My Excel dB

[GhostWolf69]

So... I guess I'm not the only one. The Internet is full of people like me, I know. But I just felt like showing what I've made for MGT with my Excel-knowledge.

First of all: Copyrights... I've stolen, copied, ripped high and low for this one. From wikipedia, from the Traveller wiki at http://traveller.wikia.com/wiki/Manual_of_Style, from MGT the book, from http://www.travellermap.com etc. So the information itself is NOT written by me. Just put together in one place by me.

Second: Due to the item above; I have yet to decide wether or not I can/will distribute this. I will definetly not charge anything for it if I do distribute it. But not yet knowing the final shape of the OGL (or whatever it will be called eventually) I will wait and see.

So this is just a demo. Some screen Dumps for your comments and feed back.

I started out as I often do with creating an Excell sheet for building Characters. I usually go about this with as few formulas and rule coded in, relying on people to buy the rules to play the game and build characters, so this is NOT a Character building tool! It is however a quite decent Character Sheet, that I personally think looks nicer and cleaner that MGTs.

Character:

The only thing coded here is the World Info. You open up a drop down and select a Home World and the World Data will fill in itself.

Currently All worlds in the Spinward Marches are in here. As listed in:
Sector Data from Travellermap.com

Once I started to fiddle with that I wanted a Log sheet to keep notes about the ongoing Adventure... the result was something like this:

Adventure Log:

And since I had all the World Data... I just had to get Subsector info etc automated as well so I created something that looks like this:

SubSector Info example:

What you do on this screen is select a SubSector (only in Spinward Marches) and you will immediately get a MAP, list of Worlds, UWPs and a briefing about the Sector (Info snipped from Traveller Wiki)

You also see where that subsector is located within the sector.

Then after some fiddling about I just had to create a sheet for Automate translation of UWPs...

World Info Example:

Again, all you do is select a world from a pick list (all worlds in Spinward Marches) and the Sheet fills out itself with all the info I could find.

These Four Functions are all created on their own Excel Tab so you can easily flip between them.

What do you think?

/wolf

 

[Ommadawn]

That is amazing. I love it. :shock:

Now, if only you can distribute it...

 

[GhostWolf69]

Thank you.

We'll see...

/wolf

 

[gabonator]

Lots of detail. Looks good. Nice layout. Makes basing a character out of a "real world" in the OTU rather easy. Well done pulling in the vast wealth of the web and putting it on something that is useful for local game play.

[nitpick] With Mongoose's anagathic rules I tend to make my characters older so if more terms could be added that'd be cool. [/nitpick]

 

[Allensh]

Looks really good! Hopefully it can be made available for the fans to use...maybe Mongoose could put it up for download themselves.

Allen

 

[Xoph]

Looks great... you should totally post it somewhere. If pretty sure if you don't make any money it won't matter who you stole what from. I created a pretty much automated character sheet I'd love to interface with your db. I'll try to some screens of it. Maybe we should co-ordinate our efforts?

 

[Sturn]

Nice work. I would love to get my hands on this. It you did release it to others, it might be nice to be able to edit certain things to the user's liking. Some may have altered world data in the Spinward Marches, for example. Allegiances are different in the SM depending on when you launch your campaign.

Can the world data portion be run seperate from the character generator? I have extensively house-ruled my MGT cg rules (added medals, education, etc). Might be nice to be able to run one without opening the other?

 

[Duroon]

That's an excel spreadsheet? How much VB does it use? I would love to have something like this for my campaign.

 

[GhostWolf69]

Thanks for all the nice feedback.

Answering Some questions:

These four tabs (Character, Adventure Log, Subsector & World Info) are all in the same Excel workbook.

The Reference Tables (Sector Data) and UWP Decoder are also in the book on hidden tabs.

The whole document is roughly 6.9Mb in size.

The Document is currently Protected so that I will not screw up my formulas by mistake. All fields that Require User Input, such as skills etc. are NOT protected ofcourse.

