Cutter's page

Here is another small issue I just noticed but I think it was in older versions as well.

It appears that the "Combat Reflexes" is not being brought in for characters imported from Hero Labs.

Dreaming Psion wrote:

1.46 isn't allowing me to load pcgen files (it crashes when I try to do so).

You are correct, sir. Unfortunately my fix for the Zip DLL problem only worked if you installed it just the right way.

For now, you can try this (slightly) experimental build:
http://combatmanager.com/CMInstallerTest.msi

If you use this. please uninstall it before trying to install the next build.

I'll have a final build out soonish. It might even be this build.

You probably already know this Kyle, but the HeroLabs import is also broken in 1.4.6.

This test build seems to resolve the problem though.

Cutter wrote:

I hate to say this Kyle but I am still getting the duplicate spell entries after this upgrade.

Are you seeing a large number or just a few? I was supposed to cleanup any spell that had duplicate name and source. I think you'll see some duplicate spells (Ablative Sphere, for example), but not a large number. There's another level of cleanup I need to do on this old file, and I also need to get more new spells in.

I just ran a upgrade from 1.4.5 to 1.4.6 on this Win 8 system and that's what I'm seeing, so I'm fairly confident the right file made it into the build.

Yeah it is just a few, Ablative Sphere and Abstemiousness are the only two in the "A"'s for example.

Combat Manager update to 1.4.6:

Fix duplicate spells
Fix Hero Lab "Speed" property loading
Resolve update issue with zip dll

CombatManager.com

I hate to say this Kyle but I am still getting the duplicate spell entries after this upgrade.

I am hoping it is just me with this problem Kyle, but I am getting duplicate spell entries again. If I have just the core sources selected it is fine. If I select Pathfinder Chronicles, Ultimate Magic, Ultimate Combat or Other, all spells from those sources are showing up twice in the spells list.

I tried an unistall/reinstall and that didn't help.

I'll have a HeroLab fix out soon. Probably tomorrow or Sunday. The fix is done, I just need to update the data in the app. iPad will be delivered to the Apple at the same time, so probably 10 days more for review process.

You're still the man Kyle! Thanks much for this.

Kyle,

I've got a bit of an emergency here, and I'm going to be emailing you a file. Hero Lab just updated their files, and any portfolio I've resaved under the new software can't open in Combat Manager. The error says Combat Manager can't read the file...

Help! I've got two sessions this Saturday, and it will be a lot more difficult for me to run without your handy software.

Thanks,
Mended

+1 - This is a real problem for me as well. Help Kyle!

Excellent news Kyle.

I've been itching to take a look at the code since you first mentioned you were going this way.Hopefully I can help out a bit.

Combat Manager update to 1.4.0:

Fix condition doubling with Monster Editor
Fix green arrow position when loading groups
Fix cleverly added Die Roller bug

CombatManager.com

Thanks much Kyle. I've said it before, but it bears repeating, you are awesome sir!

People don't get support this good on commercial products!

Kyle,

I've just noticed a very serious bug in the dice roller.

It seems that for any die rolled Combat Manager will not roll the highest possible number on that die.

For example a d4 will only roll 1-3 and a d20 will roll 1-19

That sort of makes it a lot tougher to roll a critical (or any hit for that matter) :(

I'm betting this is just a rounding error in your roll generation routine, so I am hoping we might be able to get a quick fix for this? I'm running a game this weekend and this makes the dice roller totally unusable for me.

Could someone else check this and make sure it isn't only me please?

Woohoo, a new version! I had just about given up hope.

Great to see you back in action Kyle and I hope things are going better for you!

I was wondering where I could get more info on setting up the Initiative Window on a separate display for my players. I'm not sure where to start.

Nothing to it really.

Plug a second display into your computer. (Hopefully your vid card has a second port).

That will give you two screens on the one computer and that will let you drag windows from one screen to the other.

