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Which of the many Initiative and Status trackers should I use / modify?

1480720653

Edited 1482924924
Chris D.
Pro
Sheet Author
API Scripter
Compendium Curator
I see that there are many Initiative and Status trackers that people have written, and they all some so very different. Among them are: Conditions and Status Tracker       By Josh Initiative Tracker   By manveti TrackerJacker       By Ken L TurnMarker           By The Arron There may be others that I am unaware of. As far as I can tell, none of these do everything that I am looking for, I am wondering if somebody who is familiar with thier use and programming can suggest which ones are closest to doing what I want, and which are most worth my time to examine more thoroughly. Some of these have not been updated in 2 years, so ... Well, anyway, I am hoping somebody can give me good suggestions as to how I ought to proceed. I am thinking that I will probably have to write my own if I can't find or modify what I need. I would also appreciate peoples thoughts on what I am trying to accomplish, and if I am reinventing the wheel, if you think I am crazy for even trying it, or if you would be interested in the same features that I am thinking of, I would like to know that as well. First let me tell you what I am trying to do. I am trying to make my sheets less character based, and more token based. The system that I uses has lots of modifiers and conditions that modify properties. For example a character has a Physical Defense that any physical attack (such as a sword or arrow) must hit. This PD might go up or down with any of a half dozen conditions: Aggressive Attack, Defensive Stance, Harried, Overwhelmed, Knocked Down, or any of a half dozen spells that that provide bonuses or penalties for various amounts of times. I have a lovely system on my character sheet where the player clicks a token action for an attack, is asked for any modifiers and a target. The system then rolls the attack (using numbers from the attackers character sheet) and compares it to the appropriate defense (from the defenders character sheet). If it hits the player can hit his damage token action and be asked for any modifiers, then the system will roll the damage and apply it past the appropriate armor.  With the PCs, the system works fine. If the character is knocked down, the appropriate setting is selected and the PD is reduced.  The problem is with mooks. If I have ten supposedly identical tokens, I might need to keep track of several PDs. The tokens on the left are in a defensive stance. The ones on the right have been knocked down. The ones in the middle are suffering from a debuff spell. A mooks character sheet only has one PD and all ten tokens share that one character sheet, so i have to keep track of variations from that manually. The attack on the token on the left that apparently hit by 2, actually missed because that token is in a defensive stance.   The attack on the token on the left that the API said missed by 1? Actually that hit since the token is knocked down, Etc.  So what I want to do is store the status' on the token, not the character. So when my API is rolling an attack, it will look at the character sheet for the base attribute, then look at all the various statuses to find all the modifications to that attribute.  So first question is, am I reinventing the wheel? How do other people handle the problems of mooks with many different conditions? In order to solve this, I would like to find or write something that lets me store token conditions and status's, rather than using character attributes. These are things I am looking for. Has Initiative and turn tracking. You can say: Apply this condition for X turns, then turn it off and tell me it has been turned off.  I think that there are probably too many different effects to assign each unique effect it's own icon. Therefore:  I would prefer not to need to preregister every possible effect combination. I would like to allow similar effects to share an icon.  I would also like to allow effects without a visible icon.  And also effect bundles. For example if a character is knocked down, there would be one icon for that, but the effects would be that both PD and MD would be at minus two, plus a minus 2 modifier would be applied to all actions.  So the above is what I want, and if anybody knows of a package that can get me as far towards that as possible, I would appreciate hearing about it.  If I am forced to start from near scratch, here is what I am thinking of.  A few example command lines. I am not wedded to this, but this is the sort of things I would like to be able to do. !xxx Knocked Down, , back-pain, PD-2, MD-2, AllActions-2  This would parse out to: Name of condition is "Knocked Down", keyword will be KnockedDown (derived). The blank 2nd parameter will mean that this condition does not have a time lime, but remains until cleared. The icon for this condition is back-pain. This should be displayed until the condition is cleared. Whenever the API is looking for PD, MD, or AllActions, it should report a -2.  I am thinking that this command will result in the following entries in the statusmarkers field for the token. back-pain,KnockedDown-back-pain,KnockedDown-PD-2,KnockedDown-MD-2,KnockedDown-AllActions-2 Only back-pain will be displayed. The 2nd marker tells the API to remove the back-pain marker with KnockedDown is cleared. The others are for the API's use only.  !xxx Knocked Down, Clear This would cause all of the above entries to be removed from statusmarkers. Any status marker that is not part of the Knocked Down group remains the same. Here is another example. Lets say a spell has two effects, first it damages the target, 2nd it damages the targets mystic armor for 5 turns. The character sheet API would send the following message to this api. !xxx Mystic Bolt, 5, broken-shield, MA-2 which, once again means: display a broken-shield for 5 turns, and when the character shield asks about MA, tell it it is -2 for those same 5 turns.  Note that ideally, other conditions could also modify the MA. And other conditions could also cause the broken-shield to display. The icon will display until all conditions that cause the broken-shield to be display have expired or been cleared.  So I know that other people have done initiative and condition trackers, but not quite like this. What do people think? Am I on a good track? Do you think what I want is better or worse than is already out there? What package would they suggest I start with and then modify? Thanks.
1480742434

