GURPS Calculator New Server!

GURPS Calculator has had A LOT outages the last 8 months and, every time, I would get on support chat and waste my time going around and around with them about why that may be the case. It always ended up being some "server wide" issue.

Well, this weekend, after 3 days of the calculator being down, I decided enough was enough. I demanded a refund, but in my cancellation request, and moved to a better host.

The new host costs three times more, but they supposedly have better uptime, and the speed of the calculator is noticeably faster.

I suppose we'll see what happens.

In other news, we're closing in on the $70 goal of GCA importing. Besides a few minor bug fixes, I am have been taking a break from gCalc and coding some different things (a discord bot, a scheduling API for discord, my wedding website, etc) and also going to a lot of interviews (trying to find that right fit for my next job since I get laid off in just 2 more short months!)

I promise I'll come back to gCalc soon. The sooner we hit that goal, the sooner I'll switch back over and power through the GCA import functionality!

Gencon - Meeting Steve Jackson

Today I met Steve Jackson. He signed some stuff for me, and when I mentioned gCalc his face lit up and he said "So that's you!"

Felt good that he had heard of gcalc!

Longer post incoming soon. I've been busy trying to find a new job. @.@

GURPS Calculator Future Plans

The GURPS Calculator is growing by leaps and bounds with the recent release of GCS importing and character sharing! We have more people than ever using gCalc, which is a great privilege for me!

Awhile back I realized that servers cost money, and although I love working on the GURPS Calculator, I cannot spend all of my time on it. Patreon became the goto solution for this problem, and I have since tied all major enhancements to Patreon goals, which allow you, and other users, to help fund the major features of gCalc! I spend dozens of hours on each of these features, and every cent contributed goes towards paying server costs, domain name costs, and coercing my programmer friends to help by offering them pizza and beer.

At the moment, after Patreon takes it's modest cut, I am at $63/month. With how much time I spend on gCalc, this means I "profit" about $1.20 per hour after paying server costs. That $1.20 is what goes towards pizza and beer and I thank you!

So why this big pitch on Patreon? Why explain how it effects me in so much detail? Well, like I said before, all major enhancements are tried to Patreon. I will continue to work on bugs and minor enhancements as normal (anywhere from 10-30 hours a month, depending on how broken everything is) as well as answer the weirdly numerous questions I get over email, but will no longer be working on the major enhancements that force me to ramp up those hours up to 50 or so a month until the Patreon goal is met. My personal goal is to not dip below working on gCalc for less than $1/hour for my own sanity. Help me stay sane!

So with all of that out of the way, what's coming up for gCalc?
As listed on Patreon, the goals, their descriptions, and their goal amount are as follows:

Current Monthly: $63

Previous Goals already met:

• $5   - Server costs
• $15 - Trait Sorter
• $20 - Treasure Generator
• $25 - Demolitions Calculator
• $30 - GCS Importing and Character Screens
• $60 - Character Sharing

Future Goals:

$70 - GCA Importing
When this goal is hit we will create a way to import your GURPS Character Assistant characters to gCalc! Because GCA is not open-source, this will not be as clean a solution as GCS, but it is doable. It will probably work by taking your gca save file and uploading it to our server, where we will convert it to a gCalc character. Once it's uploaded, all GCA characters will act as gCalc characters just like GCS characters do now.

$75 - Hiking Calculator
Be able to calculate long distance travel easily. Includes the optional romping rules from Hi Tech!

$80 - GM Control Board and Campaign/Character Associations
A nice interface where the GM will can track all relevant player stats! Once a GM creates a campaign and the players in the game associate their imported GCS characters with said campaign, the GM can visit the Control Board easily see and roll against all player skills and stats. Here, the GM will also be able to set up combat scenarios and track whose turn it is, current HP and FP, and much more.

$85 - Character and Monster Database
Once this goal is hit, users will be able to tag characters imported from GCS or GCA as PC/NPC/Monster. Once tagged, all characters can then made "public" (with their default being "private"). All characters that are tagged and made public will be available for other users to browse and use in their own campaigns. The goal here is to create a large, crowd-sourced monster database for everyone to use and enjoy!

$90 - GM Campaign and Session Planner
Once this goal is met, users will be able to create individual "sessions" within a campaign. These sessions will be a collections of "scenes" which the GM can insert associated PCs, NPCs, and Monsters as well as keep track of notes. For example, if you have a dungeon crawl with 3 encounters in it, you could make 3 scenes, and in each scene have the requisite monsters added along with notes on their combat strategies and pre-laid traps. Once that scene arrives in game, you simply open the scene in gCalc and will be able to quickly start combat utilizing the functionality already set down by the "GM Control Board" feature gained at the $80 pledge level.



Help make these goals a reality! Donate on Patreon now!
Are you a developer and want to help? Email me!
www.gurpscalculator.com

GURPS Calculator 2.3.2: Character Sharing

Character Sharing

Title says it all! You can now share characters in gCalc!

