GM's Second Brain

Well, its now almost a year since I first announced this program as finished! I guess I'm finally ready to cut the umbilical and let it see the light of day. I'll attach a few files for your conveniance.

The program was written using the Forte IDE for JAVA and is probably expecting the java runtime environment version 1.4 or better. If you get it to run with earlier versions, why not post that here? I've seen it run on Macs under OS X with no trouble, and I've run it under WindowsXP and Windows98 with no trouble. I've even run it on Windows98 in VirtualPC on a Mac running OS 9.2. RobKnop ran a quick test on Linux using Sun's Java 1.4.1, and it seemed to work (although there were a number of errors about not being able to write to the system preferences directory).

[Strange. I don't remember doing anything that would cause that.]

[You didn't cause those system preferences errors. This is a known problem with Java on Linux. --Main.RobertFisher]

If you need to get yourself a JAVA virtual machine..check out

http://www.java.com/en/index.jsp

Mac users may need to go to the apple website and look up the latest version etc.

Please note that those are both pretty hefty downloads, even though this program is not.

-- JohnUghrin - 07 Jul 2003

• GMBrain.jar: Should run on most machines with a double click. To run it from the command line, cd into the directory where you downloaded the file and run:
  • java -cp ./GMBrain.jar gmbrain.GMBrain

• sourcefiles.zip: the sourcecode for those interested

Here's the text from the "whatthe.txt" file included in the jar archive:

This Program is designed to help Game Masters keep their heads, and to allow easy access to information in play and to allow them add to that information easily during play.

Basically, you can think of a campaign or adventure as a web of ideas and thoughts. You can define the nature of each "node" in the web as its "type". You can define your own types, and little icons to go with them.

Each Node has a title, description, type, and a list of other nodes that it is linked to. You can view these linked nodes on the right side of the frame. You can go to those nodes by clicking on them. More details about actually using the program are available in the other help file.

I was inspired to write this program after folks on the Fudge mailing list kept mentioning how its hard to keep writing adventures/stories in a campaign where a combat wouldn't take up most of the session. It occured to me that the format most of us use for writing campaign information isn't the most efficient. This is what my brain wanted, so I whipped it up. I kept the size as small as possible so that folks might use it on smaller (read: handheld) machines.

If you use the program and have any helpful comments to convey, please drop me an e-mail at jughrin @ yahoo*dot*com.

However, this program is distributed under the terms of the GPL, so you are free to make modifications on your own! So don't think I'm holding you back.

Hope you enjoy!

John Ughrin

(Posted by RobKnop 07 Jul 2003)

Could you please describe in a few words what's the program actually for? I (and possibly not only) don't have the virtual machine and am not sure if I want to install it only to find the program not being interesting for me.

-- MateuszCzaplinski - 07 Jul 2003

You might have a JVM with your browser already. However, the program basically allows you to take the hundreds of small particles of information about a game and connect them with links. You can export the final web as an HTML file. An example html file is attached below.

Yeah! Would somebody be so kind as to post some screenshots? And perhaps a quick example of a small adventure and how the Second Brain supports the GM?

I admit that the idea of using nodes sounds interesting, since it mimics the way the human brain works... it must be surprisingly intuitive for the author to find what he's looking for--but difficult for anybody else.

-- JonathanBenn - 08 Jul 2003

Screenshot and Description

• gmbss.jpg:
  

In this screeshot, you can see the editor window of the program. On the lefthand side of the window, you can see and edit the information for the currently selected node (The town of Deridis). Both text boxes are editable, and the type (Location) can be changed by double-clicking the label to the right of the titlebox. (The "Types" menu allows you to change icons for types, as well as create new types.) On the right hand side of the panel, we can see a list of the other nodes that are linked to this one. Links to existing nodes can be created or destroyed using the buttons below the list. You can also create a new node and simultaneously link to it by using the "Spawn" button. Navigating to another node is simply a matter of double-clicking on the node's name on the list. You can also go directly to another node by using the "Search for Node" item under the "NodeWeb" menu.

Its not particularly efficient to show you every node in the example web, so I exported it to HTML and attached that file. It should be available below.

Hope this helps some people out.

-- JohnUghrin - 08 Jul 2003

Version 1.5

Many updates including support for:

• HTML formatting tags and viewing the nodes in Monospaced font.

• better control of node order for HTML/XML output

• a "Help Brain" that loads to help get you going.

• "remembers" the brain you were working on and loads it when restarting.

• and more! Yes! It reads your v1.0 files!

-- JohnUghrin - 23 Oct 2003

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