If hitting the button auto-generated an action line, e.g., “Randomly discard card #1 of 4” or “Randomly discard card #3 of 5,” that would add the clarity back in.
For bonus clarity (though added clutter to the template), it could add a line break and
card name.
The ideal (and I don’t know how hard it would be for you to do this) would be for it to add a line of text saying “(discarded)” right after the name of the card in the Starting Hand summary (which includes all cards drawn).
@zhavier
Noob here messing around with the speadsheet for the first time. I seem to understand everything except generating the post. I have attached a screenshot (I was on my iPad) of the generate screen. I used the mobile pulldown and selected “yes” but it just showed me the same screen again, including all my hand info and the programming jargon around the entries. Where do I go to view the generated sheet so I can copy and paste it into the forums?
Thanks!
That box to the right of the generate button is the output, just copy and paste that cell into the forums. Of note though, you shouldn’t need to actually press the Generate button itself, as it will auto generate when you push Discard/Draw, that button is only for outlying cases.
Hope that helps!
Ok. So one more question…once I have pasted it in the forums, can I edit it before posting? I obviously don’t want my opponent to see my hand and what I turned into workers and such. Also, getting rid of the techy looking stuff would make it look cleaner. Thanks!
Yes you can edit it before posting, but things like hand and workers are automatically hidden. A lot of that techy stuff is forum formatting.
Great. Thanks everyone. I think I will be playing in the forums now.
This might be a bit redundant, but here are my detailed instructions for starting a game, taking your first turn, and posting the thread.
Apologies if the following comes across as patronizing; I’m just going to give instructions (PC version) as I wish I’d gotten them the first time I played online. I’m sure you know most of it, but it seems useful to get this all in one place, and I’ll copy it over to one of the other threads when I get a chance. Different people use the sheet in different ways, but here’s how I do it.
Instructions for starting the game in your sheet:
Go to sheets.google.com and log in.
You probably already have a clean copy of the spreadsheet in your google sheets. If not, you can follow the link from the spreadsheet thread again. I prefer to have a clean copy as my default (I’ve modified my version’s output slightly, and I like to be able to reference that version when I like). Then I go to “File → Make a copy” within the spreadsheet and title the new copy based on when and who I’m playing. (If you’re only planning on playing one game at a time, then you can just do everything in the same sheet, but I like to have a separate sheet for every game in case I start a second one.) If your browser prevents opening a pop-up window, you may have to quickly access the option at the top of your browser to show the popped-up site.
Zoom in or out until you can comfortably see the whole sheet.
In the upper-right, make sure your player # is set to 1. (If you were going second, you’d set that to 2.)
In the lower-right, make sure your Deck Factions are set to your factions (the one whose starter your using on top), and make sure the Opponent Factions are set to theirs (likewise).
Press the Start Game button in the lower-right.
Give the Codex PbP Helper permission to access your sheets. You may have to go into “Advanced Settings,” to allow this, because google doesn’t know or trust @zhavier (their loss).
Instructions for taking your first turn:
Dragging cards is generally done by clicking on a cell, then moving the cursor over the bottom edge of that cell until it turns into a hand icon, then clicking and dragging.
On later turns, you’ll type your teched cards into the Tech Cards column after drawing any cards from Technician bonuses that happened on your opponent’s turn.
Drag any cards you want to play from your hand to the “Patrollers” or “Board” column.
When playing a hero from the command zone (or a token created by a spell), just type their name into the “Patrollers” or “Board” column.
It’s useful for readers if you edit any cells of any units/heroes/buildings/upgrades/ongoing spells so that their name is followed by “Lvl. #” (for heroes), “(ATK/HP-damage)” (for heroes/units), “# HP” (for buildings), or any other relevant information, such as who’s channeling a spell, what’s stored in a Graveyard or Prynn’s trashed time-pocket, etc. Some players leave that info in for the rest of the game; others clean it up again when cards go to discard.
Drag any card you want to worker from your hand to the “Workers” column.
Type every action you took into the “Actions (in order)” column. Type the costs (as negative numbers) into the corresponding cells of the “Action Gold” column. (In later turns, when you gain $ from scavenger bonuses or other effects, you should also enter them here as positive numbers. You might also have to manually modify the top line where you “Get paid” if your opponent destroyed one of your workers with a Marauder or something; you’ll have to manually delete a worker from the “Workers” column in that case, too.)
When you’re satisfied that everything looks right, click on the “Discard/Draw” button below the “Tech Cards” column.
Give it half a minute to process and run the scripts. When it says it’s done at the top of the browser, click on the “Post Template” tab at the bottom of the sheet.
Double-click into the big “Current Output” cell, then highlight everything in that cell (Ctrl+A), then copy it (Ctrl+C). You could just single-click the cell and Ctrl+C, but you might end up with a couple excess quotation marks. This is what you’ll paste into your forum post.
Click on the “State” tab at the bottom of the sheet to get back to the meat to prepare for your next turn and review your next hand.
Instructions for starting the thread:
From the main Codex forum, hit the button that says “All” at the top and select the yellow “Codex play-by-forum” option to get yourself into the correct sub-forum. (You can hit “none” when you want to filter out all the games and just look for articles.)
Hit the “+ New Topic” button in the upper-right.
Type or copy the title, “Casual: your name (your specs) vs. opponent’s name (opponent’s specs)” into the Title bar. (If you were in a tournament, you’d just copy the name of the thread from the tournament’s pairings post.)
Type or copy @opponent’s name (it’ll pull up a user-selection tab when you get a few letters in) at the beginnging of the post, then give yourself a few clear lines. This’ll let them know when you’ve started the thread.
Paste the turn info you copied from the “Post Template” tab of the spreadsheet after your first turn into your post.
