GCA5 and Armor

[Armin]

Originally Posted by Farmer

What I'd really like to see is support for the more advanced hit locations (the ability to customise them to some degree, even - not sure how that works but perhaps they have a "default" location to pull base DR info from which can then be manually changed for the additional spots? There are a few alternatives out there, but at some point they'll need to work in some way with the info in the GDF files) in terms of armour and actual locations and then through to things like FVTT (and for it to them handle layers of hardened armour and so on - feature requests already made to FVTT on that score).

I don't actually understand what you mean here.

GCA has the Humanoid Expanded body type from Low Tech, with a hugely expanded list of coverage locations. You can go into the Body & Locations tab of Protection to change what locations get displayed on the protection image. I'm not aware of any in-depth coverage of non-humanoid body types.

Armor is applied in a hierarchical fashion, based on the locations in the body list and coverage location specified by the armor.

You can't currently create new locations inside GCA, but you can create new bodies in a GDF. The hard part for complex bodies is properly specifying the coverage locations.

Does any of this address your question?

[Farmer]

Originally Posted by Armin

GCA has the Humanoid Expanded body type from Low Tech, with a hugely expanded list of coverage locations. You can go into the Body & Locations tab of Protection to change what locations get displayed on the protection image. I'm not aware of any in-depth coverage of non-humanoid body types.

Thanks, that helps. I didn't realise you could set the Display flag for each one. Does that also create a table of the additional locations that can be exported to FVTT, for example, and shown as a DR table (not the paper doll) on character sheets?

If an item then has an armour location added (in the GDF or just editing it in GCA) with the corresponding name, does it then show up (rather than editing it in the Body & Locations area?

Originally Posted by Armin

Armor is applied in a hierarchical fashion, based on the locations in the body list and coverage location specified by the armor.

How does it export the layering (if it does)? Again, I'm thinking of FVTT so that I can ask the guys to implement layered hardened armour correctly to calculate damage that penetrates (at the moment, they can only treat the whole location as hardened or not, not partial based on layering).

Also, if I have switched on, say, Shoulders, Upper Arms, Elbows, and Forearms but purchase armour that covers "Arms" is there anyway to have it automatically apply to the sub-locations? Or if I set the armour as covering all those sub locations as well as "Arms" will GCA avoid doubling up?

Originally Posted by Armin

Does any of this address your question?

Yes, it helps a lot, thanks!

[Armin]

Originally Posted by Farmer

Thanks, that helps. I didn't realise you could set the Display flag for each one. Does that also create a table of the additional locations that can be exported to FVTT, for example, and shown as a DR table (not the paper doll) on character sheets?

All the locations are always available to exporters. They have to check for what they want and get those values. That includes whether it's visible or whether it has a value or whatever.

I don't write the exporters, and I don't write the VTT stuff, so I have no idea how they decide what they need or support.

Originally Posted by Farmer

If an item then has an armour location added (in the GDF or just editing it in GCA) with the corresponding name, does it then show up (rather than editing it in the Body & Locations area?

Do you mean: "If I add a location of 'alpha' to a the location tag of an armor item, does 'alpha' become a valid body part on the body?"

No, of course not. There's nothing there to work with, no idea of what that new location is covered by. The locations on the Body have to say 'this location is covered by all these other locations'.

It's through that 'covered by' bit that GCA knows that 'Arms' also covers 'Left Arm', because 'Left Arm' declares that it's covered by anything that covers the 'Left Arm, Arms, Limbs, Full Suit, Skin, All' locations.

So, basically, each body part location 'opts in' to a group of locations that it's a part of, so that it will be covered by anything that covers anything in that opt-in group.

Originally Posted by Farmer

How does it export the layering (if it does)? Again, I'm thinking of FVTT so that I can ask the guys to implement layered hardened armour correctly to calculate damage that penetrates (at the moment, they can only treat the whole location as hardened or not, not partial based on layering).

Again, GCA doesn't 'export' that information, it is always available to Export Sheets, and they have to want to use it, and then write it out in the expected fashion.