Just open up the combat manager initiative display window and drag it to your second screen.

Done.

Second, a tiny feature request: would it be possible to toggle the dice roller to one-click-rolling? I end up having a second window open for a dice roller, since it is easier to tab over than clicking X to clear, clicking the die I want, and then clicking roll.

I have to second this request. I would love it is the dice buttons actually just rolled one of the specified dice as opposed to adding it to the dice to be ruled specification in the roll window. I'm forever clicking those dice buttons and expecting them to roll a die. After which I say "Doh!" and then hit clear, click the die I want again, and then click roll.

Seems to me it would be much simpler to have those as instant roll buttons and anything else we want to roll we can just type the request for in the roll window.

Hey Kyle, I noticed a minor omission during a session I ran last week.

On the Combat Maneuvers Rules page, Trip seems to be missing. Everything else seems to be there.

Request 2: For the "add condition" button, allow adding the same condition to multiple characters at the same time. For instance, it is the cleric's turn and she casts bless. I want to add 2 minutes of the blessed condition to the cleric, fighter and ranger, but NOT the wizard and rogue as they are out of range. Something like a check box to select which characters get the condition.

Papa.DRB

You can do this now. Just select the characters you want to apply the condition to (click on the first and CTRL-click the others) and then right click on any of them and add the condition. It will be applied to all of them.

OK, so i'm trying to figure out how to import PCgen files to Combat Manager. so far I've figured out that you have to export the file as a .rpgrp file by selecting ->file->export->to txt. that part goes fine.

the part i can't figure out is how to import that file to Combat Manager. when i go to import a file i have to select either Load Combat State which only seems to recognize .cmcs files, or Import Data which only seems to recognize .cmx files.

i know that others have managed to figure this out, so if one of you could please tell me what i'm missing that would be great.

BTW, this program is excellent! thanks so much.

You've got it, you're just looking in the wrong place to read in your .rpgrp file. Click the open folder icon on the Party or monster sub-windows. You'll see that file type listed there. Select it and find your file and you should be on your way.

Cutter wrote:

It isn't perfect because it doesn't take into account weapons with increased critical threat rolls, but it is a time saver nonetheless.

The result be green if it hits anywhere in the listed critical threat range. On a listed 19-20, it will be green if the roll is a '19'. Of course, the 19 could still be a miss, but that goes back to the fact it doesn't check against a target number.

Okay I stand corrected Kyle. The result is green and and the crit rolled if it is anywhere in the threat range for the selected attack.I think I was reading the window incorrectly. Very nice feature then!

Do you always have to be one step in front of me?

eXterminator wrote:

We already had this, there'd just be too much stuff to keep track of in order to automatically check if it was a hit or miss (i.e. you'd have to keep track of every modifier for the targets AC and the attacker... would you really like to do that?).

Yes, I'd like to see Combat Manager get that advanced at some point. The system is already starting to take shape to enable this (though it would be admittedly more complex).

@kyle -
A roll of 1 is an auto-miss.

Also in case anyone missed it the dice roller window now automatically flags rolls of 20 in green, and rolls for the critical as well. Another nice time saver for the GM. It isn't perfect because it doesn't take into account weapons with increased critical threat rolls, but it is a time saver nonetheless.

Another awesome release Kyle!

The dice roller is so incredibly useful now it is amazing, and the data import/export should make for a whole new way for us all to exchange content. Excellent stuff!

Would love a copy of this if still a availalbe....

droy39@hotmail.com

Thanks!

Small suggestion for the dice roller Kyle....

Any chance we could make d20 rolls of "1" stand out by being in red or something? I think that would really make it a lot easier to spot 1's when rolled for attack roles for example (automatic miss)

I'm finding I am using the attack roller all the time but since it adds on appropriate bonuses I have to be careful and look closely for 1's being rolled for attacks.

Another awesome release Kyle!

