Pathfinder Stat Block Lab

Pathfinder is a tabletop role-playing game developed by Paizo Inc. under the Open Gaming License of Wizards of the Coast. When playing Pathfinder, the Game Master is referee and storyteller, guiding the players through their adventure and assuming the role of all non-player characters and enemies they may encounter.

The Pathfinder Stat Block Lab is a tool for making the Game Master's life a little easier. It aims to present creature stat information in a more intuitively-organized manner than is available through other means.

This application has been developed by Howard Reith as his second project for General Assembly's Web Development Immersive program.

Links to relevant sections of the project can be found here:

Live site: https://howardreith.github.io/PathfinderStatBlockLab/

Live API: https://safe-ocean-44449.herokuapp.com/

Front-End Repository https://github.com/howardreith/PathfinderStatBlockLab

Back-End Repository https://github.com/howardreith/PathfinderStatBlockLabBackEnd

Live link: https://howardreith.github.io/PathfinderStatBlockLab/

What does it do?

The Pathfinder Stat Block Lab has two primary view states - one in one the user can view a "stat block" for the relevant creature and a "lab" in which the user can input information concerning the creature including its name, hit points, armor class, attack bonus, and so on. The user can save this data on the database and retrieve it via a search tool to construct the "stat block" for reference while running the game.

Technologies used:

The Pathfinder Stat Block Lab makes use of Javascript, SCSS, HTML, Ruby on Rails, and SQL.

It makes use of CSS buttons from https://freshdesignweb.com/css3-buttons/

Future Plans

The Stat Block Lab as it presently exists was originally intended to be the secondary feature of the app. I had intended on seeding a database of over 3,000 Pathfinder creatures generated from the various Pathfinder bestiaries. The application would primarily serve as a quick reference tool with a "lab" element available for any monsters not already in the database. Due to time constraints this was not possible.

The overall organization of the stat block is not quite what I hoped. I would like to tweak some minor aspects in the future, mostly in regard to removing some labels that are implicit in their location on the form to make it a bit less cluttered. I would also like to re-design the instructions gifs so the white space surrounding the instructions readjust according to screen size.

The Process

I began this project by setting up as much "scaffolding" as possible. I first created the rails databases with both the User and Creature tables, established their relationship, and made certain both could be modified via CURL scripts. I then constructed a basic HTML template with javascript functions to perform those same actions through the browser. Thanks to my experience in the first project, I was able to fulfill the majority of requirements for the project within the first eight hours of work, which gave me some freedom thereafter.

Since I had, at the time, hoped to incorporate both the public and private databases, my next goal was to set up the search engine on which most of the application would depend. This took approximately ten hours of work to research and implement, as I had never attempted such a mechanism before.

With the search engine in place, I next began building the "stat block" user interface followed by the same for the "lab." I then began replacing the static API interaction buttons I'd built to test the system with fields and systems that would incorporate user actions into the API interactions. This took 8-10 hours of work.

Following this, I began working on the various "view states" of the application, making certain no inappropriate elements or fields were showing when they should not have been and setting up responses to every action a user could take. This took a full eight hours of work, more than I expected.

For one hour I researched seeding a database with my creature statistics CSV and determined I lacked the time remaining to achieve it. I have thus spent the past five hours fixing bugs and testing.

My original wireframe for this project can be found here: https://imgur.com/a/cgZvd2K

My user stories were as follows:

I want to be able to search for the monster I need and display all of its information on screen.

I want less essential information to be hidden unless I ask for it.

I want the information to be displayed in an intuitive way - the role-playing relevant information at the top, then the defensive information, then the offensive information.

I want to be able to add my own custom monster to the database and I want to be able to retrieve this from the server.

I want custom monsters to be private so other users can't corrupt my work and so I don't have to search through endless bad or partially-completed entries that other users have created.