Timpani 4.0 ready for beta testing!

[Timpani Support]

After a solid week of vacation working on it, Timpani for 4e is now
ready for beta testing. You can download it from

http://www.dndtools.com/timpani/timpani40beta.zip

The current version posted there is 4.0b6. Later beta versions (with
fixes after I hear about problems from you) will be posted at the same
file location.

Feel free to pass it along to your friends. Please don't post it
anywhere public yet, though.

The biggest change is that although it's still a spreadsheet, it no
longer uses anything Excel-specific (as far as I know). It should now
work in Open Office, StarOffice, maybe even Google Spreadsheets if I
can somehow get the file size down. If you try it out in one of
those, tell me how it goes.

The first page has basic help and some known issues. Let me know what
other problems you find.

Cheers,

- Pam
tim...@dndtools.com

[Joseph Senecal]

> The first page has basic help and some known issues. Let me know what
> other problems you find.

Nice to see Timpani up and running again. I was surprised to see it's
a one page sheet now, but looking it over there is very little missing
from a normal two page sheet. A list of stuff would have to be a
second page, but maybe you can fit the passive Insight and passive
Perception onto the sheet somewhere? As a GM, those are things I ask
for.

I'm fine with no descriptions of the powers. There is no room for that
on the standard sheet anyway, so I've just be using Power Cards. I
found a set that has most powers and class features already entered.
But even without a description, I would like to see the level anywhere
the power is displayed. It is especially handy when choosing powers
for high level characters.

For the Human stat bonus, the program currently requires you to enter
the stat bonus as a Misc bonus. As a suggestion, have a popup for any
race where you can select one of several stats (human only for now,
but maybe more in the future). Then flag stats that can be chosen by a
something in the stat bonus in the race data (-1 or X whichever works
better). Obviously the would be well down on the list of things to do
even if you did decide to do it.

That's all I saw in a quick perusal. I need to get back to work now,
I'll send more comments when I get a chance to look at it in more
detail.

Joe Senecal

[johncpt]

i can't seem to get the program to work in open office, the drop down
menu's are disabled for some reason

> timp...@dndtools.com

[Timpani Support]

Ah, I'll have to take a look at that. Thanks for the report.

- Pam

[Bob Quinlan]

I hadn't even thought to try it in OpenOffice. I was unable to get the
previous version to work and just assumed there were too many
unsupported Excel functions to make that practical.

I use OpenOffice instead of MS Office whenever possible and would love
to have Timpani working with it too! I'll start experimenting with the
beta and OOo.

Thanks!

--Bob Q

From Timpani Support on 2008-10-24 12:05 PM: