TROS Software?

[Rattlehead]

Hi! Let me start by saying that I only recently purchased The Riddle of Steel. My initial impression is that this is a Great Game! Great job Mr. Norwood! I've read it almost from cover to cover (rare for me, but it's a good read),  and aside from a few aspects of advanced magic and combat I've managed to get my head around it.

Now on to the meat of my post. I've seen the initial offerings in the way of software at the Riddle of Steel website (dice roller and DOS combat program) but are there any plans in the works for a character generator? Beyond that, perhaps a suite of play aids (like the planned Master Tools for D&D)?

I know that character creation with TROS is fairly simple. Also, the more abstract parts, such as philosophy and concept, would be hard to pin down in a concrete manner like a selection from a list. But I think there's certainly value in such a program. Especially in the areas of calculating derived values and so forth.  Given enough flexibility, a program could even allow for the issues of philosophy, etc.

Has anyone committed to making a character generator? Or does anyone feel that it would be a wasted effort?

Regards,

Brandon

[Jake Norwood]

I'd love to see someone do a chargen. We've got a guy working on a newer combat program, but chargen...bring 'er on!

[Rattlehead]

I may look into throwing something together. I don't want to commit to it just yet, as I'm not sure how involved it would be. I've just finished my first TROS character (a reincarnation of an old favorite D&D character in fact). All through the creation process, I tried to think about the difficulties involved in making a chargen program. So far, I think it wouldn't take much, but more study is needed.

I'll let you know if I decide for sure to make a go of it!  :-)

Later,
    Brandon

[Lance D. Allen]

Hey, a question here.. I'm not particularly adept with .pdf's, so perhaps I can get an answer here, seeing as how it ties strongly into the topic.

I have created very simple character sheet generators by using MSWorks databases. I use a .bmp image of the character sheet as the background, then place fields over the relevant areas. It's crude, but workable. The result is a character sheet with the entries printed into it, which looks considerably better than my own handwriting.

However, the only really clear image I have of the character sheet is from the .pdf I DL'd from TheRiddleofSteel.com. I was trying to figure out a way to take the image from the .pdf and make it a .bmp. Unfortunately, I was unable to do so. The only idea I had which might theoretically work is to screen-shot the image, but that ends up with resolution going to hell. Is there a way to pull the image off of a .pdf otherwise? Or will I be forced to try this with a sub-standard resolution image?

[Jake Norwood]

Lance-

If you want I you can get a *.bmp from me. Just tell me what size you want.

Jake

[Rattlehead]

Hey! Could I get a couple of image format character sheets? Maybe in 800x600 size? Possibly 640x480 as well? I'd need .bmp format, too. They could be useful if I do decide to make a chargen program.

Brandon

[Lance D. Allen]

Thanks immensely, Jake. Um.. Whatever size has the best resolution on the images/words. I believe Works can auto-resize it, so resolution's the only thing I'm worried about.

If this is kosher with you, send it as a file attachment to JohanusMorgan@aol.com, or let me know where I can DL the images.

[Lance D. Allen]

Hope this doesn't come across as a nag.. But what's the deal on the .bmps? If you've not got 'round to it yet, that's cool, I just wanted to know if I could be expecting something on this sometime.

[Syphon]

Anyone with the full-version of Adobe Acrobat will be able to add form fields to the downloadable character sheet off the website. If you are real clever you can even make the fields add up - very useful for determining derived Stats i.e. Agility + Wits/2 to determine Reflexes etc.  I may even consider doing it myself - when I get the game.  ; )

Anthony

[Jake Norwood]

Hope this doesn't come across as a nag.. But what's the deal on the .bmps? If you've not got 'round to it yet, that's cool, I just wanted to know if I could be expecting something on this sometime.

Haven't gotten to it yet...sorry...I've got a real job, I'm married, part of my staff lives in the same house, and I'm enrolled in a "lets cram a year of Latin into 9 weeks" course...but things are well.

Jake

[Rattlehead]

Jake:

Just FYI, I have started work on the Chargen of Steel. I started last night, and I hope to do more on it tonight. As to whether I'll ever get it finished...  hard to say. At this point I'm still telling myself that it will be fairly easy to do (most programming projects seem to start that way). I'll try to keep you posted on how it's coming...

Brandon

[Brian Leybourne]

Jake:

Just FYI, I have started work on the Chargen of Steel. I started last night, and I hope to do more on it tonight. As to whether I'll ever get it finished...  hard to say. At this point I'm still telling myself that it will be fairly easy to do (most programming projects seem to start that way). I'll try to keep you posted on how it's coming...

Brandon

After I've finished the combat simulator, I was going to work on a character generator. Guess I'll leave it to you now, but if it's not too much trouble, can you put in the ability to export certain information to a plain text file (as well as to a character sheet) because I was planning to have a feature in mine to export characters into the combat simulator.

Of course, it depends on how you go, if you don't think you'll be able to finish, let me know and I'll work on mine (after the combat sim).

Brian.

[Rattlehead]

Hiya! Yeah, actually, I looked at the *.rid files for the current combat sim and was considering that as a feature. I'd certainly like to make that a possiblity. Have you settled on a new file format for the characters, or are you going to stick with the current layout of the *.rid files? Let me know how the data needs to be output and I'll do my best to have that as an output option.

In truth, the initial release will probably output plain text character sheets anyway. I've not looked too far into the output options. Printing graphical character sheets is something I hope to do eventually, though. I'm just not sure if it will be in the first release. On the one hand, I want to get the thing finished so people can benefit from it, on the other, I'd like it to be as full featured and "pretty" as possible. It's a question of how much effort will be required as far as graphical character sheets is concerned. But outputting for use with the combat simulator should be an easy thing to do, and I'd love to put that in the initial release.

All of this is assuming that I'm able to finish it, of course... :-)

Brandon

PS: I'll let you know if I'm not able to finish it. I have a project that I'm going to be starting on in a few weeks (professionally), so that may knock the chargen to the back burner.... only time will tell...

[Brian Leybourne]

Hiya! Yeah, actually, I looked at the *.rid files for the current combat sim and was considering that as a feature. I'd certainly like to make that a possiblity. Have you settled on a new file format for the characters, or are you going to stick with the current layout of the *.rid files? Let me know how the data needs to be output and I'll do my best to have that as an output option.

I wasn't going to use the .rid format, because I think it's a stupid idea to have a seperate file for every character. What I'll probably do is just have one single file and keep all the characters in there. However, if you export the data in a .rid file kind of way, I can import from there very easily.

I track basically the same info as the .rid files do, plus I'll track favored weapon, shield and armour (v1 only uses longswords, but the next one will have multiple weapons etc), and I thought it might also be interesting to keep track of all the wounds a character has had, so you can look back and see how many legs and arms he's lost, how many times he's been decapitated, and so on :-)

[Rattlehead]

Ok, so basically you want the chargen to allow users to save characters in a *.rid format (or similar) so that they can later open the combat simulator and import it into the combat simulator's character database. Right?

Brandon

PS: I think it's a good idea to discuss these matters in the forum (unless someone objects), since that lets the people who will be using this software (hopefully) see - and comment on - the development process.