March Beta Release in Test

[SilentRuin]

At the same time, we need to keep moving forward to keep our technical debt lower over time.

Part of that should be being aware of what those rulesets/extensions actually were told to use in the past (function/anchors/etc.) to do things and make some attempt to describe what now needs to be done instead.

Often these are simple renaming - which you would think would be simple to say "where you did this, now do this".

This post is an example of me doing just that for others, though I had to spend 8-10 hours a day for 4+ days to deconstruct what was done and work my way back to get to "what I had working before".

I can't imagine how much time I could have saved if these points were given to me rather than having to "deconstruct" them myself.

[Gwydion]

I'm not sure where else to post this and I don't want to start a thread that sounds like I'm complaining. As most of you know I am and have been a huge FG/FGU supported since 2016. I guess I have more of a question for SW (Doug and Moon Wizard) than anything. My question is, what is SW official position as it relates to independent ruleset creation? My definition of independent is basically anything that doesn't fall into the top tier for RPG's (e.g. outside of 5e, PF2, etc..). It feels sort of like the golden age (overused term) for new RPG's and as a consumer I find myself more and more wanting to play these new RPG's (such as ShadowDark, Shadow of the Weird Wizard, Dragonbane, etc..). Given I don't have anyone close to me where I can play in person, I play online. I've worked with some developers and other content creators (like Damned and spoofer) to bring things like Shadow of the Demon Lord to FGU and was hoping to do the same for ShadowDark (we actually were close to an official release before the moratorium on Ruleset Wizard releases) but it feels like now we will have to stop. Extremely disappointing not because I want money from the project but because I want more people to have the passion for FGU that I do and I want to be able to bring more games to FGU.

It seems like the offical position (and I could be wrong) from Smiteworks is that its fine to use things like Rulset Wizard (RW) to create games and release them on the Forge, but given some of the recent underlying code changes which have occurred and I expect will continue to occur, without some sort of acknowledgement to all the rulesets out there for systems that SW may never (for good reason) decide to develop, it seems that it is becoming more difficult for community developers to bring those to the Forge. I hear what you're saying, Doug, that those developers should go to MW and ask but that doesn't seem feasible to me for either MW or the community devs. I know some devs create many rulesets and even those who only create a few it seems like it is difficult for them to continue developing.

Is there some way of getting the developers more aligned with SW? I don't have the answer but whether it is a forum or some medium to understand upcoming changes like some of the points SilentRuin raised could perhaps be considered? I'm not a coder so I can't speak to the complexity but I am a consumer who is looking to run more games on FGU but unfortunately right now I'm either having to look elsewhere for those games or try and use X-core (which is amazing) to fill the gap.

Apologies for the rambling post I just wanted to get my view out there. I don't post much around topics like these but this one is important to me. Finally, I do love SW and FGU and hope to be able to continue to use it for games outside of the big ones like 5e and PF2 which I also love.

Thanks for reading!

[bmos]

given some of the recent underlying code changes which have occurred and I expect will continue to occur, without some sort of acknowledgement to all the rulesets out there for systems that SW may never (for good reason) decide to develop, it seems that it is becoming more difficult for community developers to bring those to the Forge. I hear what you're saying, Doug, that those developers should go to MW and ask but that doesn't seem feasible to me for either MW or the community devs. I know some devs create many rulesets and even those who only create a few it seems like it is difficult for them to continue developing.
Is there some way of getting the developers more aligned with SW?

I think this is an important perspective to consider for SmiteWorks, but I think the dev community also needs to consider the overall userbase of FantasyGrounds. Most users are playing 5E with little to no extensions so understandably this is the focus during development.

THAT BEING SAID,
I think the level of documentation for these updates, some of which are quite far-reaching, has been getting worse compared to the high point of last spring when documentation was pretty comprehensive.
Example: https://fantasygrounds.com/forums/sh...uleset-Updates

If this approach -- or something better -- could be kept up, it would help the developer community quite a lot.

I've resorted to maintaining my own git history that I commit the ruleset changes to so I can get diff outputs for each change, but having to interpret that myself and every other dev having to do that as well is pretty inefficient.

If SW offered an annual stable CoreRPG version (Core23, Core24 etc) developers could opt at some point to move their ruleset from CoreRPG to Core23. They would not get new features but the game would continue to work as programmed and as expected by the people who bought it.

This should definitely be considered, although I'd also be fine with a more frequent schedule. Even just being able to target 1 previous major ruleset update would be huge for the many projects that don't get updated before releases go to LIVE.

