Character Builder Lite

[EllisDee37]

Side note: I've been using it for a couple of months now, and really like your builder. One issue I found though, I was planning on TRing one of my characters who has a +5 Supreme Tome into a human bard. I decided he doesn't really need all that many skillpoints for what I want to do with him, so I dump-statted INT for a starting stat of 8. At level 3, it's suddenly trying to give me an extra skill point, like it gave +2 INT instead of +1; the +2, obviously, shouldn't come until L7. The rest of it is correct (I don't get another extra point until the +4 kicks in at L15).

A similar thing happens with INT 9 - it gives you an extra point at first level instead of 3rd, but is correct from 3rd on. A starting base of 10 or higher seems to work correctly; it just seems to have issues with INT penalties (the same pattern follows for Horcs with 6 or 7 INT - You get the extra skill point at L3 or L1, rather than L7 & L3, respectively).

I didn't even notice this until I took L3 and tried to put the extra point somewhere and didn't have a point *to* put in! Right now I'm compensating by just not putting in one point at levels 3, 4, 5, or 6, but thought you might want to look at this...

Hmmm. That sounds like it could be a bug; the skill penalty issue has been brought up before as a bug but when I looked into it it appeared to be correct, at least to the best of my knowledge.

I'll PM you my email address so you can send me the build file and then help me figure out how it should work compared to how it's currently working.

[EllisDee37]

Progress report for 1.1:

I was delayed a week by crystal cove, where I ended up grinding 9,000 greens to max a full set of tier 3 bucklers for my (recently rolled up) bard trapper. That took up all the time I had for DDO, either playing or coding the builder.

The new plan for 1.1 is to enhance warlocks a bit (add pact spells and pact alignment restrictions) as well as add descriptions+wiki links for all feats, enhancements, destinies and spells. Plus any lingering bug fixes, like that skill issue just brought up, as well as the half-elf enhancements that cost 0 AP.

I've decided to push back the enhancement leveling guide and feat swaps/alternate feats for a later update. (Likely 1.2.) Hopefully 1.1 will be ready for release by the end of the month, which is just over two weeks away. The slowest part isn't crawling wiki for the descriptions, which is actually maybe a day's worth of work per section. The real work is adding the ability for the planner to recreate the txt data files from scratch so that description updates can be automated.

The two upsides for this will be a further layer of data integrity checks for the data files, but also I could conceivably (in a future release) add data screens to allow end users to make changes to their data files inside the program itself, without having to manually open txt files in notepad.

[EllisDee37]

A similar thing happens with INT 9

Found the issue, which is with my Mod calculation:

Mod = (Stat - 10) \ 2

Integer division (\) returns an integer by throwing away the decimal, which works great if (Stat - 10) is even, zero or positive but fails if it's both negative and odd. Specifically, it will return the wrong answer if Stat = 9 or 7. This is now corrected for the next release.

[EllisDee37]

Hopefully 1.1 will be ready for release by the end of the month

It ended up being more work than I anticipated. Hopefully I'll have it ready in another week, targeting next weekend.

In the meantime, anyone have any issues with Windows 10 running the builder?

[DemonMage]

In the meantime, anyone have any issues with Windows 10 running the builder?

Haven't spent much time with it, but I did a quick run through of a build with no issues.

[UurlockYgmeov]

Haven't spent much time with it, but I did a quick run through of a build with no issues.

none. and have been using winX for months. Not a clean install - but an upgrade install.

[EllisDee37]

Venting a bit; you can ignore this:

Enhancements, Destinies, and Spells are all finished, with both descriptions and wiki links. They were all a relative breeze, and can be refreshed automatically by me each release without doing any manual work. I just re-crawl wiki for 6 minutes and I'm done. (72 page queries averaging one every 5 seconds.)

Feats, OTOH, are driving me up a wall. First is the issue that I consolidated many feats into single selector feats, like skill focus and deity feats, which makes those impossible to crawl wiki for descriptions. Fine, no problem, I can handle those manually. But so many feats have non-standard or confusing wiki pages from the perspective of writing a crawler routine that I bailed altogether and am now manually copy & pasting descriptions for all feats. Ugh, I hate it.

