Hey Guys!
Over the next few months / year or two, I'm going to be building some software that will aide GMing greatly (hopefully).
I was going to have a World Generator, which generates settlements, areas, paths etc and sticks them on a map. It probably won't generate cultures and world backstories so much, at least not for a while.
It also will have PC/NPC generators, quest generators (that don't suck... hopefully).
I'd like it to have encounter builders, and perhaps something similar to the Radiant system shown in Skyrim, but less repetitive.
Randomness is kinda key in my mind, so I'd like to generate worlds and encounters that are randomly generated (within parameters), so things don't get stale.
I'm nowhere near finished with the designs, but I've got a fairly solid settlement generator down.
Now for the questions:
Would you prefer a web-app, or a desktop download?
I'd like the tool to be useful for players as well as GMs, so on top of character builder, item builder etc I could add an online chat/voip/webcam conference thing to allow you to play online, sharing maps and items.
One idea I had (mostly because what I've done so far is in Java (can't complain about working on all platforms!)) is that, if a GM were to generate an encounter with treasure hoard and the pc's beat the encounter, the gm can *send* the items to the players, so only one copy exists etc. It depends on if playing over the internet is a thing you guys would like to see.
Because one of my lecturers is also into RPing, this gets to be my final year project for university! However, this does mean that I cant accept help from the community, nor make it open source.
On the topic of open-source, if this turned out to be a high-quality tool you use all the time, would you rather buy it once, get it free and help me live with donations, or have a subscription service? I figure subscription would be more useful if the system had Gaming Over IP (GOIP). Here's to hoping I just coined a term.
Post your thoughts, lemme know if you think it's a good or terrible idea, ideas and suggestions are, of course, welcome.
I prefer downloads. That way I can always have access to it.
Java is not a bad idea, but if you wanted it up and running faster I would recommend C# to build it.
A web app would be very mobile, but would require work on the interface and resource management, A desktop program has more flexibility and could allow user created maps to be imported faster.
A client-server system is easy to setup in C#,
DM runs server program and players connect with client programs.
That kind of setup is what I was thinking.
Don't need to worry about which language, I've already got several basics (server/client, passing objects between them) down in Java.
One thing I wrote years ago for my Amiga computer kept track of how long the adventure had gone on, moon rise and set, and sun rise and set. I would like such ability added into any GM program i use these days. The rise and set times could be configurable to take into account for local game world settings.
(typed and posted via my asus tf300t. yeah.)