World Explainer Part 2: Passengers and Freight

I finally decided to email Marc Miller about publishing my little software application in the Windows and Android store. So far, no response, but hey, at least I am finally getting the courage to ask. It would be pretty cool to have a published application! I could hang out with the other cool Traveller developers on COTI ☺. 

I've also started on the next phase of things: passengers and freight. The downside of that is we need the destination world info for those calculations, so I'll have to get at least the population for the destination system. The previous time I did this, I actually had all the worlds within the jump range of the ship and calculated for each of those. I'll probably end up back there. Almost wondering if I could resurrect that version as I do have the source code. It's just a non-supported version of .Net and had some limitations. Though I am using parts of the code still.

Anyway, I still think if I share the directory, you can install the software via the PowerShell installer, which does ask if you want to trust that self-signed certificate. Why I do want to get this published with a real certificate. Well, that, and it would be pretty cool to have software published in at least one application store. 

I should have this 2nd part completed in the next few days, depending on work and other things. I've added the passenger table to my set of text files that get included with the application on install. Though I could not find them when I installed it, though I did look in all the usual places that Windows hides these things.

The button does not do anything yet, but I did some code cleanup behind the scenes that should help make it easier to expand on it. 

I think a lot of those things will eventually move back into a SQLite DB and then I'll have to give the users some access to that. I'll definitely do that when I add in "search the TravellerMap for systems". Though in all honesty, if you have internet access then that map gives you everything you need. But I'll be caching that data, so in theory once you download a sector, you have a local copy so have off-line access. At least that is what I did before. 

And sadly, my Kahrun character in our random-roll Tiny Dungeon game was killed by a lizard. She was often the most-hurt character in that game - a magnet for damage. Ursa Major (she was a bear person) was a lot of fun to play. Not too bright. As the group ended up outside dungeon at a random evil temple thing that was oddly adjacent to a grain silo, and our mission was to find food for the town, she attacked the lizards at the silo. First death of the group. Fortunately for the game, as it was on a marshland, and they did kill off the lizards, I now have a lizard character that will join the group. Not quite as powerful (we had gained another trait after our 3rd session) but should still be fun. I found it odd that they wanted to give me a freebie trait to be on a level playing field. I'm quite happy with starting all over - Ursa took some risks and died, so I start new. All the characters in a game don't have to be the same level. Most systems it becomes harder to level up the higher you get, so it all works out. This game we were just upgrading every 3 or so sessions, so in theory I'd never catch up. But hey, I am not a power player, I just play and have fun.

Pretty sure I've posted before about playing RPGs with mismatched characters in terms of skill sets or abilities (heck, this blog is a couple decades old so probably covered a LOT of things over the years!). Seems like most people want all the PCs to be the same power-wise. I think more interesting dynamics is a mismatched set. In fact - we have a little salamander type of character: he has to hang back as if he gets hit, he is pretty much toast. But he is our healer, and rides around on the treant character. Anyway, perhaps I'll post about that adventure soon.

And for those living in the USA - Happy 4th of July!