WTF Happend to upgrade notifications

[bluedreamer]

I'm sorry did my spending $1,100 comment 1 week ago not resonant with you people about upgrade notices :mad:

Yes - you almost screwed another game tonight because you put out an UPDATE

Seriously Doug! Is it that hard to run a professional software company!

You are beginning to piss me off with these updates and down time my players and I spend

FIX IT! OR I am going to Roll20

[Moon Wizard]

I'm confused.

* We did provide notifications on our forum for the update, which was a small update with a handful of bug fixes.
* I communicated extra information with the extension developers so they could double-check their extensions, though very few if any should be affected based on the changes.
* If the players update to this version, but not the GM; then they can still play without any issues, and it will use the GM's version of the rulesets. So, players upgrading would have no impact on a game, only if the GM updates.
* During the earlier discussion, there was much discussion about informing GMs not to update right before a game; and I've seen that message communicated by several users over the last couple weeks.

Other than that, it's pretty standard that software provides an update notification, which the user can choose to follow or not.

Regards,
JPG

[Nickademus]

I'm sorry did my spending $1,100 comment 1 week ago not resonant with you people about upgrade notices :mad:

Yes - you almost screwed another game tonight because you put out an UPDATE

Seriously Doug! Is it that hard to run a professional software company!

You know, I didn't update at all and had a fine game tonight. I'll update tomorrow when I have time to check each of my extensions. I don't remember anything forcing me to update tonight. You can't blame Doug because you chose to update (or your GM did). Seriously, you were given plenty of good advice last time on what to expect, where the limitations are, and what are your responsibilities. Just because you yell on a forum doesn't mean that the company is going to make all their community developers drop what they are doing at 5 pm. on a Tuesday night and immediately update extensions or send you a personal email informing you that a specific extension is not going to work for a few days. None of your $1,100 worth of products are causing your trouble. It's the free third-party extensions that is. You were told that last time.


You are beginning to piss me off with these updates and down time my players and I spend

FIX IT! OR I am going to Roll20
Honestly, with an attitude like that, you won't be missed.

[Myrdin Potter]

I'm sorry did my spending $1,100 comment 1 week ago not resonant with you people about upgrade notices :mad:

Yes - you almost screwed another game tonight because you put out an UPDATE

Seriously Doug! Is it that hard to run a professional software company!

You are beginning to piss me off with these updates and down time my players and I spend

FIX IT! OR I am going to Roll20

Without throwing any stones, what was it that almost ruined the game?

Were you hoping to get an email yesterday warning that it was coming today?

I know that ones of my players has had issues with all the screen displaying and I think this update would fix it and I would,ah e been happier if it was one day faster.

[damned]

I dont understand the angst.
Ok I do understand the angst - its annoying when things dont work.
What I dont understand is how I can divorce myself from having any responsibility in the matter.
I loaded the community developed extensions that modified the way the developers intended things to work.
I unpacked a ruleset and didnt remove it before/after an update.
I chose to press the red upgrade button prior to beginning a game.

I made some decisions in this process and they had an impact on my experience with the software.

If I make a decision to load extensions from the forums I need to also check the forums for news and updates etc.
If I make customisations or unpack rulesets I also need to manage them and clean them up.
If Im about to run a game for my table and Im on my slow internet I dont hit update now at 5 minutes to the hour.

Cloud Software also performs updates that cause things to behave differently than they did before.
Moving to a hosted table top solution just changes the specific types of issues you experience around upgrades.

[Bidmaron]

Blue dreamer, remind us again how you think updates would be performed by a professional software company....

Are you complaining because it didn't ask you after you pushed the button if you really wanted to do the upgrade because it might scramble your game?

Are you complaining because the software didn't automatically email your players with a warning not to upgrade on your personal game night?(which MW just said would not be a problem anyway)

[Andraax]

I'm sorry did my spending $1,100 comment 1 week ago not resonant with you people about upgrade notices :mad:

I saw at least 3 notices about the update coming, including one right before it was posted. Were the words "I'm pushing an update" hard to understand? Do you have another suggestion on how MW should word the announcement?

[bluedreamer]

I* We did provide notifications on our forum for the update, which was a small update with a handful of bug fixes.
You said you would send emails - I don't see and email


I* If the players update to this version, but not the GM; then they can still play without any issues, and it will use the GM's version of the rulesets. So, players upgrading would have no impact on a game, only if the GM updates.
Not true, one of the players took the update and could not connect

I did not update 1 player did.

