Author Topic: If Arms Law were a computer program...  (Read 5967 times)

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Offline yammahoper

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If Arms Law were a computer program...
« on: June 12, 2008, 02:29:17 PM »
If Arms Law were a computer program, wouldn't that allow for an amazing amount of variety in the crits?

What would it take to design such a thing?  Is there a market for it?  Would ICE be willing to sell it?

Assuming there are positive answers to the above three questions, we could look at what sort of features should an Arms Law program have?  Hit locations?  Piecemeil armor?  A drink mixer?

lynn
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time... like tears in rain... Time to die.

Offline croakerdogboy

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Re: If Arms Law were a computer program...
« Reply #1 on: June 12, 2008, 02:35:01 PM »
Ohh.... you got me started.

If arms law were a computer program.... then there would be no problem with my 30 hit location scheme. With different crits for each location. Example.....


Player: I rolled a 99 yeah.
GM: With your ob - his db that is a 134. Let's see where you hit. Oh with your 26 roll for location you his left hand with your broadsword. Ok... his armor on his left hand is a chain glove... put that in and what do we get. Ok says you did 14 points with an D crit... and the crit roll is 78... severed his left index finger at the first joint. Stunned 1 round, -20 to activity, bleeding 3 hits per round.

Designing is not really a problem. I could hack out the design in a week with incentive. Problem would be the crit tables for my deal.

If we just went straight arms law I think I could do it in Delphi in about 2 weeks.
It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts.

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Offline yammahoper

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Re: If Arms Law were a computer program...
« Reply #2 on: June 12, 2008, 02:37:06 PM »
Could you design it so the characters AT and other relavent info was put in before the fight?  And with nice enemy templates so if I have 12 Orcs, they can all have chain shirts, helms and leather greaves?

Meanwhile, the War Troll is Chain in all locations with helmet?

lynn
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time... like tears in rain... Time to die.

Offline croakerdogboy

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Re: If Arms Law were a computer program...
« Reply #3 on: June 12, 2008, 02:41:34 PM »
Sure. I can see that pretty easy. Just lump the combatants into a groups. Assign the armor type by group and give the individual combatants an assigned group. And since a group could involve only one combatant, then the war troll gets his gear too.
It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts.

H.L. Mencken

Offline croakerdogboy

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Re: If Arms Law were a computer program...
« Reply #4 on: June 12, 2008, 02:45:00 PM »
The GUID would be relatively simple.... until tested. Everything seems simple until Quality Assurance gets ahold of it and wrings it for what it's worth.

Now you got my little mind running. I don't have anything going on anyway, I'm waiting on some protocol documents for an instrument. Perhaps I will rough it out.
It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts.

H.L. Mencken

Offline croakerdogboy

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Re: If Arms Law were a computer program...
« Reply #5 on: June 12, 2008, 02:53:48 PM »
Ok. I am beginning to see the design. If the current tables were in a .csv format I wouldn't even have to code any of them. Just run a lookup. You could even write out the combat to a text file for a blow by blow round by round documentation of the action. Figuring experience points would be made even simpler, if not done automatically.
It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts.

H.L. Mencken

Offline vroomfogle

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Re: If Arms Law were a computer program...
« Reply #6 on: June 12, 2008, 03:19:06 PM »
I did this 15 years ago - my laptop is indispensable when running games.   Actually I've written 3 such programs in that time, and I know of at least a few others but such programs are not distributable due to copyright issues.

Offline croakerdogboy

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Re: If Arms Law were a computer program...
« Reply #7 on: June 12, 2008, 03:21:57 PM »
Kinda what I thought. I never cared to take the time to do it only for myself. The books worked fine for what I needed.
It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts.

H.L. Mencken

Offline mocking bird

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Re: If Arms Law were a computer program...
« Reply #8 on: June 12, 2008, 03:33:13 PM »
One thing it could do is allow a better hit location method rather than relying on some die function (sum, reverse, etc).  And if the crits were in a spreadsheet or other lookup format you could indeed have more - even for the same roll - as you aren't restricted by space or page flipping.
Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it, not even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.    Buddha

Offline croakerdogboy

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Re: If Arms Law were a computer program...
« Reply #9 on: June 12, 2008, 03:41:05 PM »
True. It would allow me to see my dream of even more complex hit locations and damage done with a minimal amount of screaming by my players.

