[SuiteGM-Developers] SuiteGM Plugin Data Entry Form (basic) created (only 4 fields so far)

[Discussion l. f. S. D. a. T. <sui...@li...>]

Greetings Nick and company,
It has been a while, and though I should have been reading my human 
development texts, I tangented into coding (after Brennan begged me to 
help him with his BASIC game app, it brought my coding addiction to the 
forefront :-) ), and decided to fix a few bugs, and get another feature 
started.

I now have a working basic data entry form. Yay! This is a major 
component.

This is the form that a user (including us) would use to create a 
new "plugin" for SuiteGM.

If someone wants to add a new game system to SuiteGM, this is the form 
necessary to do so.

Right now I have only created 4 fields:
CompanyName
GameName
GameVersion
GameAbbreviation

I just stuck with a few to work out the process of getting a correctly 
formatted xml file created. 

Here is the output from a test run:

cat icemerp2.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<suitegmplugin version="4.0">
  <CompanyName>Iron Crown Enterprises</CompanyName>
  <GameName>Middle-earth Role Playing</GameName>
  <GameVersion>Second Edition</GameVersion>
  <GameAbbreviation>icemerp2</GameAbbreviation>
</suitegmplugin>


The filename, icemerp2.xml is (for now) created based on what the user 
gives as the system (plugin) abbreviation. I am very open to other, 
better suggestions on the file naming, anyone think this is an unwise 
approach? Suggest something better for filenaming determination?

Now that the basic mechanics are working for this form, I can bit by bit 
add other fields that are universal to all RPG systems (not the 
simplest task that), and work out what the tags should be.
After at least a fairly detailed plugin set is created correctly, the 
next step will be to modify the existing hard coded character generator 
to start using these created XML files instead.

I don't have this committed to CVS yet, but I expect to over the next 
few days, and will post when it is.

Cheers!

-Hawke
----------------------
SuiteGM Founder & Developer
http://suitegm.com
http://suitegm.sourceforge.net

Email lists at: http://suitegm.com/email-lists

Anonymous Subversion Access:
http://suitegm.svn.sourceforge.net

SuiteGM is a project dedicated to creating an extensive
set of computer based utilities to aid classical paper and dice Game 
Masters in their work.

This project is Java based, open source, open platform,
open game system and multi-lingual.

Features to be included:
* Cross-platform (Java & XML based)
* Tested to work on Linux, Mac OSX, & Windows
* Character Generation
* Character/Party tracking
* Combat resolution
* Mapping
* Adventure logging (with wiki export)
* Synchronizable/updateable software and data files
* On and offline capabilities
* Modular design to make it easy for others to contribute features and 
content