MakeChar FAQ 1.4 (21 January 2003)

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Q1: WHAT IS MAKECHAR?

Makechar is a character creation assistance program for the GURPS role-playing game. The intent was to allow players to easily play around with characters while they were creating them, keep track of all the bookwork automatically, and provide relatively nice printouts. It is *NOT* intended to replace the GURPS printed books and I have been adamant about leaving out big blocks of text from the books despite numerous requests for such things (usually dealing with descriptions of spells and powers).

Makechar creates characters for the 3rd edition of GURPS.

MakeChar started as a rewrite of a simple little program my friend Bob Meyer wrote called Cre8Char. It handled GURPS Man-To-Man characters well but wasn't expandable at all. I got the idea of putting the data into files external to the program itself to make it expandable.

Over time it grew tremendously and it now handles almost all aspects of GURPS characters: attributes, spells, skills, advantages, disadvantages, quirks, and equipment.

I have Steve Jackson Games official blessing to distribute it; see the copyright statements in the .DTA files.

Q2: WHEN'S THE NEXT RELEASE?

I only work on the program now when I find something wrong or to tweak one of the data files. I am using it as a test bed for some stuff for the forthcoming Java MakeChar application, though. Thus the recent updates to generate XHTML as output.

Q3: HOW DO I WRITE NEW DATA AND/OR GENRE FILES?

Your best bet is to look at some of the existing files, get confused, read MAKECHAR.DOC, get more confused, go back to the existing files, and repeat a few more times. Some time in there it will sink in and you'll smack yourself on the forehead for not understanding the first time.

Ok, so it's not too easy. That's why I am working on GDL (see below). You are best off finding a data file that is close to what you want and modifying it.

Q4: IS THERE A VERSION FOR WINDOWS '95, MACINTOSH, and ETC.?

MakeChar runs fine on DOS, every version of Windows that I have tried, and under OS/2 (Warp and 2.1).

Others have reported it works fine under various Windows/DOS emulators on other platforms.

Q5: HOW DO I PRINT A CHARACTER?

Use the print option from inside the program. This will generate an HTML file named "fist8charsofyourcharactersname.HTM" in the same directory as the character. Use your favorite browser that supports XHTML (Firefox, Mozilla, NetScape 7.x, and Internet Explorer 6.X all work fine) to view the file and you can print it from there.

Q6: WHERE ARE ALL THE DATA FILES?

I gave up long ago keeping track of all the data files. I don't maintain any but the basic ones and the TL3/TL4 ones for the campaigns I run myself. Check out think.com and io.com for lots and lots more. Please contact the author of any file if there are problems with it. I do updates of the ones I maintain when someone reports something or I notice something but the others are up to their authors to correct.

Some locations that have (or at one time had) data files:

• ftp://ftp.io.com/GURPSnet/Programs/DOS/dta-gen
• http://www.io.com/sjgames/gurps/utilities/
• http://www.nd.edu/~dfrohlic/makechar_files/makechar.html
• HTTP://QLINK.QUEENSU.CA/~3OB2
• http://home.earthlink.net/~salvius/mcdta.htm

Q7: CAN I GET THE SOURCE CODE?

No, you can't have it. The IPL agreement I have with IBM actually gives them the rights to the program but the IPL guys said that distributing it for free is no problem. SJG of course has the rights to all the GURPS stuff. Between the two of them handing out the source would be a Bad Idea.

MakeChar is written in Modula-2, specifically in TopSpeed Modula-2 3.1. Unfortunately, I used the TopSpeed library heavily so the code is tied quite closely to the PC hardware. I know that was a mistake now but at the time it was easiest. This will make porting MakeChar to another OS virtually impossible as it now stands.

The initial program design was very slick and it was easy to do. However, the design was not extendable very easily and the parts added on have stretched the design to the point of breaking.

Q8: I'M WRITING A PROGRAM LIKE MAKECHAR AND NEED HELP.

You bet you do! Go see your psychiatrist quick! :-) It took a long, long time to get parts of MakeChar right and it won't be any easier now! This is not something that you're going to whip out in a couple of weeks of fiddling around. GURPS is a complicated game system and was not designed for ease of writing programs to support it. The toughest stuff is defaults and prerequisites.

Q9: THERE IS NO Q9.

There used to be but I got rid of it.

Q10: ANY KNOWN PROBLEMS?

Too many. Some of the problems are really just unfinished expansions, though.

1. TLs don't work. Actually, the code in in there but it is disabled because it didn't work very well.
2. Modifier menus don't work well. Yeah, I know. That was one of the last things I did and I never did much with it.
3. Running out of memory. This is because it is a DOS program written before the advent of any memory managers. The best I can suggest is to use fewer .DTA files in your genres or free up some base memory.
4. Equipment costs. If you choose certain modifiers the cost of the equipment shoots way up. This is because there is no way to tell it which way to apply the various additive and multiplicative modifiers. So it does the additive ones first and then the multipliers. So if you make your sword flame (an added cost) and then make it Very Fine (a multiplier to the cost) the program does it the wrong way.
5. Skill values are off. Sometimes by taking and removing advantages and disadvantages that modify skill values and modifying the skill value manually in between you can cause this. I consider it a "user error". ;-)
6. It has been reported that Maneuvers don't work correctly sometimes.

Q11: WHAT IS JAVA MAKECHAR?

Note! See also the Java Makechar FAQ.

Java MakeChar is what formerly was known as MakeChar II. I decided to switch from C++ to Java to increase the protability of the final product and to help me in learning Java. This should greatly speed up my development as well thanks to the class library provided with Java.

This will undoubtedly raise a whole host of new questions some of which I will try to anticipate here:

1. Will I need to run it under a WWW browser? No. I am writing it as an application instead of an applet so it will run outside a browser. It will be runnable from a browser though (with the usual limitations thereof) and I intend to put up demoes at my someday-to-be website (probably on aol.com).
2. Will it run on non-WinTel systems? Yes! That's the whole point of Java. It will run on anything that supports a Java interpreter. Eventually that should be just about everything more advanced than a 80286.
3. Will old .dta and .gen files still work? Sort of. I have developed a simpler but more powerful format in which to write data and genre files. I will provide a utility to automatically (well, at least partly) convert old data files.
4. Will old characters be readable? Probably not, though again I may provide a conversion tool.
5. What will be supported? Everything that the current MakeChar supports plus a whole lot more flexibility for using optional rules (ala those in Compendium I) and all the stuff I started but never finished (TLs, specialization, cost modifiers, etc.).
6. When will it be done? Good question! Since I have a Real Life that keeps sucking up all my spare time I can't give any firm date. I plan on working on it a little every week and should have some simple version done by this winter.

Got any comments about all this? Then email me, but be sure to put an @ in the right place.