If I would remake Heroscribe

[Stig]

Thank you so much for going to such lengths to improve our game, getting up at 0430 Anderas, wow!

I have no idea how big of a deal this would be but could it be written in to have the dragonstrike boards too? So we could use Heroscribe but for a selection of appropriate boards to make more varied quests?

[j_dean80]

I believe the DragonStrike boards are already in there.

[Kurgan]

Is this thing still in production? Sorry if I missed it...

[StratosVX]

Is this thing still in production? Sorry if I missed it...

I plan on revisiting this, I just don't have time while I am in school and working. I graduate with by Bachelor's degrees at the end of the year (I will likely start a Masters program but I will only be taking one class at a time to begin with) and I hope to be able to put some time into it then. In the mean time, I have been reading up on the GUI software and watching videos to try to make that better and I have been running some implementation ideas through my head while working on other things. Anderas and I both ran into personal life issues that got in the way of making any real progress on it.

[Anderas]

I am stalling this now since my last posting in this thread because I started to develop the front end in python and it was a pain. Then I started to learn JavaScript so the front end could be in the net.

Imagine a web site where you could design your quest, get it in EU/US/Hasbro style, make the cards and test play it.

Then life got in the way...

[iKarith]

If nothing else … I hate Java. I HATE Java. I mean, I love the language, I just absolutely hate its standard library, Swing should be taken out and shot, drawn, quartered, burned and then really hurt. The notion of naming things with five layers of org.domain.division.department.section.team.project.component.class is IDIOTIC and not even in the most corporate bureaucratic IBM middle-manager's wet dream would it have ever been a good idea, and … Oracle literally bought the rights to Sun's Java implementation and then claimed they owned the concept of a standard API description.

Nerd to English on that last one: Oracle bought Sun, a company that … made rulers. And then they claimed they owned the CONCEPT of a f**king inch, and anyone who implemented something using inches was subject to their whims. (The Supreme Court just slapped them upside the head with a semi truck over that idiocy, but the fact is that dealing with the Oracle who tried to pull that is the cost of doing business if you use Java.)

Basically, as much as I like the C-like language with in my opinion a sane class model when compared to C++, e.g. with prototypes and implementation instead of the nightmare that is C++'s inheritance model, no, Java can die in a fire.

(I'm passionate about programming languages. This surprises anyone at this point?)

Once upon a time, Heroscribe was available in Python. There was some effort to remake Heroscribe in Python 3 with Qt. I mean something written in modern Python to replace it for my use. If I am working on it myself, it'll be probably wx-based and support SVG components (only) so … not everything from the old HeroScribe will work without vectorizing it. If others are working on it, it'll be Qt-based because that effort got started and then kinda stalled a bit.

Mostly it comes down to I know more wx than Qt. If I'm working with a group, I'll spend the time to learn the Qt. If I'm on my own, I'll just use what I know better. I think my major difference over HeroScribe would be to aim to kind of MarioMaker things. US-style vs. EU-style vs. my style being quickly toggleable. May introduce Avalon Hill style if someone makes the icons for it.

[Anderas]

I made all symbols into SVG.
The XML files of Heroscribe don't know the file format, so that's compatible.
I started out in Python and QT was a pain. Maybe I take a look at wx next. Thanks for the tip.

Note that I talked about Javascript, which has literally nothing in common with Java...

And the original Heroscribe code, it is very clean and understandable, really no pain here. Even if it is Java.

Best case it really would run on a server not on a personal PC. Like that it is usable by anyone with a mobile phone, and I can make updates without hassle

[iKarith]

HeroScribe's source looks quite readable. Porting it as-is should not be terribly difficult for someone who has even a little familiarity with it (or none if they take a bit of time to read through the source to figure out how things work—though the latter probably takes a bit of willingness to mess with Java.)

As for wxPython 4, I (kinda reluctantly) recommend Mike Driscoll's books as it's one of the only ones that actually covers wxPython 4, which is substantially different. Kindle version only, I do not recommend it in print. There's no index, he assumes you're just gonna search for what you need electronically. And the book makes assumptions about what you know. Usually safe, but … I have some training in education and you never presume your students know what you didn't tell them unless it was an explicit prerequisite, and you should always be able to answer the questions, "What have your students learned, and how do you know?" It just happens to be that his is one of the only wxPython 4 books out there and it's not bad, even if in my opinion it should be better.

I do NOT recommend his wxPython recipes book. It's vastly overpriced, and vastly overrated—the recipes are rather a lot like any number of those you'd get on Stack Overflow, and about as well organized.