They could be, though, right? So, Right Click ---> Roll ---> Select "Attack" ---> New Flyout "against" ---> Select from a list of monsters. That way it would actually fully resolve the attack and apply those Special Attacks as warranted. That could be a thing, it just isn't a thing yet.

Yes something like that is techncally possible, however when you start trying to automate the entire attack process and the associated math, things rapidly get both extremely complicated and unwieldly to use.

What you say is possible, but of course you need to start looking at all the external factors that affect whether you hit a specific target or not. Is the target flanked? Does it have cover? Higher ground? Someone using the "aid another" action to assist? etc. etc. etc. Each of those would need to be implemented (probably as a condition) and have to be checked for every attack. Like I said VERY unwieldly.

I think the way Kyle has things now is just about ideal from a usability perspective.

If you've ever used the old 3.5 DMGenie program you'll know what I mean. It tried to do all of that and somewhat succeeded, but there were so many options you had to check off and such for an attack, just trying to fit them all on the screen was a challenge.

follow up question: for lions / trolls --> is the rake / rend ability automated

(I'm guessing it kicks in depending on if you hit the enemy's AC with both claws, so while it would be calculated, a human conscious decision must subtract it from the total damage calculated IF the AC has not been reached by both claws... please confirm; thx)

Rolls in combat manager are automated but not calculated against a specific target. Hence the program will calculate total "to-hit" and damage rolls, but it is up to the DM to decide if they in fact hit a target. Special Attacks are not part of the automated rolls at this point.

Kyle,

Newbie question: can I select a PC or a monster and hit a button to have their full attack routine computed automatically? (i.e. attack results and associated damage results???)

If so, that would save SOOOOO much time at the table, especially for slow players with PCs that have TWF or lion/tiger animal companions....... :)

Right click on the monster/character, select ROLL, select ATTACKS, and the routine you want to use.

And yes that feature saves a tonne of time!

One more small suggestion:

Any chance we could get a % dice roll button added in along with the ones you already have? I think that is the only die that is missing,

Okay... unreal release Kyle! Somehow you keep managing to blow me away with how much you can add to this gem of a program every release.

I absolutely love all the new functionality. Your implementation of the dice rolls is simply elegant.

Also having the spell like abilities now linked for monsters and all spells linked for Hero Lab imported characters seems to be working beautifully as well.

This release is going to make life Soooooo much simpler for us poor GM's.
All I can say is simply "Bravo! Bravo!"

Two small questions/suggestions for you:

(1) Someone mentioned in an earlier post about the popups for feats and spells disappearing after a few seconds. Any chance we can see that timer removed or at least lengthened so that you can read all the info in the popup for long items?

(2) Now that we have spells and spell-like abilities linked for monsters, and spells linked for Hero Lab imported characters, is there any chance we might see links for spell-like abilities on characters imported from Hero Labs as well?

eXaminator wrote:

May I say that it would be rather important for me to have the fixed version (at least with the incoporeal fix) prior to saturday? ^_^"

It will certainly be by Saturday. I need some free time away from work to take what I have created and make the installer (trivial),run it through it's paces (20 minutes if everything goes well), and post it online and update the website (10 minutes of work). The bigger the program gets the higher a chance that an old feature causes a problem (like the auto-incorporeal feature) with changes I've made.

And as the program gets bigger, if you think that a beta tester would lighten your load a bit, I think you know I am more then willing to lend a hand any time you ask.

Kyle you continue to astound. This program has become so invaluable to me, I can't even imagine running a game without it. Your monster editor and ability to save custom monsters is such a versatile tool, that it has literally reduced my preparation time by (at least) half. Thank you so much for your continued work on this FREE product.

Cheers

FREE but he does accept donations on the combatmanager.com website...

Has anyone bought Kyle a pizza lately? ;)

Kyle Olson wrote:

kingpin wrote:

I'm using the HeroLab imports so hopefully so the formatting is done for me.

