Character Planner - Series 3.xx

[yanaga132]

I may or may not have an old edition but I'm just throwing this out there, Is there an option for the tower shields to be made out of mithral in the planner? And is there items such as battle armor/shield or skirmish armor?

Sorry if this should go elsewhere, I'm new to these forums. As in, this is my first post new.

[Olds-cool]

Firstly, thank you again for all you do. I keep a listing of my 6 toons and their past lives builds with full leveling details on my guild's forum pages so I can quickly jump to any of them for reference while gaming, leveling, or coming up with new builds.

I'm excited for the update if for no other reason than to just update the changes that have happened in heroic levels. Epic stuff will be nice too as I'm sure it will help me understand what people are doing from 20-25 with EDs and epic feats.

My main area of interest though, is the customizable output from builds. I want to ad a +1 to the concept that BBCode isn't the only code being used. We're on an archaic forums system in my guild (I'm the guy looking into upgrading us to something made within the past 5 years) and as it stands only competent cut-n-pasters can even use your output in our forums without jumping through hoops. In fact, our old guild leader wrote a piece of code that takes the clipboard (from a copy to clip in your planner) and re-formats it to work with the codes our 10+ year old forums use.

If you get to the point where you add popular templates I'd suggest a good place to start would be templates that produce a consistent look based on your default output for several of the more popular forums systems out there (e.g. phpBB, myBB, vBulletin, etc.) so that people coming from these different systems can look at those templates to modify them as they see fit.

Don't get me wrong, having psuedo code that your program then "compiles" into useable output would be awesome and powerful, but your average user will do much better having a template that works that they can manipulate to their tastes.

If you need testers when you get to the output stuff I'd be happy to help make these templates by taking your intended output and jumping onto a variety of forums sites and matching the output for you to incorporate into your template system.

Anyhow, kudos to you and your team on probably the most used 3rd part product (after shroud solvers ~:} ) for DDO!

-Olds

[Ron]

Release candidate (??) output test

Character Plan by DDO Character Planner Version 03.14.02
DDO Character Planner Home Page

Jherdon Bard
Level 25 True Neutral Human Male
(20 Bard) 
Hit Points: 265
Spell Points: 1619 
BAB: 15\15\20\25\25
Fortitude: 9
Reflex: 11
Will: 11

                  Starting          Feat/Enhancement
Abilities        Base Stats          Modified Stats
(34 Point)       (Level 1)             (Level 25)
Strength             14                    14
Dexterity             8                     8
Constitution         16                    16
Intelligence         10                    10
Wisdom                8                     8
Charisma             18                    32

                  Starting          Feat/Enhancement
                 Base Skills         Modified Skills
Skills           (Level 1)            (Level 25)
Balance              -1                     4
Bluff                 4                    24
Concentration         7                    46
Diplomacy             8                    39
Disable Device        n/a                   n/a
Haggle                4                    16
Heal                 -1                     8
Hide                  3                    27
Intimidate            4                    16
Jump                  2                    15
Listen                3                    35
Move Silently         3                    29
Open Lock            n/a                    8
Perform               8                    43
Repair                0                     5
Search                0                     5
Spot                 -1                     4
Swim                  2                     7
Tumble               n/a                   12
Use Magic Device      8                    1.43845e+008

Level 1 (Bard)
Feat: (Past Life) Past Life: Paladin
Feat: (Human Bonus) Spell Focus: Enchantment
Feat: (Selected) Spell Penetration
Enhancement: Bard Extra Song I
Enhancement: Improved Concentration I
Enhancement: Improved Move Silently I
Enhancement: Improved Perform I


Level 2 (Bard)
Enhancement: Bard Inspired Damage I
Enhancement: Bard Lingering Song I
Enhancement: Bard Song Magic I
Enhancement: Bard Energy of the Music I


Level 3 (Bard)
Feat: (Selected) Greater Spell Focus: Enchantment
Enhancement: Bard Inspired Attack I
Enhancement: Bard Lyric of Song I


Level 4 (Bard)
Enhancement: Bard Extra Song II
Enhancement: Improved Concentration II
Enhancement: Improved Move Silently II
Enhancement: Improved Perform II


