Re: Windows 95 & NT Ship Builder

Donald A. Chipman, III writes:
@:) At 04:11 PM 5/27/97 -0700, you wrote:

@:) I know I'm in the minority here, but I'm all for Stuart's Win95/NT
@:) app.  Come on guys; Stuart doesn't HAVE to make a ship designer at
@:) all, and it's really not anyone's place to dictate the format in
@:) which he chooses to code out of the goodness of his heart (of
@:) course, this is easy for me to say since I have a Wintel system).

  No, but when he stated that he had already written it in a language
that most of the people here could use and that he was now porting it
to a less useful (for us as a group) form, it seemed like a step
back.  Luckily ship design protrams are pretty easy to write so there
are a bunch of them around.  Actually I get the feeling they're not
used as much as they might be.

@:) * A graphic output for the completed ship, in BMP or GIF (GIFs are
@:) more web friendly, but I could use the BMPs in my VB4.0 apps).
@:) This was originally Eric Fialkowski's suggestion, but it's
@:) important enough to bear repeating.

  This would be cool but it is VERY HARD.  I'm not sure people are
really grasping the hardness factor involved here.  A ship design
program is a day's work but this thing would require significantly
more effort.  It's not impossible by any means, but it's tough.  Also
it might produce ships that only appeal to the tastes of particular
people, and not to others.

@:) * A seperate, editable weapon/equipment database so that different
@:) components can be changed to accomodate house rules and new
@:) equipment.	What would be great is if these could be given
@:) different names, so I could draw from different databases for
@:) different campaigns or races.

  This, on the other hand, is easy and a good idea.  Actually my
spacedock applet was at one point rewritten to use just such a
database.  Then I realized that no one could write to the file because
it was on the net.  Another bright idea down the tubes.  I guess I
could applicationize the thing to allow this kind of modification.
Maybe I'd better, to avoid being accused of hypocrisy.

-joachim