*IF* layering is important to you, rather than there being a combined final DR value, then you have to click the Layers button in Protection, and then check the box for 'You must check this box to manage layers yourself'. Once you do that, GCA will no longer combine the various armor values into a single DR total, and will instead list the armor values in layer order (which you can adjust), such as "2[A]+3[B]" where each piece of that formula is a separate layer and the [A] and [B] markers correspond to armor items in the layered armor order list.

The layered DR values are available normally, but the actual 'layered order' that made those values is tracked as a separate list from the normal armor list, so again, the Export Sheet needs to know to look for it, gather it up, and export it in the correct way. My sheets all support that in the Protection image section, so they can be referenced for examples.

Originally Posted by Farmer

Also, if I have switched on, say, Shoulders, Upper Arms, Elbows, and Forearms but purchase armour that covers "Arms" is there anyway to have it automatically apply to the sub-locations? Or if I set the armour as covering all those sub locations as well as "Arms" will GCA avoid doubling up?

Note that the option is to display or not. GCA calculates all body locations regardless of whether they are intended to be displayed. There is no switching on or off, there is only on and whether or not the user has asked for it to be displayed.

You could easily check this yourself, even on the simpler Humanoid body. Take some armor, such as Bronze Armbands, apply it in Protection, then go over to Body & Locations tab and expand Left Arm. Because Bronze Armbands specifies the covered location as "Arms" and Left Arm specifies 'Arms' in its group(), you'll see that Left Arm has a DR of 3.

Basically, if those body bits declare that they're part of Arms, they'll be covered by that armor. (And they do declare that, in the Low Tech version of the Humanoid Expanded body.)

[Farmer]

Thanks, Armin. This has answered a lot of questions and I now have an understanding of how it all flows together such that I can try some different settings know what to expect. This is all really helpful!

[Armin]

Glad it helped!

[ashareem]

First, apologies for the zombie thread, but this seemed the most likely place to put this question.

GCA 5 - Protection.
I have armor for a Winged Elf selected for torso coverage, using the Winged Elf body type. The loadout appears to be working.

On the character sheet, however, the image displayed in the Protection area shows the Humanoid body type, not the Winged Elf. As I need the wings to be shown as a liability, how can I get the Winged Elf body type to display in the character sheet? (Currently using Spring Bandit sheet but problem persists throughout all available character sheets displaying the body type.)

Is there a way to force the image display to match that under the Protection tab?

Link to screenshots of the issue. https://1drv.ms/u/s!Au4hRxscUhWG8vYl...2RpzQ?e=510t08

Thans in advance,
Ashleigh

[Armin]

I see you're using a custom image, which is exactly right, and should be showing up on the sheets.

Let me poke around a bit.

[Armin]

Originally Posted by ashareem

Is there a way to force the image display to match that under the Protection tab?

Link to screenshots of the issue. https://1drv.ms/u/s!Au4hRxscUhWG8vYl...2RpzQ?e=510t08

There was an issue for a while where GCA always used the default body image as the image for all protection on sheets, because the routine that returned the image was written before per-loadout images existed.

However, the routine that returns the image to draw was updated, and you should not be seeing that behavior any more. (However, Spring Bandit is apparently still using an older routine to draw the protection boxes, even though I created a new one that better matches those drawn on the Protection dialog. I'll see about updating Spring Bandit to use the new routine shortly.)

Is your GCA the current version? You should be running version 5.0.202.

If you are running the current version, you shouldn't be seeing this happening. I am unable to reproduce this on my end, so it seems to be working correctly. Other than Spring Bandit generally using an out-dated drawing routine, it seems to use the correct body images, as do the other sheets I tried.

(If you need to update GCA, you can do so simply by re-downloading it from Warehouse 23, and re-running the Setup program. It'll install the updated GCA smoothly over the top of the existing installation.)

[Armin]

Okay, I've now updated Spring Bandit to use the newer drawing routines. You can get the updated sheet through Check for Updates.

[ashareem]

Originally Posted by Armin

Okay, I've now updated Spring Bandit to use the newer drawing routines. You can get the updated sheet through Check for Updates.

Running the curent updated version.

After resynchronizing the character, I'm not seeing any changes. I went through all of the available sheets, and all of them continue to display the default human image. There's got to be something I'm missing, but no idea where/what.

ETA: Windows 11 on a Surface Book 3 laptop.