Level 5 (Bard)
Enhancement: Bard Song Magic II
Enhancement: Bard Improved Spell Penetration I


Level 6 (Bard)
Feat: (Selected) Extend Spell
Enhancement: Bard Lingering Song II
Enhancement: Bard Energy of the Music II


Level 7 (Bard)
Enhancement: Bard Extra Song III


Level 8 (Bard)
Enhancement: Bard Inspired Attack II
Enhancement: Improved Concentration III


Level 9 (Bard)
Feat: (Selected) Mental Toughness
Enhancement: Bard Inspired Damage II
Enhancement: Improved Perform III


Level 10 (Bard)
Enhancement: Bard Extra Song IV


Level 11 (Bard)
Enhancement: Bard Lingering Song III
Enhancement: Bard Music of Makers


Level 12 (Bard)
Feat: (Selected) Heighten Spell
Enhancement: Bard Inspired Damage III
Enhancement: Improved Perform IV


Level 13 (Bard)
Enhancement: Bard Music of the Dead
Enhancement: Bard Lyric of Song II


Level 14 (Bard)
Enhancement: Bard Lingering Song IV


Level 15 (Bard)
Feat: (Selected) Greater Spell Penetration
Enhancement: Bard Spellsinger I


Level 16 (Bard)
Enhancement: Bard Song Magic III


Level 17 (Bard)
Enhancement: Bard Improved Spell Penetration II


Level 18 (Bard)
Feat: (Selected) Improved Mental Toughness
Enhancement: Bard Spellsinger II
Enhancement: Bard Energy of the Music III


Level 19 (Bard)
Enhancement: Bard Charisma I


Level 20 (Bard)
Enhancement: Bard Musical Prodigy
Enhancement: Bard Charisma II


Level 21 (Bard)
Feat: (Selected) Epic Mental Toughness


Level 22 (Bard)


Level 23 (Bard)


Level 24 (Bard)
Feat: (Selected) Epic Spell Focus: Enchantment


Level 25 (Bard)

EDIT: Nope. Dammit, what the hell is wrong with UMD? Grrr. Still stuff to fix, I see....

[Ron]

I may or may not have an old edition but I'm just throwing this out there, Is there an option for the tower shields to be made out of mithral in the planner? And is there items such as battle armor/shield or skirmish armor?

Sorry if this should go elsewhere, I'm new to these forums. As in, this is my first post new.

Hey, welcome to the forums yanaga!

To be honest, I haven't a clue. Probably not. I think the equipment part of the planner is very much in need of an update. We lost our equipment guru a while ago, and no one has been keeping up with it. I'm not an equipment person, at all.

Once I get the four items on my update list in some sort of completion state, perhaps I will go back and take a swipe at the equipment stuff, if we don't get a new team member to look at it earlier than that.

My main area of interest though, is the customizable output from builds. I want to ad a +1 to the concept that BBCode isn't the only code being used. We're on an archaic forums system in my guild (I'm the guy looking into upgrading us to something made within the past 5 years) and as it stands only competent cut-n-pasters can even use your output in our forums without jumping through hoops. In fact, our old guild leader wrote a piece of code that takes the clipboard (from a copy to clip in your planner) and re-formats it to work with the codes our 10+ year old forums use.

If you get to the point where you add popular templates I'd suggest a good place to start would be templates that produce a consistent look based on your default output for several of the more popular forums systems out there (e.g. phpBB, myBB, vBulletin, etc.) so that people coming from these different systems can look at those templates to modify them as they see fit.

What I can try to do is provide commands for different formatting codes. I don't want people to be typing in the BBCode stuff (or whatever format) directly, if it can be helped. But I might be able to allow you to throw in some #defines at the start, or something like that.

I hear what you guys are saying. I'll definitely put in some functionality such that you can define what the output codes end up being for any given command (that produces output).

If you need testers when you get to the output stuff I'd be happy to help make these templates by taking your intended output and jumping onto a variety of forums sites and matching the output for you to incorporate into your template system.

My plan at the moment is to only design two, built for the DDO boards (the two that are currently possible as defaults in the planner), but to give you guys the tools to design more. It's much more efficient for you to do it, where you have access to the forums, than it is for me to try to put them together for you. Once you have a template file you can use, you can then pass that file out to your guild or whoever uses that kind of forum board. Or even back to me to be included as one of the planners built in template types.

