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POBest language to learn for RPG campaign tool (random tables, databases)
 

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    <p>I'm interested in opinions as to what the best programming language is to LEARN, to BUILD a pen&amp;paper RPG campaign tool along that can create randomly generated content (store inventories, etc.) from lists of CSV or XML data.</p> <ul> <li>For example, see the following random table: <a href="http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items#Table-Random-Magic-Item-Generation" rel="nofollow">http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items#Table-Random-Magic-Item-Generation</a>. In a pen&amp;paper game, you would roll a d20 or d100 (two 10 sided dice) to create a random item used in the game. This could take 3-5 minutes of time to roll the dice, and log the results.</li> <li>When used in a larger context - this can be very time consuming. For example, creating a random TOWN, full of random non-player characters that your PCs (player characters) might meet, full of random shops, which are in turn full of random items... it's a lot of random rolling &amp; manual storage!!</li> <li>To clarify - my goal isn't to design a game, but instead a software application that can automate the process of generating content for pen&amp;paper games like Pathfinder that use random tables, and then SAVE that data for later viewing/modification. For example: <a href="http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items#Table-Random-Magic-Item-Generation" rel="nofollow">http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items#Table-Random-Magic-Item-Generation</a></li> </ul> <p>Long-story short, literally just a personal tool with minimal interface design, to generate random data and store it. I've played with some initial books on Python and JS, but I don't want to start down one path, and learn that I'd be better served by something else :)</p> <p>My experience: I have limited experience with any kind of programming - just basic HTML and CSS for some website design. I have used programs that incorporate scripting tools (see Tablesmith, for example).</p>
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    1. COI lean towards website creation, because that's what I do. As to language, they all have pros and cons. Just about all of them will do what you need. Biggest question that I think that you need to answer is why do you want to learn to program. Do you have an end goal in mind? If you just want a tool for your pen&paper game, then you could ::shudder:: use MS Access and create all the forms and functionality that you need. As to C/C++ or Java, you could use Eclipse.
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    2. COBTW, have you done any searches for existing tools? I remember having some tools years ago to generate towns, dungeons, etc. Writing the code is not that difficult, but data entry can be tedious and time-consuming.
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    3. COYeah, I'm using TableSmith now, and reached the limits of what it can do (and it's the best at this). This script (https://www.dropbox.com/s/70btfscf19a8hd3/PRG_Town_Items.tab), for example, is only 2000 lines, and will crash the program cause it's trying to do more than TableSmith can handle. The problem is that data tables it uses ... my "Monster / NPC" dataset is 23mb in size, and parsing something that large has a tendency to crash the TableSmith program. I'm nervous to learn something as complex as C++ to do what I want, but I'm willing to put in the time/pain :)
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