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I have a spreadsheet for a 3.5 character that doesn't create squat - you have to enter every single thing yourself or at least copy in the equations that enter stuff, but it keeps track of changes over here that were made over there. That's what spreadsheets are for. If you have to break out Active X, you're doing it wrong.
1) Any character creator program Ive ever used you had to enter in the information, its not telepathic and know what you want to make. Unless I'm missing your point on this one (pretty sure I must be, otherwise I cannot fathom why you would throw out such rubbish), this is a ridiculous statement.
If anyone wants to see my sheet, just send me a PM or whatever works around here. I can't post it due to how I have my spell sheet working (and that it uses non-OGL content).
2) Kudos for making a sheet yourself. Not everyone has the time/skill and doesnt mind paying for one. Those that dont either make their own (as you did) or use the plenty of free (in terms of money at least) options out there.
3) You seem to have a lot of hate in you. Please come back from the dark side! :)
1) Any character creator program Ive ever used you had to enter in the information, its not telepathic and know what you want to make.
I think you underestimate my meaning...
The cell logic does not generate itself. Some of it pre-exists and you don't have to worry with it. For adding to the spellsheets, you pretty much have to work it in yourself (especially for those where there is a calculation in the spell description)
2) Kudos for making a sheet yourself.
I created it in the process of creating my character because I'm lazy.
Not everyone has the time/skill and doesnt mind paying for one.
It's hardly as fancy as the pay-sheets. Just functional.
3) You seem to have a lot of hate in you. Please come back from the dark side! :)
Judging by point 1, I'm apt to add "says the kettle."
Who uses Excel? The terrible, nasty, horrible program designed by people who hate people who have to use it. I use OpenOffice Calc at home and Google's version works in a pinch (though it lacks some features due to design).
I use excel. I quite like it. Nowhere near "terrible" or "nasty".
Plus, I'm kinda used to it - I know my way around the formulae, VBA and the VB.
Then that's bad design. They should stop half-assing it by working in Excel and make a real program.Who uses Excel? The terrible, nasty, horrible program designed by people who hate people who have to use it. I use OpenOffice Calc at home and Google's version works in a pinch (though it lacks some features due to design).A lot of these character generation sheets created on Excel use ActiveX or other macro functions which fail elsewhere, even on the Mac version of the program.
Yeah. Unbelievable. And yesterday, someone gave me ten bucks. But the idiot folded it length-wise! What is wrong with people?
Maybe that person doesn't want stop "half-assing" it? Maybe he doesn't have the time or inclination to learn anything that would allow him to make anything that comes close to what you can do within excel.
Anyway, no one's forcing you to use those "half-assed" excel sheets.
If you have to break out Active X, you're doing it wrong.
Why? It works. That's all that needs to be said.
1) Any character creator program Ive ever used you had to enter in the information, its not telepathic and know what you want to make.
So you don't know the new killer app from Psi-Ware? Doesn't surprise me, they don't advertise it to mundanes.
Naw, let him have his hate. Just use Firefox, Greasemonkey and the Paizo Ignore script. Every once in a while, when I see a post like yours, I un-ignore him, read his posts, chuckle, and put him back on my ignore list again. Just like I am doing now. Works wonders for me.
-- david
Papa.DRB
I have a spreadsheet for a 3.5 character that doesn't create squat - you have to enter every single thing yourself or at least copy in the equations that enter stuff, but it keeps track of changes over here that were made over there. That's what spreadsheets are for. If you have to break out Active X, you're doing it wrong.3) You seem to have a lot of hate in you. Please come back from the dark side! :)
I am not asking of a release date for the compatibility with the Paizo products but what kind of timeframes will be looking at once the various sources release.
Now that the license has been signed with Paizo, we can official get new material from Paizo as soon as they have it in finalized form. In the case of the Advanced Player's Guide, we actually received it from them about a week ago and have begun working to get it all implemented. Due the vast amount of content within the APG, we aren't going to be able to get it all completed in time for GenCon, but we're doing all we can to get as much done as possible by then. Assuming we have a good amount in place and we're confident it's all working well, we'll release what we have when the book comes out. The remaining APG content will then be added in the weeks immediately following GenCon.
For the Game Mastery Guide, we started work on it the moment it was released. We have a large chunk of it done, but we put that on hold to switch gears onto the APG. Why? Simply because the APG is valuable to *all* Pathfinder players, while the GMG is targeted at GMs. We'll return to it once the APG is handled.
