Question: 4.2 and Deadlands Reloaded Fate Chips

[Stikyhooves]

Hey there.

I saw in the 4.2 change log that:

"[Feature] Soak button added to character sheet and to mini sheet. Clicking the button will make soaking roll and consume a benny"

Is there something I am missing to make this compatible with fate chips in Deadlands Reloaded? I was not able to find any posts regarding this when searching the site.

Thanks :)

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Secondary Question: (figured better to ask it as an add on here than start a new thread since this one was still fresh)

During combat, in my Deadlands Reloaded game, some of the tokens work for the 'drop on the token' feature to roll for combat. I have noticed that as a GM I am unable to do this on player tokens but I can do it on my 'monster' tokens. But what may be more relevant is that on the combat tracker there is a little white bubble with a "1.2" in it. Is there something my players need to do so that we can drop dice on the characters the way we are able to on the mobs?

Am I missing something here?

[Skellan]

You aren't missing anything. The ruleset is bugged since the recent updates. Hopefully it will be fixed in the near future.

The ruleset is still usable though it is quirky

[Stikyhooves]

It seems like the fate chips could be reworked to act a bennies as a stop gap. (prior to having them work in all the hierarchical ways) Copy code, rename x3, insert code? (and yes, I know it is more complex than that)

Should I just go to the Savage worlds rule set and create my own extension? Is this an extension that doesn't get a lot of attention? The Deadlands Reloaded extension is heavy and I feel a lighter more nimble version could be made that might be easier to keep pace with the core ruleset.

[Skellan]

I think it is fair to say that it doesn't get a lot of attention.

I don't really know enough about extensions to know what the best option is going forward. The Deadlands setting has some great features and it would be a shame to lose them but its not good if its buggy

[Stikyhooves]

As an update:

The Deadlands reloaded rulebooks do not play well with SW core. So I revised the code in the books to make them compatible. Huzzah.
Then I adapted Ikael's sample 'SW Fantasy Companion Arcane Backgrounds' extension so to reintroduce the appropriate arcane background. (Thank you Ikael!)

That and I remade my custom Deadlands skin to work as well.

Maybe I'll rewrite the fate chips thing, but for now. I am content that my min-sheets work, the white chip soak works, ect. My crew and I figure it is easier to handle the blue/red chips manually than all of the other more common math.

[phantomwhale]

Yeah, sorry, Ikael delivered (once again) a superb set of features with 4.2 late last year, but it was during a time when I've been moving careers and focusing my energies solidly on other things. I've finally found some time now to try and address the small bugs that are still part of 4.2, as well as the incompatibilities is has with to Deadlands: Reloaded extension.

Previously I've been the sole developer for both of these products, which certainly helped keep the compatibility high. Over time, I've tried to abstract a large number of things to reduce the coupling between them, and then new layered rulesets with CoreRPG has offered a few more ways they could be further decoupled too. But it's also fair to say it's a greater maintenance effort to get new features working for both Savage Worlds and Deadlands at the same time, and sadly I didn't have the time to match Ikael's enthusiasm during the 4.2 development work.

So - going forward - firstly I'm not a very active Deadlands player, so any bugs I'm probably not seeing straight away - I've got a few notes of existing issues people have reported on this forum, so will work through them. Haven't picked up on the rulebook issues, for instance, and randomly clicking around it isn't revealing the problems; so more info would be fabulous.

But even better, any patches / fixes people have come up with, I will happily review and add into the main ruleset for all to benefit from ! Any time people can offer to help fix bugs / add features will free up more time for me to do some of the architectural things like better decoupling in places to make ongoing support / breakages fewer. A lot of the things I had to copy/paste or hard code when I wrote DL:R extension 5 years ago can be done better now with the improvements to the underlying FG code, but it's often most of my time keeping bugs fixed and on top of new CoreRPG versions right now (and clearly, not even that recently).

