The Unseen Servant forums

I'm on a game specific board and we have a sub-forum called "Software Solutions". The idea is that we talk about game related software, and a lot of us that are writing code share insight, github.com repositories, etc. That board is game specific though, and I wanted to ask if you thought a sub-forum like that would help here? Especially since the members here have diverse interests.

For example, I'm writing code that fits just one game. However, anyone else could read the code and modify things to fit their game. It's a double win since they'll likely find (and maybe help fix) bugs in the original code.

For example, I put up some proof of concept web code to create basic NPCs for a 2d6 Sci-Fi game. The code is written in Go (source on GitHub) and hosted on Google App Engine. Someone else could take what's there and port it to SWN, or something else. It wouldn't take much to generate up an adventuring party if that was your druthers.

Sounds cool. Can you post a link to the github source?

Certainly! Go is a C-ish compiled language with Objects. Some of the people involved in creating Go are also the ones who brought us C, Unix, and all those fun toys. You can get Go free and compile/run the code for your own machine. If anyone is interested in participating check out the "Issues" tab; a few are marked "Good First Issue". For example, I have some tests but could use more. I could also use Beta testers to poke holes in my great theories.

I set up go, downloaded your source and tried to compile. I got this error and I'm a little lost

ToniXX wrote:I set up go, downloaded your source and tried to compile. I got this error and I'm a little lost

Code: Select all

main.go:17:2: cannot find package "github.com/makhidkarun/crewgen/pkg/person" in any of:
        C:\Go\src\github.com\makhidkarun\crewgen\pkg\person (from $GOROOT)
        C:\Users\jivem\go\src\github.com\makhidkarun\crewgen\pkg\person (from $GOPATH)

Have you looked at "Setting environment variables under Windows" on the Go Documents Install page? There's a "Test your installation" section right under that. I tested a non-Go set up user and got the same error.

On my "normal" user I just downloaded the zipfile, extracted it, changed into that directory, and ran:
In a minute or so I had a "crewgen-master" binary. Running that starts a webserver on "localhost:8080". Let me know how I can help! Except, of course, for Windows. I'm not very good at that.

ToniXX wrote:I set up go, downloaded your source and tried to compile. I got this error and I'm a little lost

Code: Select all

main.go:17:2: cannot find package "github.com/makhidkarun/crewgen/pkg/person" in any of:
        C:\Go\src\github.com\makhidkarun\crewgen\pkg\person (from $GOROOT)
        C:\Users\jivem\go\src\github.com\makhidkarun\crewgen\pkg\person (from $GOPATH)

Was this able to be resolved? Anything I can do to help?

Leitz wrote:Was this able to be resolved? Anything I can do to help?

No. It seems that the path is incorrect and I haven't had time to mess with it.

Got some input from IRC. Is your main.go:
Go is pretty picky about where the repositories are. The rest of the repo should be relative to that.

Leitz wrote:Got some input from IRC. Is your main.go:

Code: Select all

C:\Users\jivem\go\src\github.com\makhidkarun\crewgen\main.go

Go is pretty picky about where the repositories are. The rest of the repo should be relative to that.

No, it's not. Let me mess with it a bit and I'll post back here.

If I had done it as a right package you could just "go get <blah>" and it would work. Sadly, I'm not that good. Currently working on some Ruby code, though.

For the record, I'm also converting this to Ruby and Sinatra. Go is great but Ruby is more fun, it inspires me to code more. Since I have a lot to learn, coding more is the way to go. Go. Hehe...

Of course, my wife says I "waffle" on decisions; often daily, sometimes hourly. I prefer to think of it as "mental flexibility".

Saw a DriveThru advertisement for adventure seeds, and it gave several locations. One was a bar, which prompted me to consider that a bar needs people. Took some of the starship code and started a simple "people in the bar" web thing-y. Here's a sample run:
Yes, it's in Ruby and geared towards Classic Traveller. If you can spell, you can probably learn enough Ruby to modify it for your genre and game.