Once we have the APG and GMG released, we'll be switching our attention to getting caught up on all the Companion and Chronicles content. We're also exploring additional options to get that material added in parallel with the APG and GMG.
For all future major supplements, we'll be able to coordinate more closely with Paizo. The goal will be to have those supplements available within Hero Lab the same time that the books hit the street. For books with a moderate amount of new material, that shouldn't be a problem. However, for books as extensive and complex as the APG, it will ultimately depend on how early Paizo is comfortable getting us the material to start working. If a particular supplement takes 10 weeks of work to implement and we only receive it from Paizo once its finalized for the printer, we may only have 5-6 weeks of lead time. If that occurs, then we'll probably end up handling it much like we're doing the APG now. Hopefully, Paizo will be willing to get us material earlier in those cases so we can have it all ready on the book's street date.
Thank you again for being so open with the community, much like all of the Paizo staff, that is what brought me to the game and I much like many truly appreciate the line we have to you guys. It really strikes a difference between the big guys at WotC and everybody over here.
I think being open over the years is one of the key reasons we have a loyal fan base for our products. I know for a fact the fans are the reason we persevered through the hard times over the years. And many of the features we've added to all our products have been sparked by suggestions and ideas from users. We develop these products because we're hardcore gamers ourselves and love what we do - certainly not for the longer hours and smaller paychecks than we could make at traditional corporate jobs. :-) At the end of the day, those of us here at Lone Wolf are all simply fans of the games we love to play, just like you and all the other players out there. In a sense, we're all in this together, simply striving to maximize the fun of playing our favorite games. :-)
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Now that the license has been signed with Paizo, we can official get new material from Paizo as soon as they have it in finalized form. In the case of the Advanced Player's Guide, we actually received it from them about a week ago and have begun working to get it all implemented. Due the vast amount of content within the APG, we aren't going to be able to get it all completed in time for GenCon, but we're doing all we can to get as much done as possible by then. Assuming we have a good amount in place and we're confident it's all working well, we'll release what we have when the book comes out. The remaining APG content will then be added in the weeks immediately following GenCon.
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This is GREAT news! Awesome to hear! I assume you guys will have a presence at GenCon this year correct? If so would you perhaps have copies of the software with these particular licenses available for purchase?
The only thing that saddens me is that Hero Lab won't work on notebook sized PCs. One day soon, I will have the extra cash to buy a laptop... I hope. But for now, this kind of portability is not happening for the Wolf.
In one of the V3.6 updates (maybe 3.6a?), we eliminated the requirement for a minimum 600 vertical resolution to run Hero Lab. However, there will still be issues with a few tabs being cut off at the bottom. We've got this on the todo list to address.
FYI, the minimum standard resolution for Windows has been 800x600 for about *15* years now. When we created Hero Lab, netbooks didn't exist, so we figured it was safe to build around a minimum standard that had been in place "forever". I don't know what a few netbook creators were thinking when they decided to go smaller than 600 vertical resolution. The gotcha is that all of the tabs for each game system within Hero Lab are designed with that minimum height in mind. Addressing this will entail a healthy chunk of work for a relatively small number of netbooks that decided to "go rogue" against well-entrenched industry standards. <sigh>
Who uses Excel? The terrible, nasty, horrible program designed by people who hate people who have to use it. I use OpenOffice Calc at home and Google's version works in a pinch (though it lacks some features due to design).I use excel. I quite like it. Nowhere near "terrible" or "nasty".
Plus, I'm kinda used to it - I know my way around the formulae, VBA and the VB.
So do I, doesn't make it any less terrible and evil.
Maybe he doesn't have the time or inclination to learn anything that would allow him to make anything that comes close to what you can do within excel.
It takes me all of 10 minutes to do something in VB .Net that you can't do in Excel.
Naw, let him have his hate. Just use Firefox, Greasemonkey and the Paizo Ignore script. Every once in a while, when I see a post like yours, I un-ignore him, read his posts, chuckle, and put him back on my ignore list again. Just like I am doing now. Works wonders for me.
-- david
Papa.DRB
What's truly amusing is all the high and mighty hypocritical condescension.
This is GREAT news! Awesome to hear! I assume you guys will have a presence at GenCon this year correct? If so would you perhaps have copies of the software with these particular licenses available for purchase?
We will definitely be at GenCon. I think this is our 11th year there. Yikes!
