gtkchar4e

A Perl/GTK character creator for GURPS/4e

Download version 1.0.0: gtkchar4e.perl

This is a Perl character editor. Except, possibly, for installing a couple of Perl modules, it should "just work" on a recent Linux distribution. You should be able to make it work on any other Unix. I have not heared if it working on MacOS X, but I believe one ought to be able to get it to work there as well. I have no idea if it will work under cygwin on Windows, or if the necessary gtk2-perl ports have even been done.

Installation
Known bugs
Documentation
- Overview
- The General Interface
- Attributes, Armor, and Languages
- Advantages, Disadvantages, and Quirks
- Skills
- Equipment
- Weapons
- Notes
- Loading, Saving, Exprorting, and Printing
Sample Characters

Disclaimer: GURPS is a trademark of Steve Jackson Games, and its rules and art are copyrighted by Steve Jackson Games. All rights are reserved by Steve Jackson Games. This game aid is the original creation of Rob Knop and is released for free distribution, and not for resale, under the permissions granted in the Steve Jackson Games Online Policy.

Installation

Just download and run the puppy with Perl. You need a recent version of Perl (5.8 or later, although if it's later than 6.0 it's possible things will break; dunno). You also need gtk2-perl, and the XML modules XML-Twig and XML-Writer. You can get these modules from CPAN. However, if you're on Linux, there's a good chance that your distribution includes packages that have these modules, and you will be much happier installing your distribution's packages (if they aren't already installed). For example, on Debian, I just installed the packages libxml-twig-perl and libxml-writer-perl.

Bugs

Features

Some will see these as bugs, but really they're just part of how the program works.

Point totals, weight carried, and encumbrance aren't updated.: Click "Update" at the top. The update is sometimes automatically run when you change something, but not always. To make sure you're up to date, you can click "Update" at any time.
Skills aren't getting bonuses from advantages like Talents!: The program isn't that smart. You have to put them in manually. Edit the skill, and add the bonus. If you remove the advantage from your character, the bonuses won't automatically go away, either!

Real Bugs

When I save, sometimes a new window is opened.: Isn't that annoying? I'll have to figure that one out and fix it. If you really want to be safe, you should close all windows and exit the program, and start over loading the XML file you just saved to make sure you know what's going on....
After an advantage is edited, it gets moved up on the list.: Also annoying. Very annoying. I'll fix it sometime. Right now, you just have to move the thing around again after this happens.

Documentation

Yeah, yeah, I know, I really need to write some.

Sample Characters

Save these XML files to your disk, and load them into gtkchar4e as examples created in the program.

Fernando Reyes, "The General": A 500-point Supers character that uses the Metric Mastery Power I was inspired to put together after reading GURPS Powers. he was designed for a campaign ("Planetary") run locally by Joe Taylor, but as of this writing has not actually been used.
Spirit Template: The Spirit meta-trait. If you're going to create a lot of Spirit characters, it's handy to read this in, modify it, and then save it under a different name each time.