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Is there a tutorial on how to build my own data files for army builder? Is this a difficult process and do I need to know anything about coding etc?

http://www.wolflair.com/download/abctutor.pdf

awesome thank you - do you know where I can find the creator tool or is it included in army builder?

It is included in the AB install.

http://www.wolflair.com/index.php?context=army_builder&page=downloads

Sweet thank you again. Battlescribe does not have a cheat sheet at the end of the roster which I use ALOT and no stats on profiles. So I found it lacking and since AB is done I might try to mod the space wolves to match 6th or something.

Honestly, the generally available Battlescribe files are crap, but it's pretty easy to make your own. I'm 75% of the way through making a full set of them for club use which has profiles, weapons, ect. on them. I think part of the problem is that most of the guys doing Battlescribe don't take much time to develop the files or are afraid of a GW shut-down notice.

Take this from someone who has done a decent amount of dev for both programs (All the Warhammer Ancients files for ABv3, and now an almost complete set of 40K files for Battlescribe) BS is a much easier program to design for than AB. It takes me about as long to develop a datafile for WAB in AB as it does for a 40K file in BS, and 40K is by far the more detailed game (as in, almost every unit has piles of finnicky options ect) BS is currently missing a few things to make validation easier/possible for odd cases (like being able to change a unit's org chart space on the fly, or being able to limit an item to one per army list if it can be taken by multiple types of models) but supposedly those issues are being ironed out right now. Ab is more of a full-functioned program able to design a bunch of different kinds of games within it, but that also makes it a bloated monster when you're trying to play the most popular model and pretty much all the scripting ect. available isn't being used.

So I could edit in the unit profiles into my battle scribe and have a list of everything such as weapons and power descriptions and what they do in it as well like ab has? I have been looking around in the ab files and I do see what your talking about. Thankfully it looks as though 6th got the bulk finished and space wolves looks pretty complete in ab. It sucks gw is taking that resource from us.

You could do exactly that. Adding profiles ect in Battlescribe is easier than Army Builder, especially for the novice. Also, AB is a MS-only program, whereas you can use battlescribe on piles of different platforms including Andriod and iOS.

Also, BS seems to be designed for a more decentralized data storage setup. I think that's really the only way to avoid GW's C&D harassment, or at least make it unfruitful at blocking people from developing decent list building systems.

hands_miranda wrote:
You could do exactly that. Adding profiles ect in Battlescribe is easier than Army Builder, especially for the novice. Also, AB is a MS-only program, whereas you can use battlescribe on piles of different platforms including Andriod and iOS.

Also, BS seems to be designed for a more decentralized data storage setup. I think that's really the only way to avoid GW's C&D harassment, or at least make it unfruitful at blocking people from developing decent list building systems.

As of 3.4 Army Builder is Mac OS compatible. I do believe they announced plans on mobile devices as well, not sure though.

And BS's output format was terrible from what I saw of it. Perhaps I was using it wrong, but it wouldn't show the actual armor save of a character in the characters profile. it had a second box for armor, and still didn't show the end total, just the various modifiers of it.

Didn't know 3.4 went Mac also. No Linux, which is the real thing I'd be looking for (only a few apps have kept me stuck on Windows, and AB used to be one of them) and no mobile support. Being able to go full cross-platform is a huge deal IMO, since you can finally start using a very similar interface across all your devices.

I also agree that the current BS files are pretty poor. I really dealt with the same thing when starting up the WAB project on ABv3-- poorly designed files with an inconsistent look and feel. I'm right now ~75% of the way through my first pass at the army books in BS (Orks incomplete; No Chaos Marines, Dark Angels, Black Templars) and there's no reason for the kind of setup you're discussing for either 40K or WFB (I'm assuming from your comment that it's the latter) I'll probably look into making WFB files for BS once I'm done 40K, since it is my first love of tabletop gaming and the files should be an order of magnitude easier to develop. But I guess the perspective difference I have separates the file implemented from what is possible from the program. BS is capable of 95% of what is required for 40K in very concise ways, and the file dev is much easier and less needlessly complex than AB. Correctly designed output also looks much better than AB, since you have many less profiles cluttering up the roster page.

Is there a tut on bs?

In theory, there is via the help feature in BS. The best way to really learn the stuff is of course picking apart existing files as well as trial and error. Seriously, when you see how BS files are set up, it's pretty intuitive.

alrighty thank you! I have only looked at the ipad version atm, and could not figure out how to get into the files. I will try it out on my laptop.

Catalog Editor is the program you use to develop a specific army's file. It's part of the overall suite installed on your PC when you put on Battlescribe. Game System Editor may also be useful to look at -- it develops an overall format for a game system (i.e. there's one each for 40K, WFB, Epic, ect) and can give you more of an idea of how the framework is set up.

Nice. I am going to dabble with it this weekend. School started for me this week so I don't have a lot of time during the week. Thank you!