Dungeon Fantasy Templates added to GCA?

[davidw]

Any idea if or when the templates and lenses from dungeon fantasy might be added in character assistant updates?

[bjork]

When volunteers have finished them which may be difficult since there are new parts coming out all the time :) But check this thread.

[Bruno]

The basic datafile hasn't been added to the official release, but we have a pretty solid "Beta" of DF1 up and running. It has all the stuff from DF1, including the limited list of abilities to choose from.

I'm poking through DF2 to check if there are any actual character abilities hidden in there or if it's all campaign advice.

I believe another user is starting work on DF3 - this may or may not require modifications to DF1, stay tuned. Same GCA time, same GCA channel, etc.

[RobKamm]

I've been slogging through the racial templates in DF3 and have some ideas about how I'd tackle the Power-Ups. I'm afraid that my GCA fu is being sorely tested so the going is slow. On the plus side, my 3-year-old likes to come down and "practice typing" so whatever gets done may have some really fun error messages down the road.

[Gavynn]

GCA is something I really would like to buy. I had two issues about it.

1) So it can include custom templates, but does NOT include those from things other GURPS books, although there are fan made projects downloadable elsewhere to fill that gap. Is that correct?

2) The GCA allows printing on character sheets. Does it allow one to import a custom character sheet?

Thanks.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Gavynn

GCA is something I really would like to buy. I had two issues about it.

1) So can include custom templates, but does NOT include those from things other GURPS books, although there are fan made projects downloadable elsewhere to fill that gap. Is that correct?

I'm afraid I don't understand your question. There seem to be a few pronouns and/or verbs missing. If you're asking "Does GCA include stuff from GURPS books other than the Basic Set for free?" the answer is YES VERY MUCH SO, IT DOES.

There are fan made projects to update it for various GURPS books, but that's because us fans are impatient, and there's only one guy out there being paid to update data sets. Once a fan-made data set reaches release quality, it gets proofed by the official folks, and when it passes the tests it gets submitted to SJG to get included in the official release, along with everything else.

I started the SUPERS and DUNGEON FANTASY 1 data sets, for instance, because I didn't want to have to wait months for Eric to dig himself out from all his other outstanding projects, like High Tech. And once I'd finished it, what would be the point of hiding it from everyone?

Originally Posted by Gavynn

2) The GCA allows printing on character sheets. Does it allow one to import a custom character sheet?

Yep! It does require some comfort with programming to write your own character sheet from scratch, but GCA happily takes totally new character sheets or export formats. There are also some highly customizable free character sheets available from fans, such as the most excellent Phoenix character sheet, which you can tweak many features on without needing ANY programming knowledge whatsoever. There are handy dandy menus inside GCA itself for adjusting settings.

I'm working on an OPENRPG file exporter at the moment, and GCA already exports happily to HTML, plain text, RTF, and even has its own native XML format.

[Moonsword]

EDIT: ...what Bruno said.

[Gavynn]

Wow - thanks Bruno. That makes GCA basically an essential purchase. I likely will get it this week some time. I was about to put some major effort into a custom character sheet.

What kind of programming knowledge does creating a custom sheet require?

[blacksmith]

Originally Posted by Gavynn

GCA is something I really would like to buy. I had two issues about it.

1) So it can include custom templates, but does NOT include those from things other GURPS books, although there are fan made projects downloadable elsewhere to fill that gap. Is that correct?

You can select to include any book that has a data file for it.

Makeing your own data files as well to fit your game can be relatively easy(I did not have much difficulty importing my own weapons and talents in my own datafiles, more complex things might be harder though)

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Gavynn

What kind of programming knowledge does creating a custom sheet require?

I'm afraid I'm not the best judge about how hard it is, because I'm a programmer by profession and I work with text manipulation on a day to day basis. I basically do this sort of thing for a living.

Character sheets are written in VBScript, if that means anything to you. It's a pretty friendly language for English-speakers, but I would guestimate that having a basic grasp of things like Ifs, For loops, and the like would make it easier.

If you have no experience programming at all (macros for Excel or Word counts as programming experience!) and no background in mathematics or music composition, you might find it challenging. On the bright side, it's a normal, publicly available language so you can pick up a "For Dummies" book on it, or read the VBScript For Applications help file that comes with MS Office 2003 or later.