Factions Battle Planner (Build Calculator)

[davemo]

EDIT: Updated 3/20/13 to support Factions build 1.6.43 and Siege Archer : Max Armor is now 9, Max Willpower is now 13

Hi folks,

I've been hard at work on a Build Calculator for Factions. Here's what you can do with it so far:

• customize builds for each class in your loadout
• supports all rank 1, 2 and 3 classes
• validates stat min/max and unit max_stats
• allow users to reset unit stats to defaults in the stat editor
• bookmarkable urls to builds
• stat overlays on portraits for a "quick glance" at your build numbers
• re-order loadout

Here's my TODO list with future enhancements that I'm actively working on:

• enforce loadout classtype limits (so you can't have 3 varls) etc..
• printable roster sheets (with a list of stats per class in the build in a nice table/grid)
• add flavor text and iconography for classes
• add special ability descriptions for classes

Anyways, I'd love some testers and feedback on how this can be improved. My plan is to keep it up to date with official builds of the game and add more classes and ranks of units once they are added.

Cheers!

Dave

Here's a sample build bookmarked.

[piotras]

Great work! Keep it up!

[sinogy]

very cool
thanks for that

[eAZy]

Really awesome man, this is great! Can be useful later on if we ever have a "feature build", or for people to easily share loadouts on the forums.

[sweetjer]

Nice, davemo, thanks for this! We should link this up to the wikidot.

[franknarf]

Cool, that was fast! It's very intuitive except that I expect, when I have open squares but haven't clicked one, the next unit I select will take the leftmost open spot (as in the Proving Grounds).

Other requests for some time beyond your todo:

• color variations,
• confirm on removal from team,
• clicking squares to switch positions,
• seeing the roster sheet in the build calculator itself, so all the stats can be seen at once (for example, by putting the numbers under each portrait),
• instead of a printable roster sheet, an image that can be embedded in a thread on the forums with all the info described compactly,
• and it would be really cool if there were a parser so someone could enter, e.g.,

rm 12/8/4/2/3
...

(as some folks on the forum seem to do) and have that translated into the appropriate build/url.

EDIT: Oh right, it's linked on the front page now of the wikidot wiki now.

[davemo]

Thanks frank, great feature requests; I will add those to my list. Next in priority is a stat overlay for each portrait as you suggested.

Edit:**

Just pushed a build that adds this feature

• confirm on removal from team

[Jorgensager]

Very nice!

Although a bit unintuitive to realise I had to click on the open slots before I could fill them ~ the triangle to indicate which one is active is a bit subtle, and disappears after you fill a slot (i.e. if you don't notice it at start you could be lost for a minute, like I was ).

If you implement frank's first suggestion (i.e. fill leftmost open slot on additional clicks), possibly add a "back" button or so that takes you back to the overview screen after customising a unit. I understand that this is unnecessary, but it would possibly make it more intuitive?

[davemo]

Very nice!

If you implement frank's first suggestion (i.e. fill leftmost open slot on additional clicks), possibly add a "back" button or so that takes you back to the overview screen after customising a unit. I understand that this is unnecessary, but it would possibly make it more intuitive?

Pushed a new build that has this as well as stat overlays underneath portraits. Also got rid of the little arrow; let me know what you think

https://tbs-battle-planner.herokuapp.com/

[Slimsy Platypus]

Wow this is really awesome Davemo - an epic tool for tweaking your build to perfection while you are out of the game. Thanks man!

[Jorgensager]

Pushed a new build that has this as well as stat overlays underneath portraits. Also got rid of the little arrow; let me know what you think

O_o I'm in awe!

Now, if you could display the <skill points distributed> counter in a corner of the images that would be really helpful! (I.e. 0/11 as default then if you add 3 points to strength it will say 3/11)... so that we can see if they have maxed skills without clicking on each individual one.

Out of curiosity... what is this written in, and if I want to learn doing awesome things like this, where would I start? ^_^

[davemo]

Now, if you could display the <skill points distributed> counter in a corner of the images that would be really helpful! (I.e. 0/11 as default then if you add 3 points to strength it will say 3/11)... so that we can see if they have maxed skills without clicking on each individual one.

That should be easy to add, let me see if I can crank it out fast.

Out of curiosity... what is this written in, and if I want to learn doing awesome things like this, where would I start? ^_^

This is written entirely in JavaScript, HTML and CSS. The source code is in CoffeeScript which compiles down to JavaScript; I have a build process setup to construct all the pieces and put them together using a tool that myself and a co-worker wrote called Lineman.

If you are interested in exploring I also put the entire source of this app up on my github profile:

https://github.com/davemo/tbs-battle-planner

[Jorgensager]

This is written entirely in JavaScript, HTML and CSS. The source code is in CoffeeScript which compiles down to JavaScript; I have a build process setup to construct all the pieces and put them together using a tool that myself and a co-worker wrote called Lineman.

If you are interested in exploring I also put the entire source of this app up on my github profile:

Thanks a lot! I only know a couple of programming languages which make this GUI look very impressive.

Very interested, actually! Thanks! I'm working on a log file interpreter (pretty much just to recap the battles in English, for the specially interested == me) but have no idea how to make a program out of it when it's done (also a big problem with it is that it relies on the log format which could change at any time and break the whole thing ^_^)

[Arnie]

davemo. Badass. What else to say? We gotta hype this when it's done.
Ps. If you wanted to make the lettering more like the game we use minion pro and vinque. Up to you.

[davemo]

davemo. Badass. What else to say? We gotta hype this when it's done.
Ps. If you wanted to make the lettering more like the game we use minion pro and vinque. Up to you.

Awesome, thanks Arnie! I was going to ask what fonts you use, I'll see what I can do to either make a webfont version of those or see if there is a freely available webfont that looks similar.

Consider it added to my todo list

[davemo]

Now, if you could display the <skill points distributed> counter in a corner of the images that would be really helpful! (I.e. 0/11 as default then if you add 3 points to strength it will say 3/11)... so that we can see if they have maxed skills without clicking on each individual one.

Just pushed a build with this feature, but also found a bug when you swap between multiple units in the editor, so that's my next priority.

[erom]

If you are interested in exploring I also put the entire source of this app up on my github profile

Respect.

[sweetjer]

This might sound like a crazy suggestion but how about adding some features in-game doesn't have? For instance: Total stats for your build, like total break/str/armor/etc distributed across the team, average break/str/wp/etc per unit, that kind of thing. Might be sort of useless, but I can see some applications, for instance comparing the average break on two builds you like or something like that.

[davemo]

This might sound like a crazy suggestion but how about adding some features in-game doesn't have? For instance: Total stats for your build, like total break distributed across the team, average per unit, that kind of thing. Might be sort of useless, but I can see some applications, for instance comparing the average break on two builds you like or something like that.

Yeah, meta stats (as I like to call that stuff) are definitely something I'm intrigued about. I'm going to get the core features like the bookmarkable url and bugs fixed next, but I'm totally open to building some analysis into the tool

[sweetjer]

good point, no use feature creeping the project before the basics are all there, but glad to hear you were already considering analytic applications of this tool. bookmarkable url's sounds like a great added function.