Character Planner Version 2.00 - Now with Equipment!

[Ron]

Hey gang,

I imagine this will be a fairly long post, so bear with me, there's a few things I want to mention and explain.

But first and foremost, the big announcement! As you may guess from the title of this post, I am done with version 2.00 of the planner, and I've posted it in it's usual place (http://www.rjcyberware.com/DDO). It is version 2.00rather than 1.60 because the planner has undergone the most massive amount of coding since version 1.00 in order to get it ready and able to handle equipment. In fact, the amount of code the comprises the planner nearly doubled from it's previous incarnation!

Despite the massive amount of code, the changelog for this version is quite short. Here it is in it's entirety:

Version 2.00
============
1) The Forum Export Level Selector will now show through level 12 instead of through level 10, so you no longer have to manually scroll to 12.

2) Fixed a bug where under certain conditions, the planner could miscalculate the character level for multiclassed characters. This bug most often manifested as multiclass characters recieving "level 0" spells in place of their high level spells, although it may rarely have affected other systems as well.

3) Removed the Improved Moble Spellcasting feat.

4) Users may now create and add armor to their characters.

5) Fixed the Heroes Feast spell description.

6) Added equipment listings to both the printout and the forum export.

7) Much additional work done on the statistics calculator screen. It will now calculate your total AC. However, it is limited to only using armor for equipment.

Alright, now the rest of it. Firstly, equipment is going to come in stages. The biggest and most complex part was adding the first type, which happens to be armor (or in fact any bit of equpment that goes in the armor slot, such as robes and docents). As of version 2.00, only armor can be added to your characters. More slot types are going to be going in with subsequent versions of the planner. They should come along quite a bit faster than armor did (the first one involved a whole lot of setup, and now that it's done, the rest of the slots won't need a whole lot of coding, mostly just research and data input into the database).

Secondly, it can be a bit complex to add armor to your characters. Equipment in DDO is a complex thing that involves a lot of materials and prefixes and suffixes and bonuses and so on, and there is just no way to make it completely easy. I did the best I could, and I hope with a little practice, y'all get the hang of it without too much trouble. There is a tutorial for the planner in the works, and in fact, mostly finished, over on DDOWiki (http://ddo.enterwiki.net/page/Charac...anner_Tutorial). If you've used the planner before, I suggest you at least read over the "Eqiupment" section. If this is your first time with the planner, you may want to read the entire thing. I'm not 100% finished with the tutorial yet, but the couple of parts that are missing you should be able to figure out with a little experimenting.

Thirdly, some equipment effects are not yet shown. These are the ones that affect your abilities and skills. There are plans in the works to display how your active equipment affects these items, and we hope to have them in by the next iteration.

Fourthly, there is the AC calculator. I think it is pretty accurate for a first pass, although sadly, because you can only add armor and no other type of equipment, it won't be a true representation of your AC. As we add more equipment types, it will get better.

Fifthly, speaking of the calculator, it hasn't been tested as thoroughly as I'd have liked. Given the number of permutations possible, doing so would be a pretty big task, so I'm going to leave the final testing up to you guys. If you see any weird stuff, let me know about it. I already know about a few quirks in the calculator that need to be worked out, but never assume I know about something until you tell me. If I don't know about it, I can't fix it!

Sixthly, the calculator is only calculating AC at the moment. The purpose of this screen is to calculate a variety of things (this is why "Armor Class" has a radiobutton next to it, even though there is nothing else to select, I anticipate in the future, there WILL be more selections). If you have suggestions on other types of calculations that could be added, let me know.

Finally, one last thing about equipment. At the moment, you can do things you shouldn't be able to do, like add docents to your Drow, or platemail to your Warforged, or create an armor that would be level restricted to 16 or so, things like that. I'll try to add some sanity checks as the equipment portion of the planner matures. Keep in mind it's a first pass, and it relies on you quite a bit to keep things honest. Just like the planner itself wasn't perfect at 1.00, equipment in 2.00 isn't going to be perfect either. We'll also be adding equipment icons that appear in the equipment panels (just like they do in game) and also in the scrollbox lists, almost certainly with the next version. They didn't make it into this version because quite honestly I'm exhausted and need to take a couple of days off, hehe.

