Custom Sheet Questions

Hey everyone, I have had my fair share of looking at the AD&D 2nd Edition sheets. Being unable to continue looking at them, I decided it was time to make one by myself. It's not that they aren't functional, but they're just... 'meh'. I have one question: I am currently developing the sheet locally on my machine, since I do not have a Pro subscription. How hard is it going to be to "translate" the HTML, CSS and JS to the Roll20 standard once I finish? Will my JS work on Roll20? Should I just purchase Pro and develop directly through Roll20 to save myself a headache?  Thanks!

If you read the wiki articles for Character sheets and Sheetworkers (JS), you should get a good grasp of what's within the limits Roll20's framework. Anyway, how did you intend to use the sheet when you finished developing it? You'd need Pro subscription anyway for custom sheets, as Roll20 doesn't accept additional sheets for existing systems .

Andreas J.  said: Anyway, how did you intend to use the sheet when you finished developing it? You'd need Pro subscription anyway for custom sheets, as  Roll20 doesn't accept additional sheets for existing systems . I am well aware. My time schedule is just a bit bumpy right now, so I didn't want to purchase a Pro subscription just yet. I know I need one to use the sheet. Thanks for the reply, I'll have a look at the Wiki pages.

Your problem is going to be that you won't be able to test anything. the javascript for sheetworkers is just regular es6 javascript, but functions like get/setAttrs are unique to Roll20, and are your only way to interact with the sheet in the sheetworkers, so you won't have any idea if your sheetworkers are actually functioning until you test it live.

Scott C. said: Your problem is going to be that you won't be able to test anything.  And this is a really big deal. If you build your sheet completely, and then convert it over to roll20, chances are you will have many, many issues, big and small, to track and fix, and it will be very frustrating to deal with them all at once. it is much easier to build the sheet and test it while building, dealing with each issue as it arises.

G G said: Scott C. said: Your problem is going to be that you won't be able to test anything.  And this is a really big deal. If you build your sheet completely, and then convert it over to roll20, chances are you will have many, many issues, big and small, to track and fix, and it will be very frustrating to deal with them all at once. it is much easier to build the sheet and test it while building, dealing with each issue as it arises. Yep, I was stupid enough that I worked on improving a character sheet(without sheetworkers thankfully) without a Pro sub, and even that was a very slow and cautious process, considering things. My changes was always approved, so I made small headway in improving the sheet in small safe steps(while testing stuff in new/noncritical parts of the sheet). I had a hard time with what I did, what  Re4XN is attempting is several orders of magnitude harder. Sure, you could start working on your sheet and cheap out on a Pro-sub for some time, but you'll end up needing one in the end for using it.

Scott C. said: Your problem is going to be that you won't be able to test anything. the javascript for sheetworkers is just regular es6 javascript, but functions like get/setAttrs are unique to Roll20, and are your only way to interact with the sheet in the sheetworkers, so you won't have any idea if your sheetworkers are actually functioning until you test it live. Yeah, I understand that. My original "plan", if we can call it that, was to develop the general layout and add the Roll20-specific stuff after I purchase Pro. Arguably this would still give me a headache. I have another question regarding JavaScript: you say Roll20 uses ES6, if I use that as well, that means when I start developing on Roll20, the functions I had written locally would still work, correct? For instance, I have a few tabs (<li> items) that expand when clicked on, which uses JS. Would my tabs still work on Roll20 or would I have to rewrite them? (pic below for clarity) G G said: Scott C. said: Your problem is going to be that you won't be able to test anything.  And this is a really big deal. If you build your sheet completely, and then convert it over to roll20, chances are you will have many, many issues, big and small, to track and fix, and it will be very frustrating to deal with them all at once. it is much easier to build the sheet and test it while building, dealing with each issue as it arises. Like I said above, my current "plan" consisted of making visuals, leaving the scripting for when I inevitably purchase Pro. But I can understand that developing blindly will lead to issues. I suppose the best course of action is to wait a bit until my schedule settles and purchase a Pro account then to fully benefit from the subscription time. Thanks for everyone's opinion! You cleared a few things for me. I think I'll wait before I continue developing any further.

Yeah, I understand that. My original "plan", if we can call it that, was to develop the general layout and add the Roll20-specific stuff after I purchase Pro. Arguably this would still give me a headache. I have another question regarding JavaScript: you say Roll20 uses ES6, if I use that as well, that means when I start developing on Roll20, the functions I had written locally would still work, correct? For instance, I have a few tabs (<li> items) that expand when clicked on, which uses JS. Would my tabs still work on Roll20 or would I have to rewrite them? (pic below for clarity) No. No  Javascript works on Roll20 unless  it is specific sheet worker Javascript. No access to the DOM API. No access to any of the normal event handlers. You'll have to do your tabs using HTML+CSS only (with some help from the fact that Roll20 synchronizes inputs with the same name).

