XLS to data conversion

Introduction

This guide is going to show you that any one can design content for city of heroes easily and effectively, my goal with this guide is to make that process as easy as possible, The guide will help you design the game like how paragon studio designed the game.

The main portion of Paragon Studios game design was in done Excel sheets where Coding in features was done differently but it did tie into them from the use of option sheets, There are also a number of other tools such as the map maker and importing models animations and FX.

We currently have access to a lot of the same tools and scripts the XLS sheets are well documented and make creating and editing existing content easy, This requires the XLS sheets and updated Perl scripts which can be found at Setup and Resources page on the Ourodev wiki and XLS sheets can be found from faptastic/voldemort or the Data files provided in Setup and Resources wiki page.

This will guide you through Setting up the Perl scripts and detailing what they can do, The Perl scripts themselves required additional work to be functional from what the community currently has, and only a limited amount are currently working, this guide will be updated as progress continues.

But by the end you will have a number of tools that will let you do anything from create new contacts and missions to new power sets and AT’s, Though, There are some limitations to the XLS sheets while you can create a contact, missions, powers and cut-scenes etc with little trouble in the XLS, The map maker was not fully included which makes placing new contacts require extra steps. But there are a number of work around for the map maker and may be covered later as this guide progresses.

For more information about Map Making, please refer to https://wiki.ourodev.com/Basics_about_Map_Editor

Make sure you keep a good naming scheme for everything and make backups as you develop.