Brian's CHarGen is up!

[Jake Norwood]

www.theriddleofsteel.net/support
or
www.theriddleofsteel.net/support/troschargen.zip

Enjoy!

[Brian Leybourne]

And remember... feedback is good, even if it's negative.

(Just don't let the fact that I'm chronically depressive and borderline suicidal color your comments at all...) :-)

Brian

(edit.. err, I should have put some instructions into the .zip file. Just uncompress both files into a temp folder somewhere and launch the .exe, as long as both files are in the same temp directory it'll install fine, and you can delete the install files when you're done).

[Lance D. Allen]

....You're a bloody nut, Brian.

I'm an American indeed.

Edited: Australian is a separate gender?

Hey, I never had anything asking me about the words from the book. I had a pop-up saying "The parameter is incorrect", clicked it, and am now messing with the chargen.

Edited: Hey, when I tried to go to the next page, it said Out of System Resources, and shut down the program. When I restarted the program, I got the password thing. It seemed to go on to the next page fine, this time.

[Brian Leybourne]

Edited: Australian is a separate gender?

You know, none of the testers ever noticed that :-)

(edit: or just didn't bother mentioning it, I guess. That's just one of several easter eggs I threw in there because I was bored at work one afternoon. I'll send a prize to anyone who finds them all *grin*).

Hey, I never had anything asking me about the words from the book. I had a pop-up saying "The parameter is incorrect", clicked it, and am now messing with the chargen.

Edited: Hey, when I tried to go to the next page, it said Out of System Resources, and shut down the program. When I restarted the program, I got the password thing. It seemed to go on to the next page fine, this time.

Sounds like you may have a virtual memory issue, try increasing the amount of VM windows has, or just reboot to clear whatever's in there (if you're like me and you seldom reboot your machine, you can run out of resources now and then).

Brian.

[Lance D. Allen]

Okay, actually finished a character with the generator. A couple brief points.

~It was amazingly quick. No look ups, everything was right there. The customizability was, frankly, awe-inspiring as well. This will be a boon for getting characters created quickly, especially for new players.

~Only problem I encountered, beyond a few glitches at the beginning, was that you are not able to back up during character generation, and retain all of your choices. I wanted to re-read something I'd put on the first page before saving, and ended up creating the character all over again. This is avoidable by saving, as the character is 100% customizeable after initial creation.

~A personal issue I had is with the different sized windows. This was really annoying when I had backed up a screen or two, then tried to return to where I'd been, and accidentally hit abort, because it was where the Next button had been previously. (So, yeah. I created the character 3 times) Perhaps an "Are you sure you want to Abort without saving?" option might be in order. Minor problem, though.

~Another minor problem is with the fine variants of weapons and armor. As I understand it, the program will print out your sheet with weapons and armor already on the sheet, if you assign it to. But with the fine quality weapons, you can improve the ATN or DTN, and with the armor, you can improve the AV or CP penalties. What I'm wondering is how this is determined, as it did not ask me how I wished to improve the item when I bought fine weapons and armor. Not so much a problem really as a nitpick, but still something that caught my attention.

Over all, despite the fault-finding tone of this post, I am very much pleased with this program. It reflects very well on Brian's skill and dedication to putting out a quality product.

[Brian Leybourne]

I may as well answer these here, in case others have the same/similar comments.

Only problem I encountered, beyond a few glitches at the beginning, was that you are not able to back up during character generation, and retain all of your choices. I wanted to re-read something I'd put on the first page before saving, and ended up creating the character all over again. This is avoidable by saving, as the character is 100% customizeable after initial creation.

Unfortunately, it turned out pretty early on that this had to be the case, because it got too hard to track changes otherwise. For example, if you make a character up to and past the attribute screen, then go back and change your attribute priority so you should have had fewer points to spend, how does the program know how to cope with that (while still ensuring you have a high stat and so on). What about a Fahal character who goes back and changes nationality after picking SA's, etc.

Basically, too hard, so each screen clears if you go back. But as you say, you can just keep going, and then save at the end and then edit the character if necesary. Also, other than maybe the first information screen (if you forgot what you entered for something) I ordered the screens so you should never need to go back in order to find something out to continue crerating the character.

A personal issue I had is with the different sized windows. This was really annoying when I had backed up a screen or two, then tried to return to where I'd been, and accidentally hit abort, because it was where the Next button had been previously. (So, yeah. I created the character 3 times) Perhaps an "Are you sure you want to Abort without saving?" option might be in order. Minor problem, though.

I actually wondered if the different sized windows would be an issue, but not one person who tested the program ever mentioned it, so I figured it wasn't a problem. If people hate it I could just increase the size of the smaller ones to the size of the largest, but then of course there would be a lot of empty space on some screens. I'll see if other people mention it. Sticking an "Are you sure" on the abort button is a good idea though, I'll add that in when I do an update.

Another minor problem is with the fine variants of weapons and armor. As I understand it, the program will print out your sheet with weapons and armor already on the sheet, if you assign it to. But with the fine quality weapons, you can improve the ATN or DTN, and with the armor, you can improve the AV or CP penalties. What I'm wondering is how this is determined, as it did not ask me how I wished to improve the item when I bought fine weapons and armor. Not so much a problem really as a nitpick, but still something that caught my attention.

