The AMAZING EXCEL BASH BUILDER

[urbwar]

One more thing: I'm finding that I'm having issues with copy and paste. Sometimes when I paste text in, it causes the background color to turn white. Then, when I look at the sheet, that section of text isn't displaying.. What am I doing wrong? I'm having a lot of problems here, and don't understand why

[kevperrine]

Hey urbwar,

I'm not sure I follow all your questions. I'll try and reply (in-line below). Ask here, or contact me privately if you'd like my thoughts, or help with the sheet. Simpson is also very cool about helping and fixing bugs if you wanna ask him too.

One thing I'd suggest adding (which I did in the movement section) is for panels. Since Super Speed gives extra panels, having that listed somewhere would be a big help.

You mean like a simple place to pop in a number on how many panels you get? Does it need broken up in any way? I know that some of the "get extra panel" powers are ONLY for Attacking, while others are for ANY action. And others (like Duplication) only allow and extra movement panel...
How would you split it up? Or note it?

One of the things that I like (and I'm sure Simpson will agree) is that this sheet (and any GREAT character sheet) is practical and functional during game play when you're rolling dice at the table - WHAT things are most helpful and what are superfluous? Those "extra" things can/should be relegated to a secondary page.

My only problem is not remembering all the point costs I spent on powers, which makes copying over a character a bit of a pain.

Personally... THIS is why I love the excel character builder. You can, at any time, go back and SEE where the points are broken down. You (as player) or the Narrator can open the sheet, look at the Powers tab (mostly) and see HOW the points are distributed.
This helps immensely (in my opinion) for:

Helping with ideas to make the Character Point spending more efficient. I believe maxing out the efficiency of a point build system is a good thing, as long as it doesn't force you to break concept for better cost. I've talked with others (such as Dragonfly) about Character Point cost builds. While awesome to be "complete", with any Character Point build system if you are inefficient, you can unintentionally bend the balance of the game against you (and your fellow PC-team). So, seeing ways to build better costs when you understand a rule better or have another idea is golden for having the Excel Builder like this.

It also helps the Narrator understand how/where points are spent, seeing a detailed breakdown to ask questions on how/why a PC is built a certain way. And an easy way for the Narrator to look for the "challenges" the player is excited for that may NOT come across by just looking at the Character Sheet that doesn't have the breakdown build.

I also feel that breaking down a character build with the Excel sheet helps (me at least) to understand how the rules and point costs can work best. Building things in detail, rather than just slapping together the build on a Word Doc or PDF sheet helps breakdown the costs, helping the understanding of the rules more.

Lastly...
While I have not used it for THIS builder yet, I have used the xml transfers in the past for Excel Character Builders Simpson has made. They've always worked nicely in the past. So once you make a character in ONE version of the sheet, when an update comes out saving/exporting as an xml, then importing it into the new sheet takes very very little work to update.

I will say that other than that, I do like this better than trying to use Metacreator. Nothing against the BASH add on for it; I just don't like Metacreator itself, and consider it a wasted purchase. This at least I can figure out fairly easily (other than trying to remember point costs for powers at 4 in the morning!)

I agree.
I dislike Metacreator, mostly because I hate the idea of having something SO "proprietary". Using the Metacreator I MUST open and use it on a machine with Metacreator. With the Excel builder - almost everyone and every computer HAS Excel or Open Office or something that CAN open the Excel doc to see, print and update.

Oh, and any idea why it gives me an error while trying to import a png file?
...
Edit: Never Mind. Seems all the files Kris sent me have large dimensions, so I had to resize them

Yes. This must be an Excel size limit thing.
Don't know.

Now all the skills are not displaying on the sheet, even though they are set up in the right file.

I don't know what this means.
Do you mean all the skills YOU chose for your character build? Or all the skills for the rule option choices in general to pick from?
What do you mean "set up in the right file"?

