Character Sheet Phase 3 (Savage)

Context: HL Kit … Authoring Examples … Savage Worlds Walk-Through 

Overview

In this phase of developing the character sheet, we'll begin work on the right column of the sheet. This side is a bit more complex than the left side, containing both detailed sections (e.g. powers, weapons, and armor) and some interesting relationships between the different sections.

Logos

At the top of the right column of the character are the logos for both HL and the game system. These are handled automatically in the Skeleton files and there is nothing we need to do. If we wanted to stack the logos instead of placing them side-by-side, we could do that by simply configuring the orientation within the Position script for the sheet. However, we're trying to keep things compact in this character sheet, so we'll stick with the default behavior.

Eliminate Portrait Handling

The first thing we need to do for the right column is eliminate the character portrait. The Skeleton files include the output of a character portrait at the top if a portrait is specified for the character. In the interest of squeezing all the important information into the one-page sheet, we'll remove it from the sheet.

Unlike the way we handled the "Health and Power" material previously, we won't completely delete the logic for handling character portraits. We'll likely want to include the portrait in a different character layout in the future, at which point we'll want to use the logic that's provided by the Skeleton files. For this sheet, we'll simply eliminate the reference to the portrait, thereby removing it from this particular sheet without actually deleting it from the data files.

All of the logic for the portrait display resides within the "oPortrait" template. In order to remove the portrait from the character sheet, we simply need to eliminate the reference to this template from the "oRightSide" layout. This consists of deleting the "templateref" and the line of code from the Position script that places the template. Once we do that, the portrait is no longer included in the character sheet.

Edges

The next thing we need to worry about on the right side is edges. At this point, you're probably wondering why we're concerned with edges on the right side, since we already output them on the left side. The reason is that a highly complex character might not be able to fit all the edges on the left side. If there are more than will actually fit in the space at the bottom of the left column, only those that fit will be output. If that occurs, we still need to output the rest. One option for this is to use the second "spill-over" page for that purpose. However, edges are important and should really be shown on the main character sheet, so we need to output any extras at the top of the right column.