[LordEntrails]

... (we actually were close to an official release before the moratorium on Ruleset Wizard releases) but it feels like now we will have to stop....

Could someone explain this to me? Or tell me more? I'm not sure I'm understanding this statement correctly and I have not heard anything about a stop to using Ruleset Wizard.

[Gwydion]

Could someone explain this to me? Or tell me more? I'm not sure I'm understanding this statement correctly and I have not heard anything about a stop to using Ruleset Wizard.

I might have misinformation and if so, I apologize. The background is that Damned, Spoofer and I converted Shadow of the Demon Lord as an official conversion using Ruleset Wizard and it was released on the FGU store (not the Forge). I think there might be one other ruleset created using Ruleset wizard on the official FGU store. As I understand it from discord posts and conversations with a few individuals, because of challenges I believe with Ruleset Wizard and complications it creates we can still relesae rulesets using it but only on the Forge. Again, this is a bit like the telephone game and I apologize in advance if I have anything wrong. I'm not trying to create drama, just understand if there is a better way forward. We had been close to officially releasing ShadowDark using Ruleset wizard when I heard that we could no longer release rulesets officially on SW using it. We could still release it on the Forge as I understand it.

[LordEntrails]

I might have misinformation and if so, I apologize. The background is that Damned, Spoofer and I converted Shadow of the Demon Lord as an official conversion using Ruleset Wizard and it was released on the FGU store (not the Forge). I think there might be one other ruleset created using Ruleset wizard on the official FGU store. As I understand it from discord posts and conversations with a few individuals, because of challenges I believe with Ruleset Wizard and complications it creates we can still relesae rulesets using it but only on the Forge. Again, this is a bit like the telephone game and I apologize in advance if I have anything wrong. I'm not trying to create drama, just understand if there is a better way forward. We had been close to officially releasing ShadowDark using Ruleset wizard when I heard that we could no longer release rulesets officially on SW using it. We could still release it on the Forge as I understand it.

Thank you. What I'm developing is (probably) for the Forge and just want to be aware.

[bayne7400]

It boils down to time . Each hour spent by SW supporting a product costs money. They want the store rulesets streamlined which makes it easier for them to keep up. Developers abandon products with frequency. Makes sense to me.

[Moon Wizard]

@bmos,
That same documentation that I wrote for the rulesets there is still being provided via the wiki:
https://fantasygroundsunity.atlassia...l+Change+Guide
Note, I started this in the last couple years to help with any CoreRPG updates to allow developers to take advantage of new changes.

@Gwydion,
The challenge is that we as a small company created a framework called CoreRPG, that was supposed to be a springboard of windows/templates designed to give a common experience across all rulesets that used that background. However, in order for us to advance the core code base, we do have to make changes/updates to update the user experience or make new features. In the last couple years, these are commonly wrapped up in new templates that are used to improve the experience, while the old templates are marked as deprecated with a 6-9 month deprecation period to allow for updates.

While I think the idea of RSW is interesting, the problem lies in the fact that the tool "unwinds" all of the templates and window information to provide a more exact WYSIWYG window building experience (unless you are very careful and only use predefined templates). However, the unwinding of all the templates means that all of the benefits of templatization are gone (i.e. it's all very specific placement data with low-level FG controls); and thus, there is no way for the CoreRPG system definitions to modify those windows/templates to change the user experience. There are a couple rulesets on the store currently that used RSW; and due to these issues, they are by far, the most time consuming to update for the latest code changes in Core to keep them on par with 5E and the other popular rulesets.

Also, SmiteWorks as a company ends up on the hook trying to support rulesets, where the developers have "moved on" over the years. Since, the RSW rulesets are so low-level in their implementation vs. rulesets built with the same templates as the popular rulesets, this means that we get stuck supporting these very high maintenance rulesets, which we don't have the resources to maintain or bring up to parity with the popular rulesets. Thus, why I asked the team to no longer accept RSW rulesets into the store, as that implies that SmiteWorks as a company is ultimately responsible for the maintenance of those rulesets when the developer is no longer available. (and this has happened "a lot" through the years.) By placing on the Forge, it lowers the expectation of end users in that the rulesets are "community" projects.

For developers who want to use RSW and do re-use some of the templates that end up changing, they can always copy those old deprecated templates into their own project and remove any warnings, in order to keep using them as is. I'm just eventually removing them from the Core ruleset to reduce the technical overhead and maintenance long-term.

Regards,
JPG

[Gwydion]

Helpful context. Thank you for the detailed explanation.

[deer_buster]

EDIT: I guess it doesn't really apply to the ruleset change numbers, but still...