Auto-Jimmy v0.9.2: Robot Construction Release

[CthulhuStig]

It's taken longer than I hoped, but it's now time for another release of Auto-Jimmy. For those that don't know, Auto-Jimmy is an open source app for Windows, macOS & Linux. It provides a selection of tools for Traveller players and referees, some of these are aimed at people using the Mongoose rules, but many can also be used for other Traveller variants.

The main addition for this release is robot construction based on the Robot Handbook rules. The vast majority of the rules are covered, with only some of the more obscure things like nanobots and cybernetics omitted. A huge amount of thanks goes to Geir Lanesskog for writing the book and his clarifications around some of the rules.

Release Highlights:

• Robot construction using the Mongoose Robot Handbook rules
  • Support for robots as NPCs and player characters
  • Automatically generated notes listing situationally dependant modifiers and rules
  • Show skills with and without characteristics modifiers included
  • Export of robot to PDF
• New options to allow configuration of what fuel types are available for sale at different classes of starport
  • Allows for different interpretations of the rule around if class A/B starports sell unrefined fuel
  • Default is A/B starports sell refined and unrefined fuel and C/D only sell unrefined
  • Settings are available in the Rules section of the Configuration menu
• Fuel based routing now supports fuel caches and anomalies (e.g. the VoidBridge network, Riftspan Station, etc)
  • Anomaly fuel and berthing costs can be supplied if known
  • Fuel caches are assumed to have no fuel or berthing costs
• Improved world selection in tool windows
• Jump route calculation speed improvements

If you're going to use the Windows installer, I should warn you that it's not digitally signed (as that costs money). This means your browser may warn you about it not being a frequently downloaded program and/or make you confirm that you want to download it. Also, when you run the installer, Windows will almost certainly warn you that it's an unknown app and make you jump through hoops to install it.

If you've previously cloned the Auto-Jimmy repo or downloaded the source from github, you may need to re-run the command to have pip install requirements.txt. Detail on how to do this can be found in the installation instructions in the Auto-Jimmy readme.

Project Links:
Source and Docs: https://github.com/cthulhustig/autojimmy
Windows Installer: https://github.com/cthulhustig/autojimmy/releases
Screenshots: https://github.com/cthulhustig/autojimmy/blob/main/docs/screenshots.md
Known Issues: https://github.com/cthulhustig/autojimmy/blob/main/docs/known_issues.md

These are some screenshots showing the construction manifest and final attributes/notes for the Crew Droid. I've also attached an example of the pdf that can be generated for constructed robots. The eagle eyed among you might notice that Auto-Jimmy shows the cost of the robot as Cr130,100 whereas the Robot Handbook has the cost as Cr150,000. This is the same difference in cost that Seth Skorkowsky gets when he recreates the Crew Droid in his review of the Robot Handbook, I think the only difference is he rounds down to get Cr130,000 (which Auto-Jimmy also supports).

 

[Rupert]

I just downloaded and installed it, and Windows then deleted the executable, and claims it has a trojan:

 

[CthulhuStig]

@Rupert, thanks for the detailed info. What antivirus software are you using? Is it Windows Defender?

I've had an issue with a previous release where, for a couple of hours, Windows Defender decided to flag the installer as a virus but then it was fine after the next virus definitoin was released shortly later. The highlights of that "fun" adventure can be found in the comments and my update on the reddit thread for that release

https://www.reddit.com/r/traveller/comments/163t4af/autojimmy_a_new_utility_for_players_and_referees

The installer has been run through Bit Defender and uploaded to Virus Total which runs dozens of virus checkers against it, none of them have reported an issue. If anyone else is seeing an issue, please let me know.

 

[Rupert]

That was Defender, yes. I did check it against an online one as well, and it said it was fine.

I'll wait a bit and try again.

 

[CthulhuStig]

If you do try again, could you let me know how you get on

 

[Rupert]

Tried again, and so far it's fine. Defender's definitions have updated from 1.417.55.0 to 1.415.57.0, for that's worth.

 

[CthulhuStig]

Thanks for letting me know. I'm going to have to try and find a way to stop this happening for future releases.

 

[Commander Truestar]

Hi,
I just downloaded Auto-Jimmy v0.9.2 and I'm playing with it.
Not a big quibble, but in the "Sales World" display, the values are not centered.
I've not gotten deep into playing with it, but plan to make use of the trade data in the coming game this Saturday
Next, is to try and re-work the UWP's to match MTU

Thank you for the work your doing on this!!

 

[CthulhuStig]

Thanks for the feedback @Commander Truestar, it's always good to hear people are using it. If you get a chance to try it out more, I'd be really interested to hear how you get on.

Not a big quibble, but in the "Sales World" display, the values are not centered.

By this, are you referring to the fact some columns have values left aligned and some have them right aligned? If so, then that is actually intentional, although I do admit it can look a bit odd for some columns. The reason for doing it is to mimic the behaviour of most spreadsheets, where alphanumeric strings are left aligned and purely numerical values are right aligned. I'm not completely sure why it's done, but I think it relates to differences in how people's brains compare strings with each other and how they compare numbers with each other, by aligning them differently it makes them easier to read. Where it gets a bit odd is when dealing with ehex values, as in a lot of cases they look like numerical values but technically they're strings due to the fact they can be non-numerical characters. What I might look at doing is changing it so ehex values are aligned the same way as numerical values, as they are logically equivalent to numerical values in this situation.