Well, I got tired of waiting for a SR4 windows character generation tool to appear, so I decided to write one myself. I've been working on this for two weeks on evenings and weekends. It's coming along quite nicely for ~20 hours of work or so.

Language: C#.Net 2.0
Environment: Visual Studio 2005

.Net Framework 2.0 REQUIRED

I'm making this post to give people a preview of what's coming up and to ask for general suggestions and criticism on the design/layout/functionality. Everything is still pretty malleable, so changes probably won't be a big deal at this point.

Of course I plan on releasing this free of charge to the public once it is done. I will also open the code via a license agreement that allows you to modify to your heart's content. I am mainly concerned with making sure no one sells it, but I don't think FanPro or WizKids would let that happen anyways.

On the assistance part, I am a pretty fast typist, but there is a lot of content to add. Cyberware, spells, qualities, traditions, mentor spirits, etc all have detailed descriptions that need to be typed into a .dat file. I am still cementing the file format as I program this, but at some point I would like some help in getting those .dat files put together.

Screenshots:

Tab 1 - Basic Info
Tab 2 - Attributes and Race
Tab 3 - Skills
Tab 4 - Qualities
Tab 5 - Augmentations
Tab 6 - Magic, Traditions and Mentor Spirits
Tab 6 - Spells
Tab 6 - Adept Powers
Tab 7 - Matrix
Tab 8 - Contacts
Tab 9 - Gear

OK, so let me know if I missed something, what looks good/bad, what should be moved where, you'd better do this like this or you'll regret it, etc. Thanks,

this is pretty cool looking so far

Looks pretty clean so far. I'd like to get my grubby little hands on a copy, whenever you feel comfortable doing so. The only question that pops into my mind is, have you included some way to alter the number of BP, for campaigns with higher/lower numbers?

And a small idea, you might consider breaking the .dat files up by sourcebook, and giving the user options to enable/disable certain books, that way you're not picking powers/spells/gear from books you don't have access too.

I'd be willing to help out with some of the typing, once you solidify the format for the files.

It looks nice.

Having entered most of the data in Daegann's generator, I know how long it takes to type everything into these files.
You might consider using some "open" datafile system (such as XML) so that other character generator could use them and so that anyone can easily change their datafile.
You might also try to parse Daegann's generator files to create your own. I don't remember exactly how they work, but basically there are separators between the entries, and separators between the different attributes of each entries. HEX numbers indicating the length of the following string followed by the string itself.
Take a look at them with an hex editor, I'm fairly sure they can be parsed to get the data into a better form (such as an XML file).

Keep up the good work.

May I ask in what format you are putting the gear and cyberware . . . stuff in ?
I have some files for my randomjoe programm and maybe we can find a format that is fitting both.

Thanks for the compliments, everyone. I'm glad people think it looks alright, b/c I do this for a living .

@ Tekumel
I didn't show the Options choice from the Tools menubar. That's where I plan to put reasonably configurable options like BP's, turn on/off rules, etc. Allowable sourcebooks isn't a bad idea, I should make room for that in the .dat file formats.

@ Blade
When I started this project, I was originally thinking, "wow, what a great time to whip out the XML and throw down", but alas, actually working with XML files really sucks. I've got object serialization down, but using a flat file database turned out to be majorly fast, both in development time and parsing speed. If I published the format (or added a header) to the flat files, I don't think anyone would have an issue reusing them for another project. I looked at Daegann's data files as well, saw hex, and said "ick" and moved on. Basically I was cloning the NSCRG, so I copied their general dat file layout as well and it has worked well so far.

@ Serbitar
The cyberware and gear (as well as all of the other dat files) are in pipe-delimited text files (Pipe = "|"). It has worked as a good delimiter so far. I am putting in detailed descriptions for the cyberware, but not for the gear due to the sheer volume and lack of screenspace. Gear items will have only their basic stats, but cyberware has a description like "cranial bomb - designed to kill user with implanted explosive, etc". I am just now getting to those sections as far as hooking it up to the UI, so those formats are definitely in flux.

This looks really good. I like the clean and crisp appearance. Will there be a print option available with this?

@ Kairo
Yes, that will be a must. I'm thinking an export to html might be the best way to do that, maybe PDF at some point. Whatever isn't a lot of work. I'm a pretty lazy programmer

At the moment I am using "\t" (tab) delimited text files, and I am using my lists mostly for my search utility for randomjoe, which has far less information (for example no stat changes for cyberware).

