Topic: Link to possible RM2 online character sheet

[NicholasHMCaldwell]

Discovered this
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=287650
which led to
http://www.strayhold.com/portal.php?pid=rolemaster

Might be a potential RM2 character generator buried in there.

Best wishes,
Nicholas

[imzakhor]

Hello, my name is Greg Harter... Er, uh, I am the Paladin Lord Black Fice Hawk, Leader of the Company of the Fallen Rose, Lord of Strayhold. If you had a question about the online character sheets I have created at my website, http://www.strayhold.com, you should have registered at the site and asked. I don't bite! (I'm a paladin) I have forums there, for posting, as well as the ability to post replies to my articles.

Check out my online character sheets: http://www.strayhold.com/portal.php?pid=cotfr

(psst: read the awesome RP content from my ongoing campaign, then click the character names on the left. That little "Lord Black Fice Hawk" on the left is my main)

No big deal. It's not a 'character generator' per se... It's a way for my players to keep their character data online, so they can view/update at home, and I can do the same. It also takes care of some of the formidable math that I personally LOVE, but makes the game quite hard for some of the people of my game, who have sometimes severe trouble with math.

It's not really open to the public to create characters... Besides, it has no step by step guides for char gen, and it doesn't know the rules of Rolemaster character generation, though I would dearly wish it could be. But, I am guessing, that lawyers would have something to say if I let everyone in the world make Rolemaster 2nd edition characters for nothin'.

It's been a labor of love, and one I am quite proud of. I have been careful not to step on any copyright toes... Though, if I got an email stating how much you WANT me to continue it, and go public, etc., well... That just might be the best day of my life.

Right after my marriage. Oh, and the two kids. And winning the spelling bee in 4th grade. (I peaked early. )

Yours in Justice,
Black Hawk
The Lord of Strayhold

[imzakhor]

And if you visit, PLEASE register! If you would like to discuss my online characters sheets, my forums/articles are standing by. I might just cry if someone I didn't know personally posted to my site.

[imzakhor]

AND NO LAUGHING AT THE FACT I LOST 4 POINTS OF STRENGTH WHEN I LEVELED LAST WEEK.

I mean it.

I do.

[shnar]

Hm, I'd love to comment on the site, but it won't let me browse it.

IMHO, forcing people to use Browser XYZ is grounds for never visiting the site, especially when how the browser in question does not affect the server being viewed. It's one thing to say "use this browser because it uses technology that I can't figure out how to use on other browsers", but it's completely different to say, "don't use this browser because I don't like it". Don't preach to me, just let me view your site with any browser I choose.

-shnar

[imzakhor]

Hm, I'd love to comment on the site, but it won't let me browse it.

Don't use IE. Sorry - I don't allow IE users to browse the site.

IMHO, forcing people to use Browser XYZ is grounds for never visiting the site, especially when how the browser in question does not affect the server being viewed. It's one thing to say "use this browser because it uses technology that I can't figure out how to use on other browsers", but it's completely different to say, "don't use this browser because I don't like it". Don't preach to me, just let me view your site with any browser I choose.

IE7 works just fine, and can browse the site. IE6 does not implement CSS correctly, and causes errors. Rather than hack my website to work with IE6, I just turned it off. IE6 is not allowed to browse.

I don't want my users to have a subpar experience on *MY* website. So I don't allow inferior browsers to browse it. Don't like it? That's OK. The Internet is big enough for both of us.

[ictus]

I agree with Shnar, forcing people to use or not use a given browser isn't a wise move as it can alienate people passing by, who may only visit once and may never bother again if they get bad karma from the start.

Much better to have a splash page, pop-up or a massage on the portal to let people know the page wont view correctly on IE6

Personally I hate IE full stop, but not everyone feels the same, and most things work with it, just not as fast or elegantly.

It looks like you've got quite a good site going on over there though, little tricky to navigate, but the same is sometime leveled at ResourceMasters, keep it up and get on the gateway, so you add a little more exposure. It's also good for helping you improve your site.

[shnar]

Much better to have a splash page, pop-up or a massage on the portal to let people know the page wont view correctly on IE6

Good web developers understand that being on the web, you have no control over how your page is going to be viewed, so the best thing is to develop the site to allow just about any/every browser to view it. What if I was using Lynx to browse the site? What about pre-CSS browsers? Especially for an informationaly site, it's not terribly difficult to make it work on the "common" browsers at the very least...