By the way Vroomfogle. Thanks for harshing on my buzz man. Here I thought I was the only guy in the last 30 years to think of how to code arms law.  ;D

One thing I always wondered, why didn't these programs get developed and bundled with the book. Kinda like Programming books with the disk inside. I also always wondered why games like Car Wars, and Battletech that were light in character development, didn't go whole hog with the rules completely interpreted by computer. I mean you could design any kind of hex map you wanted for Battletech like this (without the "Ignore that Mountain, it doesn't exist" problem). Instead Battletech went with all the first person shooter stuff, no turn based tabletop. And Car Wars did one little realtime thing on the Mac years ago.
It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts.

H.L. Mencken

Offline vroomfogle

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Re: If Arms Law were a computer program...
« Reply #10 on: June 12, 2008, 04:07:29 PM »
True. It would allow me to see my dream of even more complex hit locations and damage done with a minimal amount of screaming by my players.
By the way Vroomfogle. Thanks for harshing on my buzz man. Here I thought I was the only guy in the last 30 years to think of how to code arms law.  ;D

hehe - sorry man.   BTW here's a screenshot:


Having it a computer does open a wealth of possibilities as you have all pointed out.    You could have larger and more variety of crits, that'd be cool.   I haven't done that, just use the charts as is, but for me there are a few big advantages such as implementation of some rules that were previously forgotten about because of their general unwieldiness.  For instance, breakage is easily implemented as a random internal check with every roll.  Forget about Breakage numbers, or Breakage Factors, just have the computer check and notify you if you should make a strength roll.

But for me the real benefit of a program is the wound tracking as you can see in the screenshot.   This way the players don't have all the exact info about their wounds.  They know their arm hurts a lot but may not know if it's broken until it is examined.   They don't know exactly how long they are stunned for, or exactly how many hits they have.  I give them general status whenever they ask (i.e. you are down half hits, you are lightly stunned, etc).

My current program that you see above is actually quite simple.  I wrote it in VB and it is an amazingly small piece of code because of all the built in controls.   I set up the charts as XML data, link the wounds and character data and bind them to the datagrid and voila - VB pretty much handles the rest of it.




As an aside, there is an RMC ruleset coming out for Fantasy Grounds at some point (virtual Table top software) and it will have many of the same features for chart lookup and possibly wound tracking.

Offline croakerdogboy

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Re: If Arms Law were a computer program...
« Reply #11 on: June 12, 2008, 04:17:48 PM »
Quote
But for me the real benefit of a program is the wound tracking as you can see in the screenshot.   This way the players don't have all the exact info about their wounds.  They know their arm hurts a lot but may not know if it's broken until it is examined.

I didn't even think about that. I like to generally keep as much as I can from my players until their characters are finally over their adrenalin buzz, and then they do the see if I can move it check.

You brought up a good point. If I went ahead and made it, it could also track breakage roll, exhaustion point (forgot about them didn't you, I know I did. ;)) etc. I might just do it anyway.
It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts.

H.L. Mencken

Offline croakerdogboy

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Re: If Arms Law were a computer program...
« Reply #12 on: June 12, 2008, 04:21:57 PM »
Ok. Say one was to develop a set template program. Just basically to handle calculations and store character and enemy data. But the gist of the program was some CSV's that would have to be read by said program to actually function. But the CSV's were not included. Maybe they could only be handed out by ICE  kinda like the PDF's. Then say this program allowed for whatever CSV's that you had (Martial Arts Law, Arms Law, shudder The Armory) to be added to it as you got them. Would this program be something that should not be made?
It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts.

H.L. Mencken

Offline markc

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Re: If Arms Law were a computer program...
« Reply #13 on: June 12, 2008, 05:38:09 PM »
 I am speaking for myself as I am a volenteer mod but I think ICE might have trouble keeping the csv file from being passed around. In much the same way other software has in the past decompiled and passed from one Torrent site to another.

But I can say that if a program did exzist and it allowed for all options I would gladly pluck down my $ as IMO it would be a huge benifit to my game.

MDC
Bacon Law: A book so good all PC's need to be recreated.
Rule #0: A GM has the right to change any rule in a book to fit their game.
Role Play not Roll Play.
Use a System to tell the story do not let the system play you.