One more thing: I'm finding that I'm having issues with copy and paste. Sometimes when I paste text in, it causes the background color to turn white. Then, when I look at the sheet, that section of text isn't displaying.. What am I doing wrong? I'm having a lot of problems here, and don't understand why

Copy and pasting can sometimes BREAK the sheet formula's in any Excel document.
My suggestion (if I'm reading your problem correctly)... If you copy a sentence to paste into the Excel sheet... Double-click on the line that you want it to be pasted on. That opens the CELL to allow you to just paste the TEXT without any formatting. Sometimes simply copy/pasting from a word doc, from a PDF, or from online will carry over the formatting to the Excel doc. Just selecting the cell and pasting deletes any formulas or background forumula related to that Cell.

Not only would that kill the forumlas, but it also replaces all the FORMATTING of the Cell overall. So, for example:

If you copy text from the BASH! forums, the forum text is Comic Sans font (or something). Pasting that into a Cell in the Excel doc, will overwrite the formatting of the sheet - which might be Ariel or whatever. It'll also wipe the color, bold-face, italics, etc... as well as any formula that might be referencing THAT cell.

Alot of the cells are info grabbed and taken to auto-populate the final character sheet, and some actually auto-calculate values - this is especially true in the "STATS" tab - which is where ALOT of the info needs input to get the "correct" combat numbers and movement rates on your final character sheet.



Okay!
What else? How's it coming?
If you wanna email me a copy of a character you input into the sheet I can take a look at it and offer suggestions on how it might be used more efficiently.

-kev-

[urbwar]

Kev,

I think I've got most of those issues resolved. I'm pretty sure the copy/paste stuff was causing most of the issues. What's strange is sometimes I can paste in a png file, and other times I can't. When I can't, I just make a new version as a jpg at a smaller size, and work from there.

Here's a question though: When I redid Sky Marshal, the name of the comic title from his first appearance shows up on the sheet. However, with The Badge and Velocity Jane, it doesn't. Any idea why that is?

[kevperrine]

consolidated from another thread.

How do you get the sheets to display hits, movement rates and Hero Points, etc? It doesn't do that when I make a sheet

I use (what I think is the better) "MODERN AGE" sheet tab - character sheet. Instead of the "HEROSHEET" tab character sheet.
Simpson loves playing around with, making and offering 1-3 different options for print/play Character Sheets. He's still perfecting them... And "play-test" thoughts help him update the sheets for best in-game use.
I'm also looking at helping with the look/design soon.

But I noticed last evening in-game that one of our players had it worked out nicely. On the "MODERN AGE" sheet I/we use, he'd printed the sheet and then put it in a plastic binder sleeve. Then he used a dry-erase marker and simply lined-through the HITS he'd taken on the sheet. It seems to work WELL.

Anyway.
We're toying with the character sheet options to have as tabs to print. The would all display mostly the same info but look fun/different.
My hope is to have:

#1. one sheet that looks like the classic ones folks do here on the forum (with the big yellow box at the top, super simple), but also cleaned up and a little unique.

#2. one that's more like the Modern Age sheet I use

#3. and then a "back-side" sheet to print that would hold all your bio and team background info. Anything NOT very important useful that would go on the front sheet.

#4. And also perhaps a "Side-kick, Pet, Vehicle, HQ, and gear sheet" for all that fun.


I'm also considering building a couple other tabs for the sheet:

- one that is a "mini-sheet" for the Narrator, this is an idea that the D&D4 auto-sheets online spoiled me with. It would have only the very basic info on a small "playing-card" sized character sheet for the Narrator to see/use.

- have a tab that lays out all the info of the PC-Hero in the format of the old "Handbook of the Marvel Universe" layout. To potentially entice 3rd party publishers to use the excel sheet simply because they can make a statted character and save as PDF to create an actual "formated standard BASH! Bio page" in book they wish to publish!

Hope that helps.
-kev-

[urbwar]

I had no clue there was more than one type of sheet! Now that I do, I plan on redoing all the recent characters I did, and use that sheet.

The text seems more legible on that one; it still seems small on the herosheet 1 version.

Oh yeah: how do you get the text and such on the top left (where the comic issue section is)? It showed up for one of the sheets I did, but on the others, it didn't

[kevperrine]

I had no clue there was more than one type of sheet! Now that I do, I plan on redoing all the recent characters I did, and use that sheet.

