G'day everyone!

I actually haven't posted on here for a while, I need to get better at that...

Anyhow, I started working on a collection of programs the other day that I thought would be useful for writers. I'll get right to it and explain some features I was thinking.

First there would be an essence generator. For those of you who have no idea how to code and have no desire to, this could come in handy. You enter your information into fields and the program will write it into a file using the X+ syntax.

Second there would be even more generators! Name, world, and place, click the generate button and a random (whatever you chose above) will be generated.

Oh and also a character generator, input the info about your character and it will create a file with all the info formatted nice and neatly or you can have the computer generate a random character. (I did already start work on this part... link.)

Finally a builtin text editor so you can have that on the go too!

I'm also planning on adding project files so you can have essence, character, and place files all linked.

This program would be compatible with Windows, Linux, and (if I have to ) Mac. It would also come in install and portable versions.

So, what do you all think? Good idea/Bad? Features you'd like to see added?

Thanks and God bless!

Yes. You will have to do a mac version. I apologize.

Huh, your X+ generator thing sounds interesting.... I'm not quite exactly certain how you'd make it work.

This looks awesome, Sir Iarr. What sort of name generator are you talking about? Real earth names, or made up names?

No problem, I'll just have to get my hands on my father's mac testing machine.

My thinking behind the generator would be to use user inputs, for example:
Options:
Create New Essence File
--- Please enter the name for your parent title: <input here>
----- Create Child Attributes Now? Yes/No: Yes
------- Please enter the name of this child title: <input here>

So on and so forth. It's more advanced then that but I'm not sure how to convert coding into HRT.

Thanks! As far as name generator goes, I was thinking it would include both that you just mentioned and then you could set custom generation settings (i.e. Only generate male, fantasy names).

I'm open to any suggestions. I'm making this to be useful so I can't come up with all the ideas (or tell myself when I have a bad one).

Hm, OK. That makes more sense than what I was thinking. (What is HRT?)

Awesome.

What sort of information about characters and places and such would be generated by the random generator?

Sorry for the lack of response, life's been busy.

OK, what is it that you were thinking?

Sorry, HRT: Human Readable Text.

Hmm... Good question. For characters I've found several different character sheets and mixed what I think are the good parts of each. So it will include basic stuff (name, age, gender, hair color, etc.) and also more advanced stuff (family, friends, birth place, death place (if applies), location of home, etc.).

As for places, that would include things like name, a description of the surroundings, people living there (if any), etc.

Because of how advanced it is, I've thought about adding a basic generator as well. I'm hoping once I get the basic foundation, people will start putting in their ideashint hint and we can make it something everyone finds useful.

I hope that makes sense, as it is I'm not that great with explaining things and it being a tad bit advanced doesn't help any. I made a smaller (working but buggy) version of it a few weeks ago so I'll try and dig that up and post it up here.

I started working on the essence generator and while it's giving me a bit of trouble, I'm hoping to iron out the bumps and get alpha version up for people to see what I'm aiming for.

Alright, I'll wrap things up but before I do, if anyone is interested in helping out with this project, send me a PM. Right now I'm using Python, HTML, PHP and a little bit of MySQL, and also a little bit of XML. I don't expect anyone to be interested but I thought I'd at least throw that out there.

It's OK. I have been busy too.

I can't exactly remember... I think I was trying to figure how the fields would work. * grins *

Right, OK.

Cool. I don't think I've seen character generators that included that much detail before. It'll be awesome.

Are you going to be writing all of the possible answers to these fields in the random generator yourself?

I see.


Yup! That's the hope start something new and hopefully useful as well.

As for all writing in all the possible answers, yes and no. I'll be writing down all the possible names, hair colors, etc. and the computer will randomize everything. For example:

names = ["David","Julie","Anna","Samuel"],
hcolor = ["blonde","brown","red"]

So basically everything above is saying what possible names and hair colors there could be then the computer says: "Take one random name and one random hair color (and on random age and one random...)"

So then there are lots and lots of possibilities.

I hope that made some sense.

As I was thinking on this, I had a bit of an idea. I'm planning to add a function where users can submit characters into the database as well. Seems like it could be a cool feature. I'd probably have to make some sort of text filter the make sure everything was valid.

Alright, I won't continue to be boring.

Yes, that makes sense. I was wondering about the more detailed areas of the generator, however, if you decide to include them--like in the places generator you mentioned having a description of the surroundings. Would that be a list of features, kindof like a person generator? Like: 'Landscape: flat, Weather in Winter: stormy and cold, Weather in Summer: droughts', and stuff like that. Or would it be an actual description, picked out of a list of descriptions that the random picker has to choose from?

I like that idea. Maybe they could submit other things too.. like, slight variations of hair color and stuff like that.

You're awesome.

Oh I see... I'm not exactly sure but I was kind of thinking both, for example:

Landscape: flat

Seasons:
Winter: stormy and cold
Summer: droughts

(and then) Description:
The Land of Opposite Seasons is known for it's harsh stormy winters and it's dry desert like landscape during the summer. While many believe this to be "No-Man's" land the fierce looking Nomadic tribes of Cush dwell in the many caves that dot the flat, clear landscape. Sometimes they even bring about myths due to the fact that they seem to rise right out from the ground when leaving their caves to hunt in the cool of night.


That's a great idea! The main issue that I see with it is that the computer will automatically generate characters from the database at this current time. However, I think it would be easy enough to reprogram it to accept and use user changes.



What! I'm not making it boring enough?! Guess I'll have to start posting snippets of code... (kidding )

Also FYI, an updated version of the Character Generator will be released soon. I'm taking a flight to San Antonio, Texas so hopefully I'll be able to get the latest version finished on the 8 hour flight. Then I hope to focus more on the essence generator.

I know it's been a while since I've updated this thread, things have been kind of busy and I wasn't able to work on this program until about a month ago.

I redesigned the layout so it looks a lot nicer now. The program will open up as a document editor so you can write your novel/book in it if you like. It also includes a "Tools" menu where you can generate characters, locations, essence maps, etc.

I also rebuilt the generator to be better although, the first test returned the following, I guess it still needs some tweaking.



I hope to release a working version late next week but we'll see what happens. I now have a Mac to work with so for all Mac users out there, I'll have some builds for you too!

As always, if anyone has comments, suggestions, or feature ideas, I'd love to hear them!

Last but not least, some screenshots.

Sweet! I wish I had the coding know-how/time to build useful programs like this.

So cool!

Thanks DoodleWriter! Programming can be fun but you're right, it does take time.

I have released version 0.1 of the program, if anyone's interested, you can download it here. I apologize Mac users, I just wasn't able to get a build up for you today but I'll try to have one out by next Tuesday.

Some notes on this release:

Because I completely redid the program, this version doesn't really add many features (besides an awesome interface! XD). Essence mapping is not currently a thing, character gens may turn out cheesy, etc.

So, some goals for 0.2 are:

Clean up the character generator.
Add essence mapping.
Save the project folder set.
Add font settings, color settings, etc. to text editor.
Add Microsoft Word document compatibility.

And my hopes for 0.3:

Add cloud functionality.

If you end up downloading this program, please let me know what you think. I would like to see this program be useful not packed with features no one would ever use.

Thanks!

A Mac build has been released, (link) it's fully working but like the Windows version is lacking in features.

It should also be noted, I found several bugs that prevent use of the generators in the Windows release and will update this afternoon with a fix.