Howdy all. Still working on this, I think it may be one to two weeks before I have something that could be beta-tested. In the meantime I may do some non-versioned releases.

Over the past few days I have cleaned up the interface and tried to make the controls as uniform as possible. I also have serialization and deserialization working, so saving and opening character files shouldn't be a problem.

Technomancer and Vehicle tabs are still totally blank, and only the skills tab is getting close to complete. The datagrid management buttons are there, but don't work. Basically a lot of events need to be added and handled, as well as error messages for bad input, outside of rules, etc.

DnCrg Development Site

I put up a simple site to keep track of releases, requests, bugs, and other things. Not a lot of info right now, but hopefully it will fill up.

What demand is there for internationalizing the interface/.dat files? I thought Shadowrun had a pretty good following in France and Germany, so au Francais and auf Deutsch? I know a little German, but my translations would probably inspire more entertainment than information. I can build the functionality in if people would want/use it.

10/08/2006
Early Development Release: Aruba

Download Executable (ZIP, 94KB)

Subject to License Agreement

This is a preview-type release to those who want an advance look at how things will work or would like to help me in testing the product. There are still many features that do not work, and I have disabled certain sections where functionality is completely missing. Also, much of the content tables is still missing. In spite of all of this, it is somewhat workable and the basics of the program are coming together.

- Basic info is done except for lifestyle
- Attributes, skills, and qualities are done. Qualities need descriptions typed in.
- Augmentations is set up except for items that use capacity, cyberlimbs, and attribute modifying cyberware. A lot of cyberware/bioware missing from dat file.
- Magic and Matrix are still in development, pretty much do nothing right now.
- Contacts is done.
- Gear is missing accessorization, otherwise is quite functional and complete.
- Vehicles works for standard autos, but needs to have functionality filled in for customization.
- Review page works except for starting nuyen and augmentations

I wouldn't spend a great deal of time putting in data into this app, because although it does save and reopen files, it may not load everything correctly again (more than likely it will fail to display properly).

Bug reports are welcome, also I appreciate comments/suggestions for enhancing the application at all times. Enjoy,

1. Tabbing through the fields on the "Basic Info" tab is out of order. Would suggest putting it in a more logical progression if possible.

2. The "Attributes" tab fields that you fill in to add to your attributes aren't labeled, and aren't immediately obvious that this is what you're ADDING to the base attribute, instead of what you want the FINAL to be.

3. On the "Qualities" tab, make sure to put a note that qualities like Addiction & Allergy REQUIRE a "Quality Note" to be typed in to be added. Also on this tab, I'm guessing you intended the X next to the selected quality list to be the key to delete the highlighted quality from the list? It doesn't work.

4. Would suggest moving the "Gear" tab before any other item purchase tabs, or moving the "Apply BP to Resources" box somewhere more conspicuous.

That's all that jumps out at me in a quick session of playing with it. Looks good so far though man.

Did you still need help with the data entry part?

@ Tekumel
1. Yeah, I noticed that. Consider it on the look and feel list to be fixed at some point.
2. I guess I figured that would be obvious. Is there a better way to do that? A label is no big deal at the top, like "Purch" or something. I separated the totals and maxes off to the side if you wanted to look at that when making your purchases. I was used to one of the Excel spreadsheet programs that does it exactly like that, so it was natural for me.
3. I can do like a red asterisk next to the Quality Note textbox to make it more obvious that a note is required. I haven't hooked up all of the grid control buttons, but I will get there.
4. I agree on the placement of the "apply to resources" box. Maybe if I move that to the top of the gear tab and shove the listboxes down, it will be more conspicuous.

Probably after the next dev release I will have the .dat file formats cemented and I can get people to type some stuff in, particularly on the magic section. Also, you will probably notice it is quite permissive. Error messages, input checking and restrictions come last, since it makes life difficult when testing and it's more of a "final touches" item.

I like label changes. Those are easy

I could also make more room on the Basic Info tab and change the Lifestyle groupbox to "Finances". Then put the Add Nuyen textbox in there so you can swap out build points for cash and select your lifestyle in one spot.

Like So?

Awesome. Might throw the old "1BP = 5000 " Note under the BP box label as well.

Any other testers out there? Download for early development release is a few posts up.

Thanks to Tekumel for helpful input.

I like how it works so far. I only found one thing wrong, though it might actually be because it isn't finished yet. When I choose the magician quality I can't change my magic stat to increase it. Everything stays at 0.