But as it is, I cannot view the pages, so cannot comment on it...

-shnar

[imzakhor]

Good web developers understand that being on the web, you have no control over how your page is going to be viewed

Obviously incorrect, as my website does control how it is viewed. No IE, sorry.

so the best thing is to develop the site to allow just about any/every browser to view it.

No thanks. The hacks necessary to make IE6 work are just not worth the trouble. The website, and especially the online character sheets, just do not view correctly in IE.

What if I was using Lynx to browse the site? What about pre-CSS browsers? Especially for an informationaly site, it's not terribly difficult to make it work on the "common" browsers at the very least...

All of these work fine. Instead of playing devil's advocate, why not download one and browse strayhold.com?

[imzakhor]

I agree with Shnar, forcing people to use or not use a given browser isn't a wise move as it can alienate people passing by, who may only visit once and may never bother again if they get bad karma from the start.

To be honest, the website is not necessarily for people just passing by. I am not a bandwidth monkey, needing to have as many people that I don't know viewing my site as possible. If people want to view it, fine - it's like coming over to my house. Take your shoes off, or don't come in.

[Mulgar]

Hm, I'd love to comment on the site, but it won't let me browse it.

IMHO, forcing people to use Browser XYZ is grounds for never visiting the site, especially when how the browser in question does not affect the server being viewed. It's one thing to say "use this browser because it uses technology that I can't figure out how to use on other browsers", but it's completely different to say, "don't use this browser because I don't like it". Don't preach to me, just let me view your site with any browser I choose.

-shnar

imzakhor

I am usually just a lurker here. But I must comment. You obviously are a paladin. A real Lawful Good thumb up ..... D&D type.

I will not take the time and effort to run an additional browser, just because of you. Don't preach to me  with your precious bandwith. If you want to run a RPG website --run one.

If you want to preach against the evils of Microsoft do that.

I do however find irony in the fact that if not for the success of Mircosoft, most of what you are able to do would not be possible. Your options as to browser that you preach about really came about due to IE vs. Netscape.


So long and back to lurker mode.

Mulgar
An old time AD&D
1st Edition Cleric

[imzakhor]

I will not take the time and effort to run an additional browser, just because of you.

Time? Effort? LOL. www.firefox.com... Clicking a mouse is effort?

Don't preach to me  with your precious bandwith.

You misread my statement on bandwidth. My bandwidth is not precious, I just meant that I don't need zillions of anonymous people viewing my website, like most self-indulgent bloggers seem. Therefore, I have no need to cater to a bad IE.

If you want to run a RPG website --run one.

If you want to preach against the evils of Microsoft do that.

I do both of these things splendidly, and in perfect harmony at www.strayhold.com.

I do however find irony in the fact that if not for the success of Mircosoft, most of what you are able to do would not be possible. Your options as to browser that you preach about really came about due to IE vs. Netscape.

Absurd silliness. I wonder if you even bothered to try the website. It works just fine in IE7, which doesn't need the same CSS hacks that IE6 needed. Are you running IE7, or IE6? If IE6, just how far back should I be compatible? It's a rhetorical question of course, as I really don't care what your opinion on that matter is. My line in the sand is IE6 - no exceptions.

[Mulgar]

Time? Effort? LOL. www.firefox.com... Clicking a mouse is effort?

No but downloading anything on dial up is a pain. Not all of us have access to high speed internet. IE came on the computer.

It works just fine in IE7, which doesn't need the same CSS hacks that IE6 needed. Are you running IE7, or IE6? If IE6, just how far back should I be compatible? It's a rhetorical question of course, as I really don't care what your opinion on that matter is. My line in the sand is IE6 - no exceptions.

Interesting, I'm using IE 7 and still get your preaching messages about IE. Still can't see your pages. Guess you don't quite know where your line in the sand is.....

[imzakhor]

You are correct... IE7 isn't displaying, and it should (and used to). I will look into why immediately.

Well, IE 7.0 now works, as intended.

[DavidKlecker]

I for one don't understand why you are having trouble with IE6 CSS when all web pages I have created work well under IE6 & Firefox and I am using strict CSS implementation. Apply this to other people whom I know are avid html programmers and not one of them has complained about incompatibilities between IE6 and Firefox and their sites are working 100%. The key is in making sure your page isn't complex or specific enough to a single browser. There is no reason that a webpage should work only for one browser. Microsoft has gone out of their way to make sure their home page works for Firefox like it does in IE after the long Browser wars back during IE5 and Netscape 6.0

CSS is by far the best way of making sure things format properly across different browsers and right now is a GREAT time for cross platform designing. It's never been easier since IE6 and Firefox came on the scene and especially all the great work a lot of people out there have done to perfect CSS to help others in programming straight up sites with one HTML page and one CSS page.