Jakob said: No. No  Javascript works on Roll20 unless  it is specific sheet worker Javascript. No access to the DOM API. No access to any of the normal event handlers. You'll have to do your tabs using HTML+CSS only (with some help from the fact that Roll20 synchronizes inputs with the same name). Well, thank you for clarifying. HTML and CSS only tabs is definitely going to be fun, I can tell that. The sheet is thankfully early in development, so transitioning to Roll20 right now should not be a big issue.

Jakob said: No. No  Javascript works on Roll20 unless  it is specific sheet worker Javascript.  Oh, I guess the Sheet Worker wiki page tells the same more verbose, but I hadn't exactly caught on to this either...

Not to mention the Pro status has a ton of cool features, i've really enjoyed importing characters from the vault, the huge storage and the token/in-game map benefits. Personally, I had planned to unsub once I finish with my sheet I am making, think i'd rather stay subbed :D Good luck with your sheet, I hope it works out as you'd hoped. 

Leothedino said: Not to mention the Pro status has a ton of cool features, i've really enjoyed importing characters from the vault, the huge storage and the token/in-game map benefits. Personally, I had planned to unsub once I finish with my sheet I am making, think i'd rather stay subbed :D Good luck with your sheet, I hope it works out as you'd hoped.  The problem is that I will be unable to use those features, because I am not currently DM-ing. I am going to purchase Pro soon, for the pure purpose of developing this sheet, and little else. Thanks for the vote of confidence, though, it will definitely work out as I am hoping it will, it just might take some time. I want to make it available to the community, since, in my opinion, there is no good AD&D 2nd Edition sheet.

Thanks for the vote of confidence, though, it will definitely work out as I am hoping it will, it just might take some time. I want to make it available to the community, since, in my opinion, there is no good AD&D 2nd Edition sheet There are  already two sheets for AD&D 2nd edition the current policy is not to allow more than one sheet.

David said: There are already two sheets for AD&D 2nd edition the current policy is not to allow more than one sheet. What do you mean? 

He is say that if you had hopes of getting your D&D 2nd E sheet added to Roll20's dropdown, you can give up, the same thing I linked to in the first post.  But as I understand, you don't. You intended to go Pro and use the custom sheet for this, so it was a bit redundant thing to mention, but with the size of this thread, people start to lose the big picture of what you are intending to do and start mentioning thing already said previously.

Andreas J. said: He is say that if you had hopes of getting your D&D 2nd E sheet added to Roll20's dropdown, you can give up, the same thing I linked to in the first post.   But it states in the guidelines that if a sheet is different from the others it could be considered, although it says to contact the team first. I suppose I should do that.

We only need one sheet for each system. This is the important part. We didn't repeat this part without reason. Every time someone want to submit a new sheet for an existing system, Roll20 staff tells them to instead to improve on the existing sheets. Any system that have more than one sheet are either: overwhelmingly popular like D&D5E or PF, justifying keeping the longstanding and well-made sheets in parallel Have had multiple sheets since before the "One sheet - One System" was established On sheet is made by the community, the other is Official, maintained by Roll20 staff DnD 2E is interesting in the way that it have two sheets, and there where a massive discussion where someone advocated for a third sheet to be approved, but it didn't, even if it was well made. So for your specific case, you have a precedence that tell your work should probably be God-tier to be accepted. But sure, go ahead, just don't be surprised if you get turned down.  

The other option would to be to take one of the other sheets, reach out to the original author and just coordinate what you want to do and that you're willing to do it.  You could just replace the existing sheet with your version of it.  You'd want to keep all the field names the same so people don't lose data, but there's nothing that says you can't do that. And technically speaking, reaching out the original author is merely a courtesy (and there was a long discussion about that, too). So, none of this needs to stop you from going after your goal.

Finderski said: The other option would to be to take one of the other sheets, reach out to the original author and just coordinate what you want to do and that you're willing to do it.  You could just replace the existing sheet with your version of it.  You'd want to keep all the field names the same so people don't lose data, but there's nothing that says you can't do that. And technically speaking, reaching out the original author is merely a courtesy (and there was a long discussion about that, too). So, none of this needs to stop you from going after your goal. Well, that's a good idea, but I highly doubt it'll fly. I know a lot of people who use the Simple Sheet and would not want it changed, since they use it because of its simplicity. My sheet sacrifices some of that for a better aesthetic look. Meanwhile, the Revised Sheet has a lot  of extra features that I do not wish to add to mine, because, in my opinion, it would feel bloated. My goal is an aesthetically pleasing sheet that is simple to use; somewhere in the middle of the current two options. Either way, it's worth a shot, thanks for the suggestion!