*********************************************************************************** THE MAKING OF THE PROGRAM Tavern Maker is a program written by me in order to help DMs (=myself) creating different "tavern-room-descriptions". I just became bored of the "standard" descriptions whenever my party entered a tavern ("You see the fat landlord, some farmers and merchants..."), but I also didnīt want to make up my mind for detailed descriptions everytime the party went to a tavern - sometimes they do so for several times a day! So I thought a random-generator mixed with the imaginarity of all RPG-fans on the net could help here and started programming. This was in the summer of 1996 and the frame program was finished after two weeks. Then Andrew Williams joined me and programmed the excellent WIN95 surface for my program. (Special thanks again, Andrew) The whole thing was finished in November 96. The only problem I had was, that it seemed that I was unable to find enough creative people willing to help me create the description-database without my program is worthless. After a while I realized, that it was necessary to do the start of the work on my own. (Although my English isnīt the best.) And today (22.Feb.97) I finished the first 100 descriptions. (well, to be exact: 31 descritpions were written by Pete J. Mitchell and Richelieu [sorry, lost the forename]) Although this is surly not enough to make the program really useful, I descided to "throw it on the net". So think of it as a demo-version. I hope that now that everyone can test the program theyīll also be willing to spend a little bit of their time and creativity to improve it. Yes, this also includes YOU. *********************************************************************************** HOW THE PROGRAM WORKS According to some "flags" like prices, quality, size, type etc. of the tavern and race, riches of the guests the program randomly creates some "table - descriptions". It also creates a "pick-pocket"-list for the DM and a menu. Those informations are saved in three TXT-files (*.MNU *.TBL *.PPL)for further uses. There are three ways to use the program: 1.) Youīre lucky and have WIN95: Just throw all files in one directory and start the program WINTAVERN.EXE. Although the program hasnīt a helpfile yet (sorry), the program should be selfexplainig. If it, however, is not, just send me a mail. (BEJOSCHA@PING.AT) 2.) You DONīT have Win95. (...well, youīve to do without a nice shell): Just start TAVERN.EXE in DOS. Youīll come to a functional, but ugly menu which should also be selfexplaining. 3.) You want to do it in parameter-form: Just start the program TAVERN.EXE with some parameters and youīll never see a menue. (The parameters are given in PARAM.TXT and are listed if you type "TAVERN.EXE /?") If youīre going to program your own shell for the program, let me know please! *********************************************************************************** SHAREWARE Well, I nearly wrote Freeware, but _everything_ has its price. The price of the program however is only a bit of your time. If you like the program [-and if you did use it once in your campaign then it counts as "I liked it"] you have to "pay" me with some work. Write at least 5 TABLE-DESCRIPTONS or 10 MEAL/DRINK DESCRIPTIONS and mail them to me. (Any textformat, but not more than 5 lines of 70 letters) Iīll include them in the database, write your name in the list of credits and be VERY thankful. :) Of course you can write MORE then the minimum (and place your name on higher rankings in the credits-list.) >>>Please also write me where you live, as I want to mark all "my" users on >>>a worldmap. Oh, one more wish: I never said, that my English is good, so please email me, if you find any mistakes so that I can correct them. ******************************************************************* New in version 1.1 - The program now doesnīt use the same description twice in one text-file. Instead of this some "generic" descriptions may be created ******************************************************************* New in version 1.2 - You now can descide to uses special databases in parameter-mode ******************************************************************* New in version 2.0 - The meals are now "weighted". There are differnt kinds of meals/drinks and the menues should now be more reasonable. This however slowed down the generating a little bit. NOTE: DATABASES HAVE CHANGED FORMAT! YOU CAN`T MIX OLD & NEW VERSIONS ******************************************************************* New in version 3.0 - The halfelves are now a seperated race (v-flag) - There are now seven Taverntypes (Harbour/Nightbar/Bar/Traveller/Lokal Village/Lokal City/Lokal Restaurant) - You could created customized menues with an config-file. NOTE: YOU HAVE TO USES v3.0 IF YOU WANT TO USE NEWER DATABASES ******************************************************************* New in version 3.1 - You now could customize the menu within the program ******************************************************************* New in version 3.3 - The Menu-files now also have headers for the differnt meals. ******************************************************************* New in version 3.4 - You now can save/load settings and use this settings in parameter-mode. ******************************************************************* New in version 4.0 - After a lot of trying I finally did a kind of random-housplan maker. Itīs my first graphic-output program ever, so donīt expect too much. On the other hand the output isnīt too bad. To start the plan-maker just use the new menu-point or the new parameter "-p". The plan-maker is pretty much selfexplaining. Just try until you think the plan fits and then save it! The plan is saved as a grayscale-TGA file with the filename given in the settings. Note: Other settings doesnīt do anything to the plan-maker! Itīs just random. ********************************************************************* I think thatīs all. bejoscha@ping.at