Anyway, final point, I'm here, looking into stuff, so keep posting and I'll hope to get a "better" version out soon of SW and DL:R with a few of these small bugs fixed

[Skellan]

Its great to have you back :)

[Stikyhooves]

Thanks for the reply Phantomwhale

If I could ask one thing of you and all of the extension/ruleset developers. Keep your rulesets compatible with the core game that it is sourced from. Please make the official released Deadlands Marshall's Guide and Players Manual compatible with Savage Worlds Core. I re-coded them for myself so I have a working copy. But I can honestly say this whole process was a huge frustration and let down. I didn't mind that the extension wasn't up to speed with the new SW core. But, the extension should be an option, not a requirement to use the purchased content. I'll probably be a little bitter about having to re-code the Marshall's Guide for a bit. There is no reason any purchased product should not be compatible with the core ruleset that it is derived from. - I still don't understand why 'critter' and 'human' were set as a separate class from 'NPC'. :confused: This added minimal flavor and prevented the marshals guide from being SW compatible.

As for the extension in it's current state, I was too frustrated with the extension to use it much after I re-coded the rulebooks. There bugs are present, but my main concern was that it is far behind the 'ease of use' of the SW Core.

In my current game, we are only missing the poker table and other colors of bennies (as fate chips). I'm working on an extension to account for the other fate chip colors. But being able to use the SW mini tracker and auto rolls for white fate chips has been a huge boon to our game. We use these all the time. The other stuff in the Deadlands Extension was just not a practical trade off to keep using it.

In short, in loosing the extension entirely we felt we gained common practical use things at the loss of only trappings.

We rarely use the poker table. I plan to separate out this part of your extension into a mini-extension in case I want it back.

Fate chips can be handled as bennies and color tracked by other means in game if needed. It would be great if the fate chips 'worked' in game with the ease of SW bennies. But que sera.

I guess all this it to say, when you do have time to work on this one, please consider practical content over flavor that may cause future issues. And I'll go work on my own extension and also work on being less bitter. :p

Thanks.

[damned]

Hey Stikyhooves,

I think the main issue is that none of the components that make a deadlands game run are static. CoreRPG is continually changing. Savage Worlds had massive amounts of change - especially over the last year where it was ported to CoreRPG and then Deadlands on top of that. In addition - they are all done by different people with different timelines and availability and real life commitments. I know its sucky when something you pay good money for doesnt work as it should - but its certainly not something done deliberately or because of laziness or sloppiness.

[Stikyhooves]

Right. I understand. That's why I only mod and code for myself. I know I can't commit to a project like this.

That's also why I think there should be a core developer oversight in how the rulebooks are done. Everything has to be nimble. Things are going to change which means planning should be in place for that. I know that when I paid my price I mainly paid for the licence to the rule set. So having that work should be a priority. Bugs are going to be there and I'm ok with that. But if they Developers (capital D) cant create enough incentive to have multiple folks on a team or for the folks they have to keep things up to date then that will kill the faith people have in the concept. I enjoy being a fantasy grounds GM. It's been awesome to game with friends across the country again. If I didn't love what is going on here and the potential it holds then I wouldn't be so vocal.

Community modding and community content is common in the gaming world and most of it is free. (In this case it can't be because of licencing.) You can certainly use that passion to do great things. (Skywind for example) But if you know someone has real life commitments keeping them from a project then you have to manage for that. You have to expect it because people have lives and are human. (especially if they are unpaid)

I didn't mean to imply sloppiness or laziness on the part of the coder who took time out of their real life to do this. But as things go forward I hope there is more planning in how this is done. Otherwise this game will end up feel like so many pre-paid 'alpha' games on steam and less like a complete product.

And I do plan to write the Devs on this. I just want to gain more perspective first. It's easy to criticize when you don't see all the pieces.

