Some of you may recall the dashifen character record system which I put together a while back (yeah, I know the name still sucks). It's my intention to resurrect that system and update it for SR4 over the coming weeks. However, to do that I needed a web site. Since I wanted to do more than just the DCRS 2.0, I've created a new web site focused on shadowrun. Don't expect much. I only have the homepage and two downloads so far.

Here's where you all come in. In the bottom right hand corner of the content area there is a small box where I'd like random ironic quotations or sayings to appear. I've entered three myself -- thanks Fortune for the inspiration for one of them -- just to get the ball rolling, but I figured that you all could probably enter quite a few by the time I finish work today.

If you've got a quotation or a saying -- from a movie, popular culture, or even one of your games -- that you think might fit the bill, head over to the add a quote page and drop it into the database.

A note for IE users -- you won't see the quotation box. I'm still working to get IE to put it in the right place and since it's display was worse than horrible with IE, I've just removed it from the screen. You can still add a quote if you'd like, though, and I'll figure out how to bend IE to my will as opposed to the other way around.

Thanks everyone for the above.

In return, here's another thing I wanted to know: has anyone heard of plans in the works for an SR4 character generator similar to NSRCG? I've spoken with someone else online -- who will remain nameless to he/she decides to speak up -- and we're interested in giving it a go perhaps as both a web-based application like my old DCRS and as a downloadable program like the NSRCG. If you're interested in perhaps working on a protion of that whether it's preparing .dat files or databases, working on the interface or maybe even some programming, post below or drop me a PM. Granted, since we haven't even seen the rules yet we don't know how much we've bitten off let alone whether we can chew it, so in all truthfulness we're hedging out bets at this point. I figure there's a lot of interst out there, though, for such a program all we need is someone or a group of someones to step up and write it.

You do realize that I'm going to spend the next few hours randomly refreshing your page to see if any other good quotes pop up....

To be fair, I did make the original statement that I was already thinking of working on it publicly.

~The Nameless One

Yeah, but I didn't want to speak for you. Didn't seem right.

lol
Thanks Dash. As always your SR work is appreciated.
Though when I get my grubby mits on SR4 I'll likely be doing something similair.

I mainly focus on tools for speeding up tedium. remember the decker cheat-sheet and the ranged TN sheet. that sort of stuff.

I might have to familiarize myself with Python. Currently I write exclusively in excel and VB

From what Kagetenshi has shown me about python, it's not too bad. As for the web environment, my intention is a PHP/MySQL implementation with a strong use asynchronous javascript with or without XML depending on need. This will help me provide a tool online that acts as if it's on your maching similar to how maps.google.com works by fetching small amounts of data from their server quickly. I've had success working within this structure for other character generators and similar applications.

Oh, and since I noticed that some of you were adding the source of your quotes, I just added a source box. Not sure where I'll display it on the screen, yet, but I'll work on that later.

Incidentally, while I haven't started putting anything there yet, I'll be including various SR4 resources at sr4.sr3r.net (there's something ironic about that URL).

~J

Love the site Dash, let me know if there is anything I can do (other than add quotes).

Python is a great language. Easy to pick up, especially if you already know some programming, and quite powerful and extendable.

I'd recommend it: I mainly use it for scripting, but it's got a variety of uses. The O'Riley Python book is my recommendation for learning it.

Thanks all ... got close the 30 quotes in the database, now. I'll leave the page up for now but that's enough that I'm not seeing the same one twice in a row too often as MySQL draws at random.

While we're waiting, what is our desired program functionality?

Thoughts for the Python version, though obviously anything that can be should be implemented in both programs:

• Generate a character using the full rules, allowing reversals (removing points from a skill due to changing one's mind, for example)
  • Allow alternate build point quantities
  • Do not require user to divide points into skills and attributes except by spending them on such (one of my biggest complaints with the NSRCG)
• Saving a built character to a valid XML file with enough general-purpose information to be used in other tools
  • Include CSS for displaying the file in a logical, readable, attractive manner
  • Include XSLT for transforming to XHTML+CSS in several different styles (clean, tabled, etc.)
  • Ensure the files are designed logically enough to allow easy hand-editing
• Open XML character sheets in progress and edit them
  • Validate against scheme to ensure validity
• Read gear, skills, qualities from XML libraries
  • Validate against scheme
  • Allow user to add to list on per-character basis
  • Allow hand editing
  • Allow user to add to list on permanent basis from within program?

Anything else we need? I'm probably forgetting something basic.

Ideas for future inclusion involve support for basic houserules (like the elimination of skill or attribute caps) with appropriate tagging of characters as such.

~J

I think that it's probably easier to make online tools which save information in secured database (to protect copyright and all that). Then, we can have the database export well formatted XML in the necessary way. This only works for gear, spells, qualities, skills, etc. Plus, then an online component could tap into the same databases.

Hell, if Python can check a web page or download a file and read its contents we could build an auto-dat-file-updater by recording the last update to the databases.

Python can do that, and it's a good idea for gear updates.

We're not going to be able to effectively protect our datafiles, though (it's flat-out impossible, and additionally against my conscience), so any information in them had best be clean by copyright standards—we'd have to talk to FanPro about what's acceptable there.

