DM Genie

[Klintus Fang]

Just to chime in here, you realize, what you described above, is exactly how PCGen operates now?

That's interesting. I did download the PCGen source code and looked through it recently and I saw words like MONK and AC inside the definitions of some of PCGen's internal data structures. This put quite a sour taste in my mouth, and led me to assume that PCGen was not entirely generic in its implementation. Maybe those are hold overs from older versions of PCGen. I'll take another look and see.

In any case, my interest in PCGen is somewhat limited: it is too slow. I'm not sure if that's because of PCGen or if it's inherent to Java or if its a side affect of the fact that PCGen depends on Sun's rather slow Java implentation. After I installed the version of Java that PCGen says it requires (1.4.1), web browsing became slower across the board on my machine (at least for any website that has a fair amount of Java going on behind the scenes) so I'm guessing maybe the Sun Java implementation is the culprit.

 

[Klintus Fang]

The originator(s) of the SRD and the OGL behind it were fairly convinced that software of the RolePlayingMaster-type capabilities would never occur - especially from a fan-based effort. Wizard's interpretation of their license was that such an application would throw almost everyone, because of the compiled binary problem.

That seems a very unwise assumption for them to have made. It is not conceptually difficult to create a binary that makes no assumptions, contains no copyrighted content, but which can model the rule system exactly just by reading an appropriate data file that contains all the SRD material. If just takes time.

It doesn't have to be slow either; not if the internal data structures are well constructed so that interpretation of the "rule set data file" occurs only during initialization.

 

[merton_monk]

code notes

Hey all - we saw the comments in this thread about our code, so Mynex called Anthony Valterra to discuss it. Anthony's take was, as Mynex then relayed to me, that as long as the code acts only like a calculator, that they're fine with it. What that means is that as long as the code doesn't say "Well you get a dexterity bonus of +2 for your dex and an armor bonus of +3 which gives you a total bonus of +5" you're okay. PCGen's code asks the stats (and there can be a variable number of stats, and none of them might be named "Dexterity" You could create a stat named Hilda that impacted the AC if you so desired) for its AC modifier, and gets the AC modifier from your equipment, etc. and sums it all up.

It sounds like Wotc is in the process of considering new wordings for the licenses to specifically speak to software issues, which I'm glad to hear. The licenses were obviously written with printed press type works in mind and they just kind of slapped some software clauses in there - mostly because I don't think that 3 years ago they thought there'd be much in the way of fan generated software. Now that they've had a lot of contact with various software groups I think they have a pretty good handle on what's causing the most confusion and they know that a lot of people are interested in their clarifications.

 

[Cergorach]

1.) Could you call Dexterity "A" instead of Dexterity? And then still have all the mechanics in the binary? An external data file wouls say "A"=Dexterity
2.) Would it be 'legal' to make a source that's human readable and let the user compile it into a binary (preferably with a couple of klicks)?
3.) How far do you have to go in seperating data (OGL) and calculation (program)? Is it neccesary to have the formula for calculating AC in the data file or may i have that in the binary?

 

[Klintus Fang]

1.) Could you call Dexterity "A" instead of Dexterity? And then still have all the mechanics in the binary? An external data file wouls say "A"=Dexterity

I rather suspect not. If it were that easy then a simple perl script could convert the entire source of any program to something that was compliant in about 10 minutes.

2.) Would it be 'legal' to make a source that's human readable and let the user compile it into a binary (preferably with a couple of klicks)?

It seems like it. In fact that option is already being discussed on this thread....

3.) How far do you have to go in seperating data (OGL) and calculation (program)? Is it neccesary to have the formula for calculating AC in the data file or may i have that in the binary?

That seems to be an open question (at least on this thread).

 

[Luke]

3.) How far do you have to go in seperating data (OGL) and calculation (program)? Is it neccesary to have the formula for calculating AC in the data file or may i have that in the binary?

You cannot distribute a binary that encodes formula derived from the SRD.
As far as the license is concerned, content is content, and it really makes no difference whether the content is data or an algorithm.

This is what seems to catch people out.

 

[Cergorach]

You cannot distribute a binary that encodes formula derived from the SRD.
As far as the license is concerned, content is content, and it really makes no difference whether the content is data or an algorithm.

This is what seems to catch people out.

Ok, maybe i wasn't to clear, what i meant was:
data (OGL) = human readable txt file
calculation (program) = binary

The problem i have with what is being said here is that the SRD/OGL 'prohibits' the use of algorithms that are in the SRD/OGL, correct? If so, the SRD/OGL also shows us how to add two values, does that mean that i can't make an OGL/SRD application that adds values in it's binary? (I hope i just heard a resounding NO!) Then my question is what can i code into a binary and what can't i?

 

[Sm!rk]

The originator(s) of the SRD and the OGL behind it were fairly convinced that software of the RolePlayingMaster-type capabilities would never occur - especially from a fan-based effort. Wizard's interpretation of their license was that such an application would throw almost everyone, because of the compiled binary problem.

I doubt highly that this is the case. You are saying that some number of non-technical people made a guess on software tecnology and figured that it would be out of the limits of fan based software to make a externally data driven program.
Considering the open source movement have created everything from operating systems to professional level image software, and the OGL seems to take its thoughts from many of the open source licenses I believe this statement to be complete conjecture and unbelievable.

In other words the people involved knew enough about OS to model their licenses and license goals from them, but were unaware of the scope of many of the OS projects? Doubtful.

The intent as can be easily seen reading the OGL and any of the OS licenses GPL in particular is that the "content" in this case will remain open and can be reused by anyone who wants to use it.

We haven't see any of this *yet* but its perfectly acceptable for me to go and grab all the PCGen data files and reuse them in some other app of my own invention. THis is the point, and if PCGen has added in other OGL content beyond the SRD, I benefit since I don't have to reengineer the data myself. This should also apply to all the other software products, wether your product can handle changes in the date IMO seems meaningless, as long as I can use your data in some other program then the "open-ness" is satisfied.

 

[Twin Rose]

We haven't see any of this *yet* but its perfectly acceptable for me to go and grab all the PCGen data files and reuse them in some other app of my own invention. THis is the point, and if PCGen has added in other OGL content beyond the SRD, I benefit since I don't have to reengineer the data myself. This should also apply to all the other software products, wether your product can handle changes in the date IMO seems meaningless, as long as I can use your data in some other program then the "open-ness" is satisfied.

The question woudl then be, whether or not I could write a character generator program if I knew NOTHING of the SRD or D&D or anything, and it would come out correct - with no assumptions made in code.

 

[Cergorach]

Something just occured to me, you could make a D20 computer game in the same way PcGen was made...