Armageddon Player Tools and Utilities

[James de Monet]

(I moved these posts around a little, to put all the links at the top!)  Main link:

   The Armageddon Tools Page

Okay! I have gotten approval from staff to publish the link to the website where I uploaded all my Armageddon utilities/tools.  I think some of these might be really useful to people. Here is a short rundown of the stuff that's on the site, in case you, like me, don't really click on links unless you know they lead to something that interests you:

New Player Tutorial
This is an interactive video tutorial that I made to help acclimate new players both to the specifics of Armageddon and the Zalanthan environment, and to the MUDs in general.  It is still under (semi) active development, and has some issues, but staff have said they would check it out, so if you guys also want to try it and leave your feedback here, it would be appreciated!

sDesc Generator
This is exactly what it sounds like. It's a short description generator with a bit less of the "random" that most have. It allows you to set certain things about your char, and then generate descriptions based on those concrete properties, mixed with other random ones. It also allows you to generate multiple descriptions at a time, so you can get some ideas to mix and match from.
(Also, a big thanks to the people who contributed to FW's Zalanthan Color Chart thread, from which I borrowed heavily for descriptive words!)

Limited Char Text Editor
This is a web-based (ASP .NET) version of the text editor below, which allows you to edit text without installing or running it on your computer. It works a tiny bit differently than the one above, but I think it should still get the job done.

Enviro Tracker Clock
This is a graphical Armageddon game time clock, which can be set to run with different image modes, for a little more thematic feeling time system. Also, based on RGS's constant reminders, I included a feature which allows you to have the clock tell you when your timed eligibility to vote on MUD ranking sites renews.


Visual Status Panel
This is a graphical Armageddon health/status paenl, which can be set to run with different image modes, for a little more thematic feeling info system. Also includes the clock and voting reminders, as well as a clan pay timer.  I will eventually make a page for it on the tools website when it is complete, but for now, you can access it here:
http://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,49750.0.html

Log Item Indexer
This is a utility that will crawl through your log folder and try to extract the descriptions of all the items you've ever seen in game. As it says on the page, the idea here is not to make your next character a master merchant overnight, but just to help you plan item sets for your characters, and help us get more use out of the crazy tons of items that already exist in game that get forgotten about. It includes some helpful features like color, type, and price categorization.

MUSHclient Transparency
This is just a quick tutorial to walk you through adding window transparency to MUSHclient, in case you want to use the Large image setting of the Enviro Tracker clock as a background to your MUD window.



Finally, just a quick note, for the utilities that require install, your antivirus software may tell you that the program is suspicious. The reason for this is just because the publisher (ie Me) is not recognized.  Don't forget there is more detail about each tool on its individual page, including instructions!

Main link again:

   The Armageddon Tools Page

Enjoy!



And again, just to maintain visibility, since I'm posting a ton of stuff right now:

   Armageddon Fiction

   Animated Arm Banner Gif



Edited to rearrange post order, and put the important info at the top of the thread.

[James de Monet]

In the interest of collecting some of the other cool tools that people have posted over the years:

In this thread, people have posted a number of different game world clocks that track the hour on Zalanthas.

Gimf's character generator and FuSoYa's....something (may not be working)

Case's character generator

Moe's Zalanthas Time Calculator

137 (and other)'s MUSHclient Scripts / Utils

IAJO's Char Creation (Ht/Wt, etc) Tools

What other stuff am I missing?

[LauraMars]

I'm going to get so much use out of this text editor - thank you!

[Nyr]

Removed one of those links from your list there.  We'd removed it from our website for the same reason several weeks back.  If you have questions, let us know via request.

[Bogre]

Cool, text editor!

[Barsook]

Thanks for the awesome text editor, James.  But is it Mac and Linux friendly (without WINE)?

[slvrmoontiger]

Thanks for the awesome text editor, James.  But is it Mac and Linux friendly (without WINE)?

I tried downloading hoping against hope that it would be linux compatible like a nice java app... But alas it is a .exe file.

[Bushranger]

I've used Daklyn's Character Descriptors just about every time I've made a character since the late 90's. It went dark about 2002 but thanks to the wayback machine it is still accessible!

The chargen tips and in game flavor pages are useful as well.

[James de Monet]

Thanks for the awesome text editor, James.  But is it Mac and Linux friendly (without WINE)?

No, sorry. It's a Windows Forms application, so it will probably require Mono or Wine (but should theoretically work with one or the other).

I toyed around with converting one of the other tools I wrote (the sDesc generator) to ASP .NET, so I could run it as a web app, but precompiling seems to be unavailable, and I think I only have FTP access to my host, so installing could be tricky.  If I could figure that out, I'm sure I could port this as well.

[James de Monet]

I uploaded a new version of the text editor, with a fix for the button movement issue when resizing the form.