We will definitely have Hero Lab available for purchase at GenCon. And we will have demo machines where we'll be showing off everything Hero Lab can do for Pathfinder and every other game we support.
We'll also be hosting some seminars at GenCon. One will be focused on adding custom content to Hero Lab. Colen will be delving into how to easily add your own homebrew material in with all the official content.
For those of you who can't make it GenCon, you won't be left out in the cold. We will also release *online* anything that we have available at GenCon. And we'll release it online while we're at GenCon, so it will all be released at the same time (plus or minus a few hours).
One other quick note about GenCon. Just as we did last year, we'll have the guys from d20Pro in the booth with us. These guys have a great VTT that integrates smoothly with Hero Lab. I don't want to turn this thread into a debate of the various VTTs, as there are a number of really good ones available. Suffice to say that, if you're curious at all about d20Pro, you'll find them in the same booth with us at GenCon and can take a look at what they offer.
It takes me all of 10 minutes to do something in VB .Net that you can't do in Excel.
It amuses me to no end how you can find Excel "evil" but not VB.net.
It takes me all of 10 minutes to do something in VB .Net that you can't do in Excel.It amuses me to no end how you can find Excel "evil" but not VB.net.
1) VBA is not VB
2) I don't find Microsoft evil3) Ridiculous design in Excel - an application - has nothing to do with a programming language
It amuses me to no end the high-minded condescension and ridiculous conclusions.
My favorite part of Excel is if I don't double click in exactly the right place on a cell, I'm taken to the end of the column - hundreds of rows down - instead of editing the cell. Who the hell requested THAT feature?
Plus, I'm kinda used to it - I know my way around the formulae, VBA and the VB.
So do I, doesn't make it any less terrible and evil.
That's right. It doesn't make it terrible and evil at all. Because it is neither terrible nor evil. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on that.
It takes me all of 10 minutes to do something in VB .Net that you can't do in Excel.
How do you know what I can or can't do?
And we're not talking about me or you. We're talking about them. And, again, if you don't like them being evil and using excel and Active X, just don't use their stuff.
What's truly amusing is all the high and mighty hypocritical condescension.
Yeah! That poor excel never did anything to anybody. And neither did those people who make character sheets using excel.
We're investigating something that's kinda like this, but not exactly. It's not yet clear whether the idea will ultimately be viable or not, so it's premature to talk about it. However, we realized being able to sync back and forth via some appropriate mechanism will be increasingly important in the years to come.
Glad to hear it - hopefully something can pan out sooner that later. To be honest, I'd be just as happy to have it packaged as a PortableApp... ;)
AJC
The only thing that saddens me is that Hero Lab won't work on notebook sized PCs. One day soon, I will have the extra cash to buy a laptop... I hope. But for now, this kind of portability is not happening for the Wolf.In one of the V3.6 updates (maybe 3.6a?), we eliminated the requirement for a minimum 600 vertical resolution to run Hero Lab. However, there will still be issues with a few tabs being cut off at the bottom. We've got this on the todo list to address.
FYI, the minimum standard resolution for Windows has been 800x600 for about *15* years now. When we created Hero Lab, netbooks didn't exist, so we figured it was safe to build around a minimum standard that had been in place "forever". I don't know what a few netbook creators were thinking when they decided to go smaller than 600 vertical resolution. The gotcha is that all of the tabs for each game system within Hero Lab are designed with that minimum height in mind. Addressing this will entail a healthy chunk of work for a relatively small number of netbooks that decided to "go rogue" against well-entrenched industry standards. <sigh>
Oh, this is awesome news. For the record, I dearly wish I had sprung a few hundred dollars extra for a full blown laptop when I could afford it, but now I'm stuck with what I have.
Guess I'll re-install to the minipc and see if it's usable.
Now that the license has been signed with Paizo, we can official get new material from Paizo as soon as they have it in finalized form. In the case of the Advanced Player's Guide, we actually received it from them about a week ago and have begun working to get it all implemented. Due the vast amount of content within the APG, we aren't going to be able to get it all completed in time for GenCon, but we're doing all we can to get as much done as possible by then. Assuming we have a good amount in place and we're confident it's all working well, we'll release what we have when the book comes out. The remaining APG content will then be added in the weeks immediately following GenCon.
Just dont give anyone vacation time and lock them in a room programing like Paizo did Jason to get this book done so it will be ready by gencon
Congrats to Hero Labs and Paizo!