If you have suggestions and/or bugs to report, please don't hesitate to contact me. Either post in this thread, or PM me, or contact me via the instructions in the "About" box of the planner. I will do my very best to help out with problems, and always appreciate feedback.

Ron

[Tanka]

Very nice, Ron! An incredible upgrade to an incredible tool!

Thanks for all your hard work!

[Ron]

Thanks Tanka, I'm glad the majority of the work is done, hehe. Adding in the rest of the equipment will be really quite trivial in comparison

I decided it was uncool to not have the tutorial finished, so I went ahead and finished it this morning. Although I'd like to add a few screenshot graphics to it, it is otherwise complete. I hope it is of some help for those new to the planner.

[Sefuss]

Though I personally don't use it, what you do with this is awesome. My buddy was just talking to me about downloading it and trying it out. You are a credit to the ddo players, and I hope good karma rewards you accordingly. Keep up the good work

[FoeHammer]

Thanks for all your 'extra credit' work.

I relied heavily on the character planner when I first started playing and still use it today to bounce ideas!

/cheers

[Newtons_Apple]

I may get cube reprimanded for saying this, but DAMN!

[winsom]

Take 1st level as Rogue then 2nd level as Bard.
The skill planner does not show Perform as a trainable skill for either class.

Thanks for coming out with Version 2

[Ron]

Originally Posted by winsom

Take 1st level as Rogue then 2nd level as Bard.
The skill planner does not show Perform as a trainable skill for either class.

Hmmm, I can't reproduce that. I get it coming up okay. Are you sure you're looking in the list of class skills (you haven't by any chance gone too far down the list and are looking at cross-class skills, are you?).

I may need you to send me a copy of your character save file to try to reproduce it.

[prometheus303]

Originally Posted by winsom

Take 1st level as Rogue then 2nd level as Bard.
The skill planner does not show Perform as a trainable skill for either class.

Thanks for coming out with Version 2

i was just about to comment on this...what is happening to me is that Preform is trainable for rogue at first level. I am not having the same problem of not being able to rasie perform though. I was designing a bard/rogue and noticed that the planner definately let me take perform with only having 1 level in rogue and none in bard.

With that said...you know i've been a huge fan of your work, and this edition is outstanding as well. Looking forward to teh complete package...that is if turbine quits changing stuff on you so you can keep up... :P

great work ron

[Tanka]

In the Cleric spells section, Resist and Protection from Energy spells description is that of Resist and Protection: Acid.

Just thought you might want to change it to describe the new way those spells are selected.

[Tenkari_Rozahas]

nice, though with the new enhancement system around the corner... your going to have fun with all those changes, along with more equipment.

[Ron]

Originally Posted by prometheus303

i was just about to comment on this...what is happening to me is that Preform is trainable for rogue at first level. I am not having the same problem of not being able to rasie perform though. I was designing a bard/rogue and noticed that the planner definately let me take perform with only having 1 level in rogue and none in bard.

LOL, how are you guys doing that?? I cannot reproduce that one either. Clearly something odd is going on with that skill. It's really weird how you guys can get it to be there when it shouldn't, or not come up at all, when it seems to work just fine here. I'll look at it and see if I can figure it out.

I don't suppose you can give me step-by-step directions on how you get it to malfunction? Does it happen consistantly?

Thanks for letting me know about the protection/resist spells, Tanka, I'll fix em for the next version.

[Odysses]

Just wanted to say thanks for such an incredible tool too. Your planner has helped me out alot. Kudos to all your hard work

[Craggath]

Another minor issue,

Resist Energy for Clerics is listed as a level 1 spell, not level 2 as it's supposed to be.

Edit: in the spell text file it's labeled as a level 2 spell, so I have no idea what's causing this.

