Mac OS X GM Program, Any Mac using GMs out there? Options

[ShadowGhost]

Any GMs with a Laptop/Powerbook running OS X out there?

I've got a GMing program that's nearly ready for beta testing.

What it does:

Allows you to quickly create, save, export and import NPC and PC files, with skills, knowledge skills, descriptions and gear, Essence, Magic, Bio-Index, armor etc.

Rolls skills for NPCs - Combat, negotiate etc.

Roll damage resistance for NPCs, and automatically track stun and Physical wound modifiers.

Roll Dodge for NPCs

Combat Calculator - Set lighting conditions and determine target numbers for combat, including modifiers for low-light and thermographic vision, both natural and cybernetic, including ultrasound. Also adjusts target numbers for types of fire, recoil, cover, targeting enhancements (Smartlink, Laser sight, etc).

Roll reaction for NPCs and PCs painlessly and quickly, wound/stun modifiers automatically included. You enter PC’s successes and let the program sort.

Roll Initiative for NPCs and PCs quickly, wound/stun modifiers automatically included - PCs initiatives are entered before sorting for initiative order. Once again, stun, wound modifiers are automatically applied for players and NPCs.

Save games - saves all NPCs and PC stats, including wounds, stun, to pick up where you left off.

Open saved games.

What it won’t do - Cover every possibility imaginable. It also Doesn’t handle anything for Rigging, vehicles, drones or the Matrix.


While you can list cyberware/bioware, it doesn’t add them into total stats - I wanted to create a program that makes a GMs job easier, and create fairly generic NPCs quickly.

Around the beginning of July it should be ready for testing.

The program itself will be a stuffed file - unstuff and drag to your Applications folder. It doesn’t install anything into your computer, OS, or system.

It has an application, and three support folders, and takes up a whole 2.3 MB. the Stuffed file will be around 1 MB.

You can see screen shots and more info at:

http://www.members.shaw.ca/gm_pocket_secretary/

[Connor]

I'm definitely interested in taking a look at it. Just post a download link here when it's available and I'll be sure to give it a good work out. :-)

[gfen]

Not an actual GM at this time, but I'm still going to take a look into it.

Nice to see OSX programming out there for SR, too. Now, if only someone could give us our own, and superior, version of NRSCG so I don't have to deal with VirtPC :)

[gfen]

Also, this just looks slick.. I love how there's no one out there making Mac software, but whenever I see something it just looks infinitly better than any Windows based program.

[ShadowGhost]

Thanks for the comments guys.

Right now I'm having fun programming the Damage resistance section.

So many variables.

Physical or Stun.?
Hardened or regular armor?
Bypass Armor on Called Shot?
Stage up damage on Called Shot?

etc. etc.

BTW, I've also got an OS X Gun Designer almost ready for testing as well.

Hit the web page and click on the "Firearm Designer" link to see more info: http://www.members.shaw.ca/gm_pocket_secretary/

[Adam]

The screenshots look awesome. I'm sold. :)

[Erghitz]

If you need someone to test this I'm more than willing to shanghai my companies Powerbook for the good of the program. They won't mind...really. ;)

Regardless, drop a reply when you're ready to have it tested.

-- Erghitz

[Kagetenshi]

It looks very nice. If performance is sufficiently snappy, this may replace a blank TextEdit document as my SR tool of choice.

Any chance of a vehicle design/creation/modification program eventually?

~J

[ShadowGhost]

I use an old Lombard 400 MHz powerbook for running this, and it's pretty snappy, so with a newer mac, it should really go.

I have 5 SR3 books - the Core book, MiTS, CC, MM, Shadowrun Companion.

Eventually I will be getting Rigger 3 and Matrix, and I'll see what other things I can create that will be useful.

I reworked the entire combat skill programming to something shorter and easier to work with (programming-wise). Spell Resistance, Dodge Attack, Combat Calculator are all working fine, as are import/export characters, save game, open game, Edit Characters (except for one bug, it reverses the amount of Karma a character has left).

I've set it up so you can make a bunch of NPCs, and export them all as one file. You can have all your PCs in one file, and NPCs as grouped files (i.e. gangers all in one file, security in one file, etc, etc.), so you don't have to import 25 individual files, or export each file separately. At the moment, saved/exported files have to be in specific folders or the program "unexpectedly quits" (but doesn't crash the computer).

The skills tab has some tweaking and one extra thing to add - a box to enter extra dice for skills for a variety of things like Phys Adept improved skills, Enhanced Articulation bonus, Magic Pool (for Sorcery skill, and also foci/totem bonuses), etc, etc. Have to adjust the die rolling sections to accommodate that.

Lighting/visibility modifiers are automatically calculated into Base TNs, but I added a button to set them to plain, unmodified Base TNs. I didn't added Vision Mag - simply use the appropriate range for the effect (i.e. Use Short Range when it's Mag 3 at Extreme Range).

Have to add a Clone button - useful when creating multiple characters of the same type (i.e. Sec. guards). Create one, then make as many Clones as needed.

Have to add in option to remove characters from current game. Adding new ones is as easy as Importing new character files.

Have to add code to the Save Game section to save the current lighting conditions.

Have to add programming for the Spirits/Elementals Radiobutton - this is to give them hardened armor immunity to normal weapons; reverse-engineer the damage power and level for full auto-fire/burst fire to see if the base damage of the weapon used exceeds 2 X Essence(force) of the spirit/elemental.

Have to add code for Hardened Armor.

I'm sure as this program is tested some errors/bugs will be found that need to be corrected.

