OSRIC conversion for 2E

[Sterno]

Updated the OP so that it now includes monsters up through "Class B Demon". Work continues. Feedback welcome. Hope you like dragons, because I think that's 2 of the 4 pages worth of NPC records.

Did not include dimonic's addition of attack matrixes for use by the 1e extension (yet).

Added a story entry titled "Conversion notes (a.k.a "Why did he do it this way?")" that explains choices I made when deciding how to convert certain things.

[dimonic]

Excellent. I will download, merge my changes and take it for a spin!

Hmmm. The structure/version changes have made it hard for an automatic merge (not to mention changing the name of the file itself). It looks like I can simply delete all the <category...> </category> tags? I will try that and see if it simplifies the merge.

[dimonic]

So... whatever tool you use to create this has "reorganized" each attack matrix block in a new sorting order. This has stymied attempts to automatically merge my tables into your work, as the "patch" tool can't find the same text in your target to replace it.

I instead stripped out some surplus tags (<category>...</category> pairs) in the earlier code to match yours, matched CR/LF (you use DOS style) and then copy/pasted your <npc> section into my code for testing purposes.

This kind of stuff is why git is such an essential tool for this kind of work.

[Sterno]

I'm doing all my data input via Fantasy Grounds. I have not been editing the XML manually. The process I used is basically
1. Create campaign in FG
2. Create new classes/spells/items/npcs/whatever in that campaign via FG.
3. /export everything
4. Take the resulting .mod file and post it to the forums.

I use git for my extension development but don't plan to start using it for the module development, since it basically amounts to one XML file that I'm managing entirely through FG rather than an external application (thus, line endings are irrelevant to me so long as FG is happy with them... in fact, worrying about if changing the line ending type will make FG unhappy is not something I even want to have to think about!).

There may have been a big change though since a hard drive crash a few months ago lost the original "source" campaign I was building the .mod file from, so I had to recreate the database in a new campaign from the .mod file here on the forums. Maybe that process rearranged something. From there, I just do a new export of my campaign when I want to publish the .mod. It might also just be a result of the fact that those attack matrices come from an extension I don't have loaded. I'm honestly kind of surprised it even had an "all 20s" node in there rather than being completely blank, since the 2E ruleset doesn't use that at all as far as I know.

As for the class merge, chances are that if you haven't made any changes other than adding attack matrices, I can just load your corrected module from my campaign, copy the classes over, and delete my existing ones. Then I don't have to mess around with XML merge conflicts. I've broken things too many times in the DB xml files while editing them manually to want to go that route unless I absolutely have to. A github link with the XML seems useful in theory if this were a community project where people can submit pull requests for additions/changes to the XML, but frankly I don't trust it enough to "just work" in Fantasy Grounds after merging XML changes, and have no desire to troubleshoot it when things go wrong. Maybe my initial bad experiences with manually editing/merging records from the XML tainted me against it though and it wouldn't be as bad as I think, but I'm not eager to find out right now.

[dimonic]

That makes sense. It seems like FG maintains it's xml internally in some kind of map or tree, and it's natural sorting order has changed (hence the change in the data file). I just cobbled it together manually for my own use.

Yes, I agree that strategy for using the "corrected" classes should work just fine. The only changes I made were the attack matrices.

As for editing xml, normally I would agree, but there was so much repetitive cut copy and paste work in the attack tables that it saved a lot of time using VS code editor instead of going through FG.

[Sterno]

I've just uploaded a new .mod in the OP which should contain the attack matrices you added (and we're up to "Succubus" now in the monster entries!). Please let me know if it works... not sure if something is going to get lost in translation of export since I don't have the 1E extension installed, but glancing at the XML, it looked like it preserved the changes.

And yeah, I have edited the XML manually sometimes... usually something like "Crap, I accidentally typed 'Draegon' in these 200 monster entries instead of 'Dragon', let me fix that". But when it's come time to fully add/remove nodes or try to merge some changes, it's led to some janky results sometimes.

[dimonic]

Looks great. Giant two headed trolls! Way to exceed expectations!

[Sterno]

Now includes all monsters up to and including the "Undead" section of the OSRIC core book. Which means it's only about 50% done. 448 NPC records so far!

[dimonic]

Awesome. This is fantastic work, Sterno. I am going to start polishing up my adventures so I can share them.

[prometheus13]

Awesome! Will update the extension and check it out.