March Beta Release in Test

[Jiminimonka]

I think that Moon Wizard is trying to standardise everything as much as possible, and once that is "settled" there will not be as much headache for ruleset developers in the future. This latest change was quite a big step towards that.

More documentation would help, goes without saying (as does Smiteworks is a small team).

Damned, your tutorials on youtube have helped me a great deal btw.

[damned]

These methods of targeting specific versions are widely used in open source and do come with the version-compatibility issues that have been raised.
I think it's naive to assume it would not here. Indeed, Foundry also has this problem and it means that developers of extensions and child rulesets may need to provide support (or decline to do so) for more than a single version at a time.
That being said, it does come also with the advantages of continuing to use an older version where you have everything working.

So the question is whether that added flexibility for users to be able to use projects (child rulesets or extensions) that have not been updated recently by using an older version of FG and/or the ruleset is worth prioritizing.
Solving for that seems to require other devs who do update on schedule to do more work in supporting past releases and of course SmiteWorks would also have to assign their employees to adjust the release/update system to handle past integration levels (beyond just live/test)

The advantage of having everyone on the exact same versions reduced support loads and knowledge that the support team need to learn/retain.
On the flip side the changes created support issues requiring the support team to learn.
The changes are going to happen so support having to learn new stuff and support different things is by choice/design.

Adding one or two CoreRPG stable versions per year might not impact SmiteWorks support load in any significant manner.
Maybe they support the most recent stable version only or they provide no support.
Almost all issues have already been found in these versions, remaining issues tend to be very much edge cases and resolved in the next release (the devs using these stable builds can port the new code directly into their ruleset or bite the bullet and upgrade their code to the stable branch again) or they have to be addressed in the child ruleset.

I am not talking about stable releases of 5E and PF2E etc.
I am only talking about CoreRPG.

Im talking about this because:
a) there are not enough rulesets on Fantasy Grounds
b) there are not enough community developers on Fantasy Grounds
c) developers get hit by both the learning curve and time sink to build the ruleset in the first instance plus the ongoing requirement to keep maintaining the ruleset - not improving it, just keeping it working error free - its a disincentive to a) and b)
d) the player base will have less issues when playing with smaller rulesets of having the game stop working for them mid campaign

I understand SmiteWorks position in this - I dont agree with it but I get it.
I've already made my decision not to release any more rulesets, the maintenance overhead makes me depressed.

[Amerisun]

I am not talking about stable releases of 5E and PF2E etc.
I am only talking about CoreRPG.

Im talking about this because:
a) there are not enough rulesets on Fantasy Grounds
b) there are not enough community developers on Fantasy Grounds
c) developers get hit by both the learning curve and time sink to build the ruleset in the first instance plus the ongoing requirement to keep maintaining the ruleset - not improving it, just keeping it working error free - its a disincentive to a) and b)
d) the player base will have less issues when playing with smaller rulesets of having the game stop working for them mid-campaign

I understand SmiteWorks position in this - I dont agree with it but I get it.
I've already made my decision not to release any more rulesets, the maintenance overhead makes me depressed.

I want to say that, Damned, your YouTube videos made me want to develop for FG. I am a developer who has been building web pages since the late 1990's (yes, on Lynx and Mozilla). I manage a lot of developers today, so I don't do as much development anymore; I'm always looking for something to keep my geek brain happy. I want to say I 100% agree with the ruleset/extension developers' comments on this thread. I really feel for someone like Damned that has built some killer rulesets (I use quite a few of them!)

I started using Rulset Wizard to build two rule sets. When I was confused about something, I asked questions, and eventually, the answer was to stop using Ruleset Wizard; it's best to learn the Smiteworks way. I realized that RSW is a dirty word or at least a disliked tool. The official SW documentation and difficulty building rulesets without RSW keep people who could build (like myself) from doing so.

I love FGU, and I want it to more than succeed. But I think if there is not more support and help for community developers, it will only be as big as officially developed rulesets allow it to be. It would be great if something were officially supported or if something made developing rulesets much easier. Whether it's better documentation or live streams or something, the environment for developing FGU rulesets is not friendly, not convenient, and very painful to work in, especially with these changes over time.

I understand Smiteworks is a relatively small company. I understand there is no easy answer here from a commercial or technical standpoint. I am voicing my frustrations, too. I am adding my voice to the group with others, being from someone who was trying to build rulesets but will be giving up for a while because of the challenges. I will keep my eyes on this space (the whole forum).

[deer_buster]

Ruleset Wizard, without official support from Smiteworks to make it actually work efficiently, was a lot of wasted money

[damned]

Ruleset Wizard, without official support from Smiteworks to make it actually work efficiently, was a lot of wasted money

That is not my experience. I created a functional ruleset for a fairly simple system (Year Zero) in 2 hours. Ofc I spent much more time on it later improving it, but I had a completely playable version in that time.

[LordEntrails]

I would be nowhere near a functional ruleset for Frontier Space without RSW (and Damned). To me it's value lies in the visual building aspects. It would seem to me the SW concerns over template overwriting could be solved to keep RSW a valuable tool if all the official templates were already available in RSW. Then for someone like me, I could just pick and chose from the official supported templates and wouldn't be messing with overwriting or re-creating templates that make RSW rulesets hard to maintain.

[deer_buster]

Ymmv

[Myrdin Potter]

The feature expansion pressures community developers as well. Now there are three token fields to populate instead of one, for example.

The image requirements have gotten harder and harder as well as Smiteworks offloads the work to list into the store to the community developer and the probably small IP owner.

I have seen more and more community ruleset developers fall away as maintaining the code gets to be too much.

I think the problem is not a stable CoreRPG, I think the problem is a too hard to make a good enough character sheet in CoreRPG.

I think that Ruleset Wizard would not be needed if there was a better character sheet Wizard to make character sheets without learning LUA and extensions … not automated but more than text fields.

[damned]

The feature expansion pressures community developers as well. Now there are three token fields to populate instead of one, for example.

The image requirements have gotten harder and harder as well as Smiteworks offloads the work to list into the store to the community developer and the probably small IP owner.

I have seen more and more community ruleset developers fall away as maintaining the code gets to be too much.

I think the problem is not a stable CoreRPG, I think the problem is a too hard to make a good enough character sheet in CoreRPG.

I think that Ruleset Wizard would not be needed if there was a better character sheet Wizard to make character sheets without learning LUA and extensions … not automated but more than text fields.

Out of curiosity have you tried XCore - does it meet some of your needs or not really?

[Myrdin Potter]

Xcore (and MoreCore) are great at adding rollers to a standard character sheet. Not so good if you want to change the look or location of fields to the character sheet unless you code an extension.

I find they make it easier to add the rolls you need, but I have not found them better than CoreRPG if you want to move the blocks around to more closely match the official character sheets. I am thinking more of a painter where you could do limited layout of the sheet and then add the rollers.