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Chaosium BRP Character Generator


Fergo113

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Not sure if people are aware of this little gem. :happy:

Chaosium BRP Charakter Generator 4.10 (Freeware)

Its a very handy bit of software that's been around for a while and is easy to use and easy to modify at its back end.

I use it a lot for my rpg group and its saved me a lot of time in rolling up foes for the characters to defeat.

It's main limitation is that you are limited to standard humanoid hit locations. But other than that, its a useful tool.

Does anyone know of any other BRP related character and creature generators? I know of several for CoC, but only this one that's BRP designated.

Cheers,

Fergo113

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More than just one. Mac here too :D

My PC desktop is unaware I am having an affair with a Mac Powerbook...

;)

Not exactly a character generator, but a chap who posts to the Cthulhu Rising forums recently built some rather splendid character sheets for the setting using the Adobe Acrobat Forms functionality. It calculates things like attribute modifiers, hit points, skill modifiers etc based on the stats you enter.

The only drawback is that if you only have the Adobe Acrobat Reader rather than the full version of Adobe Acrobat you will not be able to save completed forms - you will just be able to fill them in and print them off.

Anyhoo, the enhanced character sheets section is on this page:

CTHULHU RISING: Game Downloads

Those with strong web-fu (and Adobe Acrobat) should be able to extract the code that does the calculating and build their own forms.

River of Heaven - Science Fiction Roleplaying in the 28th Century

http://riverofheaven.d101games.co.uk/

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Those with strong web-fu (and Adobe Acrobat) should be able to extract the code that does the calculating and build their own forms.

In Acrobat Professional go to "Forms" -> "Edit Forms" and all the fields will become "selected". Now right-click on one of the fields (for example Damage Modifier) and select "Properties". In the dialogue that appears select the "Calculate" tab. That tab has four options - the last is "Custom Calculation Script". That's where the code is stored.

Peter Brink

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I've downloaded the Byakhee source code. I'll take a stab at doing some

reverse engineering it and porting it over to OSX/Objective C. It'll be a

good exercise in refreshing my skills. If I can get it running as is natively,

I'll look into modifications for strict BRP (including options) and perhaps

a Stormbringer only plug in.

-V

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I'll look into modifications for strict BRP (including options) and perhaps

a Stormbringer only plug in.

Excellent. I'd be keen to give it a try. From the looks of it, due to the lack of posts regarding this subject there isn't too many character/creature generators for BRP out there sadly. Either that or no one is really interested in this topic. :shocked:

Thanks V

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I've downloaded the Byakhee source code. I'll take a stab at doing some reverse engineering it and porting it over to OSX/Objective C. It'll be a good exercise in refreshing my skills. If I can get it running as is natively, I'll look into modifications for strict BRP (including options) and perhaps a Stormbringer only plug in.

-V

If you need a hand testing I'm sure I'm not the only Mac user here who'd be willing to pitch in - I'd offer to help on the coding side but alas wouldn't know where to start... :( Eighteen years since my IT post graduate course and counting, and 13 years since I last programmed in anger, and that was on a PIC micro-controller... :rolleyes:

Cheers,

Nick

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Well, don't expect a rapid turnaround ;)

Between work, home and my own C coding rust (hmm, maybe I did something

significant 10 years ago), it'll take some time. I do dabble with some

other languages, scripting or otherwise, that are similar to C, and often

browse source code to resolve issues, so I am not too far removed.

But, as always, time is a key factor. But, I've been trying to find a good

project to play with to go with my book learning of Obj-C. Something more

than "Hello World" :)

-V

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The best choice of platform for (any) BRP software would probably be Java, or possibly Mono. In an ideal world where I had the time (and skill) I would use a spreadsheet as the data source, so that the end user could easily alter the data. As it happens there are open source (and commercial) libraries for both Java and Mono that can read Excel files (and Excel files can of course be stored on any system).

I choose to use VBA in my application (see upthread) because that would speed up development and also because I, falsely as it turned out, believed that a VBA application would also work in OSX. The ease of development was of course also a factor...

Now - VBA has quite some faults and as I said, if I would do it from scratch, I'd choose Java or Mono instead.

Peter Brink

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  • 2 weeks later...

Is there any progress on this thus far?

I've perused the code, but that's about it so far. Really, I only need to use

Objective-C for the GUI. OSX can compile C++ just fine. Their might be some

Windows only functions that I'd have to circumvent, but overall it looks pretty

clean.

