I've been working on an application that can help you to organize your groups' characters and to speed up calculations in combat situations - in case you are GMing with a notebook, that is
It also comes with a very basic random loot generator - just in case you don't want to come up with own loots

The logo is some kind of a placeholder - I've asked WizKids for permission to use the original SR logo, but they didn't answer, so I replaced the SR logo with a placeholder.

Screenshot - not showing everything

The program is written in Java.
Java JRE 6.2 or higher required!
click here to download the latest JRE.

The program itself comes as a .jar file - if you have the latest JRE installed, you can just doubleclick on it and it will launch the program.

You can download the latest release here.

Bear in mind that I am from Germany, therefore many translations may be inaccurate or even wrong! Just post better ones here

Please tell me what you think of it, what you would like to see added/changed, tell me about any bugs you find - I appreciate your comments!

No one giving a shit about it?

Just saw this... Sorry I didn't notice the first time you posted. I'm going to give it a try when I'm home later. The picture of the layout looks good.

I had looked at it when you initially posted. It looks great, and I like some of the layout choices you made (such as stuff that's not necessarily 100% needed being off screen until you call for it).

I just don't know enough about SR4 rules and chargen to really make any informed comments, so I haven't yet.

Looks good!

Great Job!
a few fixes:
Dexterity should be Agility.
Constitution should be Body.
Bad name should be Street Name.
For vision improvements it should read (low-light, thermographic, ultrasound)
Mental damage should be Stun Damage
Rapid-fire weapons should be Automatics
Hot Smoke should be Thermal Smoke

There's all of your translation fixes. Everything else word-wise looks spot on.

Thanks for the feedback so far!

I've worked in Eleazars' proposals except for the "street name" stuff - I've renamed it to "Notoriety" (at least that's what I found on the official english character sheet)
The latest version can always be found by simply following the link in the starting post.

Version 0.79 released.

Just downloaded it, will give it a try this week when we play next!

Thanks for your efforts.

For a short glance of this I'll had to say to you, that this looks awesome!
When I'm back home again, I'll download and try to testrun it.

Version 0.80 released.
New feature: Group saving functionality.

You no longer need to save/load all characters of your SR4 group manually - you can now save/load them with a single file. Check out the changelog for further changes and explanations

I tried downloading it, but the link brought up a username/password dialog.

EDIT: Nevermind, I didn't read your original post closely enough. My bad.

Version 0.81 released.
New feature: Simple dice roller.

Further changes and additions can be found in the changelog.

Looks very cool! Looking forward to using it to help my upcoming session run smoother.

Version 0.82 released.

added a logger and some minor improvements. Check out the changelog for details.

Pretty neat. I don't know whether this is a good idea or not, you can decide: you could have a little thing where you choose a number and a damage type, physical or stun, and you hit add and it adds it to the character's condition track, so in the middle of combat when someone already wounded takes a pot of overflow damage, everything adds up nicely in the program of yours. But maybe not. Might not be worth it, really. Some more status effects might be nice, like shocked by electric damage or whatnot. Also, the loot generator really doesn't seem too terribly useful. Even on the highest value setting, I kill a man and get...a scrap of paper? And so on. Loot generators can often be programs all by themselves, but then again, Shadowrun doesn't exactly lend itself to a "run in, shoot everything, take the loot" approach like some games.

Anyway, keep up the good work!

Sorry for replying twice in a row

Version 0.83 released.

- added a column for remarks in the connections table and fixed a rare error while resetting all characters.

READ THE CHANGELOG FOR IMPORTANT INFORMATION!

The link is sending me to a protected location. IE keeps prompting me for a username and password.

Users name : dstest
password: sr4w

As descripted in the first post

I am not seeing a .jar file in this download, or the last one for that matter.


I get 2 folders

META-INF
v1



META-INF contains a single .mf file

v1 has a bunch of .class files and gifs.

no .jar file

Umm.. the thing you are downloading *is* a .jar file..
I don't exactly know what your problem is, maybe you are trying to "open" the downloaded file with something like Winzip?
There is no need to do anything with the downloaded file, you can just doubleclick it and it should run - as long as you are having the latest Java version, that is!
Check here to download the latest Java release (Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 6 Update 2): http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp

As I had to change some things in the code for the latest release, it *may* be that you no longer need Java 1.6 for it to work. I am not sure though, as I'm testing and coding everything with the latest release (1.6.2), so some things (or even everything) might just not work.
Java 1.4.2 is definetly too old, though (for example, I used generics from Java 5, and some other stuff).

I may be the only mac user trying this, or, I may have something wonky with my system, but, it won't load at all for me. OSX.4.10 (all updates that apple has offered have been done)

I don't know much about Macs, I'm afraid, however I think Apple comes up with their own Java versions for Mac users, so there might be something not working the way it works with a normal Java version.

After checking the homepage of Apple, I only found their Java version 5 - which may be the source of the problem. As stated in the first post, I recommend Java version 6 - it might or it might not work with any lower versions. It definetly will not work with version 4 or lower, that's what I can say for sure.

So I'm afraid I can't help you

Hi There,

dhyde79, your not the only Mac user trying it And yes your right it don't work. Mac's are still on Java 1.5, while this is compiled against 1.6. Anyways VVerevvolf here is the error message we Mac users get....


Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: Bad version number in .class file
at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass1(Native Method)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(ClassLoader.java:620)
at java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(SecureClassLoader.java:124)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.defineClass(URLClassLoader.java:260)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.access$100(URLClassLoader.java:56)
at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:195)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:188)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:306)
at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:268)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:251)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClassInternal(ClassLoader.java:319)

What IDE are you using to make this ? Can you get it to compile against an older version of Java for us ?
Are you using anything that requires 1.6 for it to work ?

Alvorn

Very nice app.
a few very minor translation errors i noticed:

storm cannon should be assault cannon
shotgun(massive) should be shotgun(slug)
gifts/handicaps are called positive qualities and negative qualities in SR4 but many people still use the sr3 names: edges/flaws

aside from that everything looks really good. Thanks for the great program!

Thanks for the feedback!
Translation issues have been fixed and will be released in a future version.

@ Alvorn: I'm using Eclipse as IDE, and yes, I'm afraid I'm using Java 1.6 stuff, so it won't work with Java 1.5

If you don't mind sharing the code, feel free to send it my way and I will see what I can do to get it running on OS X. Im a java programmer by trade and I use Eclipse.

I'm sorry, but I don't want to share my code - it's horrible anyway

I made a Java 5 version - you can find it here.
This version might have some flaws, I don't even know if it works on Macs.
But I guess it's worth a try

Username is still "dstest", password "sr4w".

downloaded, tested, works good so far....though, I'm noticing something that I hadn't caught before, it's more of a GM tool than a character gen correct? (or am I missing the chargen area?)

It has got nothing to do with a char generator; it's only a GM tool.

awesome, sorry, I'm just blind then......as a GM tool, works great.....I likes it, I likes it a lot.....

Awesome .... simply awesome. Thank you so much for your work, man.

YES! I forgot to come back in and sing praise, but I'm doing so now. This prog is awesome!

I'm already about halfway through putting the characters for my next game into it, and just the combat modifier calculators alone make this prog rock on wheels.

Thanks for doing this!

I have been looking for GM tools to help me. I finally joined the age of Notebook Gamemastering. If this works as good as I think it will you shall be known unto my gaming group as a Technomancer god. Going to try it out when I get home!

First off, major kudos to VVervvolf [love that name]. This tool rocks. Period. Earlier this evening I ran a session wit your app and I must say it went alot smoother than usual. Not only was this the first time using the tool in play, this was my first time using a notebook while gaming. It worked beautifully. I really like the dice roller. I cant think of many criticisms now. Though to be honest the run was rather combat light. Next run I probably will get a chance to really put it through it's paces. Therefore I will endeavor to update next month. [next session] Until then, kudos.

Aribaderchi,
crash2029

Quick suggestion: Either make the Essence input area a simple text box, or let it allow direct entry in addition to up/down selection.

Right now, you can only choose a number with the up and down buttons, and it isn't granular enough to allow for all values. For example, I can't enter or select a value of 3.05 Essence. Also, if it were this granular, using up and down buttons to get to a number would be a huge pain, so I make the above suggestion.

Good idea, done

New version 0.84 released, click here to download it.

Changes can be found - as always - in the changelog.

I used this program for the first time last Saturday and it is a dream come true. It sped up game play considerably! May Buddah rub your belly with blessings of good fortune! Keep it coming!

The only this that I found to be an issue with this software is that the Loot Gen when you move the slider to Valuable loot doesn't get more valuable the randomness is still the same.

Just downloaded it. I'm running a session tomorrow, so I should have commentary and feedback this weekend. For now, though, this looks fantastic. As a GM who struggles with numbers and rules (I'm primarily a plot guy), it seems incredibly helpful.

Gonna finally get to test this on a session today. Eido ran one last night with it, and it was looking good.

I might work in something so you can use the combat settings from one character for another one. You would only have to set everything for one character, and then, with a few clicks, you can load these settings for another character.
It's on my to-do-list, but I cannot promise anything

That sounds like it could work. Thanks for your dedication

Thanks for reminding me, Dash.

Actually though, now that I'm looking at it less hurriedly, it occurs to me that once set for each character, it does remember what I set it for. What I originally took for an annoyance really seems more like a necessity on a more thorough examination.

I was thinking in terms of that one combat (brief though it was, damn samurai ), but really, I would think that fairly often, the characters are likely to need different distance modifiers (will be at different physical locations in relation to the target), and given that we need to account for vision modifications on a per-character basis, it's pretty likely that visibility mods are going to be set individually most of the time as well.

So I guess what I'm saying is I've decided it's great the way it is.

And yes, I definitely appreciate the work you have put into this. Although there was only one combat in this session, I can already tell that my GMing is going to be more accurate and consistent just for having the combat calculators. And the ability to save off the character group is just huge. I now have the characters "just starting", and then I have a set of them at the end of the first session. Just awesome.

Thanks for the update to the Essence input. Not a huge thing, but definitely an improvement.

I will go ahead and add a "yup, happening for me too" to the loot generator comment above.

Other than that, nothing to add at the moment. If anything comes up during play or just dinking around with it, I'll try and remember to post it.

Haven't tested this so far, just a few notes while having a first glance at the proggie - thanks btw

1. Wouldn't it be possible to "just" add a new windows showing "Modifiers for this combat" - thus Groupmodifiers (like Vision) could be applied just for one combat and for the complete group.

2. Please add an option to enter numbers directly ... I dislike having to use up and down buttons

3. I would love to be able to enter more than one Vision improvement - just though I dont forget it myself

A test will follow on my next gaming session Saturday

So long and thanks for all the fish!