After a simple tool to track initiative, health and defenses during combat in 3.5e or 4e? Then Trackwork is an app you should take a look at.

Version 0.4 wasn’t very 4e-friendly, so I’ve made some updates to the code and v0.5 is very happy to accept all your 4th Edition needs. The interface had to be reworked to accommodate fortitude, reflex and willpower.

If you have Vista, you’re all set. Everyone else, be sure to grab the .NET Framework 2.0 if you don’t have it.

Trackwork is nifty, but the 4e Power Creator, 4e Class Creator and CrawlNotes are as nifty, if not niftier. Hey – niftier is a word!

Update #1: Uploaded a minor revision to allow HP, AC, Fort, Ref and Will to accept up to 9999 as a value (thanks Granger44).

Update #2: v0.5b is up. You can now import a fight. This lets you save your heroes in one file and the encounter in another, and then mix them together when the combat starts.

Download Trackwork v0.5b

Posted in 4e D&D, Advice/Tools, Dungeons and Dragons

Tags: d&d, tools, trackwork, vb .net

Took time out of Deadshed’s development to give Zafehouse a little attention. Well, moderate attention.

Here are the changes, straight from the changelog:

-Fixed score upload problem (not code-related) (Thanks Banjo)

-Executable has a new icon

-Separated weapons and survivors in the raid priority dialogue (Thanks Banjo). New raid chances are 70%, 15%, 10%, 5%

-Fixed a bug that prevented survivors from having a chance to be injured when found in buildings (Thanks kronos)

-Added new version check on Help screen

-Added support for custom names:
To use custom names, open or create a file called “names.txt” in the same directory as Zafehouse.exe. Then add names, one line at a time, to the file. Save it, and next time the game loads, it will randomly select a name from the file until it runs out of choices. At this point it will refer back to the internal list.

I’ve also released the source code. For security reasons, it doesn’t include any of the online components.

The front page of the main site has been updated with all the important stuff, so be sure to pay it a visit.

Zafehouse

Posted in Zafehouse

Tags: free, source code, vb .net, Zafehouse, Zombies

Update: The 4e Power Toolkit is now available! Grab it from here.

Super-sized image of the above can be found here.

Okay, so I don’t know if it will actually rock, but going by the warm sensation I get in my tummy when I code it, I feel comfortable enough to associate it with the word “tubular”.

The 4e Class Creator is the successor to the 4e Power Creator. The latter was coded in a single night, and I’ve made a few tweaks, bug fixes and upgrades since then.

After releasing it into the wild, quite a few requests came in for new features, keywords and the like, but the hacked-together nature of the app left little room for easy improvement. So, the 4e Class Creator was birthed bourne born conjured.

It’s about as modular as I can make it. A HTML template contains tags that each module can read and replace with the whatever information is required. Adding something new to the program is as simple as creating a new module, adding tags to the HTML, and outputting the form data.

There’s built-in support for custom accessories, weapons, damage and power types, as well as power sources, so there’s no need for a recompile if your campaign has a Doctor class that uses Forceps or something equally as creepy.

I’d like to have it out by the end of January. February at the latest. But we’ll see how things pan out.

Posted in 4e D&D, Advice/Tools, Dungeons and Dragons

Tags: 4e class creator, d&d, vb .net

If you’re looking for a larger version of the image above, click here.

Combat for Deadshed has gone through a few iterations. Originally, it was to be completely automated, with your choices beforehand (weapons and equipment, number of characters, etc) making the difference. This didn’t change until I was hit with a fever that required more X-Com.

I then briefly toyed around with something that can only be described as Fallout with zombies. As cool as it sounds on the surface, I wasn’t happy with it, mainly because it would involve a lot of coding for AI, collision detection and line-of-sight (*shudder*), and I just wasn’t prepared to do all of that, given the multi-faceted nature of the game.

With the help of the always awesome David Kidd, I’ve settled on the above – a melding of JRPG and Armageddon Empires. And probably a little 4e D&D.

Continue reading ‘Quick look at Deadshed’s combat’

Posted in Deadshed

Tags: Deadshed, Game design, vb .net, Zombies

Been in a bit of a tool-posting mood these past few weeks. This one’s back from my days editing Kotaku Australia, but I thought I should mirror it on my personal site.

Trackwork is an initiative tracker for D&D. It’s built with 3.5e in mind, but it can manage 4e, if you don’t mind that it only tracks AC defense. Here’s a list of specific features, taken from the original Kotaku AU post:

• Tracks health, armour and initiative of multiple opponents
• Automated initiative step-through
• Can import data from PCGen PCG files
• Save fights in progress and restore them later
• Mass-add combatants
• Mass-roll Listen and Spot checks, including skill and stat bonuses

I also just found a nasty bug: Trackwork autosaves fights to “c:\fight.twf”. If you don’t have permission to write to the root of C:\, it’ll throw an error (that can be bypassed without crashing the program). I’ll see if I can fix it, and update the program for 4e soon.

Screenshot
Download Trackwork 0.4

Posted in Advice/Tools, Dungeons and Dragons

Tags: d&d, trackwork, vb .net

As promised, here are two screenshots to show the new user interface for Deadshed. There’s even a sneak peek at the Admin UI, even though it’s still in flux.

