Barf Forth Apocalyptica
powered by the apocalypse => Dungeon World => Topic started by: azrianni on June 16, 2012, 04:28:38 PM
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Please, someone with talent, make a blank playbook in a format I can use--Word or Publisher, or something easy to get.
Or tell me that the existing blank playbook is easier to use than I think it is.
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We're working on it! I have this plan to get someone with some CSS skill to make a template so that we can just provide an HTML file. Failing that, Word would be a real stretch but publisher is possible, I think.
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uh, the druid in my group actually knows a lot about css and html. If help is needed I could tell him.
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(not that) adam— that's be awesome! Not sure when we'll get around to actually doing it, but if you could get us in touch with him (gm@dungeon-world.com) that'd be awesome!
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(not that) adam— that's be awesome! Not sure when we'll get around to actually doing it, but if you could get us in touch with him (gm@dungeon-world.com) that'd be awesome!
Sage, is there a requirement for CSS? I have a quick xslt file I have been building that isn't finished yet, but is sort of functional. I was doing it for myself but if you guys want it I can work on cleaning it up. In my experience xslt is considerably more pliable, and you don't have to convert your XML to HTML, your browser does it for you! Or should.
Edit:
I just realized that the bard file actually points to an XSL style sheet already. (this is what I get for only using a single file for testing purposes). So it looks like there is some movement in that direction. Does anyone know why the dungeon-world-class.xsl file is not on github?
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Also, if you're using XSLT, a quick PHP/TCPDF script can make playable files in short order. Printable output FOR THE WIN.
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Heyya, I'm the Druid of which Adam was talking about here above.
I'm a web designer so I'm pretty involved in html and css. Just let me know if you need something in this field.
p.s talking by player side: Dungeon World rocks ;D
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Ha! I thought that xslt reference was only in my other branch. Guess I got confused!
Yes, I've been working with xslt to display the character sheets and it works perfectly well, but it doesn't look very good. Without some styling (either straight in the HTML or via css) it just looks like My Very First Web Page. So yeah, getting it to look decent and hopefully be easily printable is somewhere down the road.
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I suppose this depends on who the target audience is. I suspect that the technical sophistication of many players does not go much beyond Word, let alone xml + xslt.
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I'm hoping that a template (and the fact that really they only need to write HTML) would work, but who knows!
The idea is that we'd have a template that looked like this:
<div id="Races">
Write you race options here. Use this as a template:
<h3>Elf</h3>
<p>You're all elfy and stuff</p></div>
That's still too complex for a lot of people, but WAY easier than asking them to already have InDesign.
I've messed with a Word template but just haven't been able to get it to work to anything close to the same standard. Then again, I'm not a Word guru.
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I'm hoping that a template (and the fact that really they only need to write HTML) would work, but who knows!
The idea is that we'd have a template that looked like this:
<div id="Races">
Write you race options here. Use this as a template:
<h3>Elf</h3>
<p>You're all elfy and stuff</p></div>
That's still too complex for a lot of people, but WAY easier than asking them to already have InDesign.
I've messed with a Word template but just haven't been able to get it to work to anything close to the same standard. Then again, I'm not a Word guru.
I really like this intent. It would be pretty easy for a couple of slightly more technically oriented folks to put together a number of templates that people could hack if they wanted. Since the XML is mostly HTML writing css for it is actually easy then building an XSL file that mimics HTML. So I may take that route.
Also if you set up the XML with a fair amount of comments:
<!-- Add elfy data here -->
It should work fine for the neophyte. Word templates are pretty easy, but in general word is not nearly as robust as either inDesign or even Web/HTML. I would stick with what you have.
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I just have to say, watching you guys get all webdev about Dungeon World is giving me some nerd happiness I did not expect.
Thumbs universally up, over here.
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The problem with word is that it isn't a layout tool, it just does word processing. I'm debating putting together a quick web app that is just "fill in the blanks" and hit go. I'd generate LaTeX, or something on the backend to render the pdf, and server it up to the user. Granted, these are famous last words, but it would be fairly simple to put together.
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jj, I looked at doing something similar, but ultimately ended up not having the time to put into it. It does seem entirely possible, but my expertise isn't really in web apps. (For those who don't know my day job is software development, but I'm more in the client/app space than server-side.)
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Sage, time is always the biggest factor. Once you've settled on the new/final? character sheet layout I'll give it a crack and see how labor intense it would be.
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Guys.
Step 1: Figure out what you want your final layout to be.
Step 2: Remove all text (moves etc), but make sure the fonts used are installed and you have the ones used written down.
Step 3: Create a FORM. Namely something that has a label that says Races: Which you can cut/paste text into, but which has a hard cap character limit etc.
Step 4: EITHER output to an XML file, or much much better, use TCPDF to just output a clean pdf by writing the text on top of the image of the un-texted background. Can be done on the fly and saved to your local machine. Can also add basic moves pages or GM pages with a toggle/checkbox and just splice the files together.
Easy Peasy. I do this all the time. Forcing the user to learn layout or use InDesign is not your ideal solution. I promise.
