Rogue Trader Generator Tools released!

By TiLT, in Rogue Trader

Eh, no offense, but I'd really like to keep the data in the generator as official as possible. Assuming that NPCs can be reverse engineered according to the same rules used by PCs is problematic in my opinion. It's not like there's any lack of ships out there for the generator to use.

Take your time - and i honestly believe that that after adjustment of generating certain type of ship theres not much else to actually improve, for me just keeping record of ships and systems is enough.

I know how you feel - i work in IT industry and face problems with people asking "can u help me with my computer ", so i know how you feel with that INSPIRATION, it just hits you or it does not. Take you time, but you are actually coding something so usefull and cool here so feel free to proud after this project :D

I know only the basics of HTML, Java and some other so cant really help with this. What type of coding language is behind this ? I have not taken any look of this actually, just generated tons of systems :D :D:D

I know only the basics of HTML, Java and some other so cant really help with this. What type of coding language is behind this ? I have not taken any look of this actually, just generated tons of systems :D :D:D

It's all coded in C# with Visual Studio. The rendering is done through Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). While WPF is by many considered "dying", I find it a delight to work with. Well, in most cases anyway. There's the occasional hiccup where something that should have been easy turns out to be kind of tricky (see: hotkeys, above).

While I'm experienced in languages like C++ and trained in languages like Java, PHP, and so on, I find C# is very useful for producing quick, bug-free results, even if they aren't multiplatform or as resource effective as they could have been. Had I done this in C++ you could have been certain that there would have been a couple of hard-to-find crash bugs in there.

It also helps that I code C# in my day job, so it's a well-maintained skill at the moment.

So I've been loving the generator. Right now I'm just generating a bunch of systems ahead of time so I hav rumors to feed my players. I noiced something that I'm not sure if its a bug or just the rng coming up with weird results. I've made about 30 systems and of those the only starfarers I ve gotten has been xenos (other). Just so you know 8 systems so far have had starfarers.

So I've been loving the generator. Right now I'm just generating a bunch of systems ahead of time so I hav rumors to feed my players. I noiced something that I'm not sure if its a bug or just the rng coming up with weird results. I've made about 30 systems and of those the only starfarers I ve gotten has been xenos (other). Just so you know 8 systems so far have had starfarers.

I take all potential bugs seriously, so I checked this out for you. According to the book, the Starfarers feature should either create inhabitants of human origin, or a previously unencountered Xenos species. The reason for this is that no other major species in WH40k would typically independently develop space flight.

I programmed the generator to create human starfarers 50% of the time, with the remaining 50% producing Xenos (other). I checked that it was coded correctly and ran a few tests with it. The very first result it produced ended up being human starfarers.

In short, it works as intended. You just ran into a statistical anomaly. Thanks for the report though. :)

Thanks, I was just making sure, I'd run up a bunch of them and was starting to wonder.

Edited by SaruSama

Also I'm a little confused on how the starship graveyards work. With each hull you give a different status of it, shattered beyond repair, intact enough to allow boarding but little else etc... I cant seem to find in the book where it talks about these definitions in game terms. I'm assuming its from stars of inequity but would you mind telling me the pages/section where it talks about this?

Also I'm a little confused on how the starship graveyards work. With each hull you give a different status of it, shattered beyond repair, intact enough to allow boarding but little else etc... I cant seem to find in the book where it talks about these definitions in game terms. I'm assuming its from stars of inequity but would you mind telling me the pages/section where it talks about this?

The Starship Graveyard feature is a good example of a situation where I had to extrapolate hard data from the book's prose. If you look at the table (page 17), you'll see that it actually talks about the conditions of the ship. The first entry in the table says "The graveyard consists of 2d5 ships, of which most or all have been shattered beyond any value" for example.

Figuring out if these ships are possible to salvage is an important part of the system generation, so I had to come up with a way to make the computer create something that matches the text even if the book didn't offer any actual numbers. I divided the "quality" of the ship hulls into the three categories that covered the text the best, and went at it.

The book doesn't go into any more detail about these terms than I do in the generator. If it says that a ship is intact enough to allow boarding, but little else, then that's exactly what it sounds like. The players might be able to explore the ship's hull, but there's unlikely to be much there for them to salvage. There might be something though, which you could turn into an adventure on its own using the rules later in the book. That part is up to the GM.

So don't look for definitions in the book in this case. Use the descriptions the generator gives you as a baseline for what the players can expect to find, and change it (for example by editing the starship graveyard's description) if you disagree with what it says.

