Phoenix Sheet: Hide all trait modifiers?

[Engurrand]

Howdy,

I use Phoenix sheet, which is just grand. I'm building a set of very complexly modified powers for a very high powered campaign. Like in the Psionic Powers book, I intend to do a write-up in plainspeak of each modified power. Players will not likely understand or need to see what's going on behind the curtain.
I'm wondering if there is a simple display toggle which might hide all enhancements and limitations from printing to the character sheet, leaving the trait's Name (Name Extension) and [point cost] visible, with the enhancements and limitations still present in GCA's "Modifiers" dialogue?

My fallback would be to work out the trait cost, then create a new advantage with the correct name and that cost, and remove the heavily modified original trait, but this is not ideal, because then further modification would require reconstructing the original to recalculate its cost.

Thank you for your time.

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by Engurrand

I'm wondering if there is a simple display toggle which might hide all enhancements and limitations from printing to the character sheet...?

I don't think you really want that for all traits. There are many traits which need the modifiers printed to make sense; from weapon quality modifiers to disadvantages with Self-Control numbers.

What /might/ be useful is a way to hide the modifiers from a specific trait. Or perhaps a way to hide specific modifiers.

Originally Posted by Engurrand

My fallback would be to work out the trait cost, then create a new advantage with the correct name and that cost, and remove the heavily modified original trait, but this is not ideal, because then further modification would require reconstructing the original to recalculate its cost.

Alternative: Keep two copies of the character as two different ledgers, one with the modified advantages and one with the new advantage with the new cost for printing.

[Engurrand]

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

I don't think you really want that for all traits. There are many traits which need the modifiers printed to make sense; from weapon quality modifiers to disadvantages with Self-Control numbers.

True, though I could work around that by adding relevant details to the Name (Name Extension) description. E.G. a Sword with the cheap modifier would renamed Cheap Sword or Sword (Rusty, old). A disad like Greed with a SC would be written as Greed (12 or less), which is visually indistinguishable. This is something I do it anyway, so it's not out of my way.

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

What /might/ be useful is a way to hide the modifiers from a specific trait. Or perhaps a way to hide specific modifiers.

Those would be helpful! As far as I can tell Hidden Traits are a function of templates only, and there doesn't seem to be a way to tag individual traits to be hidden, let alone modifiers.

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

Alternative: Keep two copies of the character as two different ledgers, one with the modified advantages and one with the new advantage with the new cost for printing.

That looks like that's what I'll end up doing, thank you.

[Armin]

This seems like something that should be doable, although I don't think tmedwards or I had really considered it before.

I've looked at the code for Phoenix, and it looks like it should be pretty easy to modify a copy of Phoenix to ignore printing the modifiers for ads/disads. I'd hesitate to get too fancy, given how complex Phoenix is, and possibly break other things by adding new options or something.

If Thom stops by, he may be willing to integrate your request into Phoenix.

Otherwise, I'm hesistant to upload a modified copy of the sheet myself, since I don't want to infringe upon his copyright. However, I can tell you exactly what to change on a copy of Phoenix (always make a copy for such changes!) to get what you want. It's just a couple lines, very simple.

[Engurrand]

Originally Posted by Armin

If Thom stops by, he may be willing to integrate your request into Phoenix.

Otherwise, I'm hesistant to upload a modified copy of the sheet myself, since I don't want to infringe upon his copyright. However, I can tell you exactly what to change on a copy of Phoenix (always make a copy for such changes!) to get what you want. It's just a couple lines, very simple.

Neet! In case Thom does not stop by, I believe I am willing and able to copy a few lines of code, and I very much appreciate your offer.

[Armin]

Okay, here's what you do.

First, make sure your copy of Phoenix is the most current. The version I downloaded just now is r67.

Second, make a copy of Phoenix, and name it something obvious, like "Phoenix - no ad-disad mod info.gcs". Edit only this new copy.

Third, use a plain text editor that will show you line numbers, so you'll know what line you're at. Phoenix is tens of thousands of lines long, so finding things for these instructions otherwise is a pain. I believe Notepad++ and TextPad are both free, or have free versions, and work very well. (Notepad++ also allows you to select the language, and setting it to Visual Basic makes editing these .gcs files much easier.)

Now, to the editing.

In your copied file, scroll all the way to line 11,675. It is the red line in this block of code from that area:

			If FnSymbol <> "" Then
				TraitText = TraitText & "{\fs8\~}{\cf2\super " & FnSymbol & "}"
			End If
			TraitText = TraitText & arTrait.ExpandedModCaptions(Options.Value("TemplateAdDisadPrintModValues"))
			If OptionHasFlag("TemplateAdDisadDescriptiveTags", flagDescTagPage) Then
				tmp = Trim(arTrait.TagItem("page"))

All you need to do here is put a single quote mark (') at the front of the text, as shown in the sample block here:

			If FnSymbol <> "" Then
				TraitText = TraitText & "{\fs8\~}{\cf2\super " & FnSymbol & "}"
			End If
			'TraitText = TraitText & arTrait.ExpandedModCaptions(Options.Value("TemplateAdDisadPrintModValues"))
			If OptionHasFlag("TemplateAdDisadDescriptiveTags", flagDescTagPage) Then
				tmp = Trim(arTrait.TagItem("page"))

That comments out the bit that adds the text of the modifiers to the trait name information.

Now, we need to do something similar, but just a bit different, to the next block, which comes earlier in the file. (I did the farther down one first, so that the line numbers I'm giving you won't be affected.)

Scroll up to line 11,601. It is the red line in this block of code from that area:

			'get the modifiers
			tmp = arTrait.ExpandedModCaptions(Options.Value("TemplateAdDisadPrintModValues"))
			If tmp <> "" Then
				tmp = Mid(tmp, 3, Len(tmp) - 3)	'trim parens and preceding whitespace
				rTraitNotes.Append = tmp
			End If

As before, we're going to comment the line out with a single quote mark. However, we're also going to add a new line, for safety, to avoid the code block that follows it as simply as possible.

The commented out line, and the new line that should follow it, are shown here in red.

			'get the modifiers
			'tmp = arTrait.ExpandedModCaptions(Options.Value("TemplateAdDisadPrintModValues"))
			tmp = ""
			If tmp <> "" Then
				tmp = Mid(tmp, 3, Len(tmp) - 3)	'trim parens and preceding whitespace
				rTraitNotes.Append = tmp
			End If

After you make these two blocks of changes, this copy of Phoenix will no longer include the modifiers information from *any* advantage type traits in the trait names (that's templates, ads, disads, quirks, perks). If you want other types to still show those, we have to get a bit fancier with a few more lines.