Bouncing off of an idea from the NSRCG thread, I've decided to go forth and try to create a calculator that will allow people to "create" ally spirits. Before I move on, though, I thought I poll the group a little to see what people want out of it. Obviously, I could create something that allowed you to simply enter the options you want in your ally and then it returns the amount of karma that you need to spend on it.

Or, would people want something more complicated that could load and save files on an ally spirit more like NSCRG can for a full character. While I can do this, it'll be more difficult .

So, let's see if we can start some discussion on the topic and I'll take what you guys suggest and try to put together a program that hopefully, people will find useful.

-- Dashifen --

One little idea (I'm good at this) is to have a number of blanks for ally spirit forms.

Big ideas? Not so good at those.

Having it export to something that could be imported into the NSRCG would be great. Also, you may want to integrate the spells.dat from NSRCG into the Ally Spirit program, because they can learn spells.

I don't think I can have anything to import into NSRCG since mcmackie doesn't have anythign about allies in his program. Maybe, once I'm dont, he could port the system from c++ which I'm most comfortable with to VB which is what I think that he uses. Then, it could be distributed with NSRCG most easily.

However, if I'm working seperately from him and he doesn't put in matching screens for the ally information, there's no place within NSRCG to import the information to. As for linking spells.dat and skills.dat, that's a good idea. I'll look at that possibility, but it might also make sense to just simply have an input text field that allows you to enter the spell that your ally has learned. For ally creation, it might be better to simply enter the spells that your character knows so that the random one that the ally knows can be chosen. Not sure if I'll need to connect to the external files. What do you think?

-- Dash --

That's what I was thinking too. I can still use your formats for the spells, skills, etc, but I'm seeing this as being better as a seperate thing. I might use a file format similar to .sr3 but only because it's easy to read in files line by line and set the necessary flags I'll also probably use an interface somewhat remeniscent of NSRCG only because it's the "industry standard." Won't need as many screens, though.

So it seems like people do want some form of output file from the program that could be reloaded at a later date?

-- Dash --

In re-reading the ally spirit section of MITS, I think I'm going to produce a program that will be coded in C++ and will create an HTML page as an output. That page will contain information about a starting ally spirit. After that, you'll be on your own again. The program will also calculate the number of karma necessary to create the spirit. Once that is done, if there is sufficient desire, I may work on something more akin to NSRCG which can re-open ally files and advance them.

-- Dash --

Another fun thing to add might be their different shapes. An ally spirit can learn one shape for one Karma each so if you start creating an ally with four shapes above the first it could be something like this.

1. Kitten (Basic)
2. Naked metahuman (Practical, can wear armour, carry guns, drive a vehicle etc, just teach them)
3. Horrible monster (Alien perhaps. Very good for having it popping up in someones lap saying "BOO!" and start eating their face, or pretend to)
4. Invisible metahuman body (Has the shape of a metahuman body but is invisible and can carry clothes and guns.
5. Fly (have it buzz around and listen to peoples conversations.

It could be quite handy if you like me had ten different shapes in one ally spirit.

I'm working on it so you just enter your forms and it keeps track of how much you need to spend on them. That way, you can describe them anyway that you wish to.

If possible, having the program lanch when the familiar ordeal in NSRCG is selected would be nice. That way if the connection removes a point of magic when opened seperately, it wouldn't do so for the ordeal. I have no idea if this is possible though...

Neither do I. Since it's in an entirely different language from NSRCG, it would probably difficult to say the least. I'm still working on it, though, and I hope to have something ready for public consumption, soon.