I own HL and I bought the Bestiary. I will eventually buy their other offerings as well, over time. I have already gotten my money's worth in time saved making characters. Not to mention the fact that walking through the character creation process on Hero Labs helps me learn the PF game. Not to mention the fact that it is incredibly convenient to have the journal feature which allows you to track XP and money. Plus the custom magic item making tool.
I have fun just playing with the character creation process. Letting my imagination roam through the possibilities.
Best of all though is the incredibly responsive customer service at their site. I mean, I am a pretty infrequent poster over there, but I think that every single questions that I've ever asked has been answered by the staff. I've even re-initialized my license a couple of time due to computer changes and/or updates to the program. No problem at all.
I am eagerly looking forward to the character sheet customization upgrade that was hinted at above. I would also like to see a comprehensive set of GM tools in the future. Maybe Gencon 2012? :)
This tool is well-worth your money and support.
Just dont give anyone vacation time and lock them in a room programing like Paizo did Jason to get this book done so it will be ready by gencon
Ha! After seeing how much new awesomeness they've crammed into the APG, a part of me sure wishes they'd given Jason a couple weeks off. It certainly would have made our job easier to get it all implemented in time for a concurrent release. :-)
The other part of me is stoked at what's included. :-)
Having seen the APG now, I can definitely say this thing is *PACKED* with great stuff, and everyone should be salivating in anticipation of its release. There's far more crunchy goodness inside this book than we ever imagined Jason could cram into it. He and the rest of the Paizo team have definitely outdone themselves!
These are ten of the features that I really like about Hero Lab:
1) Ease of use. Not all the free stuff out there is user friendly.
2) Tutorial. I really like the walk through. Of course creating a character might be easy but creating new data can be hard. The tutorials are easy to follow.
3) Ease of adding new data. Some of the free stuff out there is a royal pain in the ass to add things to especially if you're not good with XML, BV or whatever. I certainly am not. I really like the simple way that things are added. In addition, Hero Lab checks your work before you can make the changes official and even tells you where you went wrong.
4) Ease of sharing data. I have created several new files and was able to send them to others. I have also taken other people's work and added it quickly to Hero Lab without any problems.
5) It validates your work. Hero Lab lets you know what you still need to correct on your character in a very easy to read format. Not all the free stuff out there is so smooth with this.
6) I can quickly make adjustments on the fly. If a character is grappled, I just select the grappled condition and the program does the rest. I don't need to spend time looking things up and having my players make adjustments. Sometimes there are a lot of adjustments such as poisons, grappled, blinded, and fatigued in the same round. Hero Lab will keep track of everything. You can even adjust things like if an item is broken or if you need a generic counter for things like Honor (Oriental Adventures type setting).
7) There are regular updates that don't require me to install an entirely new version.
8) You can set up a default setting for your game. If you don't want to allow certain types of races, such as monsters, or you don't want to allow templates, you can just set that. If you want everyone to have average hit points, you can set that. You can even set common house rules such as keen and improved critical stack.
9) You can use the software for multiple systems. I use it for Mutants and Masterminds as well as Pathfinder. My players like the ease of creating character this way. You can even jump between systems without having to restart the program.
10) You can easily set up different encounters to keep track of groups of creatures. I tend to save multiple monsters in a single portfolio for each encounter so I can call them up quickly. For example, if a room has two drow archers, two drow sorcerers and a minotaur, I can save them all to a single portfolio instead of having to print them out separately.
I really do like the program and have found it well worth my money. Of course not everyone will. Some of us don't have the time or know-how to do something like this. I don't. I also don't really want to focus my energy on learning. I have other things I want to work on, such as my career and friendships outside of gaming.
Hey everyone,
I'm going to be helping the Lone Wolf guys out with some of their marketing/customer interaction stuff so if you've got any (more) questions, send them my way. :)
Hyrum.
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All this talk about DRM concerns me in one significant fashion:
Suppose I am deep in the bowels of the Indianapolis Convention Center (which I will be in about 10 days w00t!) and cannot get wi-fi access or a decent cellular signal for the aircard.
Will Herolab work for me there, in the absence of a continuous internet connection? If not, that is the deathknell for me. I cannot use the program if it is not available in an offline mode.
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All this talk about DRM concerns me in one significant fashion:
Suppose I am deep in the bowels of the Indianapolis Convention Center (which I will be in about 10 days w00t!) and cannot get wi-fi access or a decent cellular signal for the aircard.
