Monday, September 22, 2014

Computerizing tables and data sets

Been computerizing some of my tables (some of which will find their way here eventually).  I'm using quickbasic and javascript to get them done and the biggest pain in the tasks is compiling and formatting the data sets.  You see anyone with even a halfway decent random dungeon generator with monster stats give that person some respect getting the data together is a chore.

Oh yeah QuickBasic, getting use out of 20-30 year old programming skills thanks to qb64. Sure I'm using javascript too and it looks like I might have a qb64 program generating the javascript. Also messing about with android and have a number of tools for app development that I might also put to the task so I can use my smartphone at the table for DMing and adventure construction.

Sure I could be using C++ but I just don't like writing terminal apps in C++, and javascript is close enough for me ( i know some programmer out there is groaning). I can't help it I'm a BASIC sorta guy and enjoy writing programs in it even if I have written actually useful code in C/C++.

Is is just me or is there a curiously low number of folks that program apps/applets in RPG blog-land relative to computer usage an skill sets?




6 comments:

  1. I have no modern programming knowledge, but perhaps have some innate talent at that sort of thing. To put together, say, a random dungeon generator, where do you recommend I start? Which program? And equally importantly, which book or web based source to best teach me what I need to know without wasting my time on stuff I don't need to know?

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  2. I found http://www.w3schools.com/js/default.asp useful for refreshing my JavaScript programming knowledge.
    Just need a good reference, a text editor, and a browser and you can get started with that. My clunky and ugly diceroller was done in pretty simple inelegant javascript.
    There's a host of packages and tools that can build on that for you.

    A good toy android programming kit I found recently is here: http://appinventor.mit.edu/explore/

    I used to use hypercard years back and found this to be a similar but more capable environment: http://livecode.com/

    If you used to do basic programming back in the olden days qb64 looks good for hobby programming and the wiki looks pretty solid. It has mac, windows, and linux versions.

    A big problem I've seen with many "learn to program" books is they often focus too tightly on a single package on a single platform and old books if not very general are often annoyingly out of date. I've got dozens of old useless books many programming topics. Poke about online there are so many free options out there these days it's astounding.

    I'm working on a random dungeon/campaign generator tools myself.
    Hopefully i'll be able to come up with some output that's easy to post eventually. I've found the sites about roguelike programming useful in g=regards to methods of random generation.

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  3. Thanks! I'll look into those. I never noticed your dice roller before. Pretty nifty. With humility, though, do you think the yellow color on the numbers is quite right? I could hardly read some of them. It's probably my office monitor or my eyes.

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    1. The lettering color is due to the weirdness of palettes. On the windows laptop and my old android phone the type looks fine Mac and backup PC not so hot. The controls are just a table done in word.

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  4. I use tablesmith for my computerized randomization which, once you get a handle on it, pretty much takes care of all my needs. In real life i do a bunch of codework and just don't want to do that much of it in my down time...

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  5. I wrote my own Table generator in Python, it takes a definition file and presents the table in a terminal window. I wrote it to also recurse down tables, however I don't usually preserve all the exact probabilities as that is far to tricky how I have it currently set up.

    The reason for python is that I got it running on my computer and iPad using Editorial.

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