Fergo113 Posted June 17, 2008 Share Posted June 17, 2008 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charles Green Posted June 17, 2008 Share Posted June 17, 2008 This will be very useful. Thanks for posting it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NickMiddleton Posted June 17, 2008 Share Posted June 17, 2008 I'm still hoping someone will do a cross-platform equivalent since I switched to a Mac... :-( Nick Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HollyKnight55 Posted June 17, 2008 Share Posted June 17, 2008 I'm still hoping someone will do a cross-platform equivalent since I switched to a Mac... :-( Nick Fellow Mac user! WOOO! Quote Blessed Be, )O( Mike )O http://web.mac.com/boghouse/iWeb "So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn't it be the other way around?" ~You've Got Mail (1998 film) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vagabond Posted June 17, 2008 Share Posted June 17, 2008 Well, if I had any spare time, I would work on it. OSX dev isn't too hard - most of the hard work is done for you. -V Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterb Posted June 17, 2008 Share Posted June 17, 2008 Well, I've made a spreadsheet that can generate NPC:s and a lot of different creatures with BRP stats. I've just updated it with new data from the BRP book. You can find the thread here. Quote Peter Brink Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ars Mysteriorum Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 Fellow Mac user! WOOO! More than just one. Mac here too Quote "Men of broader intellect know that there is no sharp distinction betwixt the real and the unreal..." - H.P. Lovecraft Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ottomancer Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 More than just one. Mac here too 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. Quote River of Heaven - Science Fiction Roleplaying in the 28th Century http://riverofheaven.d101games.co.uk/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterb Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 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. Quote Peter Brink Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SDLeary Posted June 19, 2008 Share Posted June 19, 2008 Not quite a generic BRP generator, but I just noticed on Yog that a gent has created an add in for Byakhee that brings CDA goodness to the program. Linkage below. SDLeary Pacman's WonderPage! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vagabond Posted June 23, 2008 Share Posted June 23, 2008 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fergo113 Posted June 24, 2008 Author Share Posted June 24, 2008 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ars Mysteriorum Posted June 24, 2008 Share Posted June 24, 2008 I is interested. Quote "Men of broader intellect know that there is no sharp distinction betwixt the real and the unreal..." - H.P. Lovecraft Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NickMiddleton Posted June 24, 2008 Share Posted June 24, 2008 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... Cheers, Nick Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vagabond Posted June 24, 2008 Share Posted June 24, 2008 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jarulf Posted June 26, 2008 Share Posted June 26, 2008 In a perfect world with loving deities and kind strangers, a BRP Character Generator would be truly cross-platform. I'm on Linux... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterb Posted June 26, 2008 Share Posted June 26, 2008 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. Quote Peter Brink Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ars Mysteriorum Posted July 8, 2008 Share Posted July 8, 2008 Is there any progress on this thus far? Quote "Men of broader intellect know that there is no sharp distinction betwixt the real and the unreal..." - H.P. Lovecraft Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vagabond Posted July 8, 2008 Share Posted July 8, 2008 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SDLeary Posted July 9, 2008 Share Posted July 9, 2008 Never mind... didn't read the post sdleary Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SDLeary Posted July 9, 2008 Share Posted July 9, 2008 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vagabond Posted July 9, 2008 Share Posted July 9, 2008 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ars Mysteriorum Posted July 9, 2008 Share Posted July 9, 2008 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! Quote "Men of broader intellect know that there is no sharp distinction betwixt the real and the unreal..." - H.P. Lovecraft Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dracopticon Posted July 13, 2008 Share Posted July 13, 2008 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. Quote "I intend to live forever, or die trying" - Groucho Marx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Scarecrow Posted December 28, 2010 Share Posted December 28, 2010 Hi Fergo, I've tried to search your BRP character generator but the link refer to a deutch site of merchandising!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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