My two cents on your browser issues.

edit: after reading your site on IE it sounds like you are just biased. Sorry to hear that.

[smug]

I can't believe the 'advice' that Imzakhor has been given by some people here and I don't understand how he has remained so patient. You know, he's offering this site, you're not paying him, if you don't like it, go somewhere else.

IE6 still didn't work with the box model, Monk, so you can easily write stuff that required a hack (in fact, you can still get some things to not work with IE -- it doesn't seem to understand 'inherit', for example, on all properties -- but now that it understands parent>child it's actually harder to hack around the compatibility issues). Unlike Imzakhor, who is doing this stuff for fun and is perfectly entitled to do it anyway he wants to, I have to make sure that stuff works in IE and Firefox and Safari (and maybe Opera) at work and it's a right pain in the arse. If I was doing it for fun and providing a service to a bunch of my friends that I kindly didn't bar everyone else from, I'd tell people to download Firefox or else to use google to find someone that cares and whine to them about it.

I don't have a problem with IE7 itself -- it's a decent browser and eats up less RAM than Firefox, at least on my machine (I managed over 600MB of RAM being used by Firefox the other day) -- but if I was doing stuff for fun, I'd probably pick one browser. As many of my friends are linuxites, I'd pick Firefox. I might or might not actually bar other browsers (it would depend in large part on how horrible it looked in the other browsers) and I'm not religious about browsers at all (or OSs, for that matter). I'm a web programmer (not a web designer) and so, fortunately, my web pages aren't too fancy that I can't make them work in multiple browsers when I'm working. When I'm not working, though, I'd be much less interested in multiple browser compatibility.

[darkon_turas]

The reason Firefox is using up all that memory is because it has a severe memory leak that they have no intention of fixing. They are only addressing that problem in the next version.

In my experience as a professional webmaster, Firefox is the worst browser out there. It is the mose likely browser to misinterpret any given web page out of all those I have installed (Firefox, Internet Explorer 7, Opera, Netscape Navigator, and Safari). Each browser does have its strong points. IE7 is the most forgiving when it comes to coding errors. Opera is an excellent all-in-one solution as it offers integrated browsing, email, and torrent clients. Navigator used to have the excellent option to change between firefox and IE rendering engines but it lost it in the last version in exchange for the ability to use firefox plug-ins. Safari has no strengths nor weaknesses on the Windows platform.

[smug]

Yeah, it's obviously at least one memory leak.

Actually (I'm a web programmer at least some of the time) I find that Firefox is clearly better with CSS standards than is IE (in particular, it understands the box model better; of course, as IE is the dominant browser, people sometimes complain that their IE-compliant pages don't look right in Firefox, but that's often because Firefox implements CSS better than IE). IE's a nice usable browser, though, and Safari isn't bad either (although I find it sometimes a little slow). What do you find that it's most likely to 'misinterpret'? I certainly find that it's intepretations are different to those of IE, but often that's because Firefox is closer to the specification than is IE (which properties can be inherited, for example, varies from one to the other but I believe that Firefox is closer to correct).

To be honest, the benefits in terms of competition (browsers competing with each other make development better) have to be weighed up against the irritations in presentation (and this problem wasn't improved by css, although much else certainly was, in that we can at least seperate our content from our styling). In practice, as I say, I test on IE, Firefox and Safari. If I had to test on a fourth, I'd pick Opera but virtually none of my clients use it. Most of my clients are linuxites or else using mac laptops; windows laptops are probably the third most common and they're not using IE that much on those, for some reason. Firefox is the most common browser amongst my clients on any platform.

[smug]

I should add that for using ASP.NET, which I like, IE is easiest. That's more a comment on ASP.NET, however (in particular, Safari is considered to be a downlevel browser by default, although that can be fixed by altering an element in one of the config files).

[darkon_turas]

For example, Firefox will not refund space in a <DIV> that changes from block display mode to none. In addition, every time one reopens the collapsable element, the space taken it by increases by its original volume. IE does not have this problem. I've also seen other dynamic elements futz up only in Firefox, not in IE, Opera nor Navigator.