WOIN [WOIN] WOIN Character Assistant, a character creation tool

Dalamar · Nov 16, 2017

DesertDogSledder said:
In the future, I'd love to handle all of the boons that exploits can give to skills, money, carrying capacity, weight etc. I chose to keep things simple for now so I wouldn't get trapped in development limbo and never release anything. It's been in the back of my mind, but I don't want to promise anything on that yet!

A bubblegum fix would be the ability to set a skill to desired rank in the character edit menu. Not perfect (especially if you would have taken ranks after getting the exploit), but it gets the skill to the character view.

I agree in some cases. I could add a prompt afterward to let the user pick what menu to go back to. This is something that would presumably be a nonissue with a GUI. Since I'm starting to see more and more UX issues that are exacerbated by the limited text interface, I may freeze the current interface tweaks so that I can focus on getting a GUI out.

Oh, definitely if you're going to work on a GUI, this is less important of an issue. Currently it is mostly an issue because the only way to see an exploit's description in the program itself is to pick the exploit and then accept or decline it.

This is a good point. I can explain my train of thought here! My original idea was storing just an index of what exploit was chosen, like you suggested. I refrained, however, because I chose to sort the exploit lists by the exploit name. If new exploits were ever added to these lists, then the index might change and then cause some errors.

Talking it out with you, though, I can think of a couple of better ways to handle this and implement what you're talking about. Either I can just sort the lists visually but without associating their "choice number" with their index or I can do a different search based on exploit name. I'll chew on that one for a bit.

I would suggest using an exploit's internal name (IIRC, your code did not have that be the same as the exploit's display name), though that does mean you need to at some point have the program check that there are no duplicate internal names for multiple exploits. Which is quite possible with some career exploits duplicating universal exploits with different requirements.

Yes, absolutely. I will admit to you that the traits portion was done at the very end. I was getting super anxious about release and was on a coding binge for far too long at that point. This is something I intended on tweaking in the future.

I'm going to disagree a bit with Morrus here. Hiding all normally unavailable choices means the program is now unable to handle house rules like having free choice of your trait.
Then again, a GUI will probably handle this issue as well.

DesertDogSledder · Nov 16, 2017

That's a fair point. I wanted the program to allow flexibility for people to utilize their own house rules. I was just figuring that you could still add your own traits via the misc exploits menu.

A good compromise might be presenting all the traits as normal, but putting asterisks around traits the character would be eligible for (via base rules).

Dalamar, I hope I didn't come across as dismissive of your suggestions. Your feedback just pointed out that my attempt at the text based interface was quickly becoming too obtuse and clunky. I think it's time we moved to the next level and get a proper GUI. I'm working with a friend to get some prototypes hashed out. I hope this won't take as long as I'm thinking it will...

I made note of your suggestion regarding save data optimization in the issue tracker!

Feedback and critique helps me improve the program and my practices. It is appreciated!

Dalamar · Nov 16, 2017

Oh, I didn't thinknthem dismissive at all. I apologize if my reply was curt, imtyping on my phone, which makes handling a long message more trouble than I would like. Mostly because I'm an idiot and not using the phone app.

DesertDogSledder · Nov 16, 2017

Dalamar said:
Oh, I didn't thinknthem dismissive at all. I apologize if my reply was curt, imtyping on my phone, which makes handling a long message more trouble than I would like. Mostly because I'm an idiot and not using the phone app.

You're fine! I didn't think such. I was just concerned that it unintentionally might look like I brushing your ideas off!

GUI prototyping is underway. This is a little more challenging than the text based interface, but it seems doable. No ETA yet on this. I'll have a better idea as I make more progress.

DesertDogSledder · Nov 22, 2017

It's been a while! Making a GUI has been challenging work, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I hope to be finished sometime soon. Here's a sneak preview of the race selection dialog!

Dalamar · Nov 22, 2017

That looks very nice!

Could you squeeze in the age categories at the end of the description? I know I would like to know those without having to flip to a different section (applies to the book as well).
Oh, and maybe force the plus sign in front the positive attribute changes?

Sent from my PLK-L01 using EN World mobile app

DesertDogSledder · Nov 22, 2017

Dalamar said:
That looks very nice!

Could you squeeze in the age categories at the end of the description? I know I would like to know those without having to flip to a different section (applies to the book as well).
Oh, and maybe force the plus sign in front the positive attribute changes?

Sent from my PLK-L01 using EN World mobile app

I'm sure I can slide that in. Morrus, is there any age category information for the races/species you recently put up? http://www.woinrpg.com/age-exploits/ only has the base races.

I'll see what I can do about forcing a plus sign as well.

Morrus · Nov 22, 2017

Hmm. Probably buried in the original articles.

DesertDogSledder · Nov 22, 2017

Morrus said:
Hmm. Probably buried in the original articles.

No worries. I can go dig through them after I finish up with the interface. Is it okay for me to put that information in? I was trying to only use what was available in the WRRD.