Revise Summary Panels (Savage)

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

Overview

Everything is finally coming together nicely with our data files. At this point, it's probably a good idea to switch our focus over to the various summary panels that are displayed.

Assess the Contents

When is comes to the summary panels, the first thing we need to do is assess what information needs to be shown within the panels. This is most easily accomplished by simply making a list of the various pieces of information that should be included. A useful approach is to look at each of the main tabs within the interface and identify items that the user will likely want to refer to while looking at other tabs. After giving it some thought, the following list probably makes the most sense.

• Attributes
• Derived Attributes
• Encumbrance
• Skills
• Edges
• Hindrances
• Racial Abilities
• Armor
• Hand Weapons
• Ranged Weapons
• Special Weapons

Organize the Information

The next step is to break the above list into logic groupings that will generally fit into a single summary panel. An important consideration during this step is that you need to create your data files with a small 800x600 display in mind. Even if you are using a huge display and keep the HL application at maximum size, your data files will also be used by some people on a small 800x600 display. So it's important that you keep each summary panel reasonably compact, if at all possible.

After you break things up, you can then decide on the appropriate sequence in which to show each set of information. For example, should hand weapons go above ranged weapons, or vice versa? When looking at the list of contents we identified above, there are a variety of suitable organizations, and the final determination really comes down to what you think works best. For our purposes, we'll settle on three separate summary panels that are organized as shown below.

• Basics
  • Attributes
  • Derived Attributes
  • Encumbrance
• Abilities
  • Edges
  • Hindrances
  • Racial Abilities
  • Skills
• Armory
  • Armor
  • Hand Weapons
  • Ranged Weapons
  • Special Weapons