As far as the spreadsheet Peter would like to use as a basis for the data so the

end user can modify the data, Byakhee uses a plain text file to add in skills,

backgrounds, etc. So, the end user can easily modify the data source or add

their own, at least from what I can tell. The real art is the generation of the

haracter sheet. Again, Byakhee takes some templates (pdf I think) and fills in

the forms. There are also stock images that can be placed. Adding images is

easy as most of the common formats are supported. Making the sheet modular

is a design goal, and might be tricky. It would entail using different sections of

the sheet, and then stitching it together, resizing some sections when others

are used/not used, etc.

Java or Mono are definitely "mostly" cross-platform, but I am not a big fan.

For my money (and time), I would strip out the core engine and make the

C++ code as portable as possible, using a Make script to catch specific

platform oddities. Then, I would keep the current Windows GUI, work on a

Cocoa GUI for OSX, and perhaps Qt GUI or similar for Linux/UNIX. Reworking

the current code for OSX would be a nice start. If I can get that done,

moving to Linux/UNIX would only entail the GUI and sheet generation.

However, as I mentioned before, copious free time is not something I posses,

neither is sparse free time. However, in the next few weeks I hope to have

some external real life cruft get resolved, in which case more time may get

freed up.

-V

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I've perused the code, but that's about it so far. Really, I only need to use

Objective-C for the GUI. OSX can compile C++ just fine. Their might be some

Windows only functions that I'd have to circumvent, but overall it looks pretty

clean.

As far as the spreadsheet Peter would like to use as a basis for the data so the

end user can modify the data, Byakhee uses a plain text file to add in skills,

backgrounds, etc. So, the end user can easily modify the data source or add

their own, at least from what I can tell. The real art is the generation of the

haracter sheet. Again, Byakhee takes some templates (pdf I think) and fills in

the forms. There are also stock images that can be placed. Adding images is

easy as most of the common formats are supported. Making the sheet modular

is a design goal, and might be tricky. It would entail using different sections of

the sheet, and then stitching it together, resizing some sections when others

are used/not used, etc.

Java or Mono are definitely "mostly" cross-platform, but I am not a big fan.

For my money (and time), I would strip out the core engine and make the

C++ code as portable as possible, using a Make script to catch specific

platform oddities. Then, I would keep the current Windows GUI, work on a

Cocoa GUI for OSX, and perhaps Qt GUI or similar for Linux/UNIX. Reworking

the current code for OSX would be a nice start. If I can get that done,

moving to Linux/UNIX would only entail the GUI and sheet generation.

However, as I mentioned before, copious free time is not something I posses,

neither is sparse free time. However, in the next few weeks I hope to have

some external real life cruft get resolved, in which case more time may get

freed up.

-V

If you weren't a C++ jockey, I'd suggest RealBASIC... supposed to work across platforms quite nicely.

SDLeary

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If you weren't a C++ jockey, I'd suggest RealBASIC... supposed to work across platforms quite nicely.

SDLeary

I'm not a C++ jockey - I actually hate the language. I prefer Objective C

and C. However, no sense reinventing the wheel. Byakhee is pretty well

done, and C++ is pretty portable. If I can get it all working with C++ and

the platform specific GUIs, I might come back to it and try something else.

-V

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I'm not a C++ jockey - I actually hate the language. I prefer Objective C

and C. However, no sense reinventing the wheel. Byakhee is pretty well

done, and C++ is pretty portable. If I can get it all working with C++ and

the platform specific GUIs, I might come back to it and try something else.

-V

Vagabond, I appreciate the work, as I really, really suck at addition and subtraction, and always have the vague feeling I miscalculated when I create a character.

So, thanks!

"Men of broader intellect know that there is no sharp distinction betwixt the real and the unreal..."

- H.P. Lovecraft

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Well, don't expect a rapid turnaround ;)

Between work, home and my own C coding rust (hmm, maybe I did something

significant 10 years ago), it'll take some time. [...]

-V

Just that you're doing this, taking a stab at it so to speak is wonderful! I'm very (with a capital V) interested in a BRP generator for the (PC and MAC).

So take all the time you need. Can't get anything bad from trying.

Thanks.

"I intend to live forever, or die trying" - Groucho Marx

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  • 2 years later...

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