Town Generator Beta 0.2

[towngen]

Well, I've been really busy at work so I haven't had a lot of time to work on this.

This new beta version should have most of the GUI complaints addressed from the first release.

I'd love to hear any comments, criticisms, complaints, rants, or whatever related to this program.

Feel free to post responses to this thread (I'll check back here occasionally), or send me an email at towngen@yahoo.com

Thanks!

 

[MJEggertson]

VERY nice. A great improvement, and its looking even more promising. I haven't put it through the ringer yet (maybe 10 min of playing), so this will deal mostly with interface, not bugs. Keep in mind, I'm criticizing heavily because I really like this program, and I want to see it finished, and done the best it can. This is meant to be contsructive, as one designer to another.

One (maybe two) things. The app does not appear in the task bar, with the exception of Step 6. This is somewhat annoying if you're mutitasking. Say you have a word processor, a spread sheet, and maybe a few character sheets open with details about the town you're working on. Having, perhaps, the Summary Screen load up first, which then presents the dialogues modally would be a good solution. Then clicking on the Summary button on the task bar will send you to the prompt since its a modal frame.

The windows are all compatible with 800x600. Good. They don't make the 640x480 displays, but hey, I'm guilty of ignoring that too. There comes a time when we eventually have to stop working for low end displays.

What would be nice though is if all the prompts are the same size. This is especially useful if you want to hammer back a few panes to change something that you realized is wrong. Having to track the back/forward buttons on each frame is not good. This may cause lots of empty space though for some of the frames.

A not so attractive solution would be having the frames track how they were opened. If they were opened with the next button, have the mouse moved to the new frame's next button. If they opened with the back button, move the mouse to the new back button. One of these should be implemented, I believe.

Labeling the steps as 1 of 8, 2 of 8, also would be a good idea that will give more feedback as to how far progressed you are.

Steps 6 and 7. These are still rather intimidating. I think you had a great idea on Step 8 when you used the tab control. Using a similar layout in Steps 6 and 7 may reduce the size of these frames, and go a long way to maintaining a consistent size on all the frames.

Did I mention the vetical scrollbars that you use with the merc groups, et al? VERY good idea. I love how they change in width with the number you enter. This is wonderful. Don't change this. Very intuitive, I think, and VERY effective. It is very space efficient, and very easy to use. The vertical sliders also really present a consistent feel to the last few frames. If they all had similar layout (size, tab controls, placement of the main buttons, etc), the app will look really solid and professional.

Copious use of slider controls. Also perfect. Try to keep away from numbers as much as possilbe. You've done an excellent job at this.

There are my ideas for asthetics and presentation. I haven't found any bugs yet, it looks like you've spent alot of time on this. And talk about quick! Wasn't it just two weeks ago you posted the first one? Good job!

Feel free to email me if you have any ideas to bounce around, etc. I've worked with VB a bit, among other languages.

-Mike

 

[towngen]

VERY nice. A great improvement, and its looking even more promising. I haven't put it through the ringer yet (maybe 10 min of playing), so this will deal mostly with interface, not bugs. Keep in mind, I'm criticizing heavily because I really like this program, and I want to see it finished, and done the best it can. This is meant to be contsructive, as one designer to another.

Thanks for the compliment! The more ideas the better!

One (maybe two) things. The app does not appear in the task bar, with the exception of Step 6. This is somewhat annoying if you're mutitasking. Say you have a word processor, a spread sheet, and maybe a few character sheets open with details about the town you're working on. Having, perhaps, the Summary Screen load up first, which then presents the dialogues modally would be a good solution. Then clicking on the Summary button on the task bar will send you to the prompt since its a modal frame.

Step 6 was an oversight. I will probably make the app show up as a single entry on the task bar, but I didn't feel messing with that until I got further along.

The windows are all compatible with 800x600. Good. They don't make the 640x480 displays, but hey, I'm guilty of ignoring that too. There comes a time when we eventually have to stop working for low end displays.

What would be nice though is if all the prompts are the same size. This is especially useful if you want to hammer back a few panes to change something that you realized is wrong. Having to track the back/forward buttons on each frame is not good. This may cause lots of empty space though for some of the frames.

A not so attractive solution would be having the frames track how they were opened. If they were opened with the next button, have the mouse moved to the new frame's next button. If they opened with the back button, move the mouse to the new back button. One of these should be implemented, I believe.

It's nice to know that I'm not the only one that thinks people that still run 640x480 need to stop complaining and just upgrade to something that is less than 10 years old.

Yeah, the buttons not lining up kinda irritates me too. I'll play around with that some more and see I can make it a little less irritating.

Labeling the steps as 1 of 8, 2 of 8, also would be a good idea that will give more feedback as to how far progressed you are.

That's easy enough.

Steps 6 and 7. These are still rather intimidating. I think you had a great idea on Step 8 when you used the tab control. Using a similar layout in Steps 6 and 7 may reduce the size of these frames, and go a long way to maintaining a consistent size on all the frames.

Hmmm... I'll think about this some.

Did I mention the vetical scrollbars that you use with the merc groups, et al? VERY good idea. I love how they change in width with the number you enter. This is wonderful. Don't change this. Very intuitive, I think, and VERY effective. It is very space efficient, and very easy to use. The vertical sliders also really present a consistent feel to the last few frames. If they all had similar layout (size, tab controls, placement of the main buttons, etc), the app will look really solid and professional.

