CT Mercenary character generator for Mac OS X

[agorski]

Mercenary is an Intel-only Mac OS X application that generates characters with an Army or Marines background.

It follows the rules in Book 4: Mercenary, published in 1978. It includes two starting options for the player character:

1. Enrollment in the Military or Naval Academy as defined in an article in The Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society, issue 10, published in 1981. Application to flight school for marine characters achieving honors is not supported. A +1 DM on promotion die rolls is available for both army and marine academy graduates.
   
2. Enrollment in college as defined in Book 5: High Guard, 2nd edition, published in 1980. Application to medical school or flight school for characters achieving honors is not supported.

To exactly follow the rules in Mercenary without the JTAS 10 options, select Enlistment instead of Academy or College.

At each point in the character generation rules where the player may select options, these are offered, along with a description that includes the success die roll and die modifiers, if any. Thus, this app provides complete control over character generation.

Skill availability is automatically limited to skills available at the tech level specified for the character. A skill browser window shows all skills available in the program.

The zip file which contains the application and an extensive READ ME file can be downloaded from here:

https://files.me.com/agorski/etvo4r

It'll be available there for a couple of months and I will probably upload it to the Files section here later.

Let me know what you think. I've already started on a companion app, High Guard, for naval characters.

 

[Beech]

Nice one, very user friendly.
And I don't need to start up Bootcamp to use it.
Thanks agorski.

 

[agorski]

Thanks. I enjoy Burrowwolf as well!

 

[ssgbryan]

Thanks!

Thankyou so much for this. It is so nice not to have to fire up parallels to use a traveller product.

 

[Kaveman Koder]

Cool, the more OS X software the better.

 

[agorski]

Cool, the more OS X software the better.

Thanks. I like your app as well. I haven't programmed in years so my eyes glazed over thinking about Apple's dev tools. I decided to use Real Studio, which was way easier for me. I probably spent 150 hours on this, including learning Real Studio. High Guard should go much faster since I now know Real Studio and I can copy a bunch of code over.

 

[HRLMT]

Mac Software for Older Macs

Greetings !

Any chance that this software can be adapted for OS 10.4.11 ?
That is all.
HRLMT

 

[agorski]

Any chance that this software can be adapted for OS 10.4.11 ?

It should work, but I assume what you really mean is a Universal binary. Here you go:

http://files.me.com/agorski/0pob1v

 

[agorski]

After generating hundreds of characters using this app, I've stamped out a few bugs, made a few minor enhancements, and fixed at least one major error. See the included Release Notes in the zip archive for the gory details. So, version 1.1 of Mercenary is now available for download. You will need Mac OS X 10.4 or later.

The Intel-only version can be found here.

And the Universal binary for you PowerPC diehards can be found here.

On a related note, I'm taking the lessons learned and working on the High Guard equivalent of this app, and it's about 50% done.

 

[Thunderbolt]

I decided to use Real Studio, which was way easier for me.

Did you evaluate other dev tools, if so, what made you go for Real Studio?

I ask as I've had a look myself at 'high level' tools for Mac and didn't come to a firm conclusion. XCode is a possibility but seems more complex than I'm willing to spend time on.

 

[agorski]

Did you evaluate other dev tools, if so, what made you go for Real Studio?

I ask as I've had a look myself at 'high level' tools for Mac and didn't come to a firm conclusion. XCode is a possibility but seems more complex than I'm willing to spend time on.

I had used Real Basic years ago and it was comfortable and easy to use. The only XCode experience I had was playing around with AppleScript Studio. Objective C was totally opaque to me and I didn't want to invest the time to learn it. Real Studio's IDE is very easy to use.

Also, a Windows or Linux developer could pick up my source code and recompile it for that platform, and only have to tweak the UI. (I was too cheap to pay for the 'Pro' version that lets you cross-compile for other platforms and I'm not familiar enough to make the UI decisions on Windows or Linux or support apps on those platforms.)

 

[agorski]

Version 1.2 is now available.

Bug Fixes
• Corrected user prompt to press Roll button rather than Reset button.

Enhancements
• "Included" skills like Combat Rifleman now award all the individual skills in that category separately, instead of awarding the major skill category.
• The optional skill level limit of INT+EDU first introduced in Merchant Prince has been implemented by reporting to the Log in case the user wishes to use this rule and muster out the character.

 

[agorski]

Version 1.3 is now available.

Bug Fixes

• Corrected dates in footer of TAS Form.
• Renamed the File>Print… menu item to File>Print TAS Form 2… for clarity.

Enhancements

• Character data can now be saved to a file.
• A saved character file can be re-opened for examination and printing.