Hero lab - New TimePeriods

The more I look through the data files, the more I find I don't know about Hero Lab... Tonight I managed to workout a few kinks in the Three Kings dataset, so it now has the equipment added to a WW2 filter so you can hide Modern equipment and just see the WW2 items if you really want to, it's own Sanity value so you're not reliant upon the Horror expansion and some injuries that reduce sanity.

Adding the new time periods turns out to be pretty easy, just not all that clearly detailed as far as I can see...

In your .1st file add the following block of code and update the id, name and description fields. This will add another check box onto the Character Configuration screen allowing you to choose which time periods you want to enable for your game.

<source
  id="ACTimeWW2"
  name="WW2"
  parent="TimePeriod"
  sortorder="2"
  default="yes"
  description="Enables the availability of equipment from the WW2 time period">
  </source>

You can see from the parent field that we're extending the existing Savage Worlds setting TimePeriod source. The sort order of 2 puts it in the second position, equal to Black Powder weapons. Thankfully, alphabetical sorting kicks in after that and places WW2 below Black Powder so that it appears to be in the 3rd position, just before Modern. We've now got a filter that we can drop our equipment into...

As we want our new pieces of equipment to still be in use for Modern settings (and I've not worked out how to add new titles into the equipment lists yet) we're going to add our new equipment into the existing Equipment and Weapon categories, but in the XML view we're going to add an additional line to say that this needs our new ACTimeWW2 source. Here's an example of a new pistol from Three Kings as an example:

  <thing id="wpM1911" name="Browning M1911" compset="Ranged">
    <fieldval field="wpDamage" value="2d6+1"/>
    <fieldval field="wpShort" value="12"/>
    <fieldval field="wpMedium" value="24"/>
    <fieldval field="wpLong" value="48"/>
    <fieldval field="wpShots" value="7"/>
    <fieldval field="wpPiercing" value="1"/>
    <usesource source="ACTKing"/>
    <usesource source="ACTimeWW2"/>    
    <tag group="Weapon" tag="SemiAuto"/>
    <tag group="WeaponType" tag="ModPistol"/>
    </thing>

By adding a usesource of ACTimeWW2 we're (as far as I can work out) saying that as long as we are allowing the use of ACTimeWW2 in the Equipment timezones, this will show up. My current issue is that if I hide the WW2 period, it doesn't vanish, but if I hide the Modern period it is all that remains... so it's sort-of working. If I remove or replace the WeaponType group, it responds properly, but then isn't grouped by anything. Creating new weapon groups in the admin console doesn't appear to work as expected and the Hero Lab forums seem to suggest you need to hijack one of the existing items and replace the title, which seems a bit daft! I need to come back to this one again before I move onto the next Achtung! Cthulhu book.

I'll detail Sanity tomorrow as it's past my bedtime...