Recent Blogs Posts

Introducing the Combat Tracker EVOE

Hello and welcome to a new instructional blog series (the series index).

In my previous “Neophyte Tackles” series I meander my way through my experiences and the lessons learned in developing my first Fantasy Grounds Extension. The fruit of that series was the starting point of this series: The Combat Tracker Effect Visibility Options Extension (or EVOE).

The EVOE currently only works with the 5E ruleset. The 5E Combat ...

In a previous post I detailed how I added additional effect visibility button options to the Combat Tracker‘s GUI. This time I’ll step through the process of adding the Lua to make those button options functional.

Detour: This is post 18 in this series. I hope that by now, as a neo-developer, you have the confidence to do many things without the detailed instruction I have provided in the past. I’ll explain concept and intent but I won’t detail some of the more mundane code.
...

Play testing the Effect Visibility Extension indicated more visibility options are required. When effects are only visible to the GM, if a player applies an effect to their character and doesn’t see it in the Combat Tracker, they tend to apply it again, and then again. When the GM views the player’s character in the Combat Tracker, the self applied effect could be listed 2, 3 or more times.

What additional options are needed? Certainly, an option that allows the player to see effects ...

This time I’ll look at reducing the size of the manager_effect.lua file in my extension. Recall from last time, I copied that lua file, in its entirety, to my extension then added a single line of code to change the default behavior of an effect’s initial visibility. Having nearly 1500 lines of duplicate code troubles me.

Detour: Why is duplicating code bad practice? For one it bloats the size of your program, and for certain languages that can cause decreased execution speed. ...

Due to posting limits, I have had to split this session into three posts.
This is part 3 of 3.

(continued from part 2)

To test the extension, I deleted all the effects that were applied to the Orc, saved all my edited files, and reloaded the ruleset. Once FG was up I started a second instance of FG and joined the campaign. In the second instance I loaded Zacchaeus’s 20th level Paladin and brought up the Combat Tracker. Then I started a third instance of ...