Find the “Thoughts” section at the bottom of your post and add in anything you want.
Hit the "+ Create Topic button at the bottom.
I hope that helps!
This should be copy-pasted to the original post in the ‘find an opponent thread’.
te original post in that thread is no longer editable. Someone could flag for a moderator to add it maybe, dunno.
I am having trouble with the codex tracking spreadsheet and Google Sheets. Whenever I try to hit the Discard/Draw button, I get a popup saying “Authorization required”. When I hit the continue button, I get a small new browser window, that is blank, with just “about:blank” in the title bar.
How can I authorize this to run? I’ve tried going into the script editor, and manually saying “run drawNewHand”, but that brings up a popup that says "Authorization required
Codex PbP Helper needs your permission to access your data on Google."
Again, a “review permissions” button, that just brings up the same empty small new window.
Does anyone know how to make this work?
For me, when I first run a script using a copy of the spreadsheet (by pressing the Start Game button), I get an Authorization Required pop-up, but it’s almost immediately blocked by my browser, and I have to quickly head up to the upper-right and tell my browser to show that pop-up. Once I’m in the pop-up, Google makes it really hard to enable an “untrustworthy” program (which is a very good thing most of the time). Basically, there’s a small “advanced settings” link (or something similar) within the pop-up that will allow you to enable it.
In my experience, once it’s enabled for a given copy of the sheet, you don’t have to enable it again for that sheet, but you will probably have to enable it for every separate copy of the sheet.
I hope that helps?
EDIT: @keybounce
Now that I have the sheet in front of me, it was the making a copy of the spreadsheet, not the authorization that got blocked by Firefox.
The Authorization Required pop-up required me to select my account again to authorize, then it brought up the “This app isn’t verified” pop-up. That’s where the tiny “Advanced” link is for me. Clicking that expands the pop-up slightly, so that I can scroll down. I then have to click on the frightening:
“Go to Codex PbP Helper (unsafe)”. THEN I have to type “Continue” into a new pop-up and hit Next. THEN it tells me what Codex PbP Helper wants to do, and I have to hit the Allow button.
Now I’ve finally given @zhavier control over all my google sheets, so he can get up to all his nefarious plans.
I had to do an authorize when I made my first copy. I haven’t had an authorization popup on any other copy of that copy. I remember doing that oauth authorization in google on the first copy.
What I don’t understand is that the script that I’m running is apparently associated with what is now my spreadsheet. Heck, I can “Edit” it (adding a space), so that I save my own copy of it, and I still have to give it permission at run time.
I have popups enabled for google.
I not only gave permission for all this to NoScript, but I even turned off script protections globally so that any script would run (at that point, NoScript is just preventing XSS exploits).
Let me try a brand-new copy of the sheet:
(EDIT: I really, really hate this forum software junk)
Click on the “make copy” link in post 1.
Have the spreadsheet in front of me, no permissions request.
Save a new copy inside mydrive/games/codex/pbf
Select MonoWhite for me
Select Past, Blood, and Discipline for my opponent
Hit StartGame
… and “Working” has been up for a minute now, just to start game?
Oh, and just in case: the previous sheet still wants me to grant permission when I hit discard/draw.
Annoyance: Every so often, clicking on those buttons brings up the “Drawing” panel.
EDIT 2: Reloading that sheet, hitting “start game” brings up an authorization needed panel, which also brings up all those blank windows that don’t authorize anything.
EDIT 3: I actually went over to the Google account page.
[quote]Apps connected to your account
Make sure you still use these apps and want to keep them connected.
Amazon
Backup and Sync from Google
Codex PbP Helper
OS X[/quote]
So I’ve got that script authorized.
…
I am not clear on how your issue came to pass, but clearly something is interfering with your authorization capability. I have to authorize the script everytime I make a new copy of a sheet when i use any of the buttons for the first time, and have dozens of copies of codex pbp helper in my authorized listing.
Note, I don’t recall needing to authorize anything if I use the dropdown menus near the buttons instead of the buttons. But I usually only use the dropdowns on mobile devices.
hmm, dropdowns?
OMG, it works??? wtf?
So… i’m trying to do something similar for a different spreadsheet. I have never really messed up with scripts before. @zhavier, how complicated is it to just create a script that randomizes a list and draws one item? (basically, I just want the ‘draw 1 card’ script)
You should be able to open my script and find the draw one function in there. It uses the shuffle function built into VBA.
@zhavier, is there currently a way in the spreadsheet to force tech cards into the discard and to be recorded without drawing? I say this as it would be very useful with Garth’s Maxband/Remembers then manually fiddling around with the output provided.
No, but I could probably add it.
It would have to be a button, as opposed to the oathkeeper/prynn box that modifies the discard/draw function.
I am running out of space for buttons 
I have added a button past the bottom of the sheet, for saving tech choices. It is out of the way, because I didn’t want to disrupt the more generally useful buttons. It is next to the prynn/oathkeeper and Shrine options, but it functinos as any of the other buttons.
I have also edited the sheet to account for the forum changes, which seems to break the italics and bold command tags if they are capitalized.
It seems like the formatting rules for the forums recently changed, so I whipped up some simple HTML to translate the spreadsheet output into a form that the forums can handle, as well as adding spoiler tags to hidden details info. To use, just copy/paste the text (look for the “RAW Paste Data” at the bottom) into a file, name it with the file extension .html, and open it in a web browser.
Edit: New version, new features! You can now put the special terms “Future”, “On Loan”, and/or “Jailed” in your Board column and they will be formatted as separate lists from “In Play”. Also, if “In Play” is empty, it will be removed. And, if you set a building’s HP to 99, it will appear as infinity (∞).
