Savage Worlds 3.4

[Doswelk]

Last night I made a new video, it covers the newer features of 3.4

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Hopefully nothing is changed when 3.4 is released...:o

[Eru the One]

Looks great!

[Flathwrak the Usurper]

I can't see the video... =(

Link?

[Davidj8886]

Just want to say...those who continue to work and improve the SW ruleset are MY HEROS!

[dittotb]

The videos that you do and the work that is being done to improve this ruleset is greatly appreciated.

[tauriih]

You're a lifesaver as usual, Dos!

One question: since this is the core ruleset and not an add-on like Ikael's work was, how will most of these new features integrate with existing setting products like Deadlands?

[Ikael]

Its planned that all commercial products d(deadlands to name but a few) will be 100% compatible with new core sw ruleset. I am also planning to make my further work compatible with at least adenture deck and deadlands.

[Davidj8886]

Not to be a bother or anything and it might be posted somewhere else that I couldn't seem to find, but...

Is there any sort of time frame to expect 3.4. Not trying to rush or anything just more of an FYI kind of thing. I know how life can get busy shall we say.

Again thanks for all you all do for the SW community!

[phantomwhale]

I'm just polishing up a final release candidate - items needed a tiny bit more love, so that we are in a good place to do funkier things with them in future releases (or user developed extensions, if Aki or someone else feels the urge !)

I've not announced a date for v3.4 as it will be inevitably wrong ! Mainly as there is no way to predict the number or size of bugs that you'll hit in play-testing. But I'm pushing hard on it - mainly as I want it done now myself; integrating Aki's work ended up being much bigger work than I'd anticipated.

Very glad to have those features in though; there are lots of really great features in there, and it seems a large majority of GMs are using it now, so be great having it compatible with all my and Doswelk's released extensions, including the new Deadlands:Noir (mine) and Hell on Earth (Kevin's) extensions.

At a guess, within the month.

[S Ferguson]

Its planned that all commercial products d(deadlands to name but a few) will be 100% compatible with new core sw ruleset. I am also planning to make my further work compatible with at least adenture deck and deadlands.

I can't believe that those are the only two products you care about!

Make it compatible with everything! From SW to Pathfinder to... Oops, sorry, my train of thought derailed.

But just to be sure, include as many of the high sales products, like WWII, Hell on Earth, etc., just to be sure I as a loyal fan ;) will be willing to incorporate. This usually means an open code philosophy. Make it as general as possible to accommodate the rising number of products for SW.

At least I'll be happy!:D

Cheers,
SF

[phantomwhale]

Ikael mentions Deadlands: Reloaded specifically because it changes quite a lot of the core ruleset, whereas most other extensions only make very minor additions.

The reason for this is simple history - I took over Savage Worlds to fix bugs, and open it up better for extension. Then I put lots of cool stuff that I wanted into Deadlands: Reloaded so I could play a great game with my mates and released it.

Between 3.3 and the upcoming 3.4, lots of these cool things have then washed back into the main ruleset - for instance, 3.4 will have and Arcane Type selector to enable better powers and an option to flag weapons that fumble on a natural 2 (shotguns, el cheapo gear) - both of which came out of Deadlands: Relaoded.

So I suspect any future work Ikael engages with will have a greater chance of being compatible with Deadlands: Reloaded, and should play well with most of the other setting extensions (as, indeed, it probably does right now) due to there minimal adjustments to the core ruleset.

It may still require a DL:R specific patch, but with some luck this will only be a minor one.

Regards,
Ben

[S Ferguson]

Ikael mentions Deadlands: Reloaded specifically because it changes quite a lot of the core ruleset, whereas most other extensions only make very minor additions.

The reason for this is simple history - I took over Savage Worlds to fix bugs, and open it up better for extension. Then I put lots of cool stuff that I wanted into Deadlands: Reloaded so I could play a great game with my mates and released it.

Between 3.3 and the upcoming 3.4, lots of these cool things have then washed back into the main ruleset - for instance, 3.4 will have and Arcane Type selector to enable better powers and an option to flag weapons that fumble on a natural 2 (shotguns, el cheapo gear) - both of which came out of Deadlands: Relaoded.

So I suspect any future work Ikael engages with will have a greater chance of being compatible with Deadlands: Reloaded, and should play well with most of the other setting extensions (as, indeed, it probably does right now) due to there minimal adjustments to the core ruleset.

It may still require a DL:R specific patch, but with some luck this will only be a minor one.

Regards,
Ben

I understand what the fundamental differences are and the problems with DL:R and the Adventure Deck in terms of coding and it's implementations (and it's implications in the core ruleset - I love going through your code:) ). I just found that as the SWFI grew, it grew unmanageably, thus having to incorporate a fair amount of that code that we all use and enjoy into 3.4. The compatibility I was concerned with were older rulesets, or settings to come, being dependent on the extension remnants. I'm sure, in fact quite sure, that Ikael will take into account other settings by generalizing and refactoring the code (I read his code too - I've learned a few tricks off of both of you). I think. Sometimes he has sneaky thoughts! :D

Cheers,
SF

[spacce1889]

Do you all get prerelease of the next fg version?