Edited 1480742543
PaprikaCC
Pro
API Scripter
As far as I know, all of the status checkers that exist right now don't have the ability to track anything more complex than predefined status markers on tokens. With the complexity of your request (and need for status markers to represent multiple things), you're best off trying to write your own script from the beginning. With that being said, it looks totally possible for a script to do what you listed above. You will just need to store all token properties in the script, or state.
1480745680
Lithl
Pro
Sheet Author
API Scripter
PaprikaCC said: As far as I know, all of the status checkers that exist right now don't have the ability to track anything more complex than predefined status markers on tokens. With the complexity of your request (and need for status markers to represent multiple things), you're best off trying to write your own script from the beginning. With that being said, it looks totally possible for a script to do what you listed above. You will just need to store all token properties in the script, or state. Pretty sure at least one of the listed scripts tracks arbitrarily-named statuses, notified in chat rather than using statusmarkers.
1480750043
Silvyre
Forum Champion
You might be able to get pretty far just with a modified version of TokenMod and ApplyChange . TokenMod can already manipulate the numerical badges of statusmarkers. These badges could be a viable way to track timed status effects. All TokenMod is missing is the ability to logically determine which statusmarker badges should or should not be decremented, and a method of affected all Tokens (without specifying which). ApplyChange can be used to modify Token Bars based on the existence of statusmarkers using logic.
1480825438

Edited 1480825523
Chris D.
Pro
Sheet Author
API Scripter
Compendium Curator
Does anybody know where the source code to  Conditions and Status Tracker By Josh is? It does not seem to be in github, nor anywhere else I can find it.   The wikipage has a link that gives a 404 error. I have found the other two trackers above and have been playing around with them.  manveti 's script seems particularly good.  So once again, does this sort of thing seem worth doing?  How do other people handle mooks where situations mean that some mooks have different effective attributes than others? If I wrote this, would anybody else use it?
1480825703
Silvyre
Forum Champion
Chris D. said: How do other people handle mooks where situations mean that some mooks have different effective attributes than others? I personally have not used it yet, but FullyFunctionalMooks offers a unique solution.
1480885372
Chris D.
Pro
Sheet Author
API Scripter
Compendium Curator
Silvyre said: I personally have not used it yet, but FullyFunctionalMooks offers a unique solution. Ah, thank you,  that is good to know.  I am not certain that method is any easier than what I am contemplating, and mine is probably less cpu intensive. 
1480897878
Silvyre
Forum Champion
Chris D. said: If I wrote this, would anybody else use it? I certainly would!
1480898280
Silvyre
Forum Champion
Chris D. said: Does anybody know where the source code to&nbsp; Conditions and Status Tracker By Josh is? Is this it? <a href="https://gist.github.com/DarokinB/5776368" rel="nofollow">https://gist.github.com/DarokinB/5776368</a> Chris D. said: I have found the other two trackers above and have been playing around with them.&nbsp; manveti 's script seems particularly good. I'm not familiar with manveti's script, but I'd imagine it might play well nice with his cron script, which can also be used to handle timed effects. I know that the short-lived TrackerJacker seemed promising, and boasted a tidy way of handling status effects via Text Chat menus. However, I didn't have much of a chance to play with it before it fell into disrepair from neglect.
1480983688
Chris D.
Pro
Sheet Author
API Scripter
Compendium Curator
Silvyre said: Chris D. said: Does anybody know where the source code to&nbsp; Conditions and Status Tracker By Josh is? Is this it? <a href="https://gist.github.com/DarokinB/5776368" rel="nofollow">https://gist.github.com/DarokinB/5776368</a> Thank you. May I ask how you found it? &nbsp; I was looking at the wiki page and searched the forum, and did not find a valid link. Nice to know where it is, but I am curious as to how you found it.&nbsp;
1481005880
Silvyre
Forum Champion
Chris D. said: Thank you. May I ask how you found it? Google, which can sometimes be as useful as a forum search. It's the first result for site:roll20.net "Conditions and Status Tracker" + "github"