... I don't have a great and easy solution.

[Trenloe]

I'm seeing the conflict in my Champions ruleset because I've done a complete font overwrite as part of the theme... hence I can see the generic issues this can cause.
There is no great solution for it, I guess you could put in some sort of check to see if the fonts exist before overwriting them somehow... but simple would be just to call those fonts something else. When I open the window though, half the fonts are going to look like 'Comic Book' fonts and others will look generic... I don't have a great and easy solution.

These are the font entries in the town extension, they are there to use the 9 point fonts that are supplied with the CoreRPG ruleset:

<font name="sheetnumbersmall">
	<fgffile name="graphics/fonts/bold-9.fgf" />
	<color value="#000000" />
</font>		
<font name="sheetlabelsmall">
	<fgffile name="graphics/fonts/regular-9.fgf" />
	<color value="#000000" />
</font>		
<font name="chatitalicfont">
	<fgffile name="graphics/fonts/italic-9.fgf" />
	<color value="#261A12" />
</font>	
<font name="chatbolditalicfont">
	<fgffile name="graphics/fonts/bold-9.fgf" />
	<color value="#261A12" />
</font>

As you can see, the font file names are pretty standard.

You'll have an issue with your ruleset whenever any font name uses one of these 9 point fonts. Unless you include fonts that match your theme in your ruleset using these exact font file names.

Looking at Ikael's extensions he usually puts "updated_" in front of most of the things that he does. Perhaps developers for anything that changes should include some label that is unique to their ruleset/extension in front of anything that is not going to be CoreRPG compatible? e.g. you could modify your ruleset so that all of your font changes have "champs_" in front of the names, the town extension could have "towndb_" in front of the non CoreRPG names, the shop extension could have "shopdb_" in front of the non CoreRPG names. So the above font definition for the town extension, for example, might be changed to:

<font name="towndb_sheetnumbersmall">
	<fgffile name="graphics/fonts/bold-9.fgf" />
	<color value="#000000" />
</font>		
<font name="towndb_sheetlabelsmall">
	<fgffile name="graphics/fonts/regular-9.fgf" />
	<color value="#000000" />
</font>		
<font name="towndb_chatitalicfont">
	<fgffile name="graphics/fonts/italic-9.fgf" />
	<color value="#261A12" />
</font>	
<font name="towndb_chatbolditalicfont">
	<fgffile name="graphics/fonts/bold-9.fgf" />
	<color value="#261A12" />
</font>

Then the references in the windowclass XML definitions can be changed to use these extension specific labels.

In this case, used in conjunctions with the Champions ruleset they will always use whichever font is available in the graphics/fonts directory that matches - so they can be overwritten by a ruleset or theme extension.

[Blackfoot]

I'm actually a little surprised that the small font definitions aren't included in CoreRPG since the fonts themselves actually are.
On a side note: This item is defined incorrectly in the Town file... it should be bolditalic-9.fgf

<font name="chatbolditalicfont">
	<fgffile name="graphics/fonts/bold-9.fgf" />
	<color value="#261A12" />
</font>

[Trenloe]

I'm actually a little surprised that the small font definitions aren't included in CoreRPG since the fonts themselves actually are.

Me too.