But in for a penny in for a pound, a mere 181 total feats is a pittance compared to the 2,189 enhancements, destinies and spells whose descriptions I crawled, so in the grand scheme of things it's not too bad. But still, it's super aggravating. Also I figure feat descriptions won't change much; not nearly as much as, say, enhancements.

Anyway, that's what I'll be doing for the next several days and why 1.1 is delayed until next weekend. (~30 feats done so far, ~150 to go...)

[Saekee]

Venting a bit; you can ignore this:

Enhancements, Destinies, and Spells are all finished, with both descriptions and wiki links. They were all a relative breeze, and can be refreshed automatically by me each release without doing any manual work. I just re-crawl wiki for 6 minutes and I'm done. (72 page queries averaging one every 5 seconds.)

Feats, OTOH, are driving me up a wall. First is the issue that I consolidated many feats into single selector feats, like skill focus and deity feats, which makes those impossible to crawl wiki for descriptions. Fine, no problem, I can handle those manually. But so many feats have non-standard or confusing wiki pages from the perspective of writing a crawler routine that I bailed altogether and am now manually copy & pasting descriptions for all feats. Ugh, I hate it.

But in for a penny in for a pound, a mere 181 total feats is a pittance compared to the 2,189 enhancements, destinies and spells whose descriptions I crawled, so in the grand scheme of things it's not too bad. But still, it's super aggravating. Also I figure feat descriptions won't change much; not nearly as much as, say, enhancements.

Anyway, that's what I'll be doing for the next several days and why 1.1 is delayed until next weekend. (~30 feats done so far, ~150 to go...)

Hi Ellisdee, thx for all your work. I think there is no need to put in feat descriptions. There are a limited number that are overused. I think the only thing needed for feat descriptions (in terms of building characters) are their prereqs like BAB etc.
Not sure if this helps though...

[EllisDee37]

Well, it would annoy me to not have any description on feats, but splitting the difference and going with very brief descriptions seems like a reasonable compromise. Especially since the default Details box for feats is so small compared to the other screens. It's expandable at the cost of hiding the filter box, but the filter box is the best part of the feats screen.

Proof of concept, here's what the description for Augment Summoning was this morning, which is a direct copy of the wiki description:

Your summoned creatures, charmed minions, and hirelings have +4 to all ability scores, increased health (amount equal to what the the toughness feat would grant - Total Hitdice +2), and increased fortification (+50%).
This includes Defender/Companion series (Iron, Mithral, Adamantine, Steel), Summon Monster 1-9, Nature's Ally 1-9, Pale Master skeletons, Drow Scorpion Faith, Charmed minions, Dominated minions, Hirelings, but not Hireling Summons Eg. A hireling sorcerer using Summon Monster I, the celestial dog would not be augmented.
Charmed or Dominated minions with Augment Summoning will also receive a bonus to saves from the ability score increase to escape the effect, but will lose bonuses from Augment Summoning once they do and can be re-Charmed or re-Dominated.

Here's what it is now:

Summons, hirelings, pets and charmed minions have +4 to all ability scores, increased HP, and +50% fortification.

The description box doesn't change on the feats screen compared to what it is in the current version you guys have, so you can picture how poorly the former would fit compared to the latter. And of course any prereqs get stuffed in after the description.

The details box for enhancements and destinies is much larger now, and I pulled several items (ranks, cost, spent in tree) out of the details box to ease the overcrowding issue. It works pretty well even with the occasional overly verbose wiki description. Sample screenshot:


image search

EDIT: I also added "build levels" to the level requirements. In the above screenshot, if you scrolled down you would see:

Level Requirements:
- 6 class levels
- 10 build levels

Because the build doesn't take its 6th fighter level until level 10.