Edit again: Fixed it! even though the Spellfile.txt said

SPELLNAME: Resist Energy;
DESCRIPTION: Gives an ally limited protection from acid damage, reducing acid damage taken by 10. The damage reduction increases to 20 at caster level 7.;
CLASSLIST: Paladin, Cleric, Ranger, Wizard, Sorcerer;
LEVEL: 2, 2, 1, 2, 2;
ICON: ResistEnergySpell;

the program reads the classes in a specific order, regardless of how they are typed in. It is paladin, ranger, cleric, etc. so the program read it as a level 2 spell for rangers and a level 1 spell for clerics because the it assumes the ranger value comes first. To fix it on your program simply do this:

LEVEL: 2, 1, 2, 2, 2;

problem solved!

[Ron]

Originally Posted by Craggath

Resist Energy for Clerics is listed as a level 1 spell, not level 2 as it's supposed to be.

Edit: in the spell text file it's labeled as a level 2 spell, so I have no idea what's causing this.

Edit again: Fixed it! even though the Spellfile.txt said

SPELLNAME: Resist Energy;
DESCRIPTION: Gives an ally limited protection from acid damage, reducing acid damage taken by 10. The damage reduction increases to 20 at caster level 7.;
CLASSLIST: Paladin, Cleric, Ranger, Wizard, Sorcerer;
LEVEL: 2, 2, 1, 2, 2;
ICON: ResistEnergySpell;

the program reads the classes in a specific order, regardless of how they are typed in. It is paladin, ranger, cleric, etc. so the program read it as a level 2 spell for rangers and a level 1 spell for clerics because the it assumes the ranger value comes first. To fix it on your program simply do this:

LEVEL: 2, 1, 2, 2, 2;

problem solved!

Wow, thanks for doing the detective work for me! Nice job.

I'm a bit disturbed by what you've found though. Those class lists are not there just for looks, they SHOULD be controlling what classes get what spells and when. They ought not be order dependent. If the parser is somehow swapping ranger and cleric in that list, it suggests there's a more serious underlying bug in there somewhere.

I'll have to check out that parser and see what's going on. I haven't looked at the spell file loading parser in some time, so I don't remember what it's doing with that particular keyword. I suppose it's possible I coded it with an order dependence, and the fix is as simple as you've discovered. That would certainly be the easiest scenario, hehe.

Still trying to figure out what's going on with the perform skill. I simply cannot get it to malfunction at all. I'm guessing it has something to do with the interaction between the Rogue and Bard classes specifically, since those are the two special case classes with regards to skills (and both of you mentioned those two classes). I'm working on it....

[prometheus303]

Originally Posted by Ron

LOL, how are you guys doing that?? I cannot reproduce that one either. Clearly something odd is going on with that skill. It's really weird how you guys can get it to be there when it shouldn't, or not come up at all, when it seems to work just fine here. I'll look at it and see if I can figure it out.

I don't suppose you can give me step-by-step directions on how you get it to malfunction? Does it happen consistantly?

Thanks for letting me know about the protection/resist spells, Tanka, I'll fix em for the next version.

Ok this is what i do...and its really not that big of a deal i guess...but if you take a level of rogue as your first level, then select bard as your second level...then go back to your level one skills you will see preform listed as a trainable skill. It has worked the last three times i've opened the character generator.

It will charge you a skill point to raise the skill .5 ranks like its a cross skill so i'm assuming somewhere in the code it doesnt matter when you take a class you get access to those skills for all levels. if you arent playing attention and go back to change skills you'll be able to train skills that wouldnt be open to you. Just tested it for rogue as well..i took my first 8 levels as fighter then level 9 as rogue, went back to my first level skills and was able to train in disable and open locks.

hope that helps...

[Dariuss]

Thanks for the new features Ron!

I've bee nlooking forward to having equipment in this thing since day 1. It's an awesome tool, and I really appreciate the work you put into it.

Cheers!

[Ron]

Originally Posted by prometheus303

Ok this is what i do...and its really not that big of a deal i guess...but if you take a level of rogue as your first level, then select bard as your second level...then go back to your level one skills you will see preform listed as a trainable skill. It has worked the last three times i've opened the character generator.

AHA! Yes, that's a huge help. I can reproduce that one, which means I can fix it. Cool, thanks a ton prometheus,

[Ziggy]

thanks for the work ron. ill give this a go soon.

[Hendrik]

Once again Ron, you do the community proud with your hard work!

Keep it up!!!