[phantomwhale]

Thanks for the reply Phantomwhale

If I could ask one thing of you and all of the extension/ruleset developers. Keep your rulesets compatible with the core game that it is sourced from. Please make the official released Deadlands Marshall's Guide and Players Manual compatible with Savage Worlds Core. I re-coded them for myself so I have a working copy. But I can honestly say this whole process was a huge frustration and let down. I didn't mind that the extension wasn't up to speed with the new SW core. But, the extension should be an option, not a requirement to use the purchased content. I'll probably be a little bitter about having to re-code the Marshall's Guide for a bit. There is no reason any purchased product should not be compatible with the core ruleset that it is derived from. - I still don't understand why 'critter' and 'human' were set as a separate class from 'NPC'. :confused: This added minimal flavor and prevented the marshals guide from being SW compatible.


Yeah, totally regret that decision now. It made certain things easier to code at the time, but I would really like to merge it all back into a single class again. The kicker for these things is two-fold; not only time, but also backwards compatibility - we will need to support those classes, which now features in dozens of products both commercial and homemade, for a long time now.

I would be keen to see if going back to a single "npc" class is now possible with those constraints, but to tell the truth, no-one has expressed massive annoyance with it before now, expect me.



As for the extension in it's current state, I was too frustrated with the extension to use it much after I re-coded the rulebooks. There bugs are present, but my main concern was that it is far behind the 'ease of use' of the SW Core.


I'm a little worried about the "many bugs" and "far behind" statements; it probably implies there are quite a few issues I've yet to hear about. Right now I'm working on getting Fate Chips to correctly soak combat damage. To my mind, that is the one feature that has broken buttons (the Soak buttons on the combat tracker). The choices were to release Ikael's features, or wait a few weeks (which became months) to have the time to review everything and ensure compatibility. I chose the former; not sure if that was the right choice or not, but probably it was for pragmatic reasons (the scope of the code is such that it relies on user bug reports to truly test every corner case)



In my current game, we are only missing the poker table and other colors of bennies (as fate chips). I'm working on an extension to account for the other fate chip colors. But being able to use the SW mini tracker and auto rolls for white fate chips has been a huge boon to our game. We use these all the time. The other stuff in the Deadlands Extension was just not a practical trade off to keep using it.

In short, in loosing the extension entirely we felt we gained common practical use things at the loss of only trappings.


Ah Ok, missing minitrackers (I have that on my list too). Auto-roll white chips is not something I've had a lot of experience with (again, since 4.2 was delivered, life has not allowed much chance to do much gaming at all, least of all savage worlds) - is this something more than just soak rolls? If so, would be good to get more details, so I can make a bug card for it.



We rarely use the poker table. I plan to separate out this part of your extension into a mini-extension in case I want it back.


Yeah, that was a labour of love I did for myself, then added into the extension for others afterwards. I doubt many people use it that heavily, but my party did a lot of gambling, and this made the experience a lot faster and a lot more fun.



Fate chips can be handled as bennies and color tracked by other means in game if needed. It would be great if the fate chips 'worked' in game with the ease of SW bennies. But que sera.

I guess all this it to say, when you do have time to work on this one, please consider practical content over flavor that may cause future issues. And I'll go work on my own extension and also work on being less bitter. :p

Thanks.

Actually, another reason I wanted to add the poker table in was a historical one. When I first worked on this code 6-7 years ago, I put most of the new funky features into the Deadlands extension (as I wasn't the maintainer of the Savage Worlds code base then). Only towards the end did I ask if I might make changes to the core code underlying it, as the extension code back then was a little less flexible in it's options as it is now (you could only merge templates, not windowclasses) and I was sturggling to put one of two things in without changing the underlying savage worlds ruleset.

So over the next 2-3 years, much of the ongoing work I did beyond new features was slowly backporting DL:R features (arcane spells, better card drawing / management, etc...) down into the core Savage Worlds ruleset, which I was now the maintainer for, whilst also rewriting huge chunks of the SavageWorlds ruleset to allow Deadlands, and several other of the extensions written by Doswelk, to modify elements of the core rules without having to copy and paste as much (or any) code around.

E.g. the fact that DL:R is now "just fate chips, a poker table, and some annoying windowclass lock in" is due to the work done to move all of that down a level such that Savage Worlds has most of the funky features originally written for Deadlands.