Yup. There's also the second page for double-siding the sheet. It needs ALOT of work to make it very cool though and ready for use..

Oh yeah: how do you get the text and such on the top left (where the comic issue section is)? It showed up for one of the sheets I did, but on the others, it didn't

In making up some of my PC-Heroes I've started to
alter Simpson's designs a little. I haven't shared them with him much yet... just mentioned them. But here's the most updated version he's given me with my minor changes. Download it from:
BASH! Yahoo Group Files
I basically just added in my stuff.

The name and info stuff that appears in the top-left of that "MODERN AGE" sheet are all input and auto-grabbed from the very first tabs - "Campaign" & "Origin". You can make a small icon for YOUR setting and delete/replace my "CENTROPOLIS" icon. The name of the campaign (on the Campaign tab) is the name that pops in to the very very most left-top space (where mine reads "Centropolis")

[urbwar]

Another question: Why is it that even though I made the text size larger, the text for the origin comes out so small? I can't read it on any of the sheets I printed, and I made sure that the text size was the same as the text size for the powers. Yet (as you can see from the images I posted in my build thread), the text is way too small. What's up with that? I'd like to know for future reference, as I'm stuck using the sheets as is for now (mainly because I started to print them all ready, and I only have so much ink left before I get new cartridges from Dell)

[kevperrine]

Another question: Why is it that even though I made the text size larger, the text for the origin comes out so small? I can't read it on any of the sheets I printed, and I made sure that the text size was the same as the text size for the powers.

The cell is probably set to "fit or shrink to size" of the cell. So you could make the font size 400 pts. But it was still come out at 7-8 pts if that's what it "needs to be" to fit all the text in the cell.

I'm guessing that's it.
make sense?

[urbwar]

The cell is probably set to "fit or shrink to size" of the cell. So you could make the font size 400 pts. But it was still come out at 7-8 pts if that's what it "needs to be" to fit all the text in the cell.

I'm guessing that's it.
make sense?

I guess. However, how do you change it, so the text will display larger? It's kind of pointless to have it set up for the text to display so small. Imho, it's a waste of space then, and more importantly, of ink

[kevperrine]

I guess. However, how do you change it, so the text will display larger? It's kind of pointless to have it set up for the text to display so small. Imho, it's a waste of space then, and more importantly, of ink

hehe.... urbwar... I honestly think it just sounds like you're fighting the program.
And it's frustrating you. I hope I'm not causing frustration for you. I wanna help and I appreciate your feedback so that I can try to engineer (what I can) to make the sheet more FUN to use for anyone.
However....
Honestly.... if you don't like it or it's too frustrating for you. Don't use it.
I'm not being snarky here. I just tend to do my best to find solutions or understanding why something is built a certain way.

I really like the way the A.B.B. makes characters easy (to me). So I wanna help when I can to explain things that I have figured out, even though I am not the excel guru to define things best for you.
So...
Two thoughts to help.

#1.
You should be able to select the output cell on the Character Sheet and go to the Excel "format" pallet - there you can find the "Alignment and Spacing" pallet. Un-check the "Shrink text to fit" box, here you can also check the "Wrap Text" option to allow the cell to wrap in paragraph form.
Then to make the font any size you want, on the "Font" pallet look to change the "Size" of the font.

#2.
This is suggestion is a "how to use" the sheet paradigm shift for the user. The cells on the character sheets are made the size they are to input data from the build tabs. They are sized appropriate and the font size is set so that the output shows the "best" size for the sheet.
However... it's set to "Shrink text to fit" the cell BECAUSE you don't want the important info to get "lost" off the cell if it's set to a font size and you have too much text to display in the cell at that size.
Point being... each cell on the character sheet is sized and font sized to FIT the best info from the build tabs. If in the build tabs you type way too much information... the character sheet shrinks the size to fit. This is done to help the user have a character sheet that has alot of info but is as concise as possible.
In the end.... What I'm suggesting is - if the text shrinks too small for you, you're probably just trying to write too much for this concise character sheet goal.