[Failedlegend]

I actually prefer the shortened version of the text...I mean I want the wiki to have as many obscure details bugs and notes as possible but when im using the builder I do t really need that...your builder is alot about trimming the fat so I not only vote yes but I encourage shortened descriptions, keep up the great work LSD

[DemonMage]

Is there a way to setup custom Export rules? The Vault output is kind of fine for our forums, but it includes font tags which we don't support. And having it wrap the whole thing in [pre] tags for preserving whitespace would be nice. I can manually strip the font tags and add pre fairly easy, but it would be nice to just be able to copy/paste!

[EllisDee37]

Is there a way to setup custom Export rules? The Vault output is kind of fine for our forums, but it includes font tags which we don't support. And having it wrap the whole thing in [pre] tags for preserving whitespace would be nice. I can manually strip the font tags and add pre fairly easy, but it would be nice to just be able to copy/paste!

Almost certainly, but let me see if I understand fully first. Sending you a PM.

[EllisDee37]

Is there a way to setup custom Export rules?

I have a vision for how I want to set this up for you, and also at the same time add a "code tags" version for those who prefer having build outputs bound into boxes. (Which I kind of like; unbongwah does this.)

Unfortunately, the way I want to do it will be more work than I'm willing to put in for 1.1, which is very close to ready for release. I don't want to delay 1.1 for another couple days as I set up custom output style templates, which I'm actually pretty excited to do. So this change will be pushed back to the next release, which may well be 1.1.1 in very short order if people uncover bugs I didn't find in my testing.

[EllisDee37]

Version 1.1 is up. (Finally!) I removed the separate data download for this update because the data files aren't compatible with previous versions.

Note on descriptions: When I crawl Enhancement and Destiny descriptions, I do NOT match up ability names. Whatever is listed first in wiki gets stuffed into the first ability in the builder, second to second, etc... If you run across mismatched descriptions, please let me know so I can correct wiki (or the planner) to reflect the proper in-game tree order.

Descriptions are the big splash but from a coding perspective were relatively minor. The big change in terms of coding was updating mouse behavior. Let me know if you run across any issues.

Warlock pact spells should be safely added to the end of your level-based spell lists without impacting existing builds. Warlock alignment reqs are coded as "soft reqs", similar to feat prereqs, meaning if you pick an incompatible pact for your alignment it will just show it as an error state. Existing builds should automatically detect alignment errors.

Feat re-ordering is a pretty cool feature. I've wanted to add that for a while now.

As always, any feedback, suggestions, feature requests and bug reports welcome. Not sure when I'll start working on the next version (including output style templates) but barring any critical bugs, probably not for at least a week.

Version 1.1:

• Feats, Spells, Enhancements and Destinies
  • Added descriptions (pulled from wiki) and wiki links for all abilities
  • Updated mouse behavior:
    • Drag now starts on MouseMove instead of MouseDown
    • Double-clicking list items now adds them to the first available slot (drag still works)
    • Double-clicking slots clears them (right-click still works)
    • Dragging a slot back to the list also clears it
    • Clicking a slot to view descriptions highlights the selected slot
      
      • Clicking it again deselects the slot and clears the details box
    • Clicking on the background of a form deselects chosen list/slot items and clears details
• Warlock
  • Added Pact alignment reqs
  • Added Pact spells
• Skills
  • Fixed error with skill point calculation when int is either 9 or 7 (including tome+levelups)
• Feats
  • You can now re-order feats by dragging
  • "Feats" list header now shows slot filter (eg: "Destiny 28")
  • Granted feats are now clickable to view details
  • Least Dragonmark can now only be taken once
  • Natural Fighting can now only be taken up to three times
  • Corrected spelling for Eschew Materials (was listed as singular)
• Spells
  • Added Mass Restoration to cleric/fvs spell books (level 7 spell)
  • Fixed spelling errors in class spells (existing builds aren't corrected, but won't throw errors)
    
