New Town Generator

The attached file is a zip containing a beta version of my new town generator program.

This version contains the GUI only! It does not actually output anything yet.

I am posting this in hopes of getting some intelligent feedback on the GUI.

If you are interested in a program that will actually create a fully fleshed-out playable town in about 5 minutes, then please download it, read the readme file in the zip, run it, and send me any comments and suggestions you may have.

I'll check back on this thread for comments. Also, email can be sent to: towngen@yahoo.com

That email address is in the readme file also, as well as more information on what exactly I'm looking for.

Thanks in advance for any help that any of you can provide!

Walter

I will look at it when I am not at work. They do not like me downloading things.

What a cool idea! I'd love to see something like this.

- Piratecat

only one comment right now.. WOW


-edit-

Ok, Looking through the Gui, I'm still quite amazing. I love insane amounts of detail so this is right up my alley.

I was wondering could you add more customization, especially in the races. It would be nice to have a town of orcs or kobolds instead of just the races from the PHB.

You may want to resize some of the screens. For instance, that second screen or make it support adjustment better. It was partially off the screen on my monitor (21" at 1024x768) when it came up for me. Related is the fact that the maximized state did not stay for me. If I maximized a window and moved to the next, it came up unmaximized.

On the second screen:

I liked the alignment distribution control. Very keen.

The scrolling power center details box was kinda confusing with the scrollbar on the right. Perhaps replace that with some kind of slider with a display of the group you're currently working with. Perhaps generate some tabs of some kind. Maybe even just a box saying what group you're on would suffice. I know I originally thought I was scrolling for more info and had to figure out what the scrollbar did. This follows over onto several of the later screens.

On the third screen, make provisions for customizing the gods available. Not all of us use the Greyhawk pantheon.

On the economic screen, you mention "Clicks". Do you mean Cliques as in the little groups all the kids in high school formed? I'm not trying to be obsessive about spelling, but I happened to notice this and thought I should point it out.

I don't really like the whole "Next" "Back" structure. Perhaps make each screen a tab. I know if I were going to do a larger city I'd be hopping back and forth a lot to get everything right and the current structure suggests it's more like a front to end progression. Perhaps have a "Wizard" mode like what it is now for quick towns and a more straightforward interface for working with a town more. Kinda like how Winzip has Wizard and Classic modes.

Once you get the thing running, there will probably need to be a bit of help to explain what some of the entries are about.

Overall, it looks like you've got incredible amounts of detail planned. I like that. It should be very cool when you get done.

I must say this is a very cool little program. I can't wait until it can acctually produce some output to a file.

I could sure see myself using this program to create some quick and easy cities.

Thanks all for the helpful comments!

There is a front to back progression in the screens. Certain things depend on other things.

Such as:

I can't decide how many churches and what alignments they are until you pass the second screen. Because until you do, I don't know if its a village or sprawling metropolis and I don't know what the alignment distribution is yet. Notice the warning tool tab that pops up if you hover the cursor over the "back button". If you go back and change the alignment distribution, it won't retroactively apply that to all the following screens that you've already been to. The logic to do that is circular in nature and gets really difficult to manage properly.

Perhaps powercenters should be on the 3rd screen to cut down the 2nd screen's size. I'll see if I can clear up the scrolling ambiguity.

If I made it a single tabbed dialog, then you would be tempted to pop back and forth a lot. Which kinda messes up the AI logic I'm using when you press the "Random All" button. It takes into account the values chosen on the previous screens and rearranges the probabilities in (hopefully) an intelligent fashion. Notice what happen to the number of undead generated by the random button if you change the ratio of good and evil churches before you click it? That kind of thing. Like, suppose the town guard is small and weak, that will affect the chances for each crime level on the next dialog. Same with alignment distribution.

Maybe I need to make another "summary and editing" screen after the ordered wizard screens, to allow easy back and forth editing with no more random buttons. That way I can still try to ensure some intelligent "this is based partly on that" logic without pulling my hair out, and allowing the user to see everything easily for editing purposes. Hmmm... I don't know. I'll think about this more. Maybe someone can give me a suggestion on how to visually imply the front to back progression I need for my logic, but not inconvience the user for editing purposes.

Yes, Clicks should be Cliques. My spelling after a long day at the office isn't all that great ... I turn off my brain and go on autopilot programming mode and just type ...