That said.
It's YOUR enjoyment of the AMZ BASH! BUILDER. So change it as you like it.

I will, though, look at my future updates on the sheet to help check these issues. So I appreciate the feedback.


I think it's a great builder and helps me amazingly with making BASH! character creation fun. So, I'm looking to help if I can.
-kev-

[urbwar]

hehe.... urbwar... I honestly think it just sounds like you're fighting the program.

No, I'm not. How I am fighting something that is done without any input from me?

Honestly.... if you don't like it or it's too frustrating for you. Don't use it.
I'm not being snarky here. I just tend to do my best to find solutions or understanding why something is built a certain way.

Telling me not to use it is somewhat insulting. I make what I consider a valid complaint/criticism, and you lead off with this? I was honestly really ticked off by these comments, which is why I waited a day to respond.

#1.
You should be able to select the output cell on the Character Sheet and go to the Excel "format" pallet - there you can find the "Alignment and Spacing" pallet. Un-check the "Shrink text to fit" box, here you can also check the "Wrap Text" option to allow the cell to wrap in paragraph form.
Then to make the font any size you want, on the "Font" pallet look to change the "Size" of the font.

My point is that it shouldn't default this way. It should be something someone should be able to choose to do if the text doesn't fit the space. It does this with every sheet I've made. Some of the ones I didn't post had ONE sentence of text, and it still shrunk it down. There is no way that was too much. Ergo, there is a fault with the way the program is pre-set.

If you look at any of the sheets I posted, and compare what I wrote under Origins, and you look at your own sheet for Cinderella Man, it is pretty obvious to me that your sheet has more text displayed. Yet your text is larger, and mine was shrunk. Seems to put a hole in your explanation imho.

In the end.... What I'm suggesting is - if the text shrinks too small for you, you're probably just trying to write too much for this concise character sheet goal.

Then explain why your sheet for Cinderella Man has more text than any of the ones I did, and it displays at a larger size. Because looking at your sheet, it is obvious to me that it didn't happen to you. If I'm writing too much, what did you do? Seriously, none of my sheets have as much text as that.

I think it's a great builder and helps me amazingly with making BASH! character creation fun. So, I'm looking to help if I can.
-kev-

To me a program should be really easy to use, and should allow the user to set defaults and such, not be done automatically. Especially for someone like me, who while in the minority (ie not knowing Excel at all), should still be factored in when making design choices. It may be great for you, but that doesn't mean it is for everyone else. Again I may be the minority, but I don't feel that means my criticism/complaints are any less valid.

I'm not going to bother with any more questions/complaints after this.

[kevperrine]

Telling me not to use it is somewhat insulting. I make what I consider a valid complaint/criticism, and you lead off with this? I was honestly really ticked off by these comments, which is why I waited a day to respond.

My sincerest apologies. Please forgive my recent "style" of reply. I assure you (and anyone reading my replies here) that it's not something I want or mean to come across with.

Personal problems have caused me to respond in weird ways.

I am very sorry.
I enjoy and appreciate the BASH! game fans, the community, the online creator inspirations and friendships and partnerships I've been offered as a part of the community.

I assure you, personally urbwar, that I will watch my reply and demeanor. It's not fair and not how I want to represent or offer my interest or community relationship to such a fun hobby of friendships.

Again. My apologies.
-kev-

Kevin Perrine
Seattle, WA
206.851.1625

[BeardedDork]

So I'm having a * of a time with the whole yahoo groups thing is there another way to get this file?

[capmarvel]

I've asked if I can post this and the other tools from the Yahoo groups on the wiki (http://bashrpg.wikispaces.com/) and am waiting to hear back from the "owners". I don't want to step on anyone's toes and post things if they'd rather they stay solely in the Yahoo groups area. Of course, maybe the tools are in the "public domain", but I'm not a lawyer....maybe BASHMAN "owns" them since he is BASH


PS - the thing is only 474K...can't one of us just email it to you?

[BeardedDork]

[edited] Would be as good an address as any if one of you were inclined to mail it. Thank you to everybody who sent it to me.