Updated Manual?

[Gandalf Parker]

@EDI
I was hoping you would show up. I had a thought (plug in the mandatory groans here)

Since it was brought up that CBM is so popular, and changes the game so much, have you felt a need for a cbm version of the DB? Not that Im suggesting that its you that needs to do one but I thought you might have looked into it and had a semi-neutral feel for how much difference there was.

[Edi]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

@EDI
I was hoping you would show up. I had a thought (plug in the mandatory groans here)

Since it was brought up that CBM is so popular, and changes the game so much, have you felt a need for a cbm version of the DB? Not that Im suggesting that its you that needs to do one but I thought you might have looked into it and had a semi-neutral feel for how much difference there was.

I have no objection if someone does a CBM version as long as I'm credited with the base work of the original DB in it.

The changes in and of themselves would not be hard, especially if it was automated. The only things you need to change in the DB document are the BaseU (units), BaseW (weapons) and BaseA (armor) tables. Everything on the display pages for units, weapons and armor is automatically taken care of by the spreadsheet functions in the full (non-static) DB spreadsheet file. A static version can then be made by copy-pasting the display page data contents and paste-specialing only numbers/text over it and saving the file with a different name.

Any new units, weapons and armor would have to be entered manually (or the entry automated if someone feels like writing the code) into the tables.

Any changes to existing weapons, armor and units could be automated by having a program that reads the mod file (since mod syntax dictates what stat goes where in the tables and is caused by what command). The program would then write the values of those commands directly into the corresponding column on the row related to that monster. Some things like the domsummons etc would probably be best to enter by hand, because they are the iffiest part of the DB documentation. Unlike lch's data dumps, they were not extracted from the game but extrapolated since the information was not directly visible from the game UI.

I know there are several competent programmers here, so if anyone feels up to it, go right ahead. I know quite specifically what needs to be done on the general level, but my coding skills are not up to the task. Hello World I can do, but ask me much beyond that and it starts getting hairy.