Yep. I just forgot to get that fixed up before I pushed this out, so it's not correct for my parser as of the current release. I've got it mostly working in my test builds now, but not all the time.

That's great. It's just such a nice feature fro when you numpty players forget what their own spells do.

Actually I'd like to hear if this is working for someone else.

That was the mistake I made. I am using characters imported from HeroLabs and the spells are not linked so I am assuming the format is not matching 100%. Monsters from the DB are linked perfectly but my other characters are not.

Okay that was my mistake. Linked spells are working great on the monsters from the DB. I was assuming it was for any creature.

I love the way this is working, the popups are going to be a fantastic time saver!

That being said is there any chance we can get this functionality for all creatures and characters? Most of the bad guys I use tend to be more character or custom entered creature, which means the spells are not linked.

Having seen it for monsters now we want it for everything. Never give us kids a new toy Kyle, we always want more!

Combat Manager update to 1.3.0:

Add Custom Monster DB
Add spell links and tooltips for monster spells known and prepared
Tooltips for monster feats
Fix loading and saving state on some systems
Fix some Hero Lab import issues
Added Magus levels to spells from PG and APG
Save and restore window location
Add subschool and descriptor to spell text

CombatManager.com

Awesome, Awesome release Kyle!

I can't believe how much you have added in one version. The custom monster DB is going to be hugely useful.

I love the popup tooltips on feats.

The only thing I can't seem to get to work is the spell links and tooltips for spells known/prepared. Spells are still displaying the same for me(no tooltip and not linked). Is there anything that needs to be done to enable this?

I have to agree - hyperlinked spells(same as you have for feats) would top my list of things that would make life simpler for GM's.

Kyle Olson wrote:

Cutter wrote:

(1) The combat state is no longer being automatically saved

This should still be working. For now you might try to delete your

\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Combat Manager\Combat State.xml file.

Did this and it didn't make any difference. It still won't save. This seems to be specific to this machine. I installed on my laptop and things are working fine. Also if I try to load the combat state I get a popup with all sorts of method and XML errors. I'll email you a screen shot of the errors, perhaps you have some idea...

I even did a full uninstall/reinstall and that made no difference...

Problem found and solved by Kyle.

This man has got to be the greatest tech support person of all time!

Cutter wrote:

(1) The combat state is no longer being automatically saved

This should still be working. For now you might try to delete your

\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Combat Manager\Combat State.xml file.

Did this and it didn't make any difference. It still won't save. This seems to be specific to this machine. I installed on my laptop and things are working fine. Also if I try to load the combat state I get a popup with all sorts of method and XML errors. I'll email you a screen shot of the errors, perhaps you have some idea...

I even did a full uninstall/reinstall and that made no difference...

Okay I have a couple of issues with this release unfortunately...

(1) The combat state is no longer being automatically saved. In the last releases if I quit the program or it crashed, when I restarted the combat would come back exactly as where it left off. This release is coming up with a completely empty combat (no monsters, or characters loaded). This is a big loss for me - I loved that feature. Hopefully this is a minor oversight?

(2) Remembering the window size is nice, but it is not remembering the window position. It comes up the correct size but parts of it are shoved off the right side of my screen and I have to drag to reposition the window. Remembering the layout of draggable subwindow boundaries and things like one or two column displays would also be a plus...

I love the changes to the initiative window. Really nice job there Kyle! Seeing it with the delay and ready icons now though has given me another idea. How about having an option to display condition icons in that window as well, and perhaps also indicate creatures with negative hp like you do in the combat window?

Thanks for the great work as always!

I'm having a slight (and surprising) technical problem with the scrolling but hopefully that will be in the next version.

You are having a technical problem..... why am I not worried? LOL

As for doing more with the window, the only thing I can think of that might be cool is to show the ready or delay flag on characters that choose that action.

A couple of thoughts/suggestions for the floating initiative Window for you Kyle...