How? It's easy!

On the newly redesigned Character screen, click the wrench icon on the character you want to share.

This will open the Manage Character popup, which has completely replaced the old (and ugly) character edit page. In that popup, and I hope that this is obvious, type in the username of the person you want to share your character with., Hit Share, and then hit save.

Boom! Just like that.

Enjoy.

What's next?

GCA importing is just $9 away!

www.gurpscalculator.com

GURPS Calculator 2.3.2 Character Sharing Update and Developer Help Needed

As some of you may have already heard through my Twitter, the company I have worked at these last 7 years has been bought out. The good news is yay, the startup succeeded and I get some money...the bad news is at the end of October I lose my job.

Because of this I've had a slowdown on work on gCalc as the higher-ups pile on all the last minute changes they need before we get the ax in a few months. I'm still working on gCalc, but it's really hard to find the motivation to code in my free time at the moment since their running us ragged at work. That's where you come in. See below. :)

gCalc 2.3.3 Character Sharing Update

I'm about 70% done this functionality, which also includes redesigning the Edit Character page into a "Character Manager" page. From this page you will be able to download, share, and modify your characters all from one place.

I'm still hoping to get this functionality out by the end of the month, which means development will be done within the next 14 days and the release will be open for testing to my Alpha testers.

Developer Contributors

Until recently, I have politely declined the requests I have received for help coding gCalc, mostly because it was a side project of mine and I had plenty of time to work on it. With recent events in mind, and the explosion of work coming out of the new Characters functionality, I am now totally on board with Development Contributions.

If you are a developer and want to help, please let me know!

Below is the current development stack for gCalc. If you know just the backend or just the front end that's ok! Let me know in an email how you can help!

jeffmdemers@gmail.com

Backend

• C#.NET MVC w/Razor
• MsSql

Frontend

• Bootstrap
• jQuery
• Modernizer
• Lots of ajax.

We have lots, and I mean lots, or enhancements, bugs, and optimizations to work through, and need your help! See the full list of what we have in our future.

Thanks!

GURPS: Ascension Campaign Living World Document (Power Templates, Kits, Races, etc)

Four years ago I decided it was time to start a new campaign. On a plane ride to Houston to visit my father, I sketched up some ideas of a time-spanning plot with lots of intrigue, complicated battles, and morally ambiguous villains.

More importantly, I began work on 5 "power classes"; lists of leveled powers united under a single theme. Knowing nothing about powers at that time, it took me a very long time (months) to fully create all five power classes. During that time I also created kits, races, regions, "blessing cards", births signs, and more.

It really is too much to describe.

The work was well worth it. Biweekly for the last 3.5 years myself and 5 friends have played in the world of Ascension on a single continuous plot arc. It has been an amazing experience with amazing friends. Season 3 is closing out within the next two weeks, and after that we move on to season four, where the second main subplot will finally have it's finale. After that, who knows? I'm sure Ascension will live on for many more years.

Last Saturday I spent the morning last Saturday organizing all my notes and templates into a living world document to share with all of you. Maybe you can use some of it too.

If you are interested in seeing what I have created, check out the document below.

Ascension

GURPS Calculator: 2.3.1 Released!

Some good stuff in this one, the biggest being Character Downloading! Never lose your gcs sheet again!

For a list of all the changes, please check out the change log. For an in-depth look at the changes, check out my previous blog post on the subject.


http://gurpscalculator.com/

C#: Null Conditionals and Interpolated Strings

Two new features of C# 6.0 I've been using like crazy lately are Null Conditionals  and Interpolated Strings. These two simple pieces of syntactic sugar has made my programming life so much easier, and so I thought I'd pass the knowledge on to some of you who may not be aware of these powerful shortcuts.

Null Conditional - ?. operator MSDN

Null conditional sounds an awful lot like Null Coalescence now doesn't it? Null Conditionals work in much the same way, by first checking the value of the left side of the operator for null. First, here is an example of getting a property from an object without knowing it is null using the longhand method, then another with Null Conditionals, and finally a little trick that I'll explain below.
The above Null Conditional code with check if User is null, and, if it's not, returns the ID property. If it is null, it will simply return null. This stops the dreaded Null Exception error that we all hate to see, and makes your code much easier to read and understand!

What if you don't want null returned by the Null Conditional? Well, there's a simple trick for that as well. Combining a Null Conditional with it's cousin, Null Coalescence, you get back whatever default you want! See the third line of code above for how it's done.

String Interpolation - $"{x}" MSDN

String Interpolation is the act of injecting variables into a string without having to close the string constant and manually concatenate variables into it. An example of a traditional string concatenation is as follows:

Not too pretty, right? Here is the same example with String Interpolation.

There we go! Much easier to read! Simple to use, simple to understand, simple to read.

GURPS Calculator - Enhancements, Character Sharing, and GCA Importing

June 2, 2016 - Fast Followers and Patch Release

This release is a medium-weight build addressing a few bugs and including some enhancements I didn't have time to include in 2.3 (Character Importing).