It's actually quite rare for the generator to create salvageable hulls. If the players should find a graveyard filled with those, then they've found a true treasure indeed.

O that makes a lot of sense thanks. Ya I rolled up one system with 8 salvageable eldar ships :S

Sorry for the necro,

But I just found out about this, Great work!

I've downloaded the file, but when I open it, my computer just hangs and freezes. Is this not compatible with Windows7? Or should I be using the "open with..." function?

I've downloaded the file, but when I open it, my computer just hangs and freezes. Is this not compatible with Windows7? Or should I be using the "open with..." function?

I have Windows 7 and it works just fine with it. So something wrong with your computer or this software. Hard to tell.

I've downloaded the file, but when I open it, my computer just hangs and freezes. Is this not compatible with Windows7? Or should I be using the "open with..." function?

Your computer should never hang or freeze from running a piece of software, even if there's something wrong with my code. You've got something else going on. I would strongly recommend a thorough virus scan, and if that doesn't give results, check your hard drive and RAM for errors.

Before doing that though, run Windows Update to make sure you're fully updated. My application uses .Net, so if there's something wrong with that framework it could lead to repercussions elsewhere.

Also, for the record, the generator should be compatible with all Windows versions from XP (with the latest service pack) up to and including 8.1.

It's working now. Very cool tool. Thanks for the hard work.

Something wonky is going on with my download folder. It's hard to access things from the folder itself, but if I drag them out of it they work fine.

TiLT, where have you been all my life? This is an incredible tool, thanks for the hard work.

As a new Rogue Trader GM, this is an amazing bit of software! I spent a few hours on my first system last night, which was time well spent regardless, but this will be a huge help!

Hello, I have just got around to giving this a go, and knowing how long it was taking me to generate systems, this really improves the usefulness of the books many times over. Fantastic work.

I'm not certain if this is a bug to report but listing it anyway.

New Workspace

Generate New Starship

I made 4, and the 2nd and 3rd ships happened to be Human Wolfpack Raider, however entry blank after ship class.

I look forward to using this software, and well done again on a such a huge project for the game. I think I may always have 10 saved as RTFs, then choose or even roll d10 when the time is right...

Edited by SteveG

Not a bug. The Wolfpack Raider ship is static, so I've merely linked to its page number in the book.

aha, thanks for that - and apologies I had failed to appreciate the different types of stat block.

Very impressive work. It's the ultimate tool. My mind is blown.

Instantly came up with an upgrade suggestion. Like the Xenos and treasure, the starship could offer a subsystem for chassis (frigate, cruiser etc.) I for example already know that the players nemesis is holding a raider, frigate and transport.

Thanks again for amazing work.

Finally gotten the chance to use (as opposed to play with) this sucker; it's great! Thanks!

The only real pain point I'm running into with it is the width of the statblocks: when I export to RTF and open it in WordPad or Word, they're too wide to print in anything short of Landscape mode (which isn't great for everything else). I ended up having to individually select each table and set their preferred cell width to .5" to get them to fit.

I've never done RTF generation, so I don't know how tough it is to specify cell width, but it'd save (me) a lot of hassle if the blocks weren't quite so wide.

And/or/in a similar vein: any chance of being able to export to something other than RTF? I feel like I'd be able to wrangle overall formatting more easily if I could export to XML.

For all the strengths of the document format I'm using in this application, it does have its limitations. I looked for ways to do proper exports to various formats, but the only one that truly seemed workable was RTF export. That export functionality (which I didn't write) seems to be buggy as well. It does support setting a specific width for the tables I use for the statblocks. It looks great in the application itself, but once you open up the exported file in a word processor, the table is completely messed up.

Out of two possible solutions (Completely messed up statblock or one that is too wide and can be adjusted by the user), I went with the latter. You do have to adjust the width manually after exporting right now, and I don't know of any workaround for it. If anyone here has any experience with FlowDocuments and the FlowDocumentReader class and can imagine a solution to the issue, I'm all ears.

By the way, you don't have to manually set cell width to fix the issue on your end. All you have to do is grab the rightmost end of the table and resize the whole thing by dragging it left until it fits on the page. This should be a quicker solution than what you're currently doing.

Edited by TiLT

I love this.. I did some testing on it and I am also someone who enjoys coding and I am wondering if I have your permission to look though the code and see how it works, if you don't mind.

What, you mean by decompiling it? Be my guest, but I would appreciate if you didn't distribute the results. I mean, I did the same thing with another Rogue Trader system generator someone else had created because I wanted to adjust a particular result in the tables it used, so who am I to say no? :)

Edited by TiLT