The ONLY VB programming I did was a neat trick to make Excel be able to switch Images on user input. This was used to make the Subsector Map change when you selected a new Subsector. Every thing else is simple INDEX and CONCATENATE formulas, picking data from reference tables and puting them together depending on User Selections.

There is nothing that prevents you from simply deleting the whole Character Profile Tab in the workbook and keep the World and Subsector stuff if you are using your own. But honestly that sheet is so small it is hardly worth the hazzle. Still, you could if you want to.

You could also simply "unlock" the Fileds to enter your own UWP and World names. The references would still be picked up "Decoded" and presented in the same sheet.

For creating your own subsectors you would have to work a little though... creating image files to Define as image objects and change the VB stuff to reference them instead. Editing Reference tables to reflect your own Subsector etc.

I'm gonna write to Mat and see if he has any ideas on how to help out here (If he can find the time), cause I have no idea where to begin. I'm sure it's ok since I don't get paid and none of this stuff is hard to get by googling the web anyway... but I don't want to get into trouble.

/wolf

 

[GhostWolf69]

Can the world data portion be run seperate from the character generator?

Repeated for clarity: This is NOT a Character Generator. It is simpy a Character Sheet, to be filled in by a human using the rules in MGT. I have included NO rules what so ever to support Character, Subsector or World Creation without MGT (or other traveller version).

Basically there are only three categories of "stolen/borrowed" goods here:

1. MGTs description of UWP data. I copied their tables so that the text boxes could describe what a certain code realy means.

2. Subsector Information. I have copied the traveller wiki'sshort info on each Subsector in the SM Sector. The Traveller wiki uses these pieces with permission from various sources.

3. I have copied the Subsector Maps from www.travellermap.com. Something that also refers to a lot of different souces.

/wolf

 

[GhostWolf69]

I just PMd Mat. Keep your fingers crossed and hope he can find the time to look at this and say... something.

/wolf

 

[Duroon]

My main reason for asking about VB is that I am running Linux instead of Windows. OpenOffice can use excel spreadsheets but it falls down a bit when trying to implement VB code. If you have as little VB code as you say it just may run fine for me. It might not though.

 

[GhostWolf69]

1. MGTs description of UWP data. I copied their tables so that the text boxes could describe what a certain code realy means.

Just realized those tables and words are in the SRD... does that mean I can use them if I include a copy of the OGL?

Man I hate legal stuff... can't be bothered to untangle it myself, so if anyone out there can help me out I'd apreciate it.

/wolf

 

[GhostWolf69]

Currently trying to contact Avenger Enterprise as well... still waiting.

/wolf

 

[GhostWolf69]

In the meantime I'm entertaining the idea of including a Reference Sheet for Ships as well. What you you think?

Pick a Scout, any Scout... :wink:

/wolf

 

[Ommadawn]

In the meantime I'm entertaining the idea of including a Reference Sheet for Ships as well. What you you think?

Pick a Scout, any Scout... :wink:

/wolf

Yes please!

 

[GhostWolf69]

I'll see what I can do.

In the meantime I have not received any replies to any of my humble requests.

Not from Mat nor Avenger...

[edited for stupidity, comments retracted and I have apologized]

No matter, I'll give it a couple of more days before deciding if I should ignore them and send this baby off.

/wolf

 

[MJD]

Can you tell me exactly how you attempted to contact Avenger?

PM to me on this board? Via my email address? Via the Avenrger forum? Carrier pigeon? Cans and string?

I'm not aware of receiving anything from you. I tend to reply pretty quickly when I do receive mail, and I've not had a thing from you.

 

[GhostWolf69]

Via the Avenger site "Contact".

I'm sending you a PM here now, so we can take further discussions of this thread.

/wolf

 

[MJD]

I received nothing.

I'll check if there's a problem when I speak to the websavvy folks. I don't run the site and I have no idea how to make it work...


PM received on this board. Though the question remains - what are yoiu hoping I can help with?