New Army List Builder

mikekh · Post by **mikekh** » Sat Jul 25, 2009 9:26 am

Following on from the thread in
viewtopic.php?t=11030

I've put together an application for creating FoG army lists.

It's still in development but is pretty close to a beta release for initial use and testing.

Some screen shots are on https://sites.google.com/site/armylistbuilder/home look in the 'Builder Screen ...' links.
(The screens are just examples and not representative of any specific army)

Cheers

Mike

Keith · Post by **Keith** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 7:17 am

Looks good , can we give it a go yet ?

mikekh · Post by **mikekh** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 8:22 am

Keith wrote:Looks good , can we give it a go yet ?

I'm just editing/testing the website to provide a download. It's a bit clunky at the moment but should allow it to be installed on Windows (MAC OSX will come soon ish...)

Cheers

Mike

timurilenk · Post by **timurilenk** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 8:38 am

Mike

I had a play with t he Java version and it looks like it could be a really fabulous tool.

I knocked up a list in very little time - I could not get it to save, I guess that is not hooked up yet.

Likes:

Fills in some defaults when you enter troop type
Sums running total AP
Provides deployment split
Easy cut, paste copy - really speeds things up

Wishlist:

Adjust columns - the numbers narrower, text widre - even better make them dragable
Add section for personal details - name contact etc for submission to tournaments
Add terrain options for easy viewing at deployment

Thank you for doing this

Ian

mikekh · Post by **mikekh** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 9:02 am

timurilenk wrote:Mike

I had a play with t he Java version and it looks like it could be a really fabulous tool.

I knocked up a list in very little time - I could not get it to save, I guess that is not hooked up yet.

Likes:

Fills in some defaults when you enter troop type
Sums running total AP
Provides deployment split
Easy cut, paste copy - really speeds things up

Wishlist:

Adjust columns - the numbers narrower, text widre - even better make them dragable
Add section for personal details - name contact etc for submission to tournaments
Add terrain options for easy viewing at deployment

Thank you for doing this

Ian

Thanks for the feedback. Save etc does work, please go back to the website and try the new download steps- i.e. just download and run the listBuilder.jar file

(There's something wrong with the WebStart mechanism and I don't have much free time today.)

Thanks

Mike

timurilenk · Post by **timurilenk** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 9:22 am

mikekh wrote:Thanks for the feedback. Save etc does work, please go back to the website and try the new download steps- i.e. just download and run the listBuilder.jar file

Mike

I did this and the saving and loading does indeed work - you do have a good basis here.

Thanks

Ian

mikekh · Post by **mikekh** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 12:28 pm

timurilenk wrote:
mikekh wrote:Thanks for the feedback. Save etc does work, please go back to the website and try the new download steps- i.e. just download and run the listBuilder.jar file
Mike

I did this and the saving and loading does indeed work - you do have a good basis here.

Thanks

Ian

Cool.

You mentioned earlier

Adjust columns - the numbers narrower, text widre - even better make them dragable
Add section for personal details - name contact etc for submission to tournaments
Add terrain options for easy viewing at deployment

1. Putting different column widths is easy enough, dragging them is too but is a bit more work.
2. Personal details is being worked on and will be a separate tab in the main frame or maybe a dialog. This will need to be integrated into the printing mechanism and is a bit more work but will certainlyt be in at some point.

3. I'm not sure what you mean by the terrain options?

If I can get more feedback on bugs and requirements I can work on a decent release.

Thanks

Mike

timurilenk · Post by **timurilenk** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 12:54 pm

mikekh wrote:3. I'm not sure what you mean by the terrain options?

Mike - simply some drop down boxes to select the available terrain types for that army to appear on the print out so that everything is there at deployment and no need to refer to a book.

Thanks

Ian

timurilenk · Post by **timurilenk** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 12:56 pm

mikekh wrote:If I can get more feedback on bugs and requirements I can work on a decent release.

The only thing I found was entering numbers in the march order where there were already some inthe box did not appear until I pressed enter which was a bit disconcerting.

Ian

chrisrivers · Post by **chrisrivers** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 3:42 pm

One thing I think would be good is to have a button that sorts the list in march order.

timurilenk · Post by **timurilenk** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 5:41 pm

Sorry to be a pain, but an option to output to Excel or Word format would be good to enable submission for tournaments.

You are likely to get more uptake that way too.

Ian

mikekh · Post by **mikekh** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 6:26 pm

timurilenk wrote:Sorry to be a pain, but an option to output to Excel or Word format would be good to enable submission for tournaments.

You are likely to get more uptake that way too.

Ian

I don't mind, it's not a pain - the feedback is useful.

I have planned to put in options to save as PDF, RTF, CSV. I want to keep it platform neutral as far as possible - I don't want to have to code in switches for the MAC/Windows, but CSV is readable by Excel. I also want to put in an email feature so the list can be emailed to tournament organisers.
In fact if the take up was wide enough I could write some server side code for tourney oranisers and make this app submit army lists, but that would be some time off

If folk just post their requirements I can collect and manage them in stages.

