D&D 4E D&D 4e Character Builder (Made in Java)

Corso · Apr 3, 2013

haha makes sense, it was an old thread and I didn't have much hope in it still being alive.

Herzog · Apr 3, 2013

For those intersted, pcgen has a 4th edition ruleset implementation ( but no dataset) and is always looking for java volunteers.

Corso · Apr 3, 2013

Herzog said:
For those intersted, pcgen has a 4th edition ruleset implementation ( but no dataset) and is always looking for java volunteers.

Interesting, do you have any more details about this?

Gorgoroth · Apr 3, 2013

If you plan on game programming, forget java and any language other than C++. C# is useful for Unity scripting, but the IDEs suck and to make it crossplatform it's all compiled into mono develop, which uses .net 2.0 aka circa 2003 .net tech.

Trust me on this one, I'm a AAA game dev and know every single major language including scripting, and C++ will continue to rule the industry for a long time. Unless of course, you want your CV to have stuff that nobody wants on it. C# is really nice for rapid prototyping but even MS doesn't use it for their own games, which should tell you something right there. You should learn to make your own C++ code cross-platform, that is a useful skill to have considering all the game platforms out there, every single one of which supports c++.

It also makes me chuckle a bit to try to optimise stat validation code, as if this is a performance oriented tool. Premature optimisation is the root of all evil. It is known. If anything, write your code to be modular so you can call the core of the logic from a wrapper, say, a C# or QT or Java front end, and keep the logic in the c++ dll. That is also a very handy skill to have. C++ might "suck" as you put it, but it's still the King, with 95% of the world's software using some variant of it. And the modern iterations have quite a number of very nice features. Once you get into STL and Boost things are a lot better. It's kind of funny talking about modulo arithmetic speed and then saying C++ sucks, trust me try building a AAA game in Java or C# or Python (shudders) and see how far you get.

darjr · Apr 3, 2013

aye Boost and the STL rock on toast.

AbdulAlhazred · Apr 5, 2013

Gorgoroth said:
If you plan on game programming, forget java and any language other than C++. C# is useful for Unity scripting, but the IDEs suck and to make it crossplatform it's all compiled into mono develop, which uses .net 2.0 aka circa 2003 .net tech.

Trust me on this one, I'm a AAA game dev and know every single major language including scripting, and C++ will continue to rule the industry for a long time. Unless of course, you want your CV to have stuff that nobody wants on it. C# is really nice for rapid prototyping but even MS doesn't use it for their own games, which should tell you something right there. You should learn to make your own C++ code cross-platform, that is a useful skill to have considering all the game platforms out there, every single one of which supports c++.

It also makes me chuckle a bit to try to optimise stat validation code, as if this is a performance oriented tool. Premature optimisation is the root of all evil. It is known. If anything, write your code to be modular so you can call the core of the logic from a wrapper, say, a C# or QT or Java front end, and keep the logic in the c++ dll. That is also a very handy skill to have. C++ might "suck" as you put it, but it's still the King, with 95% of the world's software using some variant of it. And the modern iterations have quite a number of very nice features. Once you get into STL and Boost things are a lot better. It's kind of funny talking about modulo arithmetic speed and then saying C++ sucks, trust me try building a AAA game in Java or C# or Python (shudders) and see how far you get.

Java works great if you want to build a nice tool with a complex UI that can be used cross-platform. Its not generally your first choice when doing say OpenGL type games and such, no, but this is hardly that sort of case (and in fact interestingly enough I did write a quite nice 3d sci-fi strategy game using OpenGL and RCP (java application framework with native widgets). Actually worked quite fine, but there's not a huge compelling reason to do it that way. Still, 'see how far you get', well, I got as far as I cared to, which was pretty far. Clearly if I had $50 million I'd go ahead and rewrite it in C++/QT though...

QT is actually just stupidly awesome. C++ in general though? I can quite well identify with the sucks sentiment. I mean I write large line-of-business applications that CANNOT memory leak, writing them in C++ is hell. Writing them in C# is silly since cross platform to Linux is a big plus in IT nowadays.

I'll agree with you though, multi-tier apps let you do each part in a tool suited to that thing. Its still only suitable for some things though, there's not much point in having your stand-alone character builder running a J2EE backend.

AbdulAlhazred · Apr 5, 2013

Herzog said:
For those intersted, pcgen has a 4th edition ruleset implementation ( but no dataset) and is always looking for java volunteers.

Got a site? I MIGHT have written a few million lines of Java here and there

Gorgoroth · Apr 5, 2013

I like Java, but I had to chose my professional feat tree and there's no way I could earn chops for WhirlWind Attack (i.e. making pro videogames) that way. Back in the day I even did some JavaGL mini apps. Anyway, now there are a million ways to do cross platform stuff, including NaCL which is very cool too (a VM inside my browser? yes, please). I incorporated chrome browser into an MMO, and I couldn't help but think I should have done it the other way around.

But yeah, memory leak hunting on C++ does indeed, suck. But performance optimising on Java for games? uhhh, forget it. And C#, as we know, was abandoned as a dev language by its creators (XNA Game studio is dead now, RIP. It was a fun platform for small apps...Unity killed it methinks)

Gorgoroth · Apr 5, 2013

Speaking of coding, Abdul, are there any OSS D&D Next character generators? Probably illegal since the NDA and such, but I might create one for myself. The main utility, considering how stupidly quick and simple it is to make a toon, would be for spell selection and inclusion on your sheet, of course. I made a ranger a couple days ago and it was annoying not being able to copy+paste out only my 1st level spells onto my sheet. I mean, with the full description. I hate looking things up at the game table.

//sorry to derail.

AbdulAlhazred · Apr 5, 2013

Gorgoroth said:
Speaking of coding, Abdul, are there any OSS D&D Next character generators? Probably illegal since the NDA and such, but I might create one for myself. The main utility, considering how stupidly quick and simple it is to make a toon, would be for spell selection and inclusion on your sheet, of course. I made a ranger a couple days ago and it was annoying not being able to copy+paste out only my 1st level spells onto my sheet. I mean, with the full description. I hate looking things up at the game table.

//sorry to derail.

None that I KNOW of, but I haven't really looked. I'd bet someone has done a spreadsheet type thing, which for DDN is probably pretty adequate, those just got too hard to manage for 4e. IF I were going to do one, I think I'd do a fairly simple web app, just do a fill-out form that mirrored the WotC character sheet fairly closely, then it could save to a simple XML file with some CSS to display it and a way to generate a PDF file out of it. Bit of work, but not TOO much. I had a pretty decent one like that built into my TWiki back before CB came out for 4e. It LOOKED sweet, and did the basic numbers, which was not hard.