My first big project! Done!

[smoore]

I think all together its about 2000 lines of code give or take. Took me a good 2 weeks to complete.

The program is called Character Creator. What is does is basically creates characters with skills / stats / attributes and a custom image that you provide. There are a few images I threw in also if you want to use those or even the images you see in the program are in there to. It also creates items the same way. You can save them for later use and browse through all the characters / items you have saved. Good for mind mapping things or a D & D game or whatever. You can always go back and edit things if something changes. The program allows you to search characters and items by name or browse their images/names.

Hopefully you guys enjoy and PLEASE send feedback. I am sure there are a ton of bugs and really would like to know about them. Also feel free to use any of my code for any purposes just give me some credit if you do :) Oh and when looking through the code please realize I am a fairly sloppy programmer because I am new to the programming scene in general (2 java classes in school so far).

As far as the Storage.java file goes I tried to implement a binary search tree which is what I did but I do realize it is very sloppy so you can feel free to give me advice but don't make fun I already know :P

Anyways here is the .rar file containing all the stuff. Make sure you don't move any of the files around as they depend on the images and storage folders being in the right spots!

http://rapidshare.com/files/259987276/Character_Creator.rar

[VernonDozier]

First thing I noticed is that there is no README file. I downloaded the rar, decompressed it, and I see a bunch of java files and some directories. Presumably I'm supposed to type javac *.java from the command line and there is some main file I am supposed to run. But I don't know. I guessed pretty easily that I was supposed to run MainWindow.class and I was right, but you should always try to provide instructions, no matter how obvious you, the developer, think such instructions should be.

And what are we able to DO with these characters and items once we create them? Is there a game that we can play with them? You mention D & D. I'll confess that I've never played it. Perhaps it's 100% obvious how I'm supposed to use these characters to 99% of the Daniweb members, but I may just be the 1% who doesn't know. It's a truism of programming that you spend 80% of your time idiot-proofing and explaining things to people who probably have no business RUNNING your program, but you still have to do it (i.e. if I type "My dog has fleas" into the input boxes, presumably that's a meaningless attribute for a weapon, so you have to be able to catch it and tell me what I did wrong and what I am SUPPOSED to type in there). Never assume that the user knows what he is supposed to type if you don't tell him, and never assume he WILL enter what he's supposed to even if you DO tell him.

Assume the user is a malevolent idiot whose sole goal is to break your program and you'll do fine.

That said, the program has a pleasing GUI and appears not to crash.

[smoore]

"That said, the program has a pleasing GUI and appears not to crash." I like what I hear :) haha

Yea sorry should have included a read me file. But this project wasn't so much a super functional project it was just to test out my programming skills. The characters and items are more just to look at and save I guess for if you were writing a story or something like that or wanted to keep track of a video game character offline or something.

I mentioned D&D because it is a game where you keep track characters and a "Dungeon Master" sort of dictates play and you roll dice based on stats for "battles." There isn't really a board or anything just whatever the players agree on. It is super subjective. If you've never played it don't worry I haven't either I was just spit balling ideas for possible use.

That said you don't actually use the characters or items for anything they're just too look at. Sorry if I explained it poorly. Thanks for the comments though!

[Mehwish Shaikh]

aaaah when im running MainWindow.java, error comes up of illegal character line #19(just after the import line) --> @SuppressWarnings("serial")
why is it so..:s

[smoore]

oh oh i just did that cuz eclipse wants me to for some reason. Just comment out that line and recompile it should still work the same

[~s.o.s~]

>oh oh i just did that cuz eclipse wants me to for some reason.

If your class implements Serializable, you ought to provide it a unique identifier; the java compiler raises a warning if you don't do so. By using @SuppressWarnings("Serial") you basically suppress that warning; not a good thing IMO.

>http://rapidshare.com/files/25998727...er_Creator.rar

Host your project on a real project hosting site like Sourceforge or Freshmeat. These sites give you various features like bug tracker, version control for your code, discussion forum for your project and much more. Also given that you want people to correct your mistakes, making your project open source and hosting it properly seems to be the right choice. Hosting projects on sites like Rapidshare etc. seems like a bad idea.

Best of luck.

[smoore]

I did not implement Serializable... at least on purpose. Perhaps JFrame or JPanel implement that because eclipse warns me when I extend those two all the time.

Also I wasn't really expecting a ton a people to give me feedback on this project (seeing as it is actually not a really useful program) I just expected like 2 or 3 to download it and give me feedback. Also I am unfamiliar working with open source stuff as I have never done it before. I just started working with CVS this summer for a class and I still don't really understand it. I just set it up using the directions my teacher gave me and use eclipse to commit stuff and that's about the extent of it. Anyway maybe my next project will appear on sourceforge. thanks for the help tho :)

[llemes4011]

Make sure you describe what your methods and classes do and how they work, along with what variables they use (This goes along with creating a Javadoc for your program), ESPECIALLY if it is going to be open source. Doing that during the coding process will save TONS of time later... I know from experience >.<

As for your program. Very nice GUI, it all has a very nice feel to it. For the characters, I think that either you need more stats (hp, mp, ect), or a function that allows the user to define their own stats and what goes in the fields (numbers, words, symbols, ect). same goes for items. but very good otherwise. also, I think that the user should be able to manually enter stat values. pressing the +1 button more than 25 times would get really annoying and time consuming. but other than that, everything looks pretty good! =)

[smoore]

yea thats what I was thinking also but I didn't know how to control it to stay within 100 at the time. I figured it out now so if i release another version it will be much more heavily commented and will have more editable characters and items thanks for the feedback tho!!

[llemes4011]

This is quite a neat program. I think I'm going to use it to keep track of characters and enemies in the game that I'm making (If that's okay with you).

SORRY FOR THE 4 OR 5 POSTS!!! I don't know what just happened... I'm really confused......

Okay, now they're all gone (4 seconds later...) and I'm even more confused.....

[VernonDozier]

Make sure you describe what your methods and classes do and how they work, along with what variables they use (This goes along with creating a Javadoc for your program), ESPECIALLY if it is going to be open source. Doing that during the coding process will save TONS of time later... I know from experience >.<

I agree here.

I think that the user should be able to manually enter stat values. pressing the +1 button more than 25 times would get really annoying and time consuming.

A slider bar could be handy here, in addition to the option of typing it in. I agree that no one wants to press a key 25 times.