Going forward I think all the little things will be quickly fixed - bad few months for Deadlands, and possibly a bad call to let SW 4.2 out early before someone had a chance to fix them up (and I know 4.2 still has a couple of minor bugs too - they are also on my list, but DL:R issues appear more painful).

The differing windowclasses used in Deadlands might be a longer term fix - again, one I've had on my radar for a long time. The best short-term solution I can see is to get the extension working seamlessly again in the areas you are not happy with it, to the point where you are happy to revert to using the full extension again, and then the modules will once again "just work". Mid-to-long term, we shall have to see - and, as always, patches or even just informed design ideas very much welcomed.

Hope that explains why things are as they are a little better - and apologies for trading off DL:R stability for SW features; the more I think of it, the more I'm not happy with that choice now.

[Stikyhooves]

Thank you for the very thorough reply. :)



I would be keen to see if going back to a single "npc" class is now possible with those constraints, but to tell the truth, no-one has expressed massive annoyance with it before now, expect me.

Is there any testing I can help with on this? I converted the critter/human to the npc class and it has been working swimmingly as far as I can tell, but I am not sure where else the critter/human classes are used. It seems there is a history here that I'm not aware of. Let me know and I can send you my files to play with or I can test it if you can show me where you think this may be cause issues.



I'm a little worried about the "many bugs" and "far behind" statements; it probably implies there are quite a few issues I've yet to hear about. Right now I'm working on getting Fate Chips to correctly soak combat damage. To my mind, that is the one feature that has broken buttons (the Soak buttons on the combat tracker). The choices were to release Ikael's features, or wait a few weeks (which became months) to have the time to review everything and ensure compatibility. I chose the former; not sure if that was the right choice or not, but probably it was for pragmatic reasons (the scope of the code is such that it relies on user bug reports to truly test every corner case)
Not meaning to worry you, I don't recall using the phrase many bugs. I will try to clarify the bugs I mean, but I'm a perfectionist. Every extension and game is going to have a bug or two. (even more if you are Bioware) In any case I will try to be more constructive when I note issues. The primary ones were the soak and mini-tracker.



Ah Ok, missing minitrackers (I have that on my list too). Auto-roll white chips is not something I've had a lot of experience with (again, since 4.2 was delivered, life has not allowed much chance to do much gaming at all, least of all savage worlds) - is this something more than just soak rolls? If so, would be good to get more details, so I can make a bug card for it.
Sorry if my verbiage was confusing the 'auto roll white chips' is just the vigor roll since the other two 'spend white chip' options are not associated with a roll.




The differing windowclasses used in Deadlands might be a longer term fix - again, one I've had on my radar for a long time. The best short-term solution I can see is to get the extension working seamlessly again in the areas you are not happy with it, to the point where you are happy to revert to using the full extension again, and then the modules will once again "just work". Mid-to-long term, we shall have to see - and, as always, patches or even just informed design ideas very much welcomed.

Hope that explains why things are as they are a little better - and apologies for trading off DL:R stability for SW features; the more I think of it, the more I'm not happy with that choice now.

Thank you again for the transparency. I'll be happy to test the extension when you have an update. From a design standpoint I wonder if having the extensions broken into smaller parts would be helpful. (i.e one extension for the skin, one extension for the arcane classes, one extension for the table) This might complicate things in one way, but compartmentalizing the elements may also remove the "Christmas lights effect" (if one goes out they all go out). This is what I am testing now. Of course, yay load order, and all that. But this is based on my concept of how the layers are working now. FG -> SW -> DLR . I may be missing a layer that is complicating things since my experience is only with the later two.

Anyway. Let me know if I can help. I obviously like to break things into pieces and yap about the parts. ;)

[phantomwhale]

Yeah, load order can get a bit hairy in that stack, and equally making all the pieces of Deadlands independent may not be worth the effort.

