Need a programmer - not sure if feasible

[Justin Marx]

The title says it all - I was wondering what the opinions are (it seems there are some IT folk round these here parts) for writing up a DB chargen system (I mentioned this in another thread and recieved a lot of technical helpful advice, but I am unfortunately way out of my league to write the thing).

What would a programmer charge to write a semi-complex database? How long would such a thing take? How long is a piece of string?

The Database would involve taking a whole lot of elements and referencing them together, in an attempt at making the character generation and exploration of setting detail seamless, in order for the player to apprehend the setting as they make their character. I am guessing about 500 setting entries, and a moderately complex chargen system, with die rolls. I was visualising (in a perfect world) some sort of GUI which has the character creation at main stage and two or three windows for HTML style browsing through related entries on the setting (planets, cultures, deities, history etc.)

What would be even better would be some funky cool graphics around the edges and neat little graphic simulations and lots of doo-hickeys (but then again, how much do people charge for doo-hickeys?). Beggars can't be choosers so I'll stick with the basic DB for now.

I don't know jack about this so I'm floating the idea. I'd at least like to suss out if this is a feasible project or a $10,000 monstrosity.

Thanks in advance,
Justin.

[Andrew Cooper]

Unfortunately, the answer to your question is "It depends."

As a programmer, I would need a fairly detailed and in-depth write up of what you wanted before I'd really be able to say how costly it would be.  Basically, I'd want a list of what specific data you wanted stored, what calculations and manipulations you wanted the system to do to the data, and how you would want the data displayed.  This kind of information is a lot of work in and of itself but it is neccessary, in my view, before I can even begin to figure out the difficulty and the time involved in actually producing such a project.

If you'd like to discuss this further, you are more than welcome to PM me or send me email at aecooper@charter.net.