Savage Worlds Ruleset, tokens and grid

[kalmarjan]

I find when you are speaking to someone in an effort to contribute to a community, it is best not to admonish them for the usage of language. That path only leads to irritation, misunderstanding, and your dismissal as a troll.

You have quite a history there with the other software that I mentioned. That was not by my design; I gave the example from my own personal background.

Fantasy Grounds has evolved quite a bit from its infancy. I remember back when even having pins in your campaigns would crash the program and corrupt the database.

We (the community) solved the problem in the best way that we could. I am going to repeat the point to drive it home for you:


1) Report the bug
2) Report system specs
3) Report version used
4) Report steps to recreate the problem.

There are those out there that are willing to contribute to the community as a whole, jump in and fix the problems that you post. That is their way of contributing.

I am not sure why you think that I am asking you to program your way out of your problems; I am not.

I just ask that you try and follow the guidelines to report the bug. That way, Fantasy Grounds can improve. You can continue to post that it is broken or unacceptable, I just don't see where that will get you.

I am sure that Doug has a large list of problems to fix. He inherited them. These problems would be given a rank, and he would go in there and fix them. I am not sure about his list, but I extrapolate that it is there.

Finally, getting back to the Autodesk/Adobe example. There have been many a plugin, renderer, and utility made from the creative people working around the flaws in the program. An example is V-Ray, Renderman, Brasil as renderers because the scanline renderer was just not up to par for most applications. Surface tools were originally a workaround for nurbing.

Kudos to you for being with 3DS since its DOS days. You probably remember what a nightmare the bugs were back then. (There were a LOT of them!)

I think though, that through consistent reporting of bugs in those programs by their communities, and the constructive feedback they gave is what made those programs what they are today.

For example, a crash on the AutoGrid function in 3DS M10 - One could post and say that it is stupid, the thing won't work, why after paying a stupid amount of money, won't it work?

The community asks to see the file, tweaks a few settings for the guy, and tries to solve the problem. There is no resolution yet, but the guy followed what I outlined up above.

Now people can try and re-create the problem, and perhaps a solution can be found.

Understand that all I am asking is for you to approach your bugs in the same way.

I hope that makes sense.

[phloog]

The admonishment was actually not intended to be about language, and not intended to troll, but I would say that calling someone a troll, or insinuating the same, is not productive, either.

Point taken, though, I should have just said that I NEVER said Klooge was better in general, only that it did some things better.

I get it...I see your four steps, but for the bugs I'm reporting I don't see a need to do 2) through 4), since everyone - Doug included, has already said that they see the problem with things like snap, incorrect links, etc. It's not an issue of versioning or system specs. The issue is now only speed to correct.

Here's the deal I'll make with you all - I won't post here again for a month (May 7th) at the absolute EARLIEST.

I won't post anything more on the issues I've already posted about ever, and frankly now you're absolutely free to take as much time as you need to fix things. I recognize that I have no real impact on the speed of operations, because it is in large part a volunteer organization.

And as angry as I might sound, I do appreciate the fact that I now understand a lot more about how the company gets things done, and I'm now at least informed rather than ignorant.

[ddavison]

We will do our best to continually improve FG. I think we have done a good job of releasing quality products since I have been the President of the company. In addition, the new developer commission model was designed in part to give the original developer an incentive to keep rulesets up to date and to patch and enhance them in order to garner more sales. This was something lacking in the model pushed by DA I think. It may take time for this tree to bear fruit but it is a step in the right direction.

We have a lot of areas that we want to improve upon and while I would like them to all occur at once I have to be realistic and tackle the most visible, serious or profitable ones first. Savage Worlds is an important core ruleset for us going forward, so your requests will definitely get into the queue. Requests will be weighed based on the severity, number of users requesting or reporting it and the profitability.

[ddavison]

Anyway, slightly back on the focus of this thread, I was wondering what the "best" approach for community ruleset patches was ? For instance, with this simple fix, I would like it to be considered for the next "official" SW ruleset. This is currently owned by SmiteWorks, and equally has a 3rd party developer registered as the current steward for it's development.

So ideally, I guess these patches should be sent to the development steward for consideration - in this case, this is ASilva, who I cannot find any contact details for. So maybe some sort of mailbox could be setup by SmiteWorks to capture patch requests and forward them to the appropriate developer(s) ? Even with an auto-reply to say the suggestion has been forwarded and to remind users that support requests should still be posted in the forums.