Offline yammahoper

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Re: If Arms Law were a computer program...
« Reply #14 on: June 12, 2008, 08:15:00 PM »
I love you guys.  That screen shot has my head spinning and i am grinning from ear to ear.

I'd pay up to $60 bucks for the sort of program you describe with full rule implementation and expanded hit/damage rules.

Still, I bet stopping pirating would be a pain.

lynn
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time... like tears in rain... Time to die.

Offline vroomfogle

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Re: If Arms Law were a computer program...
« Reply #15 on: June 12, 2008, 09:55:05 PM »
I am speaking for myself as I am a volenteer mod but I think ICE might have trouble keeping the csv file from being passed around. In much the same way other software has in the past decompiled and passed from one Torrent site to another.

Perhaps....but how is it any different then selling PDF files?   It seems to me that there are the same issues with selling csv or xml charts as there would be with pdf files.    Since ICE already does sell PDF files (and seem to be pleased with the results) they seem to be ok with the potential of some piracy since the PDFs don't utilize any sort of digital rights.

Offline croakerdogboy

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Re: If Arms Law were a computer program...
« Reply #16 on: June 12, 2008, 11:21:58 PM »
I can see there being a problem with piracy, but say you just have a program that does arms law. But without any definition from the books how effective would it be. They could already download the errata crit tables for SM:P from the vault. Without the background it would be information with no basis.

"Hmm says here that the bad guy is stunned two rounds and is bleeding two hits per round, he has earned one exhaustion point, and he needs to make a breakage roll for his scimitar. Huh?"
It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts.

H.L. Mencken

Offline markc

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Re: If Arms Law were a computer program...
« Reply #17 on: June 13, 2008, 01:11:17 AM »
I am speaking for myself as I am a volenteer mod but I think ICE might have trouble keeping the csv file from being passed around. In much the same way other software has in the past decompiled and passed from one Torrent site to another.

Perhaps....but how is it any different then selling PDF files?   It seems to me that there are the same issues with selling csv or xml charts as there would be with pdf files.    Since ICE already does sell PDF files (and seem to be pleased with the results) they seem to be ok with the potential of some piracy since the PDFs don't utilize any sort of digital rights.

 One way the could do it is have the program send a message to ICE every time it is started with the relevent info. But then that requires ICE to have a computer with a DB to manage it all. The DB could handel all programs for RMSS, RMC, HARP, SM, Deluxe RM/SM pack etc. But that cost $ and the tech know how to prevent some one from working around the anti-piracy.

 And a big reminder of the past. I think we all remember the problems ICE has had in the past with programs. I for one would love the program for my games. Sign me up for the Combo RMSS/SM:P/Black OPs' right now!
 [As I said I do not speek for ICE.]

 Opps I got carried away I use a custom combat system. But I think if it had the ability to adapt I would love it. Just the ability to look uup charts without having to type all that info in would be great.

Once again I am not ICE so send your E-mails to someone in the company and see if it can be done.
MDC
Bacon Law: A book so good all PC's need to be recreated.
Rule #0: A GM has the right to change any rule in a book to fit their game.
Role Play not Roll Play.
Use a System to tell the story do not let the system play you.

Offline pastaav

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Re: If Arms Law were a computer program...
« Reply #18 on: June 13, 2008, 01:47:46 AM »
One way to make sure piracy is not a problem would be to have a online service that you subscribed to...actually pay-per-user would probably be probably be more fair.

The GM would have a little free application that allow him to edit combat stats for characters and monsters. When a combat start he uploads the right characters to the server and then the server give results within the web browser as actions are initiated and submitted.

Complicated actions like character uses combat style drunken monkey, adrenal defense, parry with 60%, target target character X as snap action could be stored as "macros" so that you most of time just selects action and hits submit.

As additional benefit the online service would give ICE direct feedback about where there are RM players.
/Pa Staav

Offline Arioch

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Re: If Arms Law were a computer program...
« Reply #19 on: June 13, 2008, 03:58:11 AM »
I love you guys.  That screen shot has my head spinning and i am grinning from ear to ear.

I'd pay up to $60 bucks for the sort of program you describe with full rule implementation and expanded hit/damage rules.

Quote!
I would love to see it, too!
I suppose a magician might, he admitted, but a gentleman never could.