Heh. If you had printed out your character yet you would know the answer to this one already. For that very reason (well, and also because it was a hell of a lot of work) the program does not fill in ATN's or DTN's or AV's when it displays weapons and armor on the character sheet - you need to fill those in yourself. I figured that folk would want their own customised weapons and armor, and stats etc would be pretty variable between groups and it just became too much to deal with, so that part you just write in yourself, it only adds a 30 second manual process to character creation, which is already several times faster than doing it by hand, so I figure it's a fair tradeoff :-)

Thanks for the comments, positive or negative they're always useful.

Brian.

[Lance D. Allen]

My printer's shot. I'm in the market for a new one, and until I get one, I don't get to print out the pretty sheets.

I figured that you probably had legitimate reasons for the clearing, but it was still annoying my first go-round. The reason I went back was because I wanted to do height and weight using the charts in the book, and for that you need your attributes assigned. I posted this "problem" more as a warning to others who might try to check over the character one last time before committing it.

So, again, kudos.

[Jason]

Very nice program Brian! I fired it up yesterday and played around with it, making a couple of characters. I just have a few points to bring up.

-Tab ordering is all over the place. On a couple of the pages its good, but on some tabbing through the screen goes all over the page (the skills page is a good example of this).

-Also, on the skills page, it told me I needed to fill out specific languages, knowledges, etc before continuing. At first I thought it meant that I needed to fill in even those that I wasn't usings, and I dutifully made up stuff for each box on the screen. Maybe changing the color of the text box when you assign a skill would make it easier to understand, and your message could say "the fields in red need to be filled out before you continue". That way you could see exactly what's required.

Jason

[Brian Leybourne]

Gidday.

Tab ordering is all over the place. On a couple of the pages its good, but on some tabbing through the screen goes all over the page (the skills page is a good example of this).

Ah, yeah. Fair call. Actually I never use the tab key myself, I just click around with the mouse, but I should have thought of that (I know I did it on a few screens, like the character details screen, but didn't bother with screens like the skills screen, for example). I'll fix it when I do an update. Thanks.

Also, on the skills page, it told me I needed to fill out specific languages, knowledges, etc before continuing. At first I thought it meant that I needed to fill in even those that I wasn't usings, and I dutifully made up stuff for each box on the screen. Maybe changing the color of the text box when you assign a skill would make it easier to understand, and your message could say "the fields in red need to be filled out before you continue". That way you could see exactly what's required.

Well, basically you only need to fill in ones that have had skill points assigned (i.e. the value is no longer 13). Changing the color of the edit box isn't a bad idea though, maybe they should be greyed out until a skill gets bought and then they turn white. Again, something for an update.

Thanks for your post,
Brian.

[Brian Leybourne]

Hi all,

I just want to post this here in case someone else gets the same problem:

We received an email today saying:

I have downloaded the file.  Once I run the .EXE file, the problem is that it keeps asking me to place installation disk #2 in the floppy drive to continue

The answer is either a) you do not have both files in the same directory - the .exe and the .w02 must be together in a temporary directory to install the software, or b) you are trying to install the program by opening the zip file and double clicking on the .exe, which wont work - you must extract the files (together) first. Installing software from inside an archive never works well.

The reason it's asking for the file in your floppy drive is that if it can't find the second file, it assumes you have put the two files onto two different floppy disks, so putting the second disk in would let it continue the install with the second file. Given that both files are actually small enough to fit together on a floppy disk this is an unlikely event.

Regards,
Brian.

[kanseg]

Thanks Brian

The ignoramus who sent that message was me!  I'm not very computer literate so I thought it was a major error.  However I later saw some instructions you had put in one of your posts and extracted the files to the same temporary folder.  There was no problem then.

Now I've made my confession of total stupidity, let me congratulate you on the character generator.  I've spent the last few hours playing with it, porting characters over to the combat simulator and letting them hack at each other.  It really is a lot of fun.  Thank you for the effort you have put into it - I can see myself having hours of fun!

I hope to start a Riddle of Steel campaign in June, so for now the character generator and the combat simulator are my main ways of entertaining myself.  Damn that sounds so sad, but it isn't.

Regards

kanseg

[Brian Leybourne]

Thanks for your post. And hey - not everyone's a computer nerd like me, you should be proud of that, not apologising :-)

Have fun,
Brian.

[Bob Richter]

www.theriddleofsteel.net/support
or
www.theriddleofsteel.net/support/troschargen.zip

Enjoy!

GACK! I hate copy protection!

*grumbles and fishes for his TROS manual. No, the Retail one.*

[Brian Leybourne]

*grumbles and fishes for his TROS manual. No, the Retail one.*

I was pretty careful that all of the questions it asks are correct in whatever version of the manual you have, so you don't have to worry about that.

And it should only ask you about once every 10 times or so that you load it up, so it's not too intrusive, hopefully.

Brian.

[Lance D. Allen]

Correct in both versions? That had to be tedious to code.