The window size issues I'll try to deal with better. I should have realized that some people out there still run at 1024x786. I hope no one requests 800x600. That is a really painful resolution to have to look at. I guess I'm just sensitive to it because I stare at a monitor all day every day. I'm not sure how you can stand it on a 21" monitor, but to each his own. To me, 1280x1024 (@85Hz) on a 19" is ideal, but again, that's just me and I guess I need to accomidate people better. Sorry.

Thanks again everyone! And any more comments, suggestions, and constructive criticisms are welcome!

Walter

[edit: geeze, my spelling still sucks ...]

Town Generator

I like this immensely! There is a lot of potential here to be an excellent utility.

Now, the feedback.

1) I'd like to be able to enter values into a text box for everything as well as using the sliders. Sometimes it's easier to type a # than it is to get the mouse to hit the right amount.

2) Add the ability to specify pantheons (enter them in, or read them from a text file)

3) Re-visting what someone else said about window sizes, have it auto-fit to whatever resolution the user has.

1 & 3 are pretty generic for program functionality, #2 just annoys me, as I use my own pantheon of deities. ;p

I already have a whole host of other request lined up for when 'production mode' of this nifty little program is up and running.

Have you thought about actually making this program in Java?

Please update this soon! I look forward to it!


Mynex

- #1 Evil assistant to the PCGen Code Monkeys (Code Badgerer)
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JAVA?!?! Uggg...



Actually, I considered doing it with MFC in C++ instead of VB, but the extra development time wasn't worth the extra control. In reality, I spend most of my time programming in LabVIEW at work, but that language is REALLY not suited for this kind of application. Honestly, I've never programmed in JAVA and the thought of learning ANOTHER programming language didn't sound very appealing ... even if it's god's gift to platform indepentant programming like some people seem to think it is ...

It not going to take long to start with the output part of the program so fire away with any more suggestions you have.

The window size issues, auto-centering, etc... I can fix easily. In fact, it's mostly fixed already.

As far as customizability, I'm starting to realize that my original plan of just creating the tool I really wanted to have as a DM will leave a lot of people frustrated. Adding a list of custom gods would be relatively easy, so I guess I'll need to decide on what method I'm going to use to support it.

But, adding more/different races will get really tricky when it comes to applying racial preferences for different occupations. In an orc city, some of the occupations won't even exist. Most of my logic will break down for all kinds of different things. I really don't think I'm going to support this kind of thing. Not yet anyway. I need to make it work good for normal stuff first, then worry about weird stuff later.

I really like what I'm seeing so far. There is alot of potential here. I'll post again after I get a better chance to fiddle and tweak with it. The most obvious things I noticed were:

Window sizes: This has already been brought up. Unless you have a very high-res display, some of the windows will not fit. Windows 2,3 and 4 are particularly high. I usually design programs to run in an 800x600 screen, though its probably best to stick to 640x480 until WinXP gets more market penetration. You'd be surprised at the number of users that never change their screen resolution (or don't know how) from the Windows default of 640 for older versions and 800 for the XP line. I'd recommend increasing the number of frames and decreasing the info per frame.

Less cluttered frames will also make the app easier to interact with, as the frames will be more recognizeable, and less confusing. I know how much of a pain redesigning the frames is, but I honestly think it needs to be done.

Might I also suggest auto-center start up position?

Taskbar-Friendly: This looks like a VB app, right? If so, you're designing it for the windows environment, so you should consider the task bar. When prompting the user with a series of windows (ala "Wizard" style), I usually like to see a single window on load-up that shows in the task bar, and then loads other frames that are showed modally, and invisible to the task bar. That way, new windows aren't constantly appearing and disappering or jumping around int he task bar. Its a minor thing, but I consider it good programming practice.

Toolbox-style prompts: Why are the windows resizeable? I mean, they really don't need to be. Design them to be adequately small (fitting in low-res screens), and then you can present them as static sizes. That will save you *alot* of time by not having to write frustrating Form_Resize() code. Make sure you keep the minimize button though, as the user may want to hide the interface.

Program-bugs: I played around alot with the Authorities and Law frame. Very nice. I did notice something though. In the bottom scroll areas, where you can select churches, merc groups, etc, the properties do not remain set when you use multiple quantities. An array offset error perhaps? I'd also suggest keeping the alignment seperate from the church name, that way users can type in their own name (as can already be done), but the program will still be able to know the alignment of the custom name. People won't be restricted to the Greyhawk setting that way, and by allowing the user to type in names, your program all of the sudden has infinite setting appeal. This probably applies for all the pull-down boxes.

That's all for now, I'm going to keep a close eye on this program, you've done a great job so far, Walter.

-Mike
mike@3eprofiler.com