Shadowrun
Shadowrun General => Gear => Topic started by: FastJack on <09-03-10/1823:11>
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Not sure if it goes best here or not, but Hero Labs is a great toolkit for the Gamer with a laptop. I've been using it for 3.5/Pathfinder for over six months now and it's officially replaced all the excel spreadsheets I used to have scattered through my PAN. I also have the 4E toolkit, but I don't use it as much (not in any games) and they have toolkits for the Cortex system (Serenity, Smallville, Supernatural), Mutants & Masterminds, and Call of Cthulhu.
"But 'Jack! What's this all got to do with us runners?"
Well, if you go over and check, you'll see that they are working on releasing a SR4 toolkit for character creation. Last update (http://forums.wolflair.com/showthread.php?t=10283) puts the release date sometime around Christmas. And I can't think of a better present to find under the non-denominational tree.
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Good to hear their still slogging through it! Been looking forward to this for about a year now!
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Herolab is a fantastic program, and I had the chance to chat with Colin and a couple of the other guys from Lone Wolf at Gen Con. I'm really excited about it, and so far my only complaint is that I want this out like yesterday! :)
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can't wait, can't wait, can't wait....want it now, now , now....hmmm doesn't work for the kids and apparently not for me either. Guess i'll have to be patient.
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can't wait, can't wait, can't wait....want it now, now , now....hmmm doesn't work for the kids and apparently not for me either. Guess i'll have to be patient.
That's because you didn't sacrifice and Elf while chanting.
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I'll sure be interested to see how this one works out. I've never used Hero Lab before, but have heard some great things about it. If it works out for me, I might buy the author tools and try to work up some toolkits for CODA Star Trek and maybe Saga Edition Star Wars. Won't be able to sell them, but they'll be there for my own use.
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I'll sure be interested to see how this one works out. I've never used Hero Lab before, but have heard some great things about it. If it works out for me, I might buy the author tools and try to work up some toolkits for CODA Star Trek and maybe Saga Edition Star Wars. Won't be able to sell them, but they'll be there for my own use.
I love the program. It's got all the official stuff in there, but allows you to add on. It's not 'drag-n-drop' programming to add stuff; if you don't have any programming instruction, you'll have to figure it out, but once you do it's pretty easy to add-on to the existing. (For instance, I've been creating some Forgotten Realms material for the Pathfinder system.)
I haven't yet tackled the Authoring toolkit, but I imagine it's a bit more difficult than adding on.
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puts the release date sometime around Christmas. And I can't think of a better present to find under the non-denominational tree.
Thats only the corebook, sadly it fill probably be still next summer atleast before this will be nearly as good as the fan made excell chargenerators or really even usable.
Unless your willing to input all the additional book by yourself.
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I love the program. It's got all the official stuff in there, but allows you to add on. It's not 'drag-n-drop' programming to add stuff; if you don't have any programming instruction, you'll have to figure it out, but once you do it's pretty easy to add-on to the existing. (For instance, I've been creating some Forgotten Realms material for the Pathfinder system.)
I haven't yet tackled the Authoring toolkit, but I imagine it's a bit more difficult than adding on.
Well, it's still a ways off, and I'm not in a particular hurry, so I can probably teach myself quickly enough.
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Patrick: Hit the Herolabs website and download the trial of the base program. You can grab "trial versions" of any of the official datapacks too. You can't save or print characters, but otherwise the programs are, I believe, full unlocked. So you can muck around, see how much detail they give you and what the program looks like and how it works.
Bull
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Have they released the SR stuff yet?
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Not yet. They're hoping to get it out by Christmas. They officially couldn't start working on it until the licenses got signed over, which happened around August.
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I have 3 or 4 character generators, basically to do the number crunching. My favourite one for SR - sadly obsolete now - is NSRCG3.
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I have 3 or 4 character generators, basically to do the number crunching. My favourite one for SR - sadly obsolete now - is NSRCG3.
Completely off topic: Dude! I love Longshot. I have the mini-series from WAY back when. The first one is even signed by Arthur Adams! ;)
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I have 3 or 4 character generators, basically to do the number crunching. My favourite one for SR - sadly obsolete now - is NSRCG3.
Completely off topic: Dude! I love Longshot. I have the mini-series from WAY back when. The first one is even signed by Arthur Adams! ;)
Yeah, well, it's the closest look i'm likely to find for a particular character. Plus, the handle applies for wholly different reasons.
I managed to get the mini-series as well - had no hope of getting signatures though.
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Here's me, once again, praying that Hero Labs will help force a codification of rules and further errata.
Nothing helps test a system like putting it into a computer.
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Please correct me but didn't Lone Wolf put out something about owning the term Army Builder? I am hazy on the company name but I remember the topic coming up on a few forums. If it is them, I (personally) don't want to use software from folks who are being so anal.
