GURPS Character Sheet (GCS) 3.1.0.1 Released

[Richard Wilkes]

Major internal changes were made in this release. Data files created with earlier versions should still work, but there may be some things that don't come through quite right. For the best results, I recommend recreating your sheets with the new data files.

My original intent was to hold off and make additional changes to allow more of the oddball GURPS rules to be implemented... however, I felt it was more important to get an update out to try and fix the print settings bug that some of you have been experiencing. I did get the new detailed editors functional, although I still want to do better layout on them, and find a way to make the various criteria lists more compact.

Features

• The nameable feature (where you can embed @foo@ in a name to have the user prompted to type some text to replace it when it is placed into a sheet) now extends into most (if not all) text fields of (Dis)Advantages, Skills, Spells & Equipment. In addition, if you use the same name in more than one place, it will only be prompted for once and substituted into all occurrences.
• Removed the ability to directly edit fields within the lists -- you must now bring up the detailed editor to make changes. The detailed editors are now capable of editing all information for the item.
• Provided a separate field for specializations.
• Provided a separate field for notes for all list types.
• New column layout for most items.
• Added a first pass at a user's manual by Brad Rice. Please be sure to give him some feedback.

Bug Fixes

• While I haven't experienced this myself, some users were reporting either a failure to load saved sheets, or the sheet being huge (as if the paper were dozens of feet across). The only thing in common with these folks seemed to be inkjet printers (although I may have missed a laser printer in a bug report). Anyway, I've added code that is much more careful about trying to restore printer settings that the printer originally reported as being able to support -- I suspect these printers were reporting some feature as being available, but would then error out when I tried to restore that setting. Should this happen in this release, the code ignores the error and proceeds with the next setting. This should prevent the huge/no paper size from occuring, as I don't think it was ever getting that far before failing. Those of you experiencing the problem, please send me a quick email to let me know if this fixes your problem, as I have no way to test for it.
• When a file failed to save, there was generally no feedback to the user. Now, if a file fails to save for any reason, a dialog box will be put up to warn the user.

Miscellaneous

• Firearms, High-Tech & Ultra-Tech Armor added, courtesy of Karl Gunnarsson.

[Kalli]

One thing seems to have gone amiss... The Guns skills are now named Guns/TL and thus the skills listed in the data for firearms do not recognize them. Is there any method of bypassing this, such as having the TL number represented by a wildcard? I didn't see any rule regarding firearm defaults between TLs so I'm guessing that's best left out.

I did experience a crash while moving equipment within the equipment list on the character sheet. Haven't been able to replicate that, though.

It's funny, I had gotten used to the earlier interface so now when I double-click an item I expect to start editing it as it stands in the sheet/list. I'm approaching the changes with an open mind though; the new detail editor window seems pretty nice.

[Luther]

Thaaaaaanks!

[Richard Wilkes]

Originally Posted by Kalli

One thing seems to have gone amiss... The Guns skills are now named Guns/TL and thus the skills listed in the data for firearms do not recognize them. Is there any method of bypassing this, such as having the TL number represented by a wildcard? I didn't see any rule regarding firearm defaults between TLs so I'm guessing that's best left out.

The name is still "Guns" (no /TL) -- what you see in the name/description area is a formatted block of text with various things, such as TL and specialization. You're right that the newly add Firearms list wasn't updated for the new format -- I forgot I needed to do that. All of the firearms list the old name as a prereq (a concatenated skill name + specialization), whereas there is now a field for the specialization that needs to be filled in instead. Anyway, I'll get that fixed next time around. If someone wants to do the update and send me the resulting Firearms file, I wouldn't complain. :-)

Originally Posted by Kalli

I did experience a crash while moving equipment within the equipment list on the character sheet. Haven't been able to replicate that, though.

When you do, please let me know the steps you took.

Originally Posted by Kalli

It's funny, I had gotten used to the earlier interface so now when I double-click an item I expect to start editing it as it stands in the sheet/list. I'm approaching the changes with an open mind though; the new detail editor window seems pretty nice.

Yes. I'm partial to direct inline editing. However, that seemed to confound a lot of folks -- especially since there wasn't a clear spot to double-click on to bring up the editor. Anyway, this fits more with what people (on average) expect.

[Kalli]

Originally Posted by Richard Wilkes

The name is still "Guns" (no /TL) -- what you see in the name/description area is a formatted block of text with various things, such as TL and specialization. You're right that the newly add Firearms list wasn't updated for the new format -- I forgot I needed to do that. All of the firearms list the old name as a prereq (a concatenated skill name + specialization), whereas there is now a field for the specialization that needs to be filled in instead. Anyway, I'll get that fixed next time around. If someone wants to do the update and send me the resulting Firearms file, I wouldn't complain. :-)

Oh, ok. In my sleepy state I totally missed the specialization field. Duh! I'll give it a look. Maybe I'll fiddle with the specializations next week.

[knuddel]

some minor glitches i found :
prerequisits of "hide path" and "seek plant" are wrong. first one looks for a spell names "heal plant plant" (one plant to much) the second one has no prereq. at all ...

[knuddel]

also you should take a look on the scroll spell and its prereq (the language thing ...)

and it would be nice if you can sort a spell list by college

[Richard Wilkes]

Originally Posted by knuddel

some minor glitches i found :
prerequisits of "hide path" and "seek plant" are wrong. first one looks for a spell names "heal plant plant" (one plant to much) the second one has no prereq. at all ...

Fixed for the next revision. Thanks for the report.

[Richard Wilkes]

Originally Posted by knuddel

also you should take a look on the scroll spell and its prereq (the language thing ...)

Hmm... Clearly that won't work now that I've moved that info into a notes field. For the time being, you could just put the info back into the name of the advantage (and change the spell to "contains" rather than "is"). I'll have to provide a way to do matching against the note field as well, it seems... either that, or special handling of languages, which is something I need to do anyway due to their defaulting capability.

Originally Posted by knuddel

and it would be nice if you can sort a spell list by college

Hmm... yes, we lost that capability when I combined the fields. <sigh> Two steps forward, one step back. I'll try to come up with something...

[knuddel]

your welcome.

is there a way you could anounce a new version apart from the forum? i don't look here every day, but i am interested in this project. maybe you should make a small anouncement mailing-list.