NPC Designer is now free

[Vascant]

I have finally decided that switching between Evolution and NPC Designer has become more of a hassle then I wish to take on. While I still do add things from time to time in NPC Designer and write new scripts, the truth is it does everything I wanted it to do and see no reason to keep dragging it on waiting for the day it finally breaks down from adding new features or pushing it where never intended.

I will finish cleaning up the site during the week but all the new downloads are in place and nothing requires a key or serial number at this time. I hope everyone enjoys.


RPGAttitude

 

[azhrei_fje]

Very cool. But looking at the download options I'm assuming it's a Windows-only binary and therefore useless to Linux and Mac folks, right?

 

[Vascant]

Very cool. But looking at the download options I'm assuming it's a Windows-only binary and therefore useless to Linux and Mac folks, right?

Correct, never had any real voices for me to consider Linux or Mac when the project first started. I think in the 5 years that NPC Designer has been in existence only perhaps 50 or so people even brought up Mac or Linux, compared to over all numbers that isn't even one percent. Since I do not use Mac or Linux I would depend even more so on beta testers which would scare me with a low number like 50. With the next generation of tools I have been working on there has been very little for me to actively consider other OS development options. Though I have worked a bit with the versions of .Net that work on Mac and Linux so at least this time it is something possible in the future.

 

[azhrei_fje]

[...] With the next generation of tools I have been working on there has been very little for me to actively consider other OS development options. Though I have worked a bit with the versions of .Net that work on Mac and Linux so at least this time it is something possible in the future.

Okay, thanks for the clarification.

I tend to focus on tools that are either Java-based (like the RPTools.net stuff) or available as source code. The second requirement is particularly important. Otherwise, the entire "vendor lock-in" thing happens. And I don't mind quite so much the lock-in of the application, but the lock-in of my DATA is the killer! And because most apps don't have a good way to export all available data into a format that can be read by another application...

(Which is one thing I like about RPTools now. All of the data is stored in XML. There are some very nice capabilities that come along with that.)

 

[Vascant]

I tend to focus on tools that are either Java-based (like the RPTools.net stuff) or available as source code. The second requirement is particularly important. Otherwise, the entire "vendor lock-in" thing happens. And I don't mind quite so much the lock-in of the application, but the lock-in of my DATA is the killer! And because most apps don't have a good way to export all available data into a format that can be read by another application...

(Which is one thing I like about RPTools now. All of the data is stored in XML. There are some very nice capabilities that come along with that.)

I won't say I "locked-in" the data with NPC Designer but rather created a system that would accomplish two goals, first being allow users to not just change but rather turn NPC Designer into what they want it to be instead of what I designed. I did look at using XML but found in the end it either caused some problems or eliminated some functionality that I felt was more important then use of XML. Keep in mind until NPC Designer no one had nor has accomplished what it does with NPC Generation and that was the priority. This is not to say I did not avoid the drive by some users to have XML or other formats (two examples are Fantasy Grounds and DM Genie), there are output formats for these applications so you can quickly export your generated NPC directly into them.

With NPC Designer I did learn a few things... I wanted to make sure of data sets that were available already and allow users to make use of data sets as well, so Evolution has a converter for PCGen data sets into a format that Evolution can use. This worked out well enough that I purchased all of the WotC PCGen Data sets prior to the license being pulle by WotC, to be honest it worked out much better then I even had hoped when I designed it all. I am also confident enough that easy to use editors can be coded to make creating new date fairly easy for most things.

I do like Java and have used Java since it was in its early beta stages in the 90's but I also feel there is a time and place for each tool, since I was geared more towards results and speed of the generation Java did not fit the target. Evolution is based on .Net and I am constantly testing it against Mono (a frww Framework that has mac and linux flavor versions).

 

[azhrei_fje]

Evolution is based on .Net and I am constantly testing it against Mono (a frww Framework that has mac and linux flavor versions).

Yep, I'm familiar with Mono. So Evolution won't be using WPF? My understanding is that WPF will not be touched by the Mono project...

Thanks for the response.

 

[Vascant]

Yep, I'm familiar with Mono. So Evolution won't be using WPF? My understanding is that WPF will not be touched by the Mono project...

Thanks for the response.

Nope, I have stayed completely away from WPF and in fact most controls used for the interface are designed from scratch by me. I also test Evolution against the Mono compatibility application from time to time as well to keep any problems from creeping in during development.