4e Character Builder Project

[Coldain]

Hey all,

I'm new to Giant in the Playground (well this account anyway... think I had one back when 4e was pretty new). Anyway...

I'm working on a 4e Character builder for fun. It's heavily inspired by the DDI character creator.
Currently I'm just building it out for 4e though I think in the future I want to make it adaptable for different editions and even systems.


https://youtu.be/sd0DMbJ8XVU

Let me know if you have any thoughts. I need to garner some more posts before I can link it.

[Bahamut7]

I believe there is one that has all possible options but...from what I remember it didn't provide sources or descriptions. So if my memory is correct, I would say if you include the source for each option (at least after selecting it) and a place for a description, you would have a step up. Just be warned, I have started a similar project...there are a LOT of feats.

[ScrivenerofDoom]

Do you have access to the original offline Character Builder and CBLoader - the latter allowing you to add custom content?

If so, I would actually ask that, instead of creating a new builder from scratch, you build some sort of interface to allow those of us with no coding skills to add our own custom content to the existing offline CB.

And, yes, this post is motivated by complete, total, and utter selfishness on my part.

[MoutonRustique]

With regards to system ports - it really depends what kind of builder you're looking to make :

1 - auto calculates, guides creation process (removing illegal elements, etc)

2 - essentially a presentation tool where the character is built (perhaps with a built-in reference) by the player but w/o much (or any) calculations and such

If you're going for 1 - I... well, if you manage it, you will have squared the circle!

If you're going for 2 - make sure the output can be heavily customized with presets and themes and such.

Character sheets make or break these kinds of things, so please spend the effort to make them awesome. Some common desires:
- be able to group power cards by usage (at-will, encounter, etc), level, type, etc
- be able to manually disposition the power cards
- no power cards
- combat-oriented pages and non-combat oriented pages
- shows the math v. hides all the math
- space for manual annotations v. compact design

... and so on. I'm fairly certain all the above is unachievable, so choose your path, and built it well.

Best of luck! :D

[Coldain]

Do you have access to the original offline Character Builder and CBLoader - the latter allowing you to add custom content?

If so, I would actually ask that, instead of creating a new builder from scratch, you build some sort of interface to allow those of us with no coding skills to add our own custom content to the existing offline CB.

And, yes, this post is motivated by complete, total, and utter selfishness on my part.

Yeah I'd like for custom/home-brew anything. I actually got inspired to start working on it not to long ago after trying to get back into the DDI Character Builder after a bit of a hiatus... and realizing it was dead. Funny enough as I was searching for solutions to make it convenient and fun to build characters I came across one of your posts talking about the CB Builder and some other things. The beholder always fascinated me.

I do indeed have it but did prefer the DDI layout more. So as an opportunity to help me develop some skils I decided to work on it for fun. I would wholeheartedly support making your own anything (race, classes, feats, powers, etc). As well as interfacing with other save files. Though this part may be a bit further in the future I would want it to be able to take in and output to the different save files that other programs use. Though this is something I am yet to have any experience with. ;)


With regards to system ports - it really depends what kind of builder you're looking to make :

1 - auto calculates, guides creation process (removing illegal elements, etc)

2 - essentially a presentation tool where the character is built (perhaps with a built-in reference) by the player but w/o much (or any) calculations and such

If you're going for 1 - I... well, if you manage it, you will have squared the circle!

If you're going for 2 - make sure the output can be heavily customized with presets and themes and such.

Character sheets make or break these kinds of things, so please spend the effort to make them awesome. Some common desires:
- be able to group power cards by usage (at-will, encounter, etc), level, type, etc
- be able to manually disposition the power cards
- no power cards
- combat-oriented pages and non-combat oriented pages
- shows the math v. hides all the math
- space for manual annotations v. compact design

... and so on. I'm fairly certain all the above is unachievable, so choose your path, and built it well.

Best of luck! :D


All of the above is definitely the dream! Though to actually have it usable at some point I aim to start focused and complete one essential.

In this case D&D 4e
Core Setting
Starting with the basic books (though I for sure will do all of the books)
It's a guided set up modeled almost exactly after the DDI tool, only allow acceptable values except for ability scores in this case you will be marked as Home Brew but still allowed.
(In the future allow for home brewing everything, but again gotta stay focused at the moment).
1 Character Sheet (for now) (I'll probably have to take a vote on how to organize the power cards) Type, Level, Level (1st) / Type (2nd)
(In the future allow for different character sheets and configurations of each of those).


Once I get the necessities done then I'll really focus on working with the community to develop features. :)
That's why I wanted to share with Giant in the Playground to start getting it out there and getting thoughts / ideas / feedback / etc.


I believe there is one that has all possible options but...from what I remember it didn't provide sources or descriptions. So if my memory is correct, I would say if you include the source for each option (at least after selecting it) and a place for a description, you would have a step up. Just be warned, I have started a similar project...there are a LOT of feats.

Sources and Descriptions are a for sure thing. As I'm building my database I'm ensuring I'm keeping track of that information.

[MoutonRustique]

All of the above is definitely the dream! Though to actually have it usable at some point I aim to start focused and complete one essential.

In this case D&D 4e
Core Setting
Starting with the basic books (though I for sure will do all of the books)
It's a guided set up modeled almost exactly after the DDI tool, only allow acceptable values except for ability scores in this case you will be marked as Home Brew but still allowed.
(In the future allow for home brewing everything, but again gotta stay focused at the moment).
1 Character Sheet (for now) (I'll probably have to take a vote on how to organize the power cards) Type, Level, Level (1st) / Type (2nd)
(In the future allow for different character sheets and configurations of each of those).


Once I get the necessities done then I'll really focus on working with the community to develop features. :)
That's why I wanted to share with Giant in the Playground to start getting it out there and getting thoughts / ideas / feedback / etc.
Happy to hear it!

In any case, the only "help" I can offer is to use plenty of descriptors to allow for "down the road" development. Yep, that's all I got. :)

Greatest of luck!

Got another thing! You could use the thing as an excuse to trim the chaff - perhaps only inputting "black" and up options (or even blue and up to start). That would cut down significantly on the "time to input" the various options.

[yossarian22xxii]

Hey all,

I'm new to Giant in the Playground (well this account anyway... think I had one back when 4e was pretty new). Anyway...

I'm working on a 4e Character builder for fun. It's heavily inspired by the DDI character creator.
Currently I'm just building it out for 4e though I think in the future I want to make it adaptable for different editions and even systems.


https://youtu.be/sd0DMbJ8XVU

Let me know if you have any thoughts. I need to garner some more posts before I can link it.

Hey,

Came across your post from a while ago, are you still working on the builder? I started working on my own recently(not exactly a 'builder' just kind of character sheet), but got distracted by all the almost-infinite options for various classes and hundreds of power/feat descriptions and dependencies.

I am using Java(but no GUI yet, want to make it like some kind of core model/controller API and later build View (either desktop or web based or android)
- so far I have only made a system of loading the powers/feats/etc... stuff from xml files(kind of a big decision what exactly needs to be in a power description)(+ maybe a DB like SQLite will be better later)

What lang you using? C#? Any plans for next development? Mind sharing your code if no plans for it? I certainly don't want to make any profit from it(well how many 4E players are still out there, certainly not enough for a big business plan hh :) ) I consider it as sort of a learning project (im still a coding beginner) by coding what I like.

[Yakk]

He hasn't updated his youtube of the project in 9 months either, FYI.

[ScrivenerofDoom]

Yep, it was clearly too big a job with no return on time expended, especially when the offline versions of all the tools are still available to those who ask nicely.