Finally found the time to have a look at this… and its astounding! very very nice work. I think i'll have a couple of questions later on, but at least wanted this of my chest. Thank you for sharing!

I discovered an issue with how Eldar inhabitants are treated in the generator, so I will probably create and release a version 1.03 very soon to fix this. In short, Eldar aren't supposed to put a big strain on a planet's resources, and they might even increase its resources in some situations. Furthermore, there should be a chance that a planet with Eldar on it could be a Maiden world, and this needs to be handled as well. I somehow missed all of this during my first pass through the text.

I have been playing around with this. Very nice work sir.

As is inevitably the case, I'm here to ask for more . I'll admit I'd love to see this become the grand unified generator, complete with space hulks, local cultist presence, generated chapters, and a lot of stuff which hasn't been provided for yet, but I'll restrain myself for the moment. Two chief requests; firstly, pre-existing colonys, somewhere in thier development, perhaps with the dynasty they belong to being mentioned or generated; secondly, and a tall order at that, tying together nearby systems, according to the interactions likely to arise between them, their access to the warp, etc etc. Is this within the realms of possibility, or is there gross insubordination to be dealt with??

I've left certain things up to the GM. These are mostly things that aren't covered by the existing generators or which are so complex that the algorithms used to have them make sense would be almost impossible to code. If you want the colonies found to be part of a rogue trader empire (which isn't a given, according to the descriptions of colonies), feel free to add the details on your own. It's not exactly a ton of work, and it would make a lot more sense in the end than my generator. A star system can feel very random and still very right, but the same can't be said for a planned colony, where randomness would just stand out as weird in many cases.

As for multiple systems, this is the main reason I originally had for the tree structure in this application. You can add multiple star systems to one workspace if you want them to be part of, say, a star cluster. Then you can fill out the detials yourself for how (if) they are connected to each other. Tying them automatically together isn't part of the official generators and falls outside the scope of what I want to do. This is another case where you're better off coming up with an explanation yourself, or by just generating two systems to see if there's something about them that makes a connection seem natural to you.

Speaking of things not covered by existing generators, as new ones are released will you update this, and will it be limited to the rogue trader setting? There's a good chance of an imperial navy book, for one, and you would expect some interesting rules for imperial campaigns to bubble up sooner or later.

That depends on whether or not I have an interest in the books in question, I suppose. In the case of the current generator, I have all the books needed and I use the generator for my own campaign as well. I'm not planning on running out to purchase books from different systems just to add functionality I will never use myself.

You can expect me to at least seriously consider any new generators released for the Rogue Trader system though. I also considered converting the space hulk generator from Deathwatch until I realized it wasn't actually a generator.

By the way, a bug fix for you; the notable species sometimes do and sometimes dont generate size.

Thanks for taking the time for the answers, by the way.

Drakedude said:

I don't think that's a bug. It probably just means that the Xenos is average size. If you see any stats that indicate otherwise, let me know.

Very nice generator to have, thank you a lot Tilt.

I have been considering making a generator for my own Rogue Trader needs, mostly for more guided generation of NPC characters and ships (i.e. allow some values to be chosen by the user, then generate the rest: chose ship type or chose concept for character etc). Unfortunately I have not come any closer than than the planning stages.

From what i saw when i looked at our reflected sourcecode, you are using .Net and C#? If you want to colleborate/share the source code of your generator in any way, please let me know.

Was thinking uploading it to places like github or bitbucket and make a community effort on adding more features into one application suite, or if you want to keep it private still: just email me the source code and i'll make my own private branch of your excellent work

I fully understand and accept if you dont want to do either of these, but figured it is better to ask.

Whenever I try to run it, it says it isn't a valid win32 application. How do I fix that?

Gavinfoxx said:

I suppose that's the kind of error message you'd get if you haven't got .Net installed and updated. Use Windows Update to get the latest version and updates to .Net.

I've got the latest .Net.

Is this designed to work with Windows XP Pro with 32 bit??

Could you recompile it with a different compiler or something? What is it written in??

I compiled the application for .Net 4.5, which I only now discovered isn't supported on Windows XP. I'll see if I can safely downgrade it to .Net 4, then post an updated version if it works. Sorry about that.

TiLT said:

No problem. Eagerly waiting a Win XP compatible version!

The generator has been updated to use version 4 of .NET instead of version 4.5. This means that it should now work on Windows XP with Service Pack 3 installed. It will most likely not work on older service packs, and I do not intend to support those. Please let me know if any of you encounter any problems after this change. You can download it by clicking here .

Soapbox time:

It's really quite amazing that there's still demand for compatibility with a 12 year old piece of software. That's a long time, especially when it comes to computers. Here are a few things that happened in 2001, the year that Windows XP was released:

• 9/11
• George W. Bush celebrated the end of his first year as President.
• The first Harry Potter movie and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring premiered.
• Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal was released for PC.
• Wizards of the Coast released Chainmail due to the success of D&D 3rd Edition, which was released the year before.
• Wikipedia went online for the first time.
• Napster was closed by the RIAA.
• Apple released the iPod.

... Now I feel old.

Anyway, XP is a relic of times past. If you're still using XP on your home computer, upgrade ! There's simply no reason to keep using XP at this point.

Alright, time to step off the soapbox.

And no, Windows XP is not considered Archeotech.

Was talking about this at work the other day and apparently XP is worldwide the most widely used PC operating system with nearly 40% of PCs worldwide using it.

And yet, Windows xp runs pretty much all the software I could possibly want! Imagine that. ;)

Was talking about this at work the other day and apparently XP is worldwide the most widely used PC operating system with nearly 40% of PCs worldwide using it.

It's not. Windows 7 had 44,37% of the market share at last count and rising, while XP had 37,17%. These stats are misleading. The vast, vast majority of XP installations are in organizations that haven't upgraded because it's expensive and/or they might rely on legacy software. For home installations, XP has a very, very small market share comparatively, and it's dropping fast.

And yet, Windows xp runs pretty much all the software I could possibly want! Imagine that. ;)

If it did, we wouldn't be having this conversation now would we?

Microsoft stops supporting Windows XP next year, and so will almost every developer out there (me included). Many stopped years ago. I'm providing XP compatibility for the generator out of courtesy, but I will have no qualms about dropping it in an instant if doing so means I can add a nifty and useful feature to the application.

And my company's IT still doesn't want to install my beloved win'98 on my PC

Great generator by the way.

If it did, we wouldn't be having this conversation now would we?

Microsoft stops supporting Windows XP next year, and so will almost every developer out there (me included). Many stopped years ago. I'm providing XP compatibility for the generator out of courtesy, but I will have no qualms about dropping it in an instant if doing so means I can add a nifty and useful feature to the application.

The only two things I have found I want that it doesn't run are your thing and the latest Xcom, and I hear there is a workaround for XCom.

There's simply no reason to keep using XP at this point.

Classic vintage games (surpisingly some of them have not yet shown up with new editions on GoG), That is all.

There's simply no reason to keep using XP at this point.

Classic vintage games (surpisingly some of them have not yet shown up with new editions on GoG), That is all.

This, totally this!