[Olds-cool]

What I can try to do is provide commands for different formatting codes. I don't want people to be typing in the BBCode stuff (or whatever format) directly, if it can be helped. But I might be able to allow you to throw in some #defines at the start, or something like that.

Defines would be awesome assuming they would cover the gamut of color, typeface (bold/ital/underline), preformat, etc. With these available and your base template I'd think I could come up with templates for all major systems.

You've got PM - I'm applying to join the army

-Olds

[Missing_Minds]

Hmmm, a donate button for my other project is something I would consider (Gods know we need a budget for that poor game, heh). Sort of like a home-grown kickstarter. But I won't connect it to the planner in any way. If people wanted to donate because of the planner work I've done, that would be fine, but I don't want people thinking they need to donate to support the planner, if that makes sense.

I'll consider that (and look into it, I'm not sure what the tax implications are).

Do let us know what you decide. And yeah, I'd be a bit afraid of tax implications as well. It may be safer for your personal finances to get a business license or whatever that takes and do so under that.

[Ron]

You've got PM - I'm applying to join the army

Hehe, cool! Welcome aboard!

Give me a couple of hours, I have to do some of my actual job work (boo). But I'll get started putting you into the system when I get to a stopping point with that.

[Matuse]

Use Magic Device 8 1.43845e+008

Woohoo, no-fail on level 500 scrolls!

Seems like it would be easier to make 21-25 like they are in-game...generic with no class label. Since every level for every character is the same, shouldn't they all be the same?

[Ron]

Woohoo, no-fail on level 500 scrolls!

Seems like it would be easier to make 21-25 like they are in-game...generic with no class label. Since every level for every character is the same, shouldn't they all be the same?

I actually started to do that, but it turned out to be much much more difficult that way. The planner code REALLY didn't like having an EPIC class (I was changing TONS of stuff just to get the planner not to crash on it, and it kept getting worse and worse, heh. The root cause of the problem was there was no data for levels 1-20 for an EPIC class). So instead I've just added a 21-25 into each of the individual classes. Internally, the planner considers those levels the same as whatever your level 20 is. But for output, I'm programming it to show them as EPIC.

[Ron]

Sorry guys, I'd hoped to have this out last week, but it didn't happen. I keep finding lots of bugs. I'm trying to get them all (or as many as I can find) before this goes out. I think I'm almost done. Just have to fix a couple of things on the printout, and figure out what the heck is wrong with Epic Skills feat (which steadfastly refuses to go into your feats list at 21 no matter how many times I tell it to do so).

It should be soon. I'm getting there.

[Fedora]

Take your time Ron. We appreciate all your work on this. I'm guessing there'd be tenfold more gimped-up builds out there without your Character Planner.

[Meetch1972]

Take your time Ron. We appreciate all your work on this. I'm guessing there'd be tenfold more gimped-up builds out there without your Character Planner.

And a few of them mine.

Ron, we can wait. We may not want to, but we can and must.

Besides, it'll be at least another couple of months before I have to start planning my main's next incarnation... as far as I'm concerned, you've got til then.

[Ron]

I put up a release candidate build on our internal server yesterday for the team to look at to see if they could find any bugs I missed. So far, there have been no reports. I don't know if that means there are no bugs or if no one is looking at it

I presume, unless something major comes to light, that we will release in the next couple of days (this weekend?).

I haven't looked at any bug reports you guys sent in. At all. I've been completely focused on getting the new levels in. So I'm not sure on what still needs fixing. I'll try to look at those in the time that's left.

The next build will be the printout overhaul. If you guys have formatting thoughts, let me know. It's going to be completely redone, from scratch. So if you want to lobby for any particular format, now's the time.

[Ron]

Hi Ron and team!

I seem to have stumbled upon a bug that's crashing the program.

Hey Aganthor,

I'm trying to track this one down. Do you have an updated version of this build? I'm getting all sorts of build errors when I load it with the current version of the planner, and it's complicating things trying to track down the crash bug. I'm about 95% sure your problem is something to do with your equipment, but I can't really nail it down because of the build issues.

