Can you provide any tips on how to print my custom content?
Sure. There are some general printing/assembly/component mixing suggestions on this page. In addition, there are some deck-specific printing tips here.
Can I add my own items/locations/allies/etc. to the investigator editor?
Yes. Press New Item... on the Possessions tab (for a new location, use New Home... on the Statistics tab). Fill in the fields with the information for your card. If you have created a custom card, you can press Import Settings From Card... and choose the card's .eon complete the fields automatically. The new item will be added to the appropriate drop-down list on the editor tab. Any item or location that you create and select will be saved with the investigator and reappear when that file is opened again. To make permanent additions or changes, write an Extension plug-in.
How do the rules used to design investigators compare to FFG's official investigators?
The standard rule set is designed to be as close as possible to that used by the designers at FFG (albeit with additional features). Since there are limits to what can be determined by reverse engineering existing examples, the rules are adjusted as needed to account for official characters that are released with new expansions. This means that investigators that were considered "valid" in an older version of Strange Eons may be considered "invalid" in a newer version, or vice-versa. However, so far SE has had an excellent track record and few changes have been required. Generally speaking, once a new expansion is (fully) supported by SE, that expansion's investigators will work out point-for-point and dollar-for-dollar the same under SE. (In some cases, this has also gone in the other direction, with FFG's designers borrowing from SE as well.)

You may be familiar with rules that were proposed by Squashua (Joshua Marquart) on the Board Game Geek forum. The rules used by Strange Eons are similar but not identical to those rules. For example, Strange Eons does not grant an automatic focus bonus for having skills of all 4s. Why? The evidence suggests that the focus bonuses applied to official characters are adjustments made on a per-investigator basis during play-testing and are not universal rules. That is why Strange Eons provides a "Focus Adjustment Bonus" setting on the Special Ability tab. (In order to allow you to recreate the official characters, their special abilities automatically apply the appropriate focus bonus. If you want to make a character that uses a standard special ability but find in playtesting that the bonus is not appropriate in your case, you can simply reset it to zero.) It is possible to change the rules used by Strange Eons to make them more like Marquart's, if for some reason that is your preference; see the page on Customization. You need to edit the Rules subsection of the settings.txt file. The comments in that file explain the correct settings to use to emulate Marquart's system.
The text on one area of my card shrank. Can I make other nearby text the same size?
When the text has to shrink to fit in the available space, it is often a sign that your design is too complicated, or at least too wordy. But, if shortening the text is not an option, you can usually add extra blank lines to the bottom of the other field(s) until they shrink to the same size. A similar technique works for "one-line" text areas, too. For example, if an investigator's last name is larger than his or her first name, add an equal number of spaces at the start and end (to keep the name centered) of the last name until they are the same size.
I picked the "Jack of All Trades" ability and the focus is shown as 4 (or 3) instead of ∞. Is that right?
Yes. See the official FAQ. Essentially, the special ability lets you adjust your skill sliders without paying focus. For all other purposes, focus counts as 4. In Strange Eons, this is equated to a +2 focus bonus, so focus will be 3 or 4 depending on how many skill points you spend.
Why does a cost appear in the corner of my Exhibit Item/Spell? The official cards don't have a cost.
The cost can optionally be printed on Exhibit Items and Spells for consistency with other item types. You can turn it on or off in the Preferences... dialog.
I notice that the example cards understand some HTML-like tags. Is there a list of these tags?
This table lists the tags which are currently accepted. Of these, only <h1>, <h2>, <b>, and <i> are required to reproduce official game cards. The set of variable replacement tags can be quite handy, however. These produce text that varies depending on the character being edited. For example, the <name> tag will be replaced by an investigator's first name, while <he/she> will be replaced by either he or she, depending on the character's gender. These are used throughout the built-in special abilities to produce descriptions that customize themselves for the current character. It is a good idea to use them in your own descriptions as well, as it is not uncommon to change names several times or to "borrow" parts of rules when creating new ones. The built-in examples demonstrate how to use the most important tags.
I'm have some questions about using the Deck Editor/Expansion Board Editor. Where should I look for help?
Here.
What does a dotted red rectangle mean?
These boxes appear around text when it is too long to fit in on the character sheet. When a box appears, the application has already tried to do things like reduce the line spacing and shrink the text to make the text fit (if the current settings allow it to). Shorten the text until the box disappears.
Can I substitute my own higher-resolution card templates?

The built-in images are mostly 150 dots per inch (dpi), which is a trade-off between print quality, download size, and rendering speed. They look fine when printed, but you can use higher resolution images if desired. See the page on Customization. You will need to substitute your own images and edit settings.txt and the card-layout.txt file (the English version and/or the version for your game language) extensively. If you use higher (or lower) resolution images, it is vital that you change the value of the key template-keyname-template-dpi to match the new resolution (replacing template-keyname with the appropriate name for your card type). Depending on the size of images you use, you may need to run Java with additional memory (for example, using "java -Xms256m -Xmx1024m -jar strange-eons.jar"). It is recommended that you package such changes as an Extension plug-in so that they can be easily enabled/disabled and shared with others if you wish.