    • Mass Deathward is now Mass Death Ward (Death Ward is two words)
    • Heroes' Feats is now Heroes' Feast (Feats? heh)
    • Protection From Evil is now Protection from Evil (lowercase "from")
• Enhancements
  • Split Eldritch Knight tree into two mutually exclusive trees for wizard and sorcerer. (Existing builds that use the Eldritch Knight tree will have that tree reset on open.)
  • Half-elf improved dilettante enhancements used to cost 0 AP, now 2 AP, but I don't recall fixing this
  • Fixed Morninglord Tier 2: Blessing of Amaunator (was listed as tier 3)
  • Fixed KotC Tier 1: Divine Light (was listed as a 7th core (!))
  • Fixed Occult Slayer Tier 2: Knockout (was listed as tier 3)
  • Fixed Shadar-kai Core 2: Stat (costs 2 AP, not 1 AP)
• Destinies
  • Increased max fate point limit from 31 to 32 to reflect +3 fate tomes
  • Fixed spelling error for Shiradi Champion (existing builds will have shiradi destiny/twists reset)
• Output
  • When making changes to a build while main form is minimized, mouse cursor no longer stays hourglass
• Colors
  • Note: New colors are added to all *.clr files, but that doesn't apply to you unless you manually import them. So new colors are given "best guess" defaults when you open the planner.
  • Added "Control Link Color", used for wiki links in descriptions. Defaults to Light Blue if your settings match Black.clr, standard Blue for all others
  • Added "Output Dim Color", not currently used. Defaults to a dark gray if your settings match Tan.clr, html Silver for all others

[EllisDee37]

Note that existing builds using any of the following trees...

- KotC
- Occult Slayer
- Morninglord
- Shadar-kai

...may now display different enhancements than you originally chose. Verify any builds that use these trees now that the underlying tree data has changed for them.

[UurlockYgmeov]

looking good!

[EllisDee37]

I've run into a couple minor bugs with version 1.1, nothing build-breaking but that I'd like to fix.

More importantly, despite the feats screen functioning exactly as I intended it, after putting together several builds with it I don't think my vision was a good one. Specifically, how when you choose a feat (either by dragging or double-clicking) the slot where you place it becomes highlighted, which in turn filters the feat list to only feats that go in that slot.

That's not a particularly logical way to behave in terms of actually using the thing, and I find it confusing and cumbersome. Which is bad considering I wrote the friggin' thing. So look for a release that changes that behavior in the near future.

[N-0cturn]

First Thanks for your work. I really like the Character Builder.

However when I used it for the first time it crashed twice and I had to start over.

Error message: "Run-time error '9': Subscript out of Range"

This seems to happen when I click on a field where an enhancement or destiny ability can be dragged to. This field is only displayed the first time before I select the first enhancement. Afterwards its not visible until I drag the enhancement/destiny ability.

This can be easily avoided but as a first time user I tend to click around to see how things work and it was quite frustrating to lose all the previous work.

It would be great if this field could also be hidden.

EDIT: here are some screens
https://drive.google.com/folderview?...1U&usp=sharing

[EllisDee37]

This can be easily avoided but as a first time user I tend to click around to see how things work and it was quite frustrating to lose all the previous work.

Apologies for the hassle; that's super annoying, I know.

Very sloppy bug, easy to fix. I'll get a fix wrapped into an update by early next week.

It would be great if this field could also be hidden.

It's there to provide a visual cue that that's where you drag stuff to. I'll play around with removing it to see how it looks.

[EllisDee37]

Had a "Eureka!" moment when I woke up this morning regarding errors crashing the builder and losing all your work.

I never intended to add error handling because VB6 does it so poorly; you have to add it to every event procedure manually, which would be hundreds and hundreds of functions. Way too many to be manageable. The downside is that any runtime error crashes the whole program.

What I realized this morning is that I could easily mimic Microsoft Word: Save a backup copy as you go. Just now finished adding in logic to create a backup copy of the current build periodically: when you switch screens, tabs, or make a navigation choice using a dropdown (ie: enhancement/Destiny tree selection, spell class/level selection.)

This global "current backup" file is named Backup.bld and is saved in the root folder, where the exe is. It's deleted when the program exits properly, meaning it will be left there if you crash for any reason. Next time you start up the builder, if it's there it will be automatically loaded.

I should have had this functionality in there from the very beginning, but it never even occurred to me until just now.