I have some recommendations.

1. One thing I like about Daegann's character generator is when I raise an attribute past it's natural maximum it will add the exceptional quality automatically. It will do the same for skills as well.

2. I also like the fact that Mundane, Adept, Mystica Adept, Magician, and Technomancer are all chosen at the beginning of character creation. The reason for this is so that all my attributes can be filled at once. I think this is even more vital for your system because things like this could force the user to flip back and forth between the tabs. Tabs are a great way to organize information and have it look clean and concise. They can also force a user to flip back and forth between information again and again because something they just changed in the qualities affects their attributes. To exemplify further the exceptional quality would also force me to go back to the attribute tab to raise it. Please refrain from anything like this that would force the user to go back and forth between tabs. Obviously if the user needs to double check information in a previous tab or wishes to change something in a previous tab that is their own decision not forced by the design of the program.

3. Skills. I need a clarification on something. I am pretty sure during charcter creation I could take the Sorcery skill group to 4 and then decide to only raise up Spellcasting to 5. So I would have:
Counter Spelling 4
Ritual Spellcasting 4
Spellcasting 5
If this is true, could you please make sure that your system would then add Skill Group ratings and Single Skill ratings? It might work something like Skill Group Spellcasting rating 4 + Single Skill Spellcasting rating 1 = Total Skill Spellcasting rating 5.

4. It would be nice to be able to arrange all skills by Attribute before I select them. I realize there is already a table in Shadowrun, but I would like the ability to create a character with this system without having to always consult the SR sourcebook. I can't remember everything.

5. If you could restrict the user from viewing information that isn't pertinant to their character that would be nice. I know this will make coding more difficult, but it would really help out. For instance, if I am a mundane I shouldn't see the magician or technomancer related skills, qualities, abilities, spells, complex forms, etc. Obviously as a mundane some tabs would be completely removed from view.


Everything else seems pretty good. That is all I can think of right now. I really like this interface the best out of all the chargens available for SR4 so far.

@Eleazar
The magic attribute doesn't increase with the quality, as that isn't done yet. Will be soon though!

1) & 2) Really the same topic. I sort of agree but disagree with you, if that's possible. There will be plenty of tab changing for attributes/qualities, definitely, as I set up the tabs in the order that the character creation steps are in the book. It is less efficient to go to qualities, add "Magician", then go back and increase Magic accordingly. However, I want to avoid the situation where a quality is unexpectedly added when someone takes a skill at 7 or an attribute above max. Yeah, they should know the rules, but I'm programming for the "lowest common denominator" ...heh, I love that. I think the simpler design will prevail over the more efficient, but slightly more complex one in the end. Besides, in personal experience, I have found myself all over a character gen sheet back and forth, switching this and that to optimize BP expenditure.

3) Fortune is correct on that one.

4) As in, you want to know/view the skills by linked attribute, instead of by category? Or just be able to see the linked attribute next to the skill name in the listbox? Either of those wouldn't be hard. Having it in the listbox is probably a good call.

5) For sure. That will happen at the end, when I lock down the user interface with lots of error messages, restrictions, disable certain areas, etc. Technomancer and Magic come to mind as the only real possibilities there.

Thanks for the compliment and the review. I think I'll get a chance to work on some stuff tonight.

4) I think you had it right with the first question. To rexpalin it. The skills in the skill tab are currently listed like so:
Skill Groups
Combat
Magic
Physical
Social
And so on...

If possible, I would like it so that I could lists all the skills by attribute. So, if I selected Intuition, I would see every skill that uses Intuition as it's linked attribute for the dicepool. I can see this being very useful for magician's so they can choose skills that compliment their tradition's drain stat or any character that needs more flavor by adding a skill that has a high linked attribute. I realize in the SR4 sourcebook there is already a table with this information, but it would be nice to have it in the program.

The first column is the one I described already which has Skill Groups as it's first item. You could add something likeAttribute: Intuition, Attribute: Logic, Attribute: Strength and so on to this first column. In the second column you would then have the individual skills linked to that attribute, and then the third column would be filled with the specializations available for that skill.

The other implementation I thought of would use radio buttons and would populate column 1 based upon which radio button was selected. If I selected the "skill category" radio button It would populate column 1 with the current list. If I selected "attribute radio button" it would populate column 1 with attributes. Maybe more radio buttons could be made so that the user could organize the skills in varying ways. Though all I can currently think of are 2 radio buttons. So I think it makes this way less viable unless more ways to organize the skills are thought up and are actually useful.

