Given the "writable character sheet" thread is up to 5 pages I figured I start a whole new thread on programming character sheets.
Why? Because a number of us may have some programming tips to pass on
Here is one:
Wingdings "m" creates a blank circle, Wingdings lower case "L" a filled in circle.
If you want check boxes you can look through the other Wingdings characters and select.
If you are making a character sheet in Excel or Open Office and you want to create a selectable list that can be automatically transferred into a character sheet you can use Wingdings m's & l's to indicate selection then use a numerical incrementation to pinpoint what values you want in, then the vlookup function to put things in the right spot. Example: You want to allow the players to be able to select three of the following 8 powers, but you don't know which they will select. Below the player has selected powers 2, 5, and 7
A B C
.. 1 Power List
m 1 <power 1>
l 1 <power 2>
m 2 <power 3>
m 2 <power 4>
l 2 <power 5>
m 3 <power 6>
l 3 <power 7>
m 4 <power 8>
.. 4 <blank>
The cell for the powers (PowerLst) calls a table that includes the number list and powers (not the m's or L's).
So, the formula =vlookup(1;PowerLst;2) will yield <power 2> since that is the last call with a 1 and =vlookup(2;PowerLst;2) will yield <power 5> and =vlookup(3;PowerLst;2) will yield <power 7> in the example above. Therefore a non-printable "Creation Worksheet" can be created without using any macros and yet you can still drop all the proper powers into the "Character Sheet" even if you don't know what the player may select. Only requires the powers list and refresh costs to be coded.
Additional coding can be created to handle specialties (using a numeric), etc.
I hope this also serves to explain why it can take a while to do ... lots of typing.
Furthermore, since it would copy longer selections from the book it may be considered to be a type of infringement on EvilHat's copyright and thus why I would rather mention here HOW it can be done rather than distribute such a sheet.
Well, good luck, happy programming, and I hop others use this thread for other helpful character sheet programming suggestions as well as additional questions/comments of character sheets as well as other sheets (city, etc)