~J

Agreed. Judging by mcmackie's standards, the basic informatin (cost, availability, effect, etc.) is cool but full descriptions are a problem. Do you want to handle communications or hope someone official finds the thread (it's a poor name at this point considering I closed the quote thigy down when I got to 30 some quotes).

If you edit the first post you can always scrap the first half of the thread name.

I'll give someone a shout about it—we may have to stick at pure stats and a page reference.

~J

Sounds good. I'll get back to learning python

Very nice site, it's now added to my Shadowrun bookmarks.

I was looking into making a SR4 program as well...untill I found out that I'm out of my league here. You guys have already started thinking about it, and I still have yet to get my books. You guys also must be very good programmers. I'm just a little tech college student. I wish I knew as much as you guys do...I only know about three languages, and not all of them proficiant enough to do what you're doing.

Thanks for the vote o' confidence. we're not all by any means experts. Hell I'm still struggling with english let alone programming languages.

I'm more of a GM tool type guy, I'll leave char-gen to those that want it. I'm looking to reduce tedium in gameplay.

Well, I'd love to help. I'd give me a chance to learn more about program development. If you need help, let me know. I don't know Python yet, but I have VB and Java.

it isn't for me ... probably due to the scroll bar. the first step of the neighborhood generator is smaller than the rest and you may not need a scroll bar. since the page layout is in percentages, the scroll bar takes out a little piece of the window and, thus, the other ones may seem thinner when they're not. Conversely, IE hates my web site so far, so it could be that sort of problem. I haven't worried about IE compatibility as I'm hoping that IE7 will solve the CSS layout concerns that most developers have with IE and, thus, I won't have to be concerned in the long run

Nope, I still have the scrollbar on Neighborhoods. Not sure what could be causing it. Oh well, it's a very minor detail. I only noticed it because it's wider than the frame for the top section.

I'm going to be very busy in the coming months but I am very comfortable with perl and CSS and familiar enough with programming to at least think I'm useful. If you'd like help, I'd love to be of service.

We might be in touch when we work on the web components but for now it looks like python will be taking the lead as our core development language. Thanks, pragma

(Full disclosure: Pragma's a player in my Saturday games, so I know him from elsewhere)

While I don't think the project is large enough to support too many more people without communications overhead becoming unwieldy, I'd personally appreciate your assistance—at the very least, you ought to be able to come up with some better character sheet CSS than I could. I'll pass a preliminary sheet over to you when I'm done mocking it up—we'll be able to do basic transformations (reordering, stripping commas or parentheses or whatever) via XSLT, so feel free to edit those while working on display.

Remind me, how familiar are you with Python and program design?

~J

Haven't worked with Python before but I've no doubt I can learn if need be. Very familiar with program design -- as far as I can tell at least.

Sounds good.

My brain is fried, does anyone on this project have the book yet?

~Zombie

Me.

I'm through character gen at this point. The logic isn't that hard, it's the exceptions due to the qualities that will make things interesting. Gonna need a table of flags or something that we can set and reset to see which qualities a person has for use in the rest of the system. The big four are, of course, adept, magician, mystic adept, and technomancer since they unlock whole other sections of the generation system to the player, but some of the other ones allow attribtues or skills to go to seven but only once and what not.

Not to mention those four are mutually exclusive.

That's why it's nice to use an array and assert that the sum of the values of the array cannot be anythign but 1 or 0. Then, you only get one of those four qualities or throw an exception otherwise. Whoops ... went and geeked out there for a minute

A suggestion? I'm not sure what language you're coding in, so I'll keep it relatively high-level:

Create a Rules field in each of your data tables. This field contains conditions required before each entry is added to your character sheet. For example, if the Technomancer quality is mutually exclusive with the Magician quality, you might code the rule for the Technomancer quality something like this:

Expand on the security issues? I'm probably just taking too narrow a view of what "security" means, but I'm not seeing it.

~J

In a collection of good, useful quality/cyberware definitions, include a definition like:

Quality: God Doesn't Love You (-70)

The definition files will probably be nothing but plain text and not executed at all, thus someone could try to attack the program by entering code into the block, but all it would do is get printed on the screen.

Now, the mutex function that you mentioned, spookymonster, is great. And I've done a lot of work with that kind of stuff at the class level. Which, incidentally, I've always allows one class to access the methods of another class (a singleton -- that is there's only one every instantiated in the program) which controls information about what's mutially exclusive. So, in a way, the mutex() type functions that I've always worked with simply access a large flag table that's instantiated at program run time.

I like what you're saying, though, and will certainly make a note of it -- for use with the SR4CG or otherwise (crap -- did I just make our acronym?)

If you use a definition language like spookymonster's, sure. I was suggesting that each quality/cyberware piece/etc have two associated Python functions, written into the definition file and executed during runtime. This would permit new qualities to be added without changing the program source, and enable GMs to add their own homebrew qualities without having to recompile...or re-add their changes whenever they receive a program update.

So I've been mocking up some prototype code for attributes and skills, and I came to a question: how does cyberware work with attributes, particularly cyberlimbs?

~J