Utilitarian Star System Generator

[coolAlias]

I wrote a straightforward no-frills application that implements most of the steps and procedures from the wonderful *World Builder's Handbook* up to Class III Survey status, with a bit of IV-P.

Download the star_gen.html file (right-click and Save As), then open the file in any browser and voila, you've got yourself a star system generator.

GitHub: https://github.com/coolAlias/star_gen

Hope you all find this useful and fun - feedback and corrections welcome!

Sample output:

 

[Enaknomolos]

I'd been hoping someone would do this! I've not had a proper play with it yet, but it looks like exactly what's needed. I think its existence really adds to the value of the book.

Any plans to do the same for the society material in the second half of the book? It would require the user to designate a mainworld, but could be nice to have too.

 

[Galadrion]

Strong agreement from here! Excellent work, CoolAlias.

 

[Limpin Legin]

Hope you all find this useful and fun

Another strong agreement here!

feedback and corrections welcome!

One question:
The World Builder's Handbook allows for 3 different Creation Methods (page 3):
#1: expanded method to work some known properties into systems.
#2: accepting existing information and developing more deetail around it.
#3. Categorisation method into standard form - ditto method #2.

For approaches #2 and #3, I cannot see a way of manually inputting "known data" into the form on the generator to create a complete and consistent structure.
Yes, I can untick the boxes hidden under the "Show More" link, but I cannot manually fill the boxes in should I have opted out of automatic generation.

Or, maybe I missed something?

 

[MasterGwydion]

Does this allow for each star in a binary or trinary system to have their own system of planets or asteroid belts?

 

[Anstett]

#1: expanded method to work some known properties into systems.
#2: accepting existing information and developing more deetail around it.

These options would make this a definite must have bit of software.

I would gladly pay/tip for that functionality.

 

[Terry Mixon]

These options would make this a definite must have bit of software.

I would gladly pay/tip for that functionality.

Ditto. And the social stuff / Starport shipyard stuff from WBH.

 

[coolAlias]

Any plans to do the same for the society material in the second half of the book? It would require the user to designate a mainworld, but could be nice to have too.

Eventually, but not for a few months at least, probably.

I was thinking the easiest way to integrate it would be to make a separate World Generator program where you could enter in the World Profile of a world that was generated from the current program and it would fill in the rest of the details.

 

[coolAlias]

Another strong agreement here!

One question:
The World Builder's Handbook allows for 3 different Creation Methods (page 3):
#1: expanded method to work some known properties into systems.
#2: accepting existing information and developing more deetail around it.
#3. Categorisation method into standard form - ditto method #2.

For approaches #2 and #3, I cannot see a way of manually inputting "known data" into the form on the generator to create a complete and consistent structure.
Yes, I can untick the boxes hidden under the "Show More" link, but I cannot manually fill the boxes in should I have opted out of automatic generation.

Or, maybe I missed something?

You did not miss anything, only #1 Expanded method is currently supported.

Maybe someday I'll support #2, but there are some challenges there.

#3 I don't have any plans to support other than you could copy the row headers into a spreadsheet and fill out the information there.

 

[coolAlias]

Does this allow for each star in a binary or trinary system to have their own system of planets or asteroid belts?

Yes. There's also an option to calculate the Baseline Number etc. for each star independently (checked by default), although it only does so if that star has at least one planet allocated to it.

 

[Terry Mixon]

Eventually, but not for a few months at least, probably.

I was thinking the easiest way to integrate it would be to make a separate World Generator program where you could enter in the World Profile of a world that was generated from the current program and it would fill in the rest of the details.

That would be great and makes sense.

 

[Yatima]

This is amazing, thanks for your hard work. Ideally, Mongoose would commission these tools and release them alongside crunch books like the WBH, Highguard, Robots etc.

A tool like this is more useful than the artwork in some of these books.

 

[Demon Samurai]

Nice work, i can see this being useful for something like Deepnight Revelation campaign when you are charting new worlds. It would of course be super useful if it allowed the input of existing stellar data & UWP enabling one to flesh out existing systems.

 

[Terry Mixon]

Nice work, i can see this being useful for something like Deepnight Revelation campaign when you are charting new worlds. It would of course be super useful if it allowed the input of existing stellar data 7 UWP enabling one to flesh out existing systems.

This.

 

[Demon Samurai]

No what would be really mint, now that Mongoose owns Traveller, would be that the Traveller 5 World Builder used the system presented in the WBH, so you could link from Traveller Map and pull up the system data. That would be bloody lovely.

 

[coolAlias]

Nice work, i can see this being useful for something like Deepnight Revelation campaign when you are charting new worlds. It would of course be super useful if it allowed the input of existing stellar data & UWP enabling one to flesh out existing systems.

That's the plan! Don't have a timeline on that yet (have some real work to do...), but I think being able to input a single UWP and generate a star system around it shouldn't be *too* difficult. I hope.

For now, I've just been clicking "Generate" until a system jumps out at me as being interesting and then manually slotting in whatever world I had in mind, either as an addition or replacing a generated world.

 

[Demon Samurai]

That's the plan! Don't have a timeline on that yet (have some real work to do...), but I think being able to input a single UWP and generate a star system around it shouldn't be *too* difficult. I hope.

For now, I've just been clicking "Generate" until a system jumps out at me as being interesting and then manually slotting in whatever world I had in mind, either as an addition or replacing a generated world.

Love it, The WBH is a work of art - i love it. It's just time consuming to use and anything that automates it or even just aspects of it would be great.

 

[coolAlias]

Love it, The WBH is a work of art - i love it. It's just time consuming to use and anything that automates it or even just aspects of it would be great.

I also really love the WBH, but there's just no way I'm going through all of that each time by hand... and thus this little tool was born.

 

[coolAlias]

Speaking of which, I'd like to re-emphasize Rule Zero from p6:

The procedures in this World Builder’s Handbook are meant as a guide to a enhance Referee’s creativity, not to enforce arbitrary procedures or results. If any roll of the dice contradicts the Referee’s vision of a system or world, the Referee is free to change the outcome, no matter how unlikely.

This 100% applies to the output of this program. I've generated a lot of systems that would be much more to my taste if a planet was just a tiny bit this way or that way, or whatever else, and if that happens to you, you should absolutely just change the result to what you like.

Now, it'd be nice if we could adjust the results in the table and have it recalculate, but that way lies madness on my end.

 

[Terry Mixon]

Speaking of which, I'd like to re-emphasize Rule Zero from p6:


This 100% applies to the output of this program. I've generated a lot of systems that would be much more to my taste if a planet was just a tiny bit this way or that way, or whatever else, and if that happens to you, you should absolutely just change the result to what you like.

Now, it'd be nice if we could adjust the results in the table and have it recalculate, but that way lies madness on my end.

Hence the enter your own UPP mentioned earlier.