Mon, 03 Aug 1998 15:20:24  rec.games.frp.super-heroes       Thread   73 of   80
Lines 61                   HtmlHero Improved !!?            1 Response
gmn@cs.bu.edu  George Novodvorsky at Computer Science Department, Boston Univer
 
Hi folks.
Many of you have used Doug MacDougall's wonderful HtmlHero JavaScript
program to display Hero System character sheets in HTML form.
 
        http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Lair/9678/
 
Well, I have the hubris to say that I have improved it. At least, my
version also calculates characteristic point costs, for base and derived
characteristics, OCV, DCV, ECV, and Phases, as characteristic changes are
made. Also, I have fixed some minor miscellaneous bugs. The program is at
 
        http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Vista/2013/HtmlHero/
 
and the complete list of changes (improvements?) is at
    http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Vista/2013/HtmlHero/Changes.txt
It might not make sense if you haven't studied the original program code.
 
There might be a few bugs - please write to me (gruban@geocities.com, or
reply to this email) as you find them - I might be able to fix them, or
might not, see Q2-3,
 
Questions:
=========
 
Q1) How does Doug MacDougall feel about this?
 
A) I wish I knew, honestly. It is very much his program (or at least 85% or
so, even now), so if he complains I will take it down. I haven't been able
to get in touch with him either through his HtmlHero Web page, or through
dougmacd@student.umass.edu, through which address we communicated about a
year back. He probably graduated and is too busy to care. When we
corresponded before he seemed to think it would be a neat idea, but I
didn't get around to implementing it until now. My hope is that he will
like it enough to make it the new "official" version on his original
HtmlHero site.
 
Q2) Won't Hero Games mind? Isn't this competing with Hero Creator / Hero
Maker / Creation Workshop?
 
A) I hope not. After all, they don't object to the various spreadsheets to
calculate Hero System characteristic costs that people have written - they
even distribute some of them for free from their own site, I
understand. That is all that my "improvements" do for now, minor number
crunching. The program generates a nice HTML sheet, true - but is
JavaScript, so *very* unstable.  (I personally lose the character I am
working on when I "view sheet" about 2/3 of the time :-(. But I have the
same problem with the unmodified version of Doug's program, so I think it
is inherent in the JavaScript, not a new bug I introduced.)
 
Q3) So if it has all these problems, is it of any use?
 
A) You tell me. I use it to generate the same HTML pages as the original
program, except this time it is a bit better about checking my math. Also a
few other, really minor, bugs were fixed, see the Changes.txt. I find it
useful - if you do too, great, sign my guestbook,from my main page,
 
        http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Vista/2013/
This is "nice warm feeling"-ware.
 
George Ruban, author of the Hero Java Combat Applet
        http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Vista/2013/CombatApplet.html
branching out into JavaScript!