Will Herolab work for me there, in the absence of a continuous internet connection? If not, that is the deathknell for me. I cannot use the program if it is not available in an offline mode.
as long as you register you license number before hand you will be able to use it.
All this talk about DRM concerns me in one significant fashion:
Suppose I am deep in the bowels of the Indianapolis Convention Center (which I will be in about 10 days w00t!) and cannot get wi-fi access or a decent cellular signal for the aircard.
Will Herolab work for me there, in the absence of a continuous internet connection? If not, that is the deathknell for me. I cannot use the program if it is not available in an offline mode.
Yes, you just need an internet connection to license it in the first place. Once it is installed it runs fine without an internet connection, although it can't finish checking for updates.
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Yes, you just need an internet connection to license it in the first place. Once it is installed it runs fine without an internet connection, although it can't finish checking for updates.All this talk about DRM concerns me in one significant fashion:
Suppose I am deep in the bowels of the Indianapolis Convention Center (which I will be in about 10 days w00t!) and cannot get wi-fi access or a decent cellular signal for the aircard.
Will Herolab work for me there, in the absence of a continuous internet connection? If not, that is the deathknell for me. I cannot use the program if it is not available in an offline mode.
Awesome! One more question then - I have been playing with the demo, and it looks pretty nice, but will I need to buy more that the Pathfinder RPG data set if I want access to things like Gnomes of Golarion or Adventurer's Armory?
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Awesome! One more question then - I have been playing with the demo, and it looks pretty nice, but will I need to buy more that the Pathfinder RPG data set if I want access to things like Gnomes of Golarion or Adventurer's Armory?
You won't need to. There will be the option to buy additional data sets, but anything you want to add can simply be added manually. In addition, the http://www.d20pfsrd.com/ website has some free downloads available that add in some more content if you want to save time from manually entering it yourself.
Awesome! One more question then - I have been playing with the demo, and it looks pretty nice, but will I need to buy more that the Pathfinder RPG data set if I want access to things like Gnomes of Golarion or Adventurer's Armory?Yes, you just need an internet connection to license it in the first place. Once it is installed it runs fine without an internet connection, although it can't finish checking for updates.All this talk about DRM concerns me in one significant fashion:
Suppose I am deep in the bowels of the Indianapolis Convention Center (which I will be in about 10 days w00t!) and cannot get wi-fi access or a decent cellular signal for the aircard.
Will Herolab work for me there, in the absence of a continuous internet connection? If not, that is the deathknell for me. I cannot use the program if it is not available in an offline mode.
Well at this point the only thing that is available beyond what is in the core install is the bestiary. There intentions are to eventually have all of the data entered into it, although timeframe and cost is unknown at this point. Price of data is going to depend on th amount of work it takes to enter it.
Too bad it's still Windows only. And expensive.We're actively working on a native Mac port right now. The plan is to have a Mac version available late this year.
Mac compatibility is great. I'm currently using HeroLab in WINE and despite the interface being a little sluggish (WINE, not HeroLab to blame), it runs great. Though I must admit if there was a native Linux version one day, or even tacit support of it under WINE I'd feel even better..
Once it is installed it runs fine without an internet connection, although it can't finish checking for updates.
The check for updates runs in the background and automatically gives up after about a minute if it can't get through. Since it runs in the background, you can simply ignore the in-progress check, load the game system you want, and start using Hero Lab immediately. Once you've loaded a game system, the check will quietly fail and you won't be bothered about it.
?! Does this mean that SGG might be getting acquired or otherwise officially sponsored by the folks at paizo?!Sorry, nothing like that. :)
Hyrum.
Given that you have some familiarity with the Lone Wolf guys, is there any chance of getting a Super Genius package add on for Hero Lab? I'd be willing to pay for it.
Given that you have some familiarity with the Lone Wolf guys, is there any chance of getting a Super Genius package add on for Hero Lab? I'd be willing to pay for it.
The war master is available as a free download from d20PFRPG. We're also working on getting the other classes, feats, and magic systems from the Adventurer's Handbook into Hero Lab as well.
Hyrum.
Generally, you can get quicker answers to questions about HeroLab on the LoneWolf forums.
That said, did you make sure that, in addition to downloading the add-on, you enabled it for that character? Ctrl-K brings up the "Configure Your Hero" screen.. in the list of sources, make sure that the book you want to use is checked for that character.