Software

[Libris]

Creiff?

Digs out map.

Ah ha!

Er, nope. But it's in a nice part of the world up near Perth. Every thing to the left of it on the map is mountains! Okay, it's Scotland, big hills.

I'm more of a west coast guy, south of Glasgow in Robert Burns country. From my back door you can see Loudoun Hill, allegedly where William Wallace had one of his earlier skirmishes.

 

[Scarlett]

Ahhh ... still sounds nice. I'd love to visit Scotland before I die. Hopefully well before.

 

[themink]

Originally posted by Frank Lee Scarlett:
Man ... I wish you luck. I'd love to see the finished product. I think GDW should have started producing software Traveller utilities years ago. It still wouldn't be a bad idea for far future now.

Since people write code for fun (only sick and twisted people, but a suprising number non-the-less) there isn;t much money in writing these little apps.

You might be able to make a little money if you wrote LOTS of rpg tools and host games - but I think it would be a labour of love.

 

[Scarlett]

Good point. Bless you binary benders!

 

[Reginald]

Forgive me for having raise this thread to a fervor. I just want to make sure you know what you are getting into. After all, forewarned is forearmed.

On a personal note, yes, I would like such program that can do the calculation, randomization, and organization of my game notes. I would like a user-friendly mapper ranging from buildings (primitive to futuristic architects) to terrain, even planet-scale maps.

If you can do it without using any material, copyright, and trademark from Traveller and yet can be used in this game (or any science fiction game), then by all means go for it.

 

[themink]

Originally posted by Reginald:
Forgive me for having raise this thread to a fervor. I just want to make sure you know what you are getting into. After all, forewarned is forearmed.

On a personal note, yes, I would like such program that can do the calculation, randomization, and organization of my game notes. I would like a user-friendly mapper ranging from buildings (primitive to futuristic architects) to terrain, even planet-scale maps.

]

Forewarned is fore armed and Virushi are four Armed.

I'm talking about stellar mapping - The main reason I'm doing it will be because paper maps have difficulty showing 3D positioning of pin-points.

I'll be going for an "elite" style radar display - where you can move the centre point to another star, change scales and rotate (pitch and yaw).

Other Stars will be "selectable" using number keys.

"Current position" information will be converted to a series of ints - so lookers can get back to where they are now.

Users are able to select two stars and get distances between them as well as library info.

I'm doing it purely to support my game - so all the "user friendliness" will be on the interface rather than the admin side of getting data into it.

Aside - If you don;t understand what an elite style radar is - see http://home.clara.net/cjpinder/download.htm - for a blast from the past. Yes it's a working version of Elite - it's speed limited so you can play it on modern machines and the source is available if you want to create a variant version.

 

[etherflyer]

Originally posted by xloop:
Amazing how such fervor can be raised with such a small topic.

Those of us who earn our living by creating information have a vested interest in the matter.

The fact that pirate sites exist _doesn't_ invalidate copyright, nor does failure to prosecute. (Failure to prosecute can, I believe, invalidate a traemark, but (a) that;s a separate issue, and (b) I may be wrong about that.) Still, for copyright the protection is automatic from the moment of creation, until the work is explicitly placed in the public domain, or until the copyright expires.

 

[AndreaV]

Originally posted by Libris:
I too am attempting to write a Traveller program (attempting is probably the correct word). Specifically a smallcraft/starship designer.

Having been fairly upto speed with Visual Basic 5 I thought nothing of changing to VB.Net. Hey! Its just VB. Can't be that hard.

For some reason this reminds me of my VB tutors comment "VB is fully OO except for one or two minor things". Of course those one of those minor things was inheritance. (I wrote HGS in Delphi, I don't think I could have done it without inheritance and centralised error handling).

However, you'll probably find that weaponry is the most complex part of the design process.

(Aside: The ship design rules are not OGL, legally you'll need QuikLink's permission if you plan to release the software).

 

[RabidVargr]

I'll help with the beta testing as long as you get at least an e-mail ok before publishing the program to a site.

RV

 

[xloop]

Thanks for the replies. For those concerned I have been in touch with Mark Miller who pointed me to http://www.farfuture.net/a0007-5500.html, which explains the software concerns. With that in mind. I am writing in VB 6.0. I'm not a professional programmer or even want to be, I'm just too lazy to spend a lot of time writing things down on paper only to lose them again and again. I like backups. Its a computer geek thing.

As for designing my own programs that are independent of the T20 rules. I thought about that and still may. The animal encounter one can give some odd results, like a 800kg carnivor that does 1 point of damage, or a tiny < 1kg animal that inflicts 20 points of damage. Odd but true. The next program is system independent. It will track a starships and crews stuff such as equipment, money, encounters, notes, and so on. I have just finished one for D&D that works well enough for me.

If anyone would like to reach me off line please contact me at xloop@adelphia.net.

There are a few good mapping programs out there. Campaign Cartographer is a very good one. The only issue I have with it is it is very completed. It runs off a CAD engines. If you know CAD feel free to jump on it. My favorate mapping program is Fractal Mapper. I have helped betatest the last few releases. It is simple yet efective. My onle issue with it is the number of graphics that are supplied. But it is easy to add more as needed. Fractal mapper can be found at www.nbos.com.