The Content Poll

[unerwünscht]

Question of the day, What is your gaming group in need of for Fantasy Grounds?

[GunnarGreybeard]

I checked Rulesets since that is really all I need at the moment. The other stuff listed that I really need, I can manage.

[Dracones]

More than anything I'd like to see continued support for the rulesets. You go into a lot of the forums and it looks like many of them don't see much in the way of updates.

It really puts me off buying, say the C&C ruleset, if I go into the forums and haven't seen much in the way of updates in a few months. Compare that to Savage Worlds which seems to have very active development and even "previews" for what's coming up in the next release.

A lot of the tools and utilities often feel like abandon-ware. For example the 4e parser hasn't worked with DDI's updates to items and as a new FG2 user, that means I can't create myself 4e libraries.

Now, for the DDI tool that's community supported. So I can't really complain that the guy that wrote it isn't updating it to my time table. But I wouldn't at all mind paying for tools like that and having part of my money go to whomever is continuing to support it.

[joshuha]

More than anything I'd like to see continued support for the rulesets. You go into a lot of the forums and it looks like many of them don't see much in the way of updates.

It really puts me off buying, say the C&C ruleset, if I go into the forums and haven't seen much in the way of updates in a few months. Compare that to Savage Worlds which seems to have very active development and even "previews" for what's coming up in the next release.

A lot of the tools and utilities often feel like abandon-ware. For example the 4e parser hasn't worked with DDI's updates to items and as a new FG2 user, that means I can't create myself 4e libraries.

Now, for the DDI tool that's community supported. So I can't really complain that the guy that wrote it isn't updating it to my time table. But I wouldn't at all mind paying for tools like that and having part of my money go to whomever is continuing to support it.

Yeah the issue with the rulesets, even commerical, is that they are done on a contract basis to create the initial ruleset and maybe a little bit of support but then people move on. I am guessing most rulesets sell a good amount initially but then taper off enough that they can't really make a maintenance only contract to be worth the money to the developer. However I do know they are trying to let developers who want to put in many bug fixes/new features to essentially get the new sales amounts but for some rulesets that still may not be worth minimum wage depending on the sales.

[phantomwhale]

Of all the FGII development items unerwünscht has listed, rulesets are financially the worst for a 3rd party development point of view. And given the developer cut is based off the ruleset cost, development of the super-cheap SWEX ruleset is probably the least rewarding of all !

Which is why it has to be a labor of love; I earned at least three times as much per hour doing a newspaper route when I was 14 :)

And for all things, new products get more sales than just supporting products, so there really is little financial incentive to continue developing / supporting them. So again, it really comes back to an interest / passion in maintaining them. Having migrated 8,000+ miles from my SWEX group, I wanted a tool to carry on playing the same game we used to play face-to-face, if not a better game with better tools - that's my reason for doing it.

[Dracones]

Part of a solution to that might be in how the frameworks are handled by the software. Really the game rules change very little over time. It mostly seems like the adds are things like "Super Transparent Tokens 2.0 with Combat Tracker Crunchiness" updates.

If there was a way for say C&C or BRP to inherit from a parent's work, any work done on making Pathfinder shinier would filter down to Osric/C&C/etc if the work was done on the d20 parent they all belonged to.

It might take a bit of tricky thought to get that right though. Especially to make sure that you didn't end up with C&C 1.12 requiring D20 2.34 and breaking with D20 2.4 which is what Pathfinder 1.8 and higher needs. Although even then that might not be too bad if FG could handle multiple version installs. C&C would just lag until someone went in and tweaked it to work with the new parent D20 mods.

[Moon Wizard]

As I am upgrading and adding features on the existing client and rulesets, I'm trying to keep an eye on how to add functionality to older rulesets without having to upgrade anything. However, this seems to be at odds with maintaining backward compatibility in most cases, so it's a balancing act. Also, I have been slowly modularizing the 3.5E and 4E rulesets to make them easier to work with when pulling code into other rulesets.

Cheers,
JPG

[unerwünscht]

While I have you Moon, might I ask if there is a hook for the 3.5/Pathfinder selection window in the new ruleset. A lot of people are wanting other D20 based rulesets and I think it would just be more efficient to hook them in there.

[Magnatude]

Just adding my voice here...
I just want to see continued support for the CURRENT rulesets as Moon is so busy, and most of us realize this. Hoping for EXT's of the Rulesets we $$bought$$ (and as they are still currently being sold as is... but slightly malfunctioning). I'm still active with my Iron Heroes and Arcana Evolved as well. (even off the Calandar sessions)
Thanks Moon for helping us out so far as much as you can.

[Nightfiend]

I'm a newer fantasy grounds user and so far it seems it has most everything i have been looking for. I agree with keeping up to date with changes in rules is going to be important. Maybe I'm missing it or haven't found the option yet but, i would be interested in the ability to make an image viewable to a select player where the rest of the players cant see it.

[Dershem]

I know for 3.5/PF/4e you can just drag the image to the characters portrait.

[Doswelk]

I'm a newer fantasy grounds user and so far it seems it has most everything i have been looking for. I agree with keeping up to date with changes in rules is going to be important. Maybe I'm missing it or haven't found the option yet but, i would be interested in the ability to make an image viewable to a select player where the rest of the players cant see it.

That feature is there you just drag the link button to the portrait of the player you want to see the specific image/story/npc/item.