At the moment the main thing is getting any niggles out, like the weird edits on the march order column and putting sorting in on the march order column.

It'd also be cool to get some Mac user feedback.

Thanks

Mike

dave_r · Post by **dave_r** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 6:45 pm

I haven't checked it out (yet) - but how does this differ from Olivier's excel spreadsheet?

It looks very, very similar.

mikekh · Post by **mikekh** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 7:12 pm

dave_r wrote:I haven't checked it out (yet) - but how does this differ from Olivier's excel spreadsheet?

It looks very, very similar.

Yes, at first glance they look very similar . There are some things that the spreadsheet just doesn't handle well. Cut and paste units, creating combined units, no auto entry for default/typical values, no hooks for saving in PDF format or emailing lists, limited configuration/options for printing. Of course this app doesn't do all of that yet, but it's written from the ground up as a specialised application and all the 'hooks' are in to provide capabilities that a spreadsheet couldn't approach.

Thanks

Mike

celticht32 · Post by **celticht32** » Wed Jul 29, 2009 3:38 am

Works under Linux just fine...
some suggestions.. make the cells a little bigger
have a pull down for the orders as well...

for the header information... maybe make the cnc and generals a button instead of the click here next to them...

Fortifications I would just have the one button and then update a fortifications area once they have been filled out...

Dropdowns do not use the specified font size... just a default one...

Might be nice to be able to also assign which general a BG goes to

Chris

mikekh · Post by **mikekh** » Wed Jul 29, 2009 5:19 am

celticht32 wrote:Works under Linux just fine...
some suggestions.. make the cells a little bigger
have a pull down for the orders as well...

for the header information... maybe make the cnc and generals a button instead of the click here next to them...

Fortifications I would just have the one button and then update a fortifications area once they have been filled out...

Dropdowns do not use the specified font size... just a default one...

Might be nice to be able to also assign which general a BG goes to

Chris

Thanks for the comments.

I've made the columns so that dragging can make them larger.

I'm not really happy with the main header (the part with generals etc) and will bear you comments in mind whe it's re-written.

Well spotted on the font sizes, I never noticed that.

Thanks

Mike

johno · Post by **johno** » Mon Aug 03, 2009 6:42 pm

Nice Job, Mike - thanks for the effort so far

A few comments:

-- I can't resize the columns - all I manage to do is drag the contents into the next column. Could it be something to do with running under Windows 2000?

-- The grid seems to default to 100 rows when started, which is ridiculously large. Very few armies will need more than the 25 lines that fill a default print page.

-- The Print set-up defaults to Letter size. and one inch (25.4mm) margins - even if the user has altered the page size and margins earlier in the session - very annoying! Ideally, once the preferred page and margin settings have been chosen, they should be stored somewhere, so the user doesn't have to keep re-setting them

-- Print-outs don't have the Army title, or details of the commanders: have I missed some obvious on/off switch for these?

This is a very promising start, and I shall look forward to future iterations.

Johno

mikekh · Post by **mikekh** » Tue Aug 04, 2009 6:04 pm

johno wrote:Nice Job, Mike - thanks for the effort so far

A few comments:

-- I can't resize the columns - all I manage to do is drag the contents into the next column. Could it be something to do with running under Windows 2000?

-- The grid seems to default to 100 rows when started, which is ridiculously large. Very few armies will need more than the 25 lines that fill a default print page.

-- The Print set-up defaults to Letter size. and one inch (25.4mm) margins - even if the user has altered the page size and margins earlier in the session - very annoying! Ideally, once the preferred page and margin settings have been chosen, they should be stored somewhere, so the user doesn't have to keep re-setting them

-- Print-outs don't have the Army title, or details of the commanders: have I missed some obvious on/off switch for these?

This is a very promising start, and I shall look forward to future iterations.

Johno

Thanks.

The columns are now resizable (and sortable on the March Order)and the whole top half (generals etc) has been re-worked.

The print function was just a place holder. I've now sorted out a decent print library and will start on that soon. Printing will include 'normal' printing with an option to include player details - mainly for tournament. It will also include options to print to a PDF or RTF file.

If I get chance tonight I'll put some new screens onto the website.

Also what details would tournament players like to see includeed in the list?

Thanks

Mike

timurilenk · Post by **timurilenk** » Tue Aug 04, 2009 6:12 pm

Probably being dense, but I cannot see any changes from the one I used before

mikekh · Post by **mikekh** » Tue Aug 04, 2009 6:42 pm

timurilenk wrote:Probably being dense, but I cannot see any changes from the one I used before

No you're not! I've only just put the screens up.

I've removed the download link and the new one should, hopefully, be up there later tonight.
(Unfortunately any saved army lists won't be readable correctly by the latest version.)

Are there many Mac users for this app?

Thanks

Mike