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Please correct me but didn't Lone Wolf put out something about owning the term Army Builder? I am hazy on the company name but I remember the topic coming up on a few forums. If it is them, I (personally) don't want to use software from folks who are being so anal.
Well, they have a program called Army Builder to track armies for miniature games like Warhammer and such, but I've never heard of any naming issues. AB's been around for over a decade, so there might have been something when they copyrighted the name?
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Please correct me but didn't Lone Wolf put out something about owning the term Army Builder? I am hazy on the company name but I remember the topic coming up on a few forums. If it is them, I (personally) don't want to use software from folks who are being so anal.
Well, they have a program called Army Builder to track armies for miniature games like Warhammer and such, but I've never heard of any naming issues. AB's been around for over a decade, so there might have been something when they copyrighted the name?
That's the one I sorta remembered. Yeah the whole issue is they (Lone Wolf) is pitching a fit because gamers are making army builder freeware or asking where they can find an army builder and LW is slapping cease and disists, and telling Mods to remove posts that use the term army builder and the like. As I see it they should have named their product something less generic. Like say Wizards trying to restrict the term Character Generator because they didn't have the good sense to name their gererator something less generic.
I'm sure Lone Wolf will make a good application for ShadowRun Charater Generation but because of their sillyness, I'll just use the stuff the gamers make, or if CatLabs writes one I'll buy theirs!
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Please correct me but didn't Lone Wolf put out something about owning the term Army Builder? I am hazy on the company name but I remember the topic coming up on a few forums. If it is them, I (personally) don't want to use software from folks who are being so anal.
Well, they have a program called Army Builder to track armies for miniature games like Warhammer and such, but I've never heard of any naming issues. AB's been around for over a decade, so there might have been something when they copyrighted the name?
That's the one I sorta remembered. Yeah the whole issue is they (Lone Wolf) is pitching a fit because gamers are making army builder freeware or asking where they can find an army builder and LW is slapping cease and disists, and telling Mods to remove posts that use the term army builder and the like. As I see it they should have named their product something less generic. Like say Wizards trying to restrict the term Character Generator because they didn't have the good sense to name their gererator something less generic.
I'm sure Lone Wolf will make a good application for ShadowRun Charater Generation but because of their sillyness, I'll just use the stuff the gamers make, or if CatLabs writes one I'll buy theirs!
Well, they are working directly with CatLabs to create the Shadowrun Generator. I believe its akin to Heavy Metal working with BTech.
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Really? Yeah I guess LW would have to do that. I would have to make an exception then :-\ I just hope they don't call it character generater ::)
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No, no... Hero Labs is the registered trademark. The different systems they support are all add-on packages to that software.
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See that works for me ;)
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I am looking forward to the SR 4th character generator so that I can make some sweet major NPCs relatively fast. Also it will be nice to have all my PC's sheets on hand if they forget theirs.
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Is hero labs only a character gen? Or do they have some component/addon that makes it a multi-user (multi-player) software that allows collaboration/play via internet?
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There's no collaborative use for the program, but it does allow the GM to have all the PC's grouped together in a single file (along with any mounts/companions/hirelings), as well as NPCs. It also has a pretty good initiative tracker, and can track any status effects, benefits or modifiers easily
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So this sounds pretty good. However I am looking for a program that supports charcter creation, online play and in game news reports and shadowtalk. So a program that has pages for character info, online communication, ingame news articles w. archive cpabilities would be the bomb. Is Hero Lab this robust? Is anything that supports SR this robust?
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Hero Labs supports only character info and some nice combat/initiative tracker tools. Nothing with regards to online communication.
As for News Articles and Shadowtalk, I'd recommend setting up your own forums to handle stuff like that (Proboards (http://www.proboards.com/) is a great free messageboards tool).
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Fastjack,
Thanks for the info. I already do a forum but am looking for a product that does all in one. I reliese there is nothing like that currently. Will still look at Hero lab when its done.
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That would be a tough product to sell, even with Catalyst's blessing and support. Most gamers just need the character sheet, so it'd be a DM tool, which notoriously don't sell well since it's not as widespread as the player market.
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I would kill for a really good multi-player "virtual table top" that was specifically targeted for SR4A. Unfortunately, I'm rather picky about how the interface should work and the odds of it being to my liking are rather slim. I've tried most of the ones I could find on the market, but they are all very "low-budget" feeling and looking, and often have zero support for SR - so you end up having to jury rig it just to make it work at all. Oh well.
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Anyone know where the .dat files for the new Shadowrun 5th are located so I can start adding in custom stuff?
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Holy Resurrection Batman!
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You find them in:
C:\ProgramData\Hero Lab\data\shadowrun5
The files are .user files for the user-configured stuff. Also, this thread really shouldn't be in Gear as Hero Lab is much more of a character generator and tracker than any kind of reference to gear.
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I've been getting a number of the books I have into user files. Don't have much else.