[S Ferguson]

Do you all get prerelease of the next fg version?

Nope, although some people are involved in playtesting the ruleset.

[ddavison]

Another stellar effort guys. Great work!

[Doswelk]

Nope, although some people are involved in playtesting the ruleset.
You DO get to experience the fun of play-testing the new versions though...

Basically iKeal and PW and myself have been trying to keep bugs out of all the published rulesets, AFAIK when 3.4 is released all the settings will work (without bugs).

BUT the only real way to test these is to play the settings, so please let me know of any issues you find once 3.4 is released...

[sakmerlin37]

I hope I am not stepping on any toes here, but I have a few questions:

1> How many people are working on the code for SW in FGII?
2> Is this a paid venture for those people?
3> Is it a community-driven project?
4> If so, is there a subversion-type checkout?

I can code and would offer my services to help. It seems like just a few people are carrying the weight of the entire FGII-SW community on their shoulders :). If it's a paid endeavor, that's a bit different then :P

Just thought I'd offer my services; it might take me a little while to get up to speed on the code, but in the long run, it might be beneficial to coordinate many different developers who work on different pieces than it is to tackle all by one's self (i.e., the way most Linux distributions are developed).

~Steve

[S Ferguson]

I hope I am not stepping on any toes here, but I have a few questions:

1> How many people are working on the code for SW in FGII?
2> Is this a paid venture for those people?
3> Is it a community-driven project?
4> If so, is there a subversion-type checkout?

I can code and would offer my services to help. It seems like just a few people are carrying the weight of the entire FGII-SW community on their shoulders :). If it's a paid endeavor, that's a bit different then :P

Just thought I'd offer my services; it might take me a little while to get up to speed on the code, but in the long run, it might be beneficial to coordinate many different developers who work on different pieces than it is to tackle all by one's self (i.e., the way most Linux distributions are developed).

~Steve

It's a paid endeavor. And to my knowledge there is one person handling the code and a group of individuals working on the various rulesets, to ensure compatibility.

Cheers,
SF

[phantomwhale]

Savage Worlds is a paid endeavour; whilst most of the cost of sales goes to Pinnacle entertainment, and then a reasonable slice back to Smiteworks, there is a small commission rate that goes back to the maintainer (myself). Similarly, for commercial extensions, a small amount goes to the extensions creator (often Doswelk or myself).

That said, for this release, Ikael had written a large body of code as an extension to add on new features which had proved to be very popular. So in this sense he helped me and the community by writing a good chunk of the code required for these features; allowing me to focus on some other core ruleset changes that were required instead.

So given everyone has access to the code (it's just zipped up the SavageWorlds3.pak file) anyone can view the code, and Fantasy Grounds allows you to write extensions to extend what the code is doing. This isn't quite the same as modifying the code in-place, but it's not a huge leap to integrate extension code back into the main ruleset.

I do have a Git repository I use for my own work, and have shared it with Ikael during this release to try and merge features in gradually (didn't quite work like that...) but obviously that's not public, as it's a commercial product, and has to be.

So I would encourage anyone with any interest in adding an new feature, or tidying up a feature, to get involved with the code - I gladly would accept patch requests to the ruleset, or work with home-grown extension authors to pull there stuff in the core ruleset. Or even graphics artists would want to update some of the graphics within the ruleset or an extension !

Sure, I'm still the guy who takes the small (e.g. tea and biscuits, and maybe the odd RPG PDF money) commission. But then I'm also the guy who has to make sure everything is bug-free, stable, supported, open for future extension, released professionally and field support requests in a timely fashion. After that, I'm also throwing hours at the project as I want it to be better for me to use, and if anyone else feels like doing the same, I'll be as pleased as punch to work with you !

In short, no toes stepped on, I highly welcome community involvement / feedback, and be glad to work with anyone around this body of work however I can.

[Doswelk]

Ikael pointed out a feature I missed so I had to make another video to show it off!

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[S Ferguson]

Ikael pointed out a feature I missed so I had to make another video to show it off!

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You and your video fetish. Geez, trying to be a star? ;)

[Ikael]

I could sworn that the min strength is taken ahäccount in calculation. In addition its very easy to ensble the feature to work in minisheet as well.

[phantomwhale]

Minimum Strength is still in the updated SW rules, but the problem was there are no minimum strength values set against the module's melee weapons - these are not shown in the paper book either, as melee weapon minimum strength values are assumed from the damage (e.g. a Str+d8 melee weapon is assumed to have minimum strength d8)

There is also a bug in SWFI / latest 3.4 build which causes minimum strength to work for ranged weapons (where the values HAVE been set in the modules) so if you carry a rifle doing 3d6 damage with minimum stength d4, it actually resets the damage to 3d4 !

I might simplify this up, and remove the exotic attribute parsing for the release version, so I can focus on getting the Str dice part working correctly.

[phantomwhale]

Yeah, so final release will respect strength requirements in any "Str+d#" damage weapons, but I've removed the other attributes from the calculation engine for now.

Can open this code up better for extension, especially if there are any settings that use other statistics for damage calculation ?