Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="JamisBuck" data-source="post: 342180" data-attributes="member: 12">Luke, you raise some very good issues.&nbsp; However, I disagree that generating a random &quot;entity&quot; has to take an eternity to do if you are doing in with a &quot;generic&quot; engine.&nbsp; My current NPC generator (in which everything is admittedly hard-coded) can generate 100 NPC's, including spellbooks, feats, and skills, in seconds.&nbsp; I am confident that a well-designed and thought-out engine could generate a complete character (including racial templates, spells, equipment, prestige classes, and more) with sub-second response time, on hardware commonly and inexpensively available today (I'm talking sub-gigahertz processors here).Your point about unforeseen effects is a good one, though, but it only reinforces my statement that we need to think this through as thoroughly as possible before we implement anything.&nbsp; Of course, any piece of software is rewritten several times--I know that from experience, no matter how well thought-out it was.&nbsp; I don't expect to get this right the first time, especially since we've never done this before.&nbsp;&nbsp; And please note that my goal is not to create a dataset that never needs to be rewritten, but to create a program that never needs to be modified in response to a new type of datum.&nbsp; The entire &quot;can't use metal&quot; issue should be solvable in the data (and yes, probably through the use of scripting, but since that's an implementation issue, I want to steer clear of discussions on that right now).&nbsp; If someone comes along and says &quot;my new class X can't use anything flammable and requires that their weapon be able to contain at least a gallon of water&quot;, I don't want to have to go back in and release a new version of the software--just the data.&nbsp; Am I making any sense at all?I know this is not going to be trivial.&nbsp; It is going to require a LOT of work (heck, it's already taken me over a year and a half) and it's going to require a LOT of hard thinking.&nbsp; But saying why it can't be done is dooming yourself to failure.&nbsp; I only ask that people contribute if they want to help succeed; let's keep the comments positive and constructive.Thanks,Jamis</blockquote>

[QUOTE="JamisBuck, post: 342180, member: 12"] Luke, you raise some very good issues. However, I disagree that generating a random "entity" has to take an eternity to do if you are doing in with a "generic" engine. My current NPC generator (in which everything is admittedly hard-coded) can generate 100 NPC's, including spellbooks, feats, and skills, in seconds. I am confident that a well-designed and thought-out engine could generate a complete character (including racial templates, spells, equipment, prestige classes, and more) with sub-second response time, on hardware commonly and inexpensively available today (I'm talking sub-gigahertz processors here). Your point about unforeseen effects is a good one, though, but it only reinforces my statement that we need to think this through as thoroughly as possible before we implement anything. Of course, any piece of software is rewritten several times--I know that from experience, no matter how well thought-out it was. I don't expect to get this right the first time, especially since we've never done this before. And please note that my goal is not to create a dataset that never needs to be rewritten, but to create [i]a program that never needs to be modified in response to a new type of datum[/i]. The entire "can't use metal" issue should be solvable in the data (and yes, probably through the use of scripting, but since that's an implementation issue, I want to steer clear of discussions on that right now). If someone comes along and says "my new class X can't use anything flammable and requires that their weapon be able to contain at least a gallon of water", I don't want to have to go back in and release a new version of the software--just the data. Am I making any sense at all? I [i]know[/i] this is not going to be trivial. It is going to require a LOT of work (heck, it's already taken me over a year and a half) and it's going to require a LOT of hard thinking. But saying why it [i]can't[/i] be done is dooming yourself to failure. I only ask that people contribute if they want to help succeed; let's keep the comments positive and constructive. Thanks, Jamis [/QUOTE]

Verification