Skills by Attribute...

Like So?

Looks great!. Wow, that was quick.

Very nice. I'm gonna d/l a copy and poke around at it as well.

...definitely looking real good.

I know this is a bit forward, but are there plans for a "Finalise Character" option (like the NSRCG had) so that you can apply karma to improving the character after they enter play?

This is one a feature that the current Excel versions (at least the ones I downloaded) don't include.

@Kyoto Kid
Yeah, definitely. That's probably a version 2 thing, as version 1 is focused on character creation. But just like NSCRG, it's really just some controls switching and different calculations to handle an existing character as opposed to a new one.

My group never used that feature for SR3. We would just edit the html files to create a new sheet to print out. In SR4, character creation is much more calculation-intensive than the meager process of karma expenditure. I can see keeping track of contacts, nuyen, lifestyles, gear, etc as being a nice feature though.

...that is what I do with the current Excel generators, but I have to hack the formulae to make it work so I don't get a lot of "red flags" for exceeding starting BP limits. BP costs are different than Karma costs for improving a charcater. This was one feature I really liked about the NSCRG.

Because of rhumathoid [sp?] arthritis, I use a notebook computer display as my character sheet instead of hardcopy. My handwriting is so bad I could probably give a sample to a pharmacist and get a prescription.

@Kyoto Kid
I totally understand the desire to use this as a full character management software. I'm just sure that will come after the character generation part of it is hopping along nicely.

Special Project Request
If someone would like to work on a rather decent sized part of this project, I think I have broken off a piece that can be done rather independently of all of the rest of the code. I have sort of decided that the program should print/export in three separate ways:

1) Text export of basics, meant for very quick sheets or forum posts
2) XHTML character sheet for printing purposes
3) XML SOAP serialization for interop with 3rd party programs

Of course it still saves to a .sr4 file for use with this program. (1 and 3) are no problem, but if anyone would like to take my wonderful ugly hackjob of an XHTML character sheet and make it print and look pretty, that would be cool. I'm thinking you would want to do separate sheets, and keep the stuff that everyone will have on two pages and then extra pages for spells, adept powers, vehicles, etc. An example of a setup like that might be:

Page 1: Basic Info, Attributes, Skills, Qualities, Condition Monitor, Dmg Resistance
Page 2: Contacts, Background
Page 3: Vehicles, Gear
Page 4: Tradition, Mentor Spirit, Spells, Adept Powers, Magical Items
Page 5: Commlink, Hacker/Technomancer Detail
Page 6: Augmentations

That way everyone will end up with a 4 page sheet probably.

Thoughts, ideas?

I'm a dork. Forgot the link to the XHTML character sheet I was working on, badly at that. Avert your eyes:

Character Sheet

If you output a basic XML data file with all the character data, it would allow anyone to create the xslt file they want to form any presentation they desire.

Program outputs txt, xml files.

For display and printing steps
Select character
Select XSLT -- Have a range of xslt that do the various archetypes and options
Display|Print

Alternative.
You can assign a default XSLT and make the Select XSLT an option outside of hte printing display step

Advantage of this appraoch is that you can just have the program generate the xml data set, it will be the same for all xslt.

Allows people to create XSLT for theri favorite character sheet display, and their own options.

You can add a feature to allow for import or assignment of users XSLT.

All you need to provide is the dataset schema to allow people to start designing XSLT for you.

Forgot to metion a small detail, but obviously the output xml file would need to reference the appropriate xslt.

@DireRadiant
Yeah, that was my general direction. I am not familiar with using XSLT, only XML as a data storage format. It sounds like:

1. Program -> XML document

2. (Default XSLT document or User Customized XSLT document) + XML document -> XHTML output

3. User opens XML document in XSLT-compatible browser and prints XHTML output

That looks fine to me. I checked out this
XSLT Tutorial (which was where I was getting my CSS and XHTML info from) and it looks nice, I just suck at coding XHTML (or any webpage for that matter).

Getting the XML schema for the SR4 character might take some time, as it is somewhat subject to change as I develop the program.