(1) The active character box at the top is consistently narrower then the character list below (the main initiative list). That means it wraps sooner with a long name then the rest of the window does. It might be nice if they were roughly the same width. That might save some screen real estate because the window can be a bit narrower before long names would wrap.

(2) It would be nice if the initiative window automatically scrolled if the list is longer then the can fit in the window size. Right now if I am clicking the next turn button the turn indicator in the initiative window disappears when a creature who is scrolled off the bottom of the window comes up in the order.

Great job as always though and keep it up. I (like many others I am sure) don't even think about running a session without your software in front of me anymore.

I do like the external Initiative window, though I didn't quite figure how to "hide" a monster (since there is a "display hidden" option in that initiative window).

Same question here - is hiding a "yet to be completed?"

Kyle, no worries. I've become a Combat Manager junkie and I need my fix!!! <Goes off to twitch in the corner>

Get out of the corner Seth - I was here first! <twitch> <twitch>

Minor usability issue, if I have a monster in the monster party, the monster details don't change until I click on "stats". It would be better if the details changed when I simply clicked on the monster to select it.

Any chance you have had a chance to look at this issue Kyle?

This is the same issue I have mentioned to you before about the stats block not always displaying the selected character or monster. Seems like it should be an easy one to track down as it is looks like just a timing issue of when that window is updated.

This one has been outstanding for the last few releases it seems. Yeah, it's minor, but it's the one annoying little hiccup I often stumble across in an otherwise seamless program!

I have to agree, AWESOME release Kyle. The autosaving of combat state should resolve any problems with the program crashing and losing the state of the combat (not that it crashed often but you never know).

Also I think this one finally fixes my issue with being unable to display the stat block for a monster on occassion.

I think you have actually hit the point where I have nothing to complain about. ;)

Thanks again, for the great work!

Really, we should be thanking you since you're doing the hard stuff.

Have I mentioned the buy Kyle a pizza campaign lately? ;)

After I install 1.2.1 and I click the shortcut on my desktop I get "invalid parameters" and it won't start.

I had to delete the shortcut and go to the program's folder to get a new shortcut, when then works

That's normal I believe Chopswil. I get that exact same thing with every release. Like you said though, just deleting and recreating the shortcut fixes it.

Thanks for this update Kyle. I discovered a crash bug. When I tried to add the "exhausted" condition to PCs. It doesn't seem to happen when added to monsters though.

I just tried that exact sequence here and it is working fine for me. It must be something with either your install or the party you are using I am guessing.

I noticed that on d20pfsrd the enemies from the pre-pfrpg APs have been updated and added onto there. Is there any chance they could be added to the monster/NPC list? If not, can anyone help me by sending me them to upload?

Yeah I would love to get my hands on those as well.

So, when are you going to update the monster database file with the new dragons and stuff? ;)

There are still many monsters in the NPC list, is that your bug or is it that way in the database?

I believe the monsters in the NPC list come from the extra data sources. If you unselect "Adventures and Modules" as well as "Pathfinder Chronicles and Companions" under sources then I believe you will only see the actual NPC entries.

I guess the monsters from those extra sources are classed as NPC's because they are not part of the monster DB itself.

Add stat changes for some spell conditions

This is an awesome feature and thanks for the quick fix on the crashing problem Kyle.

Is there anyway we can tell which spell conditions are making stat changes and which aren't other then trial and error?

This tool is great and such, but you could still get the DM screen which has most skill DC tables (and concentration check DCs) on it ;-)

I do own a copy of the DM screen, but I am finding that with the amount of info that Combat Manager has in it these days that the laptop is quickly replacing my need for the DM screen at all.

Suggestion for inclusion in rules tab.

Could be possibly get the rules for spell casting and concentration checks added somewhere in the rules tab? The concentration check DC's and related charts are something I often have to look up and I don't think it is included any where as of yet, unless I am just not seeing it.