[yanaga132]

Hey, welcome to the forums yanaga!

To be honest, I haven't a clue. Probably not. I think the equipment part of the planner is very much in need of an update. We lost our equipment guru a while ago, and no one has been keeping up with it. I'm not an equipment person, at all.

Once I get the four items on my update list in some sort of completion state, perhaps I will go back and take a swipe at the equipment stuff, if we don't get a new team member to look at it earlier than that.


What I can try to do is provide commands for different formatting codes. I don't want people to be typing in the BBCode stuff (or whatever format) directly, if it can be helped. But I might be able to allow you to throw in some #defines at the start, or something like that.

I hear what you guys are saying. I'll definitely put in some functionality such that you can define what the output codes end up being for any given command (that produces output).


My plan at the moment is to only design two, built for the DDO boards (the two that are currently possible as defaults in the planner), but to give you guys the tools to design more. It's much more efficient for you to do it, where you have access to the forums, than it is for me to try to put them together for you. Once you have a template file you can use, you can then pass that file out to your guild or whoever uses that kind of forum board. Or even back to me to be included as one of the planners built in template types.

Thank you for the welcome! I was just worried that I was doing something wrong, or had an old version, so hearing that cleared up some of my doubts. Your work is frankly extremely good. I appreciate the effort you are putting into this, as this doesn't seem to be a simple project.

[Yehediah]

Simplifying the data for forum posting is very helpful.

"Feat/Enhancement Modified" Stats and Skills are not always that useful. Maybe more useful on Abilities than Skills.

I'd really like simplify skills - just show ones that points are put into at level-ups and only show the final base for each. That's often all we look for and many are just kept maxed each level up. I don't really see a need for starting or modified skill columns.

Level Up class order is not that helpful - though knowing which abilities those level up points are put into is nice, but likely is seen in the final stats - often, all increases are put into the same stat, though not always, so I'm not sure if that can be further simplified.

Simplifying Enhancements would be nice, but not sure if it's that easy. I'd rather just see a list of enhancements and only showing the last one in a particular chain - Barbarian Toughness III instead of showing all 3. But, that's probably a pain to do.

PS: I've done some spreadsheets and coding for game stuff before - it's time consuming and a LOT of free work! So, I do want to end by applauding you on this - it IS a great app!

[Lauraliane]

Level Up class order is not that helpful!

I don't agree on that one, level up class order is extremely useful, for some builds not taking the different classes levels in the right order can make or break them.

[Missing_Minds]

I don't agree on that one, level up class order is extremely useful, for some builds not taking the different classes levels in the right order can make or break them.

Because of this, it is externally necessary to have that data.

[Ron]

Because of this, it is externally necessary to have that data.

It's because people disagree on what is a useful forum output that I've never made everyone happy with the forum output

Thus was born the template system idea. You don't like my default output? Make your own! Once this system is in place, I don't ever want to hear again that the CharGen forum output sucks!

But anyway, remember guys, this system is third on the TODO list. What I'm really interested in ATM is ideas for the printout, which I will start work on as of this weekend. Two different systems, don't get them confused.

[Fedora]

Simplifying the data for forum posting is very helpful.

"Feat/Enhancement Modified" Stats and Skills are not always that useful. Maybe more useful on Abilities than Skills.

I'd really like simplify skills - just show ones that points are put into at level-ups and only show the final base for each. That's often all we look for and many are just kept maxed each level up. I don't really see a need for starting or modified skill columns.

Level Up class order is not that helpful - though knowing which abilities those level up points are put into is nice, but likely is seen in the final stats - often, all increases are put into the same stat, though not always, so I'm not sure if that can be further simplified.

Simplifying Enhancements would be nice, but not sure if it's that easy. I'd rather just see a list of enhancements and only showing the last one in a particular chain - Barbarian Toughness III instead of showing all 3.

Not to be contrary, but I pretty much disagree with all of this. lol

It may be that you use the app just for a snapshot of what a build looks like at the end (that seems to be what your ideas provide) whereas I use it as a leveling guide. Plan it all out, print it, reference it at each level to avoid screwing up something as I usually do.