PC Software

Legoman05

Alright, so I'm making a concerted effort to learn Perl for a new job, where it won't be necessary, but would certainly be nice.

I also just got a laptop, and will soon be applying it to the practice of Dungeoning and Dragoning.

The synthesis of these two facts suggests that I could learn Perl through the creation of a PC-tracking program. I've seen a couple other programs like this, but ultimately, I don't like them.

So, I ask you, the Dice and Men forum, to submit some ideas for features that would make a program really 'pop.' Some things I came up with:

• Action tracking. No more trying to cast a spell, move, sheath a weapon, pick a lock, and fire an arrow in the same turn. Pick your actions, and then it rolls all the relevant dice for you in one fell swoop, meaning that your turn takes maybe 15 seconds. Keeping things moving = good.
  
• A 'Spell Caddy' system: Easy, intuitive preparation of spells. Like, click an open slot, select the base level, and then select applicable metamagic that would put the base spell in that slot. Also, since the program keeps track of caster levels, when you click a spell to cast it, it automatically rolls everything for you. (So clicking scorching ray would give you a Ranged Touch Attack roll, a damage, roll, and a SR roll as well.)
  
• Magical weapon creation built right into the program. Select all the properties from a list, it tells you how much it costs. Also integrated with:
  
• One-click attack-rolls. Say you're taking a full attack action, and you're using a trip for your first attack, then a swing with your second. Click {ATTACK}, and it rolls everything, even the damage, for you right away. Of course, since you specified which weapon you were using, it automatically rolls elemental damage for you.

Any other ideas?

Wulf

Deja Vu? (maybe I'm off my rocker here, but I swear I've seen this exact topic and post before)

Well anyway, configurable rollers are always nice

RiemannLives

Sorry to necropost here, but I just wanted to advise caution in using software for dice rolling. Most pseudorandom algorithms are very poor at generating random output. In fact the built in random generators in most programming libraries are severaly flawed (the suggested implementation in the ANSI C specificiation terrible and most follow it blindly).

Rolling real dice is a much better way to go. Basicially, if the program is not asking you to pound on your keyboard for a minute before use to store up some entropy then it's probably not a good dice substitute.

robaal

The wonders of this new era never cease - with internet we can now have truly random number delivered directly onto our computars via http://random.org/

I know you can fairly easily integrate it into a php script.

Of course you'll need an internet connection to actually grab the numbers when running the program.

mrcheesypants

RiemannLives wrote:

Sorry to necropost here, but I just wanted to advise caution in using software for dice rolling. Most pseudorandom algorithms are very poor at generating random output. In fact the built in random generators in most programming libraries are severaly flawed (the suggested implementation in the ANSI C specificiation terrible and most follow it blindly).

Rolling real dice is a much better way to go. Basicially, if the program is not asking you to pound on your keyboard for a minute before use to store up some entropy then it's probably not a good dice substitute.

I don't see what's wrong with pseudorandom algorithms being used in dice rolls except for the time it takes. Sure it's not perfectly random but it's close enough for dice rolls.