All files created by the program are saved as text files. Installation is simple as drag to your applications fodler - the program does not install anything into the OS, or make any changes to the OS, so removing the program is as simple as dragging the application to the trash.

I'm sure I'll think of more things to add or streamline as time goes by.

Going to get some more programming done today on this, and start the code for saving custom firearms with the Firearm Designer.

[Kagetenshi]

Just realized something: why support folders? Why not just roll them into the .app package?

~J

[ShadowGhost]

Why support folders? Actually, in the final version I will be getting rid of most of them.

It's just the coding for while I'm working on the program. I wanted to set it up so it always looks into, and saves into the same places.

On my machines, new games and characters are all considered documents, and my macs always want to put these files into the "Documents" folder, which means moving around through to where you want to save them (The App folder - I like to keep everything together.)

You have to set up a path to the folder you're using, and it's a little difficult right now when testing/debugging. I'm not running the final program, but an emulation of it.

Normally you'd make a path name for files that says Parent (The Directory this application is in). However, because it's an emulation, what happens is it makes the Compiling App (RealBasic) the default folder, instead of the SR3PS, because it's the compiler that's running an emulation of the SR3PS program, not the SR3PS program itself.

There's seven support files right now (all small txt files) for a number of static variables. They'll be rolled into the app, but until I'm sure of how I want the variables set up, it's easier to edit the txt file that's loaded up then do it on screen in RB.

And one other reason, when importing character files, it makes a list of all files in the Characters Folder in the program as a listbox - from there you can select as many as you want, and they'll all imported at once, rather than Import-> pick one file. Import -> pick one file. Gets to be a pain when you want to import several files into a game at once.

[Liquid_Obsidian]

another willing beta tester here g4350 panther runnin' (thnks to my 640 Mb of RAM)...

[RangerJoe]

I'd love a chance to try out the Poc-Sec program. Drop a PM when you get the download up, and I'd be happy to put it through some paces.

[pk323]

I'd love to beta this. I'm running 10.2 on a G4 desktop (but located at the gaming table and believe it or not it would work).

[dandy]

i'm willing to be a guinea pig for this. please post the download link as soon as possible.

oh, i'm running mac os x 10.3.4 on a g4 1500 512mb powerbook and 10.4.pre on my g5 dual.

[ShadowGhost]

For some reason, hitting "Add Reply" kept giving login errors even thought I'm already logged in.

Sorry about the delay getting a beta version ready - work has been really busy, and a family medical emergency has also kept things hopping, and finally I spent hours getting Panther installed on my laptop, plus all the software I have re-installed.

I'm really hoping to get a version of this posted by Sunday afternoon. I just need to add the clone character feature (for making dupes of NPCs like Sec. Guards etc), and turn off some of the other features that aren't ready yet.

I also combined two sections into one to eliminate switching back and forth between windows, and improved the combat calculator so it works out a target number for each of 4 consecutive different targets within on combat turn (assumung abidexterity and two weapons, or full autofire and 4 different targets.)

[Method]

I'd be interested in any GM tools as well.

I'm on a G4 powerbook running 10.3.4.

The screen shots on your web page look awesome!! :love:

[Dashifen]

Wow. I want to buy a mac so I can use this program :)

[Razorwire]

Also 1.5 G4 powerbook looking to beta test. That prog looks fragging awesome.

[ShadowGhost]

Just an update for everyone.... due to huge workload, laptop repair, and major modifications to this program, it looks like it will be about September before this is ready for testing.

One thing I completely left out was Astral initiative/combat. Doh!

I've finally got some free time and right now I'm reprogramming this puppy, and hope to spend the next few days getting things planned out, and the next couple weeks programming and ironing out bugs.

[Kagetenshi]

Any chance this'll get finished at any point?

~J

[ShadowGhost]

I'm working on it now. Things went apeshit in September. I was away for two months, at my mom's place, staying with her in the hospital until she passed away, the subsequent funeral, dealing with the estate etc, then came back home to a huge load of work that's kept me busy.

I'm going to spend a couple days debugging, then post it on an updated website around Thursday, in the hopes that other can find bugs I haven't and suggestions for possible features to add.

At the moment, I'm leaving certain functions off (Spirits/Elementals) as they require their own subsection for programming for damage resistance.

Right now, I'm working on the Damage Resistance for section for NPCs - ironing out certain bugs (such as it not factoring in Cyber Armor when calculating dice rolls for damage resistance.)

[Kaosaur]

how far away is the code from being unix portable?

Those of us on Linux systems have still got nothin' :D

[Kagetenshi]

Perfectly understandable, and I'm sorry to hear that. I hope things are doing better now.

I also found a bug in the firearm designer whereby the FCU will occasionally reach -.25, but I haven't tracked down exactly what's causing it. I'll give you a complete bug report when I've figured it out.

~J

[ShadowGhost]

Thanks - I appreciate that.

I think I got the armor problem figured out. Now working on the Dodge test - so it will automatically enters any successes on the attack for damage resistance if you haven't completely dodged.

One other headache I have is that I have to reverse engineer the Firearms and Backpack program so that when you click on the document (instead of the program) it automatically opens the program with the document open within the program. Right now you have to boot the program, then open the document.


*** Dodge is now set up to add successes to Damage Resistance, if character didn't fully dodge.

Now fixing settings for non-Ranged Combat skills so injury mods apply properly (i.e. sorcery, conjuring, etiquette), with options for lighting condition modifiers (on or off), as lighting will affect most spells (but not all), and with some skills, lighting has no effect.