@craigpierce
Thanks for the info. I'm a noob when it comes to actually using XSLT's with XML, so I'm sure it will come in handy when I get there. Btw, I am a Windows Forms developer generally using C# and .Net 2.0. I looked at Jackpoint a few weeks ago, and I was blown away. Very impressive user interface.

i'm actually droping the UI for now...i'm rebuilding to make all of it function together the way i always intended it to - and to get it out in any kind of a timely manner i'm just going back to normal tabs and buttons...that kind of thing can always be upgraded later.

how do you get the symbol into your program (if you're willing to share )

@craigpierce
Just open up MS Word, do Insert Symbol and find the Yen symbol. Copy it in the Word doc and paste it into either the Designer properties or right into your C# code. Must be some nifty unicode support by Visual Studio 2005.

The XSLT templates are very useful. I would create a template for each section of a character sheet, or section of xml data. Initially I can envision a weapon template, cyberwear, bioware, drones and vehicles, commlink, programs, and a whole bunch of other ones. Then mix and match templates for your desired character sheet display.

This last weekend I didn't get a lot done, but I am optimistic about the XML character sheet format. I have most of a schema done, I just need to get the program to import and export in that format. Once I have that tacked down, I guess someone can work on XSLT transforms for me, or it can wait for later versions. I'm going to shoot for October 22nd as the date to release the next dev version with the changes I have made. Hopefully that will include:

- XML character storage
- Augmentation tab working and loaded with data
- Qualities actually doing something
- Various improvements and bugfixes from last dev version

...excellent, I will be watching for it.

Ditto. This is a really smooth interface. Nice job man. I look forward to seeing the next version.

@All
Thanks for the positive feedback. I almost have the XML export/import completed. It is pretty slick. Once I get that done, I want to spend some time cleaning up and completing some stuff I left unfinished before, just generally making it a more functional release.

Wow, I feel like a cool kid, being listed as a tester on the webpage.

Now you just need to put out a new release so I can get back to testing

@Tekumel
Righto, righto. Actually I've gotten a lot done this week, so if things keep up the next release could be pretty neat indeed.

Also, dev website updated with new info. (Dev Site)

I am watching this program very closely. You are doing a great job. I wrote xslt for McMackie's program, and I will certainly help do that or anything else you need done for help. Be sure to post here if you need help with anything.

I would like to mention one thing, on your Contacts tab, you give a short description of what the level numbers 1-6 mean for loyalty and connection. I think that is wonderful and it helps for people who want to design characters based on a character concept rather than a min-maxing, playing the numbers type of design. I would like to encourage you to include something like that for attributes and skills as well. I know that screen realestate can be a premium, though, I just think that it would help a lot.

Once again, thanks for the effort, and let me/us know if you need any specific help.

@KeyMasterOfGozer
Thanks for the support. I am working hard to get as much done as possible for this next release, hopefully it will be very cool. The text along with loyalty was from the book, but I had to make up the description for each connection level. Doing the same for skills and attributes isn't a bad idea, assuming I can squeeze the proper space out for it.

Don't worry, I will be asking for help. I just want to get enough set up beforehand so work isn't constantly being redone as changes are added. That is what I am running into with the DAT files and the XML format. I don't want a bunch of field additions/changes after someone has done a lot of work on a part of the project.

10/21/2006
Early Development Release: Barbados

Download Executable (ZIP, 114KB)

Subject to License Agreement

The long-awaited next preview release. New features of note:

- XML serialization (format somewhat subject to change)
- Lifestyle and nuyen integrated into Basic Info, now working
- Qualities actually do something. Try it!
- Augmentations is more/less complete. You can customize an item in your grid by right clicking on it and hitting "customize" for the Accessorizer
- Grid control buttons (Move Up/Down, Delete) should work for all tabs
- A few tab order/convenience items fixed

Progress

Things are looking good. Magic/Matrix tabs are awful, but are next on the list. A lot of little stuff still remains, and the finishing touches will take a while. In another 2-3 weeks, I'd like to have a feature complete program ready for things like input checking, error boxes, meaningful debugging, and the like.

Bug reports are welcome, also I appreciate comments/suggestions for enhancing the application at all times.

Enjoy,

I like what I see so far. Just looked over it really quick. I like how the lifestyle works and the customization of the character on the first tab(Basic Info). I don't remember if you had this in the last one, but I like how the knowledge skills are sorted in the By Category view. Academic, Professional, Interests, and Street. I will give further input after I have had a chance to look over more of it. I also can confirm that the magician quality is working properly.

One caveat so far is that the knowledge and language skills are getting sorted when I view the skills By Attribute. Meaning Intuition and Logic have all those skills listed. I think it would make sense to not have those sorted into that field.