Eager to sink your teeth into a new update? Well, let’s dig in and see what’s on the menu. A pot of large updates, a bowl of smaller ones, and a very tasty, brand new Generator!
As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve completed my latest updates to the Species and Journey Gens. Despite some…hiccups, I dug out and rewrote a lot of old code, improved functionality and made future updates easier. While at first glance, they might not appear that different, both Gens are a whole lot more capable now; the Species Gen file size is almost twice as big as before, while the Journey Gen is 4x as big! I’m quite happy with the new aspects, so I hope you’ll find the Gens more useful and enjoyable.
The “Saucy” Species Generator Update
In a nutshell, you can now specify what Class your creature belongs to, i.e “avian”, “mammal”, “fish”, etc. This determines some traits that they’ll have and also affects certain parts of the General and Family Life facts too.
For now, the Invertebrates section only provides a few basic descriptors to give certain creatures a more insect-y feel. But, the full array of real-world Invertebrates is so large and is far more than just insects. So in time, I’ll be able to produce descriptions for a whole bunch of wacky creatures, from insects to octopi.
In addition, you can now choose from a range of creature sizes and more preset Forms, like Humanoid, bird-like, 4-legged.
Lastly, I adjusted the description output a little and added more content to the General and Family Life sections. I plan to keep adding more as we go along, so this isn’t the end of that.
Check out the updated Species Generator here.
The “Juicy” Journey Generator Update
Again, quite a lot of work went into this. First of all, there are a bunch more travel methods to choose from, allowing travel by land, air and sea. If the pre-sets don’t take your fancy, you can now enter your own custom speeds!
A new feature is the traveller’s Rest length, and Endurance level. These give a more realistic overview of how long it takes to cover the distance by adjusting the frequency of food, rest and toilet breaks.
There are more details about what causes delays, as well as some spicy method-specific delays. I’ll be adding more to these over time. Also, like the Species Gen, I tweaked the description output a bit to make things easier.
Begin your Journey right here.
“Meat” the Meal Generator
You can’t make me stop with the food puns.
Anyway, introducing the Meal Generator! It’s been a while since I’ve been able to release a new Gen, and this one has been requested forever. It was a lot of work and fun to do and provides great food for thought with its suggestions. Choose a meal type, ranging from a snack to a full-blown feast, select the dietary type, from Vegan to obligate Carnivore, and specify some main ingredient types, or leave it random.
The resulting dishes can help you flesh out the culture of your world or the details of a specific character. Is ground insect-meat with roasted offal and sweet barbequed moss with vegetables a national dish? Perhaps one of your characters enjoys chowing down on strips of “uncooked twigs, well seasoned with ground pungent roots”? How do other characters from different regions respond to these culinary habits? What happens when your character attends an official state dinner and absolutely hates everything on their plate? Open up a can of endless possibilities!
Minor Updates
I’ve continued to make small adjustments and fixes to several Gens while I continued to lurk in the comments. I also reworked the naming system that produces names for several Gens, namely the Species, Solar, Planet and Country Gens. There’s now a much bigger variety of names that these entities can have, including more that sound more natural. As usual, I’ll continue to tweak and add to this as I go along. I’ll also share some of my favourite results on Twitter (follow Rangen on Twitter!); there are some pretty delicious and wacky suggestions to be seen.
Contact Form Fix!
For a while now, the contact form below has been having problems, meaning that I haven’t received many messages. This issue has been fixed, so if you previously sent a message and I haven’t responded, please re-send it! Alternatively, you can send me messages on Facebook, Twitter, and in the Disqus discussion box below.
It pretty much boils down to that for now. I do have more updates, new projects and another new Gen simmering in the background, but I’ll save that for dessert.
OK, I’ll stop.
But if you’d like an opportunity to find out more about what I’m doing behind the scenes, see WIP Gens, and even have access to new Gens early, you should consider becoming a Patron, like these fine diners below:
Duncan, Ellie, Lokomotives, Sander, Stuart, Terence and Kim
And my newest Patrons,
Ostagaar and Kristin!
That’s all for now, but I’ll be back again soon with something a little more…deadly.