Enhancements

Download your current or previous characters back into GCS format

If you find yourself away from your copy of GCS but need to update your character, we have you covered. In this release you will be able to click on a special "download character" button on the Full List Character Screen and be redirected to a download screen like the one above. There you will find that every instance of your character you have ever uploaded will be available for you to download, so if you made some crucial or confusing changes to your character that you now wish to revert, you can always just go back and grab an old copy! All character save files download in their original gcs format, so once downloaded you can open it in GCS and edit away (and, of course, re-import into gCalc!)

Over in the Collisions calculator, the Local Gravity field now accepts decimals, allowing you to crash into things at high speeds even more accurately.

I've also created a Wiki to aid in GURPS Calculator use, the link to which will be featured in the menu next release. It, unfortunately, has nothing in it yet, but you can help change all that! I use every spare moment I have coding and planning for gCalc, which sadly does not leave me much time for documentation and promotion. That's where you come in, head on over to http://wiki.gurpscalculator.com and help the community by adding any information you can to aid in the use of gCalc! Anyone who edits will of course have their names added to the contributors list. No need to contact me, just head over to the wiki and get to writing. :)

Bug Fixes

• Critical hits are now based on effective skill and not base skill (D'oh!)
• Rolling against Fright now always fails on 14 and above.
• (Dis)advantage/Skill/Equipment groups now import correctly (with collapsible panels and everything!)
• Player notes for skills exported from GCS now show up correctly.
• -10xHP now indicates total bodily destruction.

On the technical side of things, this release moves gCalc away from MVC bundling of assets and into the world of Cassette bundling, which, in my opinion, is much easier to use and gives much better results. CSS and JS files are now bundled and minified in a very specific way and order, allowing for faster page loads and response times.

2.3.x - Character Sharing

This month we hit our goal of $60 with a reward of Character Sharing. I started work the day the goal was met, and I am around 50% done the initial work on it. When complete, a player will be able to go to the Full List screen and click a "Share" button next to a character. When clicked, the player will be redirected to a sharing manager where they will be able to share their character with another player by inputting their gCalc username. That second player, once they approve the share, will be able to view the character, roll against its stats/skills/attacks, and download it using the Character Download feature available in 2.3.1. The player will not, however, be able to make any alterations to the characters HP/FP, Tracker rows, or any other value that gCalc tracks independently of GCS.

Ideally this will allow players to share their characters with a GM, allowing the GM to make secret rolls, check resources and adeptness when planning adventures, and view values such as DR and Defenses when rolling for combat (if secret).

There is no release date for this functionality yet, but I am optimistic that it can be release mid-late June.

2.3.x - GCA Importing

GCA importing is currently our next goal, sitting at $70. When this goal is met, players will be able to export their players from GCA using one of the save functions already built into the system (most likely export to xml) and then, on the gCalc site, upload their character for use. Once uploaded, the player will have at their disposal the full suite of tools already available to GCS imported character, including Character Sharing. One caveat is that Character Downloading may not be possible without uploading both the xml and the original character save. I will most likely offer uploading the save file as optional functionality for those of you that wish to leverage character versioning and cloud backups that the GCS crowd enjoys.

Thank you!

As always, thanks so much to my patrons and contributors, and of course to everyone who uses my app. I love working on it, and I love talking to all of you and hearing your ideas. If you want to get active in gCalc, please don't hesitate to do so! 

• Donate to the cause! 
• Join the ranks of the people that keep gCalc alive.
• Contact me to become an Alpha tester at admin@gurpscalculator.com.
• Submit a bug or enhancement idea!
• Write a review of gCalc on your blog! Spread the word on Twitter!

Special thanks to Travis Ellis, Bruno, and K Abson for becoming patrons this month! People like you make it all possible!

Seeing CriOS in your analytics?

What is CriOS and why does it keep popping up on my analytics?

Recently in my google analytics for my site and blog, I have been seeing "CriOS" popup from time to time, and, each time, I discount it as either a foreign browser or a bot crawling my site, but no! It turns out CriOS is in fact "Chrome for iOS", meaning Chrome on an iPhone!

This ends up being a very interesting statistic to have, since now I can compare it with my iPhone Safari hits and see how much Chrome is eating in to the Safari pageview share on my site.

As a user, and a developer, it would be important to know that CriOS doesn't work like normal Chrome for Android (since the operating system are completely different.) It is, of course, based on webkit (just like Chrome for Android/Desktop and even Safari), "However, while Apple allows only Safari to access iOS facilities like the iOS Nitro engine, Chrome uses Apple's UIWebView for loading and rendering content." -- developer.chrome.com

If Chrome for iOS takes off and begins to really compete with Safari as the #1 browser for the iPhone, some considerations may need to be taken with how mobile webapps are built.

Interested in knowing more about CriOS, or want to try it yourself? Click here.