The problem with Excel/Word/TCL/LaTex/InDesign is that you can't do a fair bit of backend pre-processing to calculate fits, number of lines etc. The problem with InDesign is that many people don't have it. All this would require is a machine with LAMP on it.
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Stras, how do we style the headers in user inputed text in that process? (Or do we just not bother?) Like when the user adds a move called "I Like To Move It" how do we put "I Like To Move It" into the header font/style?
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Sage, basically what a toolkit like TCPDF does is embed additional content into an existing file. Its kind of like if you put the blank character sheet into a typewriter, manually aligned it, typed your text, moved to the next point, typed... etc... Now, imagine that your typewriter had access to a handful of different fonts, and you could set them to bold or italic. It's not necessarily the cleanest solution, but it works in a pinch, and generally works well for filling out forms.
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Huh. Probably should have googled that and figured it out myself. Okay, time to give it a look. Thanks!
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@sage: The easiest way to do this is to have 2 labels: Header, and Body. Separate. With an 'add' button. You can easily _POST this (although i would use basic ajax/js).
So you say 'you can do 10 moves with header at 200 chars, body at 2000 chars'. They fill in a move, click add. it appears below. The space is still there for the add, but you can 'edit' or 'delete' it. Just have a basic validation function for counts/bad_char_stripping.
I've got boardgames tonight, but I'll see if I can sneak in some time to do a mockup after work. If not tomorrow it is!
Also: TCPDF is just a couple functions laid on top of PHP (which you know, bad language, but super easy to install/maintain for minimal effort to slap up something). It allows for easy PDF creation. You can layer some images in the background and type on top of them for example. It's how I do a lot of auto-form population at work. It's also very intuitive, so you can natural-language read the functions and it should make sense.
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Seems doable, yeah.
stras, any chance if you have a prototype you could throw it up on github? I'm low on time at the moment (I'm getting married in just under two weeks) but sometime I'll have time to contribute.
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@sage: for sure. Whoa! Congratulations! Also ... what a time to have crazy kickstarter/game-publication >_< you're crazy dude.
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What can I say, I'm hopeless about making stuff!
In fact, between the last two posts, I started looking for python PDF equivalents so I could work with django instead of PHP. Hmmm...
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This is an excellent plan, I just haven't had experience with any Python specific PDF apps (all my py was AI/backend oriented). Also, more overhead for installs and such. I know people though ... I'll see if I can finagle a suggestion :)
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Well, there's a pretty official suggestion: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/howto/outputting-pdf/
I'm leaning towards django since (1) I have more experience there and (2) that's what the prototype monster builder is in. I'm also glad any time I get to code python. That said, I'm not that familiar with server-side web design, so who knows.
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Ok ok ok... *cracks knuckles* Django and Python you say?
Stand back, there might be explosions. *digs up laptop*
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If you're down with Django and python that's my preferred approach (I have hateful memories of PHP) but hey, I'm open to anything. I toyed around with it just a bit today and it seems very possible.
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If you're down with Django and python that's my preferred approach (I have hateful memories of PHP) but hey, I'm open to anything. I toyed around with it just a bit today and it seems very possible.
Just to be clear. Sage/Stras what are your goals? It sounds like there are multiple things going on and I just want to get my head around them and understand where I may be able to add any assistance. (my day job is helping run a relatively large video game studio, but in the olden days I used to do a ton of more technically oriented content work, so I am more than willing to get my hands very dirty)
1. It sounds like stras is interested in making an online character sheet that is user editable and allows for custom extensions (user definable moves for example)
2. Sage are you looking at publishing the whole text as HTML and then possibly outputting as pdf from there?
3. I am interested in different ways of displaying and presenting the book data. For instance I think my campaign would benefit from class packages/character sheets the encompassed both the characters and the rules similar to world of dungeons, but of course bigger.
Sage it also sounds like you would like to focus and solutions around Python and Django?
Sorry for being simple, I just want to make sure I understand where folks are and where the community may be able to focus and help.
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Stras and I are talking more directly now.
The goal is to be able to store classes (no matter who made them) and output them to PDF. The goal there is that anybody can use the site to make a custom class and print it, maybe even share it, but that's all tangential. At this point we (or rather stras) is trying to proof-of-concept something that takes class data (in whatever format) and outputs a character sheet that looks somewhat like our new character sheets. From there we can start worrying about how to store that data, authentication, all that.
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Sage, sounds like you guys are on the right track.
Mtallen, I think you're point #3 is worthy of its own thread. You might want to start a new one and elaborate on what you're thinking in that regard.
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Sage, sounds like you guys are on the right track.
Mtallen, I think you're point #3 is worthy of its own thread. You might want to start a new one and elaborate on what you're thinking in that regard.
Sure! I just want to get a bit further with my hair brained idea and test it on my group :)
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Stras, how is project, candied coded playbooks, coming along?
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Really well actually. Took me a bit to get used to the new setup (plus life has been busy recently). I'm hoping to post a more comprehensive update this weekend. :) Look forward to it!