Shadowrun 4E Combat Automator, Has anyone done this? Options

[LurkerOutThere]

Before I put my lackluster programing skills and sorely limited time resources to the test has anyone done this? A simple website or excell spreadhseet that players preload their attributes, statistics, and bonsuses into. WHen combat comes it rolls initiative (I know there is an initiative webform already it is excellent) and then whenever the players need to roll the program itself pops up a window allowing the GM to select from the appropriate combat skills and then use a slider to select any appropriate situational modifiers. It will prompt (likely with a checkbox before the dice are even rolled) whether the defender wants to actively dodge and with what skill. There will be an additional slider for situational modifiers there. Additionally there will be checkboxes for either side to spend edge before the roll. On the results window there will be an option to spend edge after the roll to reroll failures or add edge.

Ultimately what i'm looking for is something I can bring to cons (preferably on my Ipad) I can bring to cons as a GM to speed up combat and save the associated time involved in dice rolls and then counting. Does anyone have something like this already?

[whatevs]

Before I put my lackluster programing skills and sorely limited time resources to the test has anyone done this? A simple website or excell spreadhseet that players preload their attributes, statistics, and bonsuses into. WHen combat comes it rolls initiative (I know there is an initiative webform already it is excellent) and then whenever the players need to roll the program itself pops up a window allowing the GM to select from the appropriate combat skills and then use a slider to select any appropriate situational modifiers. It will prompt (likely with a checkbox before the dice are even rolled) whether the defender wants to actively dodge and with what skill. There will be an additional slider for situational modifiers there. Additionally there will be checkboxes for either side to spend edge before the roll. On the results window there will be an option to spend edge after the roll to reroll failures or add edge.

Ultimately what i'm looking for is something I can bring to cons (preferably on my Ipad) I can bring to cons as a GM to speed up combat and save the associated time involved in dice rolls and then counting. Does anyone have something like this already?

If I'm reading this correctly, what yer talking about is taking the combat mechanics in the book and creating an application around them. I love the idea. It would cut time in a playing session and give more time for roleplaying and p(l)ot advancement (haha, see what I did there).

Anyways. My suggestion is to start small if you're going to do it. Maybe start with the gunfire mechanic first and get it to tell you the number of dice the attacker rolls vs. the number of dice the defender rolls (example: 2 net hits for attacker), based on selected options. Then once you get that going, you could add in the damage resistance tests etc. and a dice rolling mechanic to actually tell you how much damage the defender takes as opposed to outputting # of dice. Voila! Then you'd have a push button combat calculator that would look great running on an ipad.

If you wanted to get fancy, you could get an even higher level of abstraction going. Something like 'pc <pc name dropdown menu> attacks <npc or pc dropdown> with <dropdown of weapons or whatever available to pc> <submit button>. And clicking on submit could just generate something like '2 boxes of stun damage' or 'miss'. Food for thought.

One last thing. You may want to bring this up to Nebular (author of the Chummer Character Generator). He likes a challenge.

[Kevin Adams]

LOL....i've been looking for the same thing and contemplating trying to create the same thing. I was contemplating something
similar to the Chummer character generator.

My concept would let you pick from a list of the standard grunts, contacts and critters and assemble groups of opponents. You would then be able to, like you said, calculate initiative, even role some die pools for attacks, resistances, social roles.

K

[LurkerOutThere]

I'm torn between designing the interface in visio and asking a friend of mine who's a programmer by trade to throw it together or trying to do it myself. I'll keep folks posted if it actually comes to fruition. Vain hope would be to have something to take with me to Gencon and field test there before refining to release to the masses.

[suoq]

Personally, it's not the coding that bothers me, it's the UI (user interface) design.

For any interaction, be it combat or facing, it's not the rolling of the dice, it's the playing of 20 questions, that makes me struggle with the requirements.
1) Everyone roll init.
2) Who's burning edge?
3) Who has combat paralysis?
4) What bonuses do I have that aren't working anymore (due to jamming, whatever), tacnet? smartgun? hawkeye?
5) Are you burning edge before you roll? Is he? These are the rolls, do you want to burn edge now? What kind of edge?
6) Should the system track edge, hits, modifiers because you're hit?
7) How do you want to enter other combat modifiers?

I'd be tempted, if I was going to write it, to sit down at a table and run through some sample combats to document what the system actually needs to do. I think if I recorded a session, converted that to requirements on index cards, and then did some basic agile programming, I could pull it off, but without that simulation to use as the beginning of a unit test, I'd crash and burn in the UI.

[LurkerOutThere]

Honestly for my needs at least I don't even need a full combat automator so we could leave initiative and turn order to be tackled for another day. What I envision is more just a virtual roller that can anticipate some skill associations.

Interface wise I see a line entry for every character under offense and one under defense. There's a pull down menu with character skill ratings that automatically selects the default attribute for that skill (or we could just have it load the attribute variable and let people replace it as needed. From there you can put in a positive or negative pool modifier. If it's just a unopposed roll you either check or leave unchecked the edge button and hit roll. It tells you how many hits you had adding edge and rerolling sixes as appropriate.

If it's an opposed roll you basically do the same steps but instead of hitting roll you check the box by that character line and go down amongst the defensive lines and check the box for their opposite number and then select the skill that's appropriate if it's an active dodge. Then you press the active or reactive dodge and it comes up with the dodge or net hits value. On that window would be buttons for either side to do their edge manipulation (re roll failures or roll edge additionally and re-roll sixes) For extra levels of ease it could also pull weapon damages and add net hits to that and then confirm before rolling body + armor minus AP.

It still leaves a lot of the tracking in the GM's head but it shortens 3 dice rolls and the associated waiting and counting into a few mouse clicks. If we got me that I'd be happy as a clam and we could get more detailed as needed in future experiments.

[Blade]

I'm working on something like this for my Nook Touch (running Android).
It's a lot of work to take everything into account but I think I can make it.
Once it's working, I'll open source it and maybe put it on the Android Market.

[Kevin Adams]

Personally, it's not the coding that bothers me, it's the UI (user interface) design.

For any interaction, be it combat or facing, it's not the rolling of the dice, it's the playing of 20 questions, that makes me struggle with the requirements.
1) Everyone roll init.
2) Who's burning edge?
3) Who has combat paralysis?
4) What bonuses do I have that aren't working anymore (due to jamming, whatever), tacnet? smartgun? hawkeye?
5) Are you burning edge before you roll? Is he? These are the rolls, do you want to burn edge now? What kind of edge?
6) Should the system track edge, hits, modifiers because you're hit?
7) How do you want to enter other combat modifiers?

I'd be tempted, if I was going to write it, to sit down at a table and run through some sample combats to document what the system actually needs to do. I think if I recorded a session, converted that to requirements on index cards, and then did some basic agile programming, I could pull it off, but without that simulation to use as the beginning of a unit test, I'd crash and burn in the UI.

So did you have any luck? I was just rereading this post and thought, you could sit down and stage your own combat and get all the details. Wouldnt be as much fun as sitting in on a real game but it would at least get you the requirements. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Blade]

I'm still working on my project and every time I add a new feature I discover two features I didn't think about. But I still hope to get it done.

It probably won't cover everything from day 1, but once I get something complete enough I'll release the source code for everyone to contribute.