I really can't claim credit for the scroll bar's behavior. That is the default behavior for the version of the control I'm using. App's without that behavior are probably written in an older version of VB. I can't remember off hand which version of MS common controls has the newer scroll bars.

Copious use of slider controls. Also perfect. Try to keep away from numbers as much as possilbe. You've done an excellent job at this.

There are my ideas for asthetics and presentation. I haven't found any bugs yet, it looks like you've spent alot of time on this. And talk about quick! Wasn't it just two weeks ago you posted the first one? Good job!

Thanks again. I have very high standards for myself professionally and I feel like a complete slacker on this project. I could never get away with being this sloppy at work, but it's really nice to be able to relax and enjoy writing something. Also, I get to just ignore it for days at a time when I don't feel like looking at it.

 

[Klintus Fang]

it crashes on my machine :-(

I've a winXP machine with a 900MHz P3 and 256M of RAM, so I'm sure my machine should be able to handle the program...

When I click on "next" at the "Assign Some Economic Details" window, the application crashes with the message:

Run-time error '339':

Component 'MSFLXGRD.OCX' or one of its dependencies not correctly registered: a file is missing or invalid


It looks like you must be using a library that I don't have installed on this machine.


Otherwise, the program looks like it has some serious potential. I'd say that I'd like the option of some text based configuration file that I could load in to configure the probabilities for the various items that it calculates randomly.....

Or maybe even the option of using it as a "library" that I can call from other programs. Then I could write a "kingdom generator" that plugs into this thing to generate the details for all the cities. I've been toying with a kingdom generator lately. Maybe that's asking a lot though.

 

[Klintus Fang]

nevermind the crash problem: I found the information regarding the need to have VB dll's installed in order to use the program in the readme.

 

[towngen]

If that doesn't solve your problem, then give me an email. I'll try to help. I didn't distribute the program as an installer with all the support files because I'm just a lazy bastard.

It's possible that you'll need to get a copy of that ocx and put it in your windows/system directory (or the apps directory). I've never even seen WinXP run on a machine since none of my customers use it, so you know more than I do about that part. At least you're not trying to run it in some weird windows emulation window on a mac.

Also, feel free to post or email me any suggestions about the program. Hopefully, in another week or so I'll get a "semi-final" GUI beta released for people to comment about.

Walter

 

[annadobritt]

Would there be a way a person could customize things like the deities of their campaign world? And Mercenary companies?

Anna M. Dobritt
Freelance Cartographer
http://rpgmaps.mortality.net

 

[towngen]

Support for custom dieties has already been added. Now whether you have to type in the diety names yourself or not is up to the lawyers at WotC.

If they forbid me to using any deity names that appear in the PHB and FRCS, then I'll just release a template file with the program that you will have to edit. The probability that someone will retype it and post it on the internet within 10 minutes is close to 100%, so I wouldn't be too concerned about that. One way or another, you'll be able to use any dieties you want. And you'll be able to customize the probabilities of each.

There is another thread I started about a week ago titled "Request For Help with Diety Info for Town Generator" in this same forum. It has a copy of the text file the program will load. All that code is already written and will be in the next beta version.

There are a couple extra options that some of you might not have thought of when looking at that diety info file. You can list the same diety twice (or more) to get bigger differences in probability. For example, V is only 9 times more common than R. Suppose you list the same diety twice, once with V and once with C. Then another diety is listed as R. Now the chances are 14/15 for #1, and 1/15 for #2. If you want or need a bigger selection of frequency codes, let me know. I could just change it to a number also. That's not a big deal. If you think that's easier or better great, I haven't gotten any comments back on the diety info file yet so I'm not sure what anyone thinks of it yet.

Another thing you can do is create a standard section for a campaign world. Then copy&paste it again, chance the name ( for example to [FRCS-The North]), then customize it up again. Now you can have regional templates for various areas with little extra typing.

Now as for mercenary groups, so far the only options you're getting are: the size, level of highest person in the group, and amount of magical support the group has. I considered adding another selector for type (ie: calvalry, foot, archers, mixed non-cavalry, marines, seige guys, etc...), but no one complained when it wasn't there. I was probably going to put it in anyway instead of just randomizing it without giving the option to change what it picked, I just didn't get to it yet. If you want or need something more specific then please let me know. Thats the whole point of me releasing the beta! I'd hate to get all the way finished, release the product and have everyone complain that I forgot something that was necessary.

Walter

 

[faqulan mitaadle]

Now whether you have to type in the diety names yourself or not is up to the lawyers at WotC.

If they forbid me to using any deity names that appear in the PHB and FRCS, then I'll just release a template file with the program that you will have to edit.

I'd suspect that this probably falls into the Product Identity category of things, since proper names and WOTC specific data is being used. The OGL only covers the mechanics and not much else.

The probability that someone will retype it and post it on the internet within 10 minutes is close to 100%, so I wouldn't be too concerned about that.

Just be careful. It's not something that should be announced too loudly. Since the data falls outside the OGL, any illegal obtainment (is that a word?) can be enforceable by WOTC.

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[Leopold]

any update on the software?