Beginners Box Set Simplified Record Sheets option

[kevinn]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. The Beginners Box Sets throughout the years has simplified record sheets for beginning players. These record sheets are about half of an a4/letter paper size with Mech Data, Mech/Unit image, Hit Location table, Gunnery Skill, and an Armor Diagram. No heat, crit tables, and rear/internal structure diagrams.

SSW can offer a simplified sheet print-out as outlined above (with BV rating for balancing purposes) for all of the available Mechs, Vees and the like. This could cater for pick-up games, accessibility, beginners, and/or those groups who wants something in-between Alpha Strike and standard Battletech games for simpler/faster play but grants access to all eras and units.

AFAIK, MML doesn't have this feature.

Example of the current quick-start record sheet:

[WEKarnesky]

I do like this idea, we can probably edit the print to only have the top half of the sheet. and have most of the work done. I am not a UI person (at least not in Java), so if someone who has UI experience wants to offer an alternate suggestion, I'd love to hear it.

If we have someone who takes on this project, I see no reason it can't be released as part of 0.8

[Notsonoble]

I'm not a dev by any means, but I'll pitch my 2 cents in saying I'd love to see this. I'm also super grateful this got picked back up.

[Notsonoble]

I don't know anything about printing in java either, I do know that SSW uses some base images and writes on them. I've created a sample of the base for a standard battlemech that doesn't move anything simply removes the sections that aren't printed, and adds the flat print of the hit location chart.

If people like the sample I can finish the rest and do a proper commit.

[WEKarnesky]

Looks clean and simple to me, I'm by no means a graphical person, but I like it.

[Notsonoble]

So I knew QSR didn't use heat, but it also ignores minimum range... This'll make alignment harder potentially. I'll keep working on these sheets but someone who understand the printing in java will have to make them work.

OR

We could leave heat and mins in...

[KaydenMiller]

I can probably make the printing part work if you can get the sheet finished up. If you have the repo pulled there are files that you could base it off of in the directory "solarisskunkwerks/Data/Printing" or if you have changed the directory it might be different. However, the one you have posted looks pretty good overall.

We would want to update the logo at the top though.

[Notsonoble]

-I can start on that stuff. However I'm new to git and github so let me figure out how to get that squared.- Done...

[WEKarnesky]

@Notsonoble You are more than welcome to join our discord to communicate and work together on this. We can also help you with any issue with Git. https://discordapp.com/invite/xc5pUWP

[KaydenMiller]

Hey so I have been looking into this further and it seams that this is going to require a fairly large refactor of the print system to implement. Each type of record sheet has its own printer class, im looking into creating a factory that can determine what kind of record sheet is needed but this will be quite the change to how printing is done.

To be honest to make this work might even require refactoring the mech class files themselves to make them be what is printing rather than have a dedicated printer class for each type. Other wise there isn't really a good way to do this one.

[WEKarnesky]

With that assessment, I think it doesn't qualify as a good first issue.

[Notsonoble]

My repo on github now has a subfolder in Data/Printing called QStart_Sheet with 3 files in it for mechs, quads, and ground vees. Algebro and I had some issues getting my repo completely synced. We can try and get them merged when they'll be useful to Kayden.