GURPS Spaceships Design Spreadsheet

[panton41]

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

Also, my original intention (which still holds) is to be able to copy the Design Table within the spreadsheet so you can keep all your ships for a single campaign in one file. This doesn't really save much space, but does allow you to set up a single set of campaign options and easily change them for all your ships.

Well I use Excel templates for it, so if I want to set campaign option I can set them, then save it as a ready-made template.

Actually, since I'm looking at doing a serious revamp of the sheet I would like any suggestions on how to improve the interface or changes that would help (such as changing how options are applied).

I'm probably focus the design direction on being vertical. Not everyone has a wide screen monitor and vertical scrolling is easier than side-to-side.

I'd probably also sketch out the boundaries of an 8.5x11" page and try to fit everything inside it. Either that or throw off the design notes that currently live off to side onto another page and just leave what's under it blank.

For that matter, send me an email to my personal address (it's on file) and I'll send you a "paper prototype" of an idea.

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

Actually, since I'm looking at doing a serious revamp of the sheet I would like any suggestions on how to improve the interface or changes that would help (such as changing how options are applied).

Because I'm running under OpenOffice, each ship takes up the full space anyway including all its blank lines; I have to print by highlighting the relevant cells (unless there's some setting I haven't found)... I suspect the easiest option to make it possible to print a ship sheet, rather than ship sheet plus extra data, would be to move the tickboxes and auxiliary inputs onto a separate sheet, or alternatively to have a "display page" sheet with no inputs at all, just neatly-formatted output.

[Langy]

Originally Posted by RogerBW

Because I'm running under OpenOffice, each ship takes up the full space anyway including all its blank lines; I have to print by highlighting the relevant cells (unless there's some setting I haven't found)... I suspect the easiest option to make it possible to print a ship sheet, rather than ship sheet plus extra data, would be to move the tickboxes and auxiliary inputs onto a separate sheet, or alternatively to have a "display page" sheet with no inputs at all, just neatly-formatted output.

I second that last idea. I'd like to have multiple output formats - one plain text, one HTML or BBCode, and one for printing.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Langy

I second that last idea. I'd like to have multiple output formats - one plain text, one HTML or BBCode, and one for printing.

Oh, and one for exporting to the forum, if possible!

[Langy]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Oh, and one for exporting to the forum, if possible!

Yeah, that's pretty much why I suggested BBCode.

[ericbsmith]

Version 1.26
-Corrected cost of SM+4 Passenger Seats, Soft Landing System, & Stasis Web.
-Corrected cost reduction of Reduced Control Stations for SM+4 ships
-Modified Core Macro to eliminate all the screen flashing when changes are made (it now flashes once per change, instead of four or five times). This should speed up calculations as you make changes to the sheet

See my first post for download links.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

Posted Version 1.26, which has a few minor corrections and a change to the Core macro.

I thought you were working on a version 2. Is that on a backburner or something?

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

I thought you were working on a version 2. Is that on a backburner or something?

I've been doing some work on it, but it's going to take a while. I've actually got enough done that I may do a preview release at some point in the near future to take suggestions on possible changes.

In the meantime there's no reason not to make corrective changes to v1.x as I find things to fix - and as I work on v2 I keep finding minor things to fix in V1.x

[davester65]

Any ideas on how you might incorporate smaller systems into the spreadsheet? The only idea I can think of is to have each system take up 3/10ths of a space and have the remaining 1/10th space be waste space (curse us humans and our base 10 math, base 12 would have been so much better).

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by davester65

Any ideas on how you might incorporate smaller systems into the spreadsheet? The only idea I can think of is to have each system take up 3/10ths of a space and have the remaining 1/10th space be waste space (curse us humans and our base 10 math, base 12 would have been so much better).

That's a planned addition for v2.0. I tried a couple different approaches in the current version of the sheet, but they proved unworkable, so I decided that a redesign of the sheet with a new approach was necessary.

I've done a considerable amount of coding on v2.0, but there's still a bunch to go and I kind of ran out of steam on the project (real life caught up with fun & play). The good news is that Smaller Systems and Reconfigurable Systems, each with two or three sub-systems, are working just fine. The bad news is I broke some other stuff that's got to get untangled, plus I'm going to need either some help with Macros in Open Office or I'm going to have to learn the language myself as Macros are now absolutely necessary for Smaller & Reconfigurable Systems.

I hope to get back to it over the summer when I have less school and more free time, though if I have some time during spring break I may take a crack at it then.

So, anybody familiar with the coding of semi-complex Macros in Open Office?