How is the similarity between different monsters (shown on the Monster editor) determined?
The monster being edited and the standard monsters are converted to vectors in an 18-dimensional vector space. The standard monsters are then sorted by their distance from the monster being edited. Starting in SE 2.00, the default is to use a Hamming or Manhattan distance metric. In previous versions (or if list-monsters-by-hamming-distance is set to no), then a Euclidean distance metric was used. Monster distance is categorized into "very similar", "similar", "somewhat similar", or "dissimilar"; the distances for each range are determined by the list-monsters-distanceX group of keys. A distance of 1 unit corresponds roughly to one edit step: for example, going from a Toughness of 2 to a Toughness of 3. The editor stops listing monsters once it has listed at least five monsters and the monsters are no longer similar. If you would like a more detailed ranking, you set the settings key list-monster-similarity-distance to yes and the computed distance will be included in the list. You may also set the key list-all-monsters to yes to rank the entire set of standard monsters.
Can I change how text that is too long is handled (for example, by disabling shrinking)?
Yes. Each kind of card has a separate text-fitting rule that can vary by game language. You can override these rules for all cards (Preferences...|Text Layout|Text Fitting Methods). You can also change the rule for a particular card by editing the game language's settings.txt resource (see Customization).
Monsters look larger than other cards in the preview window/exported images. Is this intentional?
Yes. By default, monster tokens are drawn at a resolution of 300 DPI (dots per inch), while other cards and tokens are drawn at 150 DPI. This keeps the small text on monster tokens crisp and readable. The tokens will print at the correct size when printed from Strange Eons. If you export a monster as images, you can choose the resolution of the exported images. If you want to export a group of related cards, you might want to choose the same resolution for all of them.
Why are there purple (pink) boxes surrounding the text areas on my cards?
You probably have the Show Regions plug-in installed, which is meant to help people who want to create custom card types. If you are running version 1 of this plug-in, you can turn off the boxes by clicking on the Toolbox menu, then choosing Plug-in Manager and unchecking the Show Regions plug-in's Active check box in the list of installed plug-ins. If you are running version 2 of this plug-in, click the Show Regions button in the tool bar to show or hide the boxes.

Technical Support and Performance

Nothing seems to happen when I start the application. When I try running it from the command line, it prints a lot of text and mentions that it can't find the class java.awt.SplashScreen. What is wrong?
The most common problem people have trying to run Strange Eons is that a version of Java prior to Java 6 is being used. (If you see the message regarding java.awt.SplashScreen, then this is the problem.) Under Windows, download and install the latest version of Java. Under OS X, make sure that you have followed the OS X installation instructions on the main page. Under Solaris or Linux, or if running from the command line, check the path and JAVA_HOME settings to make sure they are not pointing at an older version.
Why does Windows give me a "Windows Security Alert"? Should I Unblock the application?
Strange Eons tries to open a socket (a way for two applications to communicate with each other) when it first starts. This lets it make sure that only one copy of Strange Eons runs at a time. When you start a second copy, copy 2 uses the socket to call up copy 1 and tell it about any files you were trying to open. Then copy 1 opens the files and copy 2 stops running. This means that when you open a card icon (.eon file) in Windows, the new file will open in an already running copy of Strange Eons instead of running two copies of Strange Eons at the same time. It is safe to unblock the port, but if you choose not to, this is the only feature that will be affected.
I'm getting Out of Memory errors or my game component doesn't refresh when I open it. I've got 2GB of memory! What's going on?
The most common cause for this is indeed running out of memory: Java memory. Java only allows applications to access a certain maximum amount of memory. It is normally set fairly low. Older versions of Strange Eons used close to the default amount but didn't usually go over. Newer versions (starting with 1.50) use a lot more memory, so they tend to hit this limit. You can tell Java to allow more memory by starting Strange Eons with a command like this:

java -Xms96m -Xmx512m -jar strange-eons-1xx.jar
This will start the program with 96 MB of memory, and allow it to use up to 512 MB.

NOTES: The Windows installer version will automatically start with a higher maximum memory limit for the application. If you wish to monitor memory use, start the application with the --debug option.
The editor redraws cards slowly on my computer. Can I do anything to speed it up?
First, check that you have the most recent version of Strange Eons. New versions often include performance enhancements. Second, if possible install Java 6 update 10 or newer. Strange Eons can take advantage of hardware acceleration features that are enabled in that version.

To further tweak performance, there are two major things that affect drawing performance. The first is the preview update quality and the second is the preview update frequency. You can choose the quality of preview images by choosing an option in the View menu. Lower quality previews usually draw more quickly, while higher quality previews are more legible and look nicer. The frequency of preview updates is controlled from the Preferences... dialog. Set the frequency using the slider in the Preview Window section. The frequency determines how often the game component is checked to see if the preview is out of date. The lower the number, the more often your typing will be interrupted to update the preview image. The higher the number, the less often you are interrupted, but the longer you have to wait for changes to appear in the preview window after you stop typing.

The general rule of thumb for achieving a "smoother" editing experience is as follows: if you want the preview area to update as you type, keep the frequency fairly high but set the quality low. If you want the preview to more closely reflect the final printed version, lower the frequency and keep the quality high.
I have downloaded a plug-in, but when I try to run it it opens like a ZIP file. How do I use it?
This issue appears with some versions of Internet Explorer (IE). IE analyzes the incoming data stream, determines that the download appears to be a ZIP file, and renames it. You can simply rename the file to the right extension (.seplugin, .seext, or .selibrary) and it will then work normally. Newer versions of SE support "Web-safe" bundles, which are regular plug-in bundles stored inside a small wrapper so that they make it past IE unchanged. SE removes the wrapper automatically when the plug-in file is installed. If you are a plug-in developer, you can use the plug-in bundle maker included with SE Text Resource Editor to make Web-safe versions of your plug-ins.

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March 28, 2007 — Updated January 01, 2011

Contents

Program Features and Component Design

Technical Support and Performance