I think the biggest dependancy is the one you highlighted - you need the extension to use the personalities in the modules. The extension should just offer progressive enhancement of the Savage Worlds ruleset, and the module data should work just fine without it (albeit without some useful DLR functionality, like fate chips, and understanding any automated behaviour around the DLR edges / hinderances, for example)

Thinking out loud, it might be enough to just revert all the critters / humans back to NPCs in the core library modules and any future modules produces (again, as we've backported lots of the fancy NPC behaviours from DLR into the basic SW windowclass now). For older products, we'd just need to keep supporting the Critter and Humans windowclasses too, but treat all three the same.

So actually what you have done to the library modules may be the step forward...

Anyway, bugs first :)

[Skellan]

Anyway, bugs first :)

I don't know about the behind the scenes stuff, but I like the Deadlands ruleset and its features. I'd be happy if the bugs were ironed out :)

[Stikyhooves]

Oh, one other reason I was suggesting taking a modular approach. - For independent items such as the poker table, if it worked independently then folks could also use it for any other game. (not just SW). People could bring it into DnD, Cuthullu or any game setting. - I think of it like back in the day when I played Peggle in WoW. It just acted as a little top layer on it's own since it did not need to communicate back and forth with the main game. - Instead of having it load in on a hot bar. It could have a separate widget on the 'tabletop' that could be moved around. - I think of this when I think of mods in other games and how many of them work.

[Skellan]

yeah, it would be cool to use the poker table in other settings :)

[WansumBeats]

Starting a deadlands campaign and I played with it a little last night. When attacking with ranged it attacked vs parry every time. In don't drink the water, I dropped a feral dead into combat tracker and targetted my player and then attacked with claws from combat tracker and got script errors. I had to open the monster info and drag the attack onto the token.

Bennies don't work for soaking. Says character has no Bennies

[Skellan]

The targeting seems to be working fine on mine. There is a little target icon above the raise damage dice in the bottom left near the modifier box - if you click that it changes whether the attack is vs parry. You can also set weapons as ranged in on the attacks tab on the front of the character sheet. Does this help?

The benny issue is being fixed - it is due to Deadlands splitting bennies into different types of fate chips. In the meantime, I just drag and drop the fate chips to the chat box manually.

Hope this helps

[WansumBeats]

Fired up the campaign again last night and everything worked properly. I must have changed options and restarting it fixed it. Ranged attacks TN 4 and melee vs parry. Worked great.

Do have another question though. The mini sheet button has been replaced with soak button. Any idea how to bring up the mini window?

[Skellan]

Great, glad that's sorted.

I think that the missing mini sheet is a known issue too.

[WansumBeats]

Ok so i was Marshell'in deadlands last night, and near the end of the game session I lost the ability to target and roll against the targets. Not getting any errors, but CTRL clicking on a token would do nothing. i restarted the campaign without layers extension and that didnt do anything, so i restarted without the deadlands ext and then dropped the tokens from combat tracker on the map and it worked.

went back and loaded Deadlands extension again and it was all working properly.

havent gotten thru one round and it started again, albeit a little differently now.. i can CTRL click to target, but it wont roll against that token, it just does a straight roll, and YES i have USE TARGET FOR CURRENT ROLLS selected.

really hope deadlands gets fixed soon... the bugs stink.

[WansumBeats]

also noticed TOKENS are NOT removed from the map when i remove them from the combat tracker if they die.


I take that back... apparently they are NOW working AND i have BLOOD STAINS WOOT!

[phantomwhale]

Hey WansumBeats - sorry it sounds like you had some odd behaviour.

Do I understand that everything seems to be working / behaving again now? Or are there still some errors happening with targeting?

I'll certainly take a look at the whole targeting stack again, and run through a couple of example combats, whilst I'm fixing up the extension, but anything specific / details can help me track down any hidden gnarly issues that I might otherwise miss.

Cheers,
Ben

[WansumBeats]

Heya! Can not wait for the fix ;)

Yes had some odd behaviour, after playing for 2.5 hours my players and I lost the ability to click on a target (the white distance arrow wouldn't appear) and when the attack and damage were rolled they wouldn't be applied to the target (because they couldn't target) also dropping the dice on the token wouldn't work. The dice fell flat on the board. (also tokens from the start wouldn't be removed from the board when removed from the tracker)

I fixed it by loading the campaign without the deadlands extension and applying tokens from the tracker to the map. Once I realized it was working with the extension off, I reloaded the extension.