Equally it would be good for the bleeding edge users to be able to co-ordinate on unofficial patches between releases. Right now, I see efforts done as potentially "lost" as there is no formal way of sharing them with the community. Maybe this needs to be a community driven affair, but not sure how best to proceed. A thread for code patches might be good, but dissolve into chatter most likely. A section on the FGWiki could work ? Or hosting the ruleset in an online VCS like google code ? (although not sure about security / legal implicaitons on this - guessing this might be an issue). Maybe the demand is low around this usage, but equally it might be low because co-ordinated collaboration is non-trivial at the moment ?

Maybe something has already been setup around these areas, and I was not aware (I've been absent from the FG community for a while). Or maybe people have some good ideas around this. In any case, I am asking in a larger context to see if any future bugfixes might find a home in more than 2-3 people's installations. If so, I think I as a developer would be more encouraged to look into them.

Ah, was just coming back for a simple contact detail, and ended up rambling again. Apologies

That is a good idea. We will talk about it internally, but I think creating a forum for each ruleset might be a good approach. Sub-forums underneath could further help direct users to hot-fixes, release notes, how-tos, etc.

We also have a little work to do on our end on the best way to deploy the patches for ruleset and adventure modules out to users who bought them. It would be nice to tie it into the built-in update system but it might end up being a simple email approach at first.

[umbralux]

I hesitated before posting here. Mostly because it seems as if the issue has become personal for more than one. I also understand the need to make a profit. Better yet, I'm a die-hard capitalist and don't see it as a "necessary evil". I even realize the current issues with the SWEX rule set probably weren't caused by the current owners.

Even so, those issues almost certainly hurt profitability.

They've certainly made me more cautious about purchasing rule sets. Not because the rule set has issues, few can afford NASA's code shop. And even NASA has made some big mistakes. To me, the issue is the lost functionality. Things which work in SWv2 don't work in SWv3...even when using the same FG2 installation. "Nerfs" will almost always cause more pain than bugs or even lack of functionality.

I'm all for FG being profitable! Hopefully very profitable. It'll keep you around longer for me to use and enjoy! Out of curiosity, have you considered a ransom model for creating / upgrading rule sets? Stolze seems to have done well with that for RPGs.

One comment on the new forum format, have you considered making the rule specific forums a subforum of the Workshop? That would put the technical info in forums dedicated to the rule set while leaving the game and community areas as a community.

[Doswelk]

They've certainly made me more cautious about purchasing rule sets. Not because the rule set has issues, few can afford NASA's code shop. And even NASA has made some big mistakes. To me, the issue is the lost functionality. Things which work in SWv2 don't work in SWv3...even when using the same FG2 installation. "Nerfs" will almost always cause more pain than bugs or even lack of functionality.

I understand you concern, and my reply is my opinion (yes I do create SW modules for Smiteworks, but I am at the mercy of SWEX FGII bugs just like you!).

The Savage Worlds rule set is fairly unique in it's history compared to all other rulesets.

The Savage Worlds ruleset was the first non d20-based ruleset released for FG1. The D20 Modern for example (there were 2 different versions for FG1!) were both I suspect (I only did one of them) modified versions of the D20 ruleset Smiteworks provided with Fantasy Grounds. (this is not relevant really but a little history sometimes helps!)

The release of Fantasy Grounds II meant all the existing rulesets no longer worked, the change to using lua whilst making customization away from d20 easier it also increased the complexity of making a ruleset.

So people (myself included started re-making rulesets for FGII), and as Fantasy Grounds was updated people sometimes had to fix their rule sets to keep things working.

This is where the complications set in:

1) There have been three different versions of the Savage Worlds ruleset for FGII (there was a Dev version that was the concept version for the current version that to my knowledge myself and my group used for 10+ months exclusively; we were the unofficial play-testers)
2) to my knowledge the Fantasy Grounds Savage Worlds Ruleset has had 4 different people work on it over the years (and two companies!). The current chap trying to resolve the problems with it did not write any of it, so he has had to go through almost line by line to work out how it works (like we do when we try to find issues).
3) Smiteworks USA has only had ownership of FGII and the SW ruleset for a short period of time compared to the length of time the problems have existed.

I completely understand your concerns but other rulesets/products are usually the work of one person and are all designed to work (or have been fixed to do so) with the current version of FGII.

I would like to stress again the above post is my own opinion and any inaccuracies are mine, this is just my take on the only ruleset I use on Fantasy Grounds these days...

[umbralux]

One thing I'll add, all the community support has gone a long way towards mitigating my irritations. The community, as a whole, has been great! Thanks!

[phantomwhale]

Snap to grid fix, along with another bug fix, now both available as an unofficial extension : https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...ad.php?t=12159

[Blue Haven]

We can use this two extensions together or must be used alone...? i know this might be a stupid question but i remember that sometimes when you use more than one the program crash...so i asked