May 24, 2005

Automated Weather Generator

The weather generator download is a compressed (.sit), binhex-ed (.hqx) file (otherwise known as an archive).  You'll need a universal expander/decompresser to open the archive and get to the weather generator.

Aladdin Systems' StuffIt Expander is a free utility that should do the job for you.  Download it from <http://www.aladdinsys.com/>.

Once you've decompressed the archive, you'll have a folder that contains the Greyhawk weather generator.  The generator itself is a HyperCard stack (a kind of document), and requires the HyperCard application to open it.

HyperCard (or at least a HyperCard Reader) comes free with most Apple Macintosh computers (or at least it used to).  If you have access to a Macintosh computer, simply locate the HyperCard application, and use it to open the weather generator.  The rest should be self-explanatory.

If you have access to a Mac but can't locate HyperCard on it, I've uploaded HyperCard Reader 2.4 to this page.  It's also in a compressed, binhex-ed format (uncompress it using Aladdin's Stuffit Expander, as above).

I don't know if there's a version of HyperCard for Windows, although I've heard that a HyperCard Windows port, called FreeCard, is in development.  Check out <http://ufp.uqam.ca/> for more information.

Also check out Revolution, at <http://www.runrev.com/>, which is a cross-platform development environment capable of opening HyperCard stacks.  Apparently it'll run HyperCard stacks in Windows, although I haven't tried it myself.

I realise this is all very complicated and inconvenient, and I apologise for it, but HyperCard was the only easy-to-learn tool at hand when I decided to automate the Greyhawk weather generator.  I guess it's become somewhat dated now, but it still works fine on my computer, and I don't know of any modern equivalents to HyperCard.  (Except, perhaps, Revolution--a sufficiently intriguing concept that I might spend the time to look into it... at least it's cross-platform, which avoids the single biggest disadvantage of HyperCard.)

"Enough talk already," you say.  "Let me download the weather generator, (version 1.2)."