Now targeting is working, tokens are being removed from the map and blood stains are being applied to the map. Everything seems to work. Will play again next on Monday to test with my players.

Also I was running the multiple layers extension, so maybe that had something to do with the tokens not being removed?

Thanks a tonne for your time!

Beats

[Mask_of_winter]

Heya! Can not wait for the fix ;)

Yes had some odd behaviour, after playing for 2.5 hours my players and I lost the ability to click on a target (the white distance arrow wouldn't appear) and when the attack and damage were rolled they wouldn't be applied to the target (because they couldn't target) also dropping the dice on the token wouldn't work. The dice fell flat on the board. (also tokens from the start wouldn't be removed from the board when removed from the tracker)

I fixed it by loading the campaign without the deadlands extension and applying tokens from the tracker to the map. Once I realized it was working with the extension off, I reloaded the extension.

Now targeting is working, tokens are being removed from the map and blood stains are being applied to the map. Everything seems to work. Will play again next on Monday to test with my players.

Also I was running the multiple layers extension, so maybe that had something to do with the tokens not being removed?

Thanks a tonne for your time!

Beats
Yes, the image layer extension causes conflicts with Savage Worlds, plus you can't use the templates. It's unfortunate Ikael doesn't care for it and didn't want to make it compatible with Savage Worlds since I really like that extension. The ability to make maps on the fly or add furniture is great.

[WansumBeats]

OK so it probably was the layers causing the targeting issues. Not sure what you mean about the templates?

[Mask_of_winter]

Small burst, medium burst, large burst and cone template for Savage Worlds. They are different than the ones in other rulesets and last I checked aren't compatible with the image layers extension.

[WansumBeats]

Ahhhh yes gotcha. They seemed to work for me. I had them up and running. One of my players is a huckster, made a spell called 52 card pickup (darkness). When cast the area would fill up with swirling cards so thick you couldn't see in our out.

The cone template need a rework for SW in FG though. That would be nice to see

[Mask_of_winter]

Ahhhh yes gotcha. They seemed to work for me. I had them up and running. One of my players is a huckster, made a spell called 52 card pickup (darkness). When cast the area would fill up with swirling cards so thick you couldn't see in our out.

The cone template need a rework for SW in FG though. That would be nice to see
What needs reworked on the cone template?

[WansumBeats]

Nothing major, it works well enough. But the cone template in SW is supposed to be 3 inches wide at its end from what I remember reading?

[phantomwhale]

Nothing major, it works well enough. But the cone template in SW is supposed to be 3 inches wide at its end from what I remember reading?

When I draw a cone template, that's what I get:

13347

Oh look, the world's tiniest inline image :(

[WansumBeats]

So when I do it I hold down both mouse buttons and either ctrl alt or shift, can't remember which one makes the cone. By the time I get it to length its much wider than 3 squares.
Is there an easier way?

[Mask_of_winter]

right click on the map, choose pointers and select cone template... you're probably using the CoreRpg templates if you're using the shortcuts

[WansumBeats]

Gaaaaaaahhhhhhh! Learned something new today!

[Stryfe484]

I would like to take the fate chips from this extension and repurpose it for another game I'm running. Can anybody run me through how to do this?

[Doswelk]

Just use conviction :)

[Stryfe484]

I will be using conviction, but I need the Fate Chip model for the Eberron setting. They will be renamed as Prophecy Shards. It is a very ingenious way to incorporate the shards mechanically into the game. I just don't need everything else that comes with the extension.

[damned]

Im nost sure of the mechanic but you might try Hero Points?

[Stryfe484]

I haven't heard of hero points for SWAdE. If you're referring to the D&D mechanic, that would perform just like a standard benny. I really just need to strip the Fate Chips from the Deadlands extension and rename them.