Posted in Deadshed

Tags: Deadshed, vb .net, Zombies

What I wanted: A beta of Deadshed before the end of 2008.

What happened: Deadshed languished on my PC, ignored by eyes and coding fingers. From time to time, I’d hear a gentle, sad mewing from my hard drive. I’m assuming it was Deadshed, and not a super-tiny kitten caught between the platters.

Basically, between September-December, little was done on Deadshed. A lot more was done on the 4th Ed Power Creator (rewrite incoming), CrawlNotes and, most surprisingly – Zafehouse.

I needed to say sorry to Deadshed. And I did.

Over the Christmas break, disconnected from work and other distractions, I had a chance to give Deadshed some much-needed attention. I stared at the shopping list of features I wanted to add, glared at code that didn’t include said features, and sighed a bit. Then, I got to work.

I redesigned the interface. I added controls for base-building and action-point based combat. Gone are the six survivors, replaced by green-gilled soldiers. The town is now a quarantined city block, and the city generation code has been completely rewritten.

Survival is just one facet of the game now. You’ll have to manage the media, local government and the affected populace. Riots will break out when you mess up. I’ve added semi-realistic infection spreading code so if one building is filled with zombies, it’ll reach nearby buildings if left unattended.

It’s all so much. Too much maybe. But the more I think the scope has blown out, the more I don’t want to code Zafehouse 2. I want it to be new. I want it to be a challenge. I want it to be massively rad.

Yes, I said massively rad. And I’m cool with it.

I’m a little sad to see the survival horror aspect of the game slowly slip away. It will be retained with the action-point combat, the infection spreading and the event timeline. The important thing is, it’ll be something that isn’t Zafehouse. That’s a good thing – really.

P.S. I’ll post a picture of the new UI soon. Would love feedback.

Update: Said UI pictures can be found here.

Posted in Deadshed

Tags: d&d, Deadshed, vb .net, Zafehouse, Zombies

Just upgraded to WordPress 2.7. Pretty painless affair, and I finally made a proper backup of the site!

Which I probably should have done sooner.

Posted in General

Tags: wordpress

Update: A completely revamped version of CrawlNotes with many more features is available.

Just a tool I whipped up today to help me plan out dungeons for my 4e campaign. It’s designed to be used as your players progress through – you click on a room when they enter it and a description, list of items and list of monsters will appear at the bottom.

Adding new rooms is accomplished by clicking the “Room” button in the top-left of the window. The “Save” and “Load” buttons should be self-explanatory.

You can position and resize rooms, and there’s snap-to-grid functionality so it all looks neat.

The files are stored in human-readable XML, so you can tinker with them externally if you have to.

I’m sure it has a few quirks… I spent about half and hour debugging, but it feels robust enough.

Update #1: I’ve uploaded a new version which fixes a bug with the load code, adds a “New” button, autosave functionality, a bigger grid, size info (in feet and squares) and a few other tweaks.

Update #2: New version, 1.2. Fixed a bug with the autosave code and made a few miscellaneous tweaks. Also has a fancy icon.

Update #3: Version 1.3. No massive changes, just optimised the grid code, added a warning about the autosave and made the app icon prettier on non-black backgrounds.

CrawlNotes forum.

Posted in Advice/Tools, Dungeons and Dragons

Tags: crawlnotes, d&d, vb .net

One would not expect an online trade rag for the IEEE to contain decipherable gems of content for the average Joe. Indeed, even the above-average Joe might struggle to convince himself it deserves an RSS subscription, especially with front page features like “Your quick-and-dirty guide to the fourth fundamental circuit element”.

But this article on artificial intelligence in games is a terrific read. The title “Bots Get Smart” is a little misleading – sure, it starts off talking about computer-controlled opponents in first-person shooters, but manages to segue into AI storytelling. The latter topic is what I will focus on.

I could spend a paragraph or two breaking it down, but the article does a good job of that already. Cue a mammoth cut-and-paste:

PaSSAGE uses the same game engine as Neverwinter Nights, a fantasy adventure set in medieval times, produced by BioWare of Edmonton. With PaSSAGE, scriptwriters determine only the most general arc to the story and provide a library of possible encounters the player’s character may have. The computer studies the player as he or she progresses and cues in the kinds of experiences that are most desired. For instance, if you like fighting, the game will provide ample opportunities for combat. If you prefer to amass riches, the game will conjure up ways for you to be rewarded for your actions. The software is able to make the sequence of events globally consistent by maintaining a history of the virtual world’s changing state and modifying the player’s future encounters appropriately. The game will therefore always appear to make sense, even though it unfolds quite differently for different people—or even for the same person as his moods and tastes change.

Neverwinter Nights appears a popular choice of tech among academics, be they teaching the fine points of journalism or building an MMO so realistic one cannot make armour without assembling the 50-odd components required for its construction. I’m guessing it’s because the Aurora toolset is so powerful and NWN can run smoothly on most PCs.

Continue reading ‘Is an AI-controlled narrative really beneficial to players?’

Posted in Game design

Tags: ai, mmo, neverwinter nights