Gary's Heroscape Site & Stuff

[Agent Minivann]

Very useful site. I also like how you can download a copy of the site.

[geddy lifeson]

Been a bookmark of mine for a while...great site and a wealth of information.

[Joah]

Originally Posted by geddy lifeson

Been a bookmark of mine for a while...great site and a wealth of information.

I got my first glimpse at a Border Battle, a while back.
Very useful.
Discovered my "new favorite" Warband there.

[Hex_Enduction_Hour]

Originally Posted by GaryLASQ

didn't get that far yet but now that i think about it they're just repaints.

[GaryLASQ]

my website's been idle lately because i've been teaching myself SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics). and what better way to learn than experiment with HS battlefield 2D graphics!

here is "Table of the Giants".
http://heroscape.glasq.com/online/sc...hsbf100101.svg

if it doesn't look like 2D battlefield graphics (browser tries to download the files), then you might need to install a simple SVG Viewer plug-in. here's one by Adobe.
http://www.adobe.com/svg/viewer/install/

SVG is maturing and web browsers are now providing native support, so depending on the version of your browser, you may not need the SVG Viewer by Adobe.

for the more curious of you, read on .... take a peek at the page source, of one of the SVG files, in your browser to see the "code" behind it. i'm using Notepad to enter the terrain tiles into an XML file that is transformed into SVG via XSLT. it's a far cry from LandScape or VirtualScape since the user interface is currently Notepad. maybe someday i'll create a user friendly interface of my own...

[reapersaurus]

hm.
interesting.

Don;t see what the application might be in the future, but I think your website is great, regardless.

[GaryLASQ]

thanks reaper.

this is just a sneak peek. a practical HS application is not obvious yet. eventually, i plan to use SVG heavily in my HS site once i get it figured out. if i wanted to go nuts with this i could combine it with some JavaScript to build my own version of LandScape (called something else of course). for now i'm just making non-animated SVG "images" of battlefields.

SVG graphics are drawn on-the-spot by the browser, using instructions from the SVG file, which is nothing more than text that can be altered easily with something like Notepad.

[GaryLASQ]

all finished with loading up Hasbro maps into my little XML/SVG project. these aren't linked to any page on my website....yet.

Table of the Giants
The Forsaken Waters
Durgeth Swamps
Trollsford Swamps
Mingol's Tomb
Soulrazon Canyon
The Meat Grinder
The Forgotten Forest
Volcarren Wasteland
Searing Pass
Wellspring of Obsession
Wolf Swamp Road
The Battlefield of Frozen Souls
The West Barbican of Idona Castle

if it looks a little like Landscape it's because i'm using Logrey's color choices and copied his button style. i'm still fooling around with this and the style will be changing.

the cool thing to do is play around with the window size of the browser you're viewing them in.

i'm currently working on how i want to work scenarios into the XML data structure. for now this is just the battlefields.
http://heroscape.glasq.com/online/sc...attlefield.xml

[CornPuff]

I am very interested in this. Very cool.

what do you use to enter xml data? what tools do you use? could i see the xslt?

Over on the Battlefields of Valhalla thread I have been talking about maps with multiple "Start zone and glyphs" layers. I would love to see your xml format become the standard for map distribution.

Virtuascape doesn't do Start Zone and Glyph layers well, doesn't do scenarios well and makes Bunjee (and the rest of the Mac users) unhappy. Also it has a closed file format.

Lanscape is cross-platform, lacks snow and castles, and has a closed file format.(Even though i think its XML based, logrey doesn't have intentions to make it open).

I really dig the fact that you are making an XML based format. I would love to use your format to create a map database. If you need any help with speccing things out or some grunt programming let me know. I'm pretty sharp when it comes to coding, and I think that you are on to something good.

[GaryLASQ]

hey CornPuff. i know Logrey has experimented in the past with XML as a format for saving and exchanging maps, rather than the .sol files of Flash. and he plans to work this into his version 4 of LS. (in fact, the .sol files are XML that are "scrambled" for proprietary reasons.)

the one thing i want to do with scenarios is allow plugging different scenarios into the same battlefield rather than doing a "copy" of the same battlefield with each scenario. so i'm still thinking about how to represent this in the XML battlefield file.

for tools, i'm a bit of a reductionist. only using notepad. i should look into other tools though. and i'm still quite the novice with XSLT. i use the Saxon parser on my laptop but haven't figured out all of its features yet.

here is the XSLT file:
http://heroscape.glasq.com/online/sc...attlefield.xsl

however it's far from its final form and it needs more documentation. and this will not be it's permanent url. just putting it at this location temporarily for the purpose of this thread.

Originally Posted by CornPuff

I really dig the fact that you are making an XML based format. I would love to use your format to create a map database.

i was getting started on a map database via a different XML structure back in the HQ days. but that was for organizing PDFs generated by LS. instead i'm concentrating on putting the maps themselves (terrain objects pieced togther) into XML first; then work on a map database (higher level info about maps). although this is a bit of an uphill climb with a learing curve and RL distractions.

you can use this format anytime you want, but it would be better to wait a bit until i get scenarios worked into it which should be a couple more weeks i think.

[kboleen]

Very cool site. I love the rotating avatars. Are they free for us to use?

[GaryLASQ]

Originally Posted by kboleen

Very cool site. I love the rotating avatars. Are they free for us to use?

thanks kboleen. help yourself to the "spinners". don't even need to give me credit or anything since i swiped the animation frames off the Hasbro sight