Another Rifts Character Generator Update

Artwork above from Rifts Black Market, page 92.

Well, there have been some positive developments over the past few weeks.

First, a shout-out to Rogue Scientist Allen for expressing interest in the app. He has offered a lot of advice and rule clarifications. Also, he has created a very useful O.C.C. JSON generator which will allow me to add future O.C.C.s to the app with less tedious, less error-prone data entry. That and he’s good conversation!

Let me break the updates down into sections.

Basic Information

The first “Create Character” screen where you enter the character name, O.C.C., race, etc has an additional field: Black Market. If “Yes” is selected, the user will eventually get to a Black Market configuration screen.

Attributes

A lot of catching up here. The app now correctly calculates Hit Points (if an S.D.C. being). It will also roll the character’s appropriate P.P.E. and I.S.P. - for many cases. There are exceptions, and I’ll cover those in a section down below.

When the character’s P.E. or M.E. changes, the change is reflected in the H.P., I.S.P., and P.P.E. stats.

To Do

  • Account for P.P.E./I.S.P. notations that do not simply add the character’s P.E. or M.E. to the stat. Some notations are weird.

Saving Throws

I thought I had this working before but, apparently, I did not. If you configured an O.C.C. or Race (or whatever) to have a bonus for a non-standard Saving Throw, the generator will automatically add that Saving Throw w/bonus to the list of Saving Throws.

Skills

You can now select Related and Secondary skills. Selecting skills applies applicable skill bonuses, physical attribute bonuses, and W.P. bonuses.

To Do

  • W.P. Bonuses should stack with existing strike and parry bonuses

  • Enforce skill pre-requisites.

  • Enforce “Number of Related Skills” and “NUmber of Secondary Skills”

  • Skills selected at higher levels should start at level 1 proficiency.

Black Market

This is in-progress. Eventually, using code similar to the Skills back-end, the user will be able to select Black Market Abilities and have their bonuses applied to stats/skills as applicable.

You can also select your Black Market faction.

Back-End Changes

  • People probably don’t care about this part, but I’ve made the following changes:

  • Character data is stored more efficiently, improving the speed of the app.

  • Updated CoreUI to 3.4.5

  • Began a rewrite of the functions that apply bonuses to stats/skills. I think this can be consolidated into a single reusable function.

  • Black Market Abilities now stored in a database, like Skills, Combat Styles, etc…

  • Probably more that I can’t think of.

Coming Soon

  • Black Market will be working

  • Psionics

  • UI/UX changes

  • New O.C.C.s to test with.

That’s all for now - thanks for reading!

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