[James de Monet]

(I moved these posts around a little, to put all the links at the top!)

Limited Character Line Text Editor
(For writing IG bios, mdescs, rumor boards, and books!)

Since several people expressed interest in one, I decided to write a limited char line text editor.

It can be found -here-.


It isn't perfect.  Still not perfect, but I uploaded a new version with the button problem FIXED.

It should correctly insert line breaks if you are simply typing in it, and you will see that you can adjust the length of the line, as well as the length of the page if you wish to enter more than one ascii "page" at once.  It also has the tilde (~) as a disallowed character so that you will not accidentally put one in the middle of your text, as that will close the IG editor.

Finally, copying and pasting into the form, or editing in the middle of an existing line is not terribly functional.  The program has trouble tracking which line breaks are the user's, and which it's own.  What I have done is put two buttons at the bottom of the form.  One will manually edit your entire text to have no user line breaks whatsoever.  The other will keep line breaks that are in pairs, or followed by an indentation of at least three spaces.  Any others will be overwritten in the mass format.  I will probably try to post a new version tomorrow without the errors.  Let me know if you have any questions or comments.  Otherwise, hope it works for you!


P.S.  Depending on your telnet client, copying from the program and pasting into your client may result in empty carriage returns being removed.  Not much I can do about that.


Pasted text from the website, and the same text after formatting with line breaks.




Edited to rearrange post order, and put the important info at the top of the thread.

[valeria]

Awesome!  If you'd like a word list for your sdesc generator, let me know.  I tend to unload all the ones I've seen into an excel file for when I can't come up with ideas on my own.  At this point it has 805 unique descriptors.

[James de Monet]

Awesome!  If you'd like a word list for your sdesc generator, let me know.  I tend to unload all the ones I've seen into an excel file for when I can't come up with ideas on my own.  At this point it has 805 unique descriptors.

Absolutely I would!

This sDesc generator can theoretically do somewhere in the realm of 91 million unique sDescs, but you would be amazed how much you can add to that number with just one new adjective!

(P.S. I purposely removed all animal colors from my color lists. I didn't want "the beetle-haired man" to have an accident because of an adjective he got from me!)

[CodeMaster]

I "played" your Allanak tutorial and it was ultra cool.  Good idea making it interactive.

Maybe threshold your generated sdescs at 35 characters?

[FantasyWriter]

The walk through was awesome.
I loved the interactive nature of it.

[James de Monet]

Maybe threshold your generated sdescs at 35 characters?

Heh, yeah, I thought about that, but the way it's set up right now, it would have to basically generate an sDesc, determine it was too long, then generate a new second term blind, check again, ad infinitum. Maybe I can set it up to create a subset of the possible second-term adjectives from only terms that will keep the full sDesc under 35 chars.  That would be way more reliable, and probably not that hard.

[Case]

Wow my character generator is zany lol. I could code it so much better now.

Cool stuff James de Monet

[a french mans shirt]

seventhsanctum.com

For when you're too lazy to come up with something yourself! Got something for everybody, even dwarves.

[Molten Heart]

If only there were some tool that would show the weather of the outdoor location surrounding where I'm logged out at.  Impossible, I know.  *Le Sigh*

[Barzalene]

I thought this was going to be a thread about tools used in game. I was not prepared for how amazing this is. I am blown away by how freaking wonderful this is. You are wonderful.

[James de Monet]

I thought this was going to be a thread about tools used in game. I was not prepared for how amazing this is. I am blown away by how freaking wonderful this is. You are wonderful.

Heh, thanks!  Salient point about the thread title, though.  Hopefully if I change it here, it will stick.

[ShaLeah]

Awesome.

I'd like to see less eyes in the sdesc generator. I happen to dislike eyed descriptions and will do so until they stop that whole 'the headless body of the blah blah blahtety blah blah eyed man is here", since you can't see that without the head. Or that whole how can you see their eyes when they're passed out thing. I digress.

The tutorial is awesome. Might even show it to #4 so he can sneak peeks at it on the downlow.

[James de Monet]

I'd like to see less eyes in the sdesc generator.

For just such a preference, I put a selection option in each drop down box that says "Do Not Use".  If you select that option for a trait you don't want to see, like eye color (currently only colors are used to describe eyes - hair has styles and skin is somewhat referenced by overall appearance), none will show up!

[Beethoven]

Isn't it just as bad to have the headless body of the blah-haired man?

[Maker]

Never understood why it doesn't just say "a decapitated body," or some such.  If they feel the need for more descriptors, they can pull from height and weight stats to generate something generic, such as: "the decapitated body of a tall, thin figure."(actually not sure what the best word to use there would be, as you probably can't tell half-elf from elf from human on the body alone).