If you can do a Docker container?

Okay, taking a few steps backwards. I've gutted the web portion of FTLTools, and am converting it to a Ruby based CLI program. Mostly because I love Ruby.

The Gem: https://rubygems.org/gems/ftl_tools

The gem requires Ruby to be installed, and then provides "chargen" and "roll_dice". Should be pretty simple to use.

The Code: https://github.com/makhidkarun/ftl_tool ... pendencies

The code is the current development branch. While it does much less than the original, it requires much less and opens things up a lot more. The skills and such are now just text files, so someone could read through the code and fairly easily port it to their game system and genre of choice. If you know most any semi-modern programming language you should be able to read Ruby with no issues.

Let me know if you have any questions.

I have a plan, if anyone is interested. I really like to code in Ruby, and I enjoy helping others learn. Us self-taught coders often stumble, as we try to move from book-learning to actual projects.

That's what we're going to tackle. You need to be able to program in some language. Pretty much anything that has control flow and computation; it teaches you to think programatically. You need to have some Ruby under your belt; how to install it, save files, run programs, etc. See the resource list below. Some syntax practice in irb, and a willingness to forge ahead, even if you crash. Coding is like adventuring, early on you get the snot beat out of you, doing every little thing. As you go, though, it gets easier.

The project will last for 90 days. I have a character generator project already going, and we'll work with Ruby, git (version control), rspec (testing), and teamwork. You'll fork the code and mess with it. Things will blow up. By the end, though, you should be able to bend the code to your will, and you will be able to generate characters as you like.

The Project

Resources for learning Ruby
Learn Ruby the Hard Way
CodeAcademy
Programming Ruby

Let me know if you're interested. There's no cost, but it will take some effort on your part. If you're willing to do the work, I'm pretty sure it will be worth your time.

Are there any programs we'd recognize that are written in Ruby?

I currently use HeroLab and Combat Manager.

I wasn't already so over-committed with other projects, I'd be all over this. Sadly, I just don't have the time right now.

cybersavant wrote:Are there any programs we'd recognize that are written in Ruby?

I currently use HeroLab and Combat Manager.

More people have heard of "Ruby on Rails", which is a fairly common web framework. Ruby by itself is a niche language; comparable to Python and Perl. There are a lot of Perl and Smalltalk-isms, for those familiar with those two languages. Two things that set Ruby apart are its strong Object Orientation and ease of use.

For example, I have a library that produces a character's name. The data files with the names, are based on the culture of the character.
"options" is a Hash (Python -> dict, PHP -> associative array), a data structure that uses keys to index values. Order does not matter, searches are by key. The options hash has an optional key, 'culture', that you can set a character's home culture to. The value is a string, and is used to find the right file. For example, I wrote this for Traveller, and the default culture is 'humaniti'. However, in tibbus' "Athens Has Fallen" game, we could add greek, minoan, latin, etc. A 5e game could add dwarf, elf, gnome, or whatever.

Ruby is very object oriented, and the Hash itself is an object. That means it has methods, like "key?" (checks to see if the hash has a ket that matches 'culture'). There is an array (also an object) called CULTURES (lists allowed cultures, i.e. ones we have data files for), and "include?" checks to see if the CULTURES array includes the value in options['culture']).

The goal is to help coders learn how to participate in software projects. The target audience is someone who knows how to code a little, but hasn't yet broken into the "shared project" space. The code we're working on generates characters, and is set up to be modified. You could replicate some of the Hero Lab stuff, if you wanted, and probably start working on handling combats, too. You could take the processes and convert them into some other language, as well, and then build on it as you like.

dmw71 wrote:I wasn't already so over-committed with other projects, I'd be all over this. Sadly, I just don't have the time right now.

Yeah, I know that feeling. I'll be drafting the talking points today, and putting it up in the repo. Each learning iteration goes for 90 days, and each week will have a focus topic. Likely to start early to mid April, so if you have anything wrapping up soon...