<font color="#660066">'Joe' connected</font>
<font color="#660066">Host (3.3.2) is running different version than client (3.3.3).</font>

[bluedreamer]

You know, I didn't update at all and had a fine game tonight. I'll update tomorrow when I have time to check each of my extensions. I don't remember anything forcing me to update tonight. You can't blame Doug because you chose to update (or your GM did). Seriously, you were given plenty of good advice last time on what to expect, where the limitations are, and what are your responsibilities. Just because you yell on a forum doesn't mean that the company is going to make all their community developers drop what they are doing at 5 pm. on a Tuesday night and immediately update extensions or send you a personal email informing you that a specific extension is not going to work for a few days. None of your $1,100 worth of products are causing your trouble. It's the free third-party extensions that is. You were told that last time.


Honestly, with an attitude like that, you won't be missed.

I didn't update 1 player did, 3rd party extensions have nothing to do with it - I expect software to stay backwards compatible between 1 minor version update. I have over 2GB of purchased content - which takes hours and HORUS to download. The reason I use VTT is because I can't play in person. Now stop thing everybody has Gigabit internet and let the company solve the problem of
A) let it be backwards compatible.
B) EMAILING PEOPLE
C) telling people how big the update is

I pay a lot of money and their salary and they are not making me happy with the service. In two weeks they promised to send out emails about updates and they already forgot - how hard is that?

[bluedreamer]

Without throwing any stones, what was it that almost ruined the game?
The fact that a player could not connect because they upgraded, which means I have to take the upgrade. Of which I could only take parts of (the rules part) which took 30min from a 2 hour game session and then none of the books I purchased work because I didn't have 4 hours to download them

[damned]

Hi bluedreamer the Host (3.3.2) is running different version than client (3.3.3) message does not always indicate that a player cannot connect. It is pointing out the differences between the host and client versions. In most (but not all) cases the third/z level updates (x.y.z/3.3.z) will allow version mismatches to connect but the second/y level ones will not.

Also where did you see SmiteWorks say they would email notification of updates out? I couldnt find it anywhere - just curious.

[bluedreamer]

Hi bluedreamer the Host (3.3.2) is running different version than client (3.3.3) message does not always indicate that a player cannot connect. It is pointing out the differences between the host and client versions. In most (but not all) cases the third/z level updates (x.y.z/3.3.z) will allow version mismatches to connect but the second/y level ones will not.

Maybe the clue was that it kept kicking him out of the game then?

[Andraax]

Maybe the clue was that it kept kicking him out of the game then?

Must be a problem with your internet, then. Upgrades don't take me hours to complete (15 minutes would be a *long* time), and when I get that message, my players have no problems staying connected. It's an informational message. You wouldn't see the message *at all* if they weren't connected.

[JohnD]

Invariably at least one player in every game I run pops a message like this upon connecting. Generally it's never been a problem although there was one time a ways back that the player in question could see every NPC on the map regardless of whether or not they were revealed.

[lordjeb]

FWIW, My game last night had 2/4 players that had updated. (I took the safer route and decided not to apply the update right before a game.) Everyone connected fine and our session went great. As for e-mail notifications, please don't - I already get too much. The software had a big red button that told me there was an update, I know exactly where to find details about the update (the forums), so I don't think there's a problem.

The update available COULD be enhanced to have a link to the release notes, or a popup that shows them, but that's really not necessary, and if I were the professional dev involved, I would opt to spend dev resources elsewhere since there is a clear and simple way for people to accomplish everything that the original poster wanted. Give us new content and features for game play - the updater is good enough. :)

And kudos to the dev team for producing a kick-butt piece of software! Thank you!

[Myrdin Potter]

I ran a game last Monday and one of my players was a slight version behind. That happens just about every time there is a minor update and I have never had a player kicked out because of it. Sometimes there is some extra downloading to set the players all at the same and if there is a connection glitch there can be a disconnect but that is all.

This was a minor bug patch, not a major upgrade like the last one.

[ddavison]

We do plan to put a note about the update in the newsletter that goes out this week. The version Moon Wizard pushed out was a hot fix style update so there shouldn't be any backward compatibility issues with it. That said, there are always a possibility of an issue. Hotfixes and content updates go out almost daily do the sheer size of our library and how many new releases we put out each week. Whenever that happens you will get an Update Available notice if you have any of those.

The reason for the delay is that we are also trying to finalize an update on the Steam build for Mac. This will require an update to the Windows version on Steam as well and it is going to require more notification since we expect that this *will* impact people if they are caught unaware. They will most likely need to re-enter their CD key and their username and then update. We also have a few more items for New Releases that we are waiting on Steam to approve. Due to the volume of emails that we send out for a newsletter, we try not to send out more than one in a week's period.

[Nickademus]

Maybe the clue was that it kept kicking him out of the game then?

You have a problem. I'm not sure what it is or if it is with your setup or your player's, but it is not tied to the version number or updating. Please give us more information so we can help you solve this problem, because we honestly do want to help people get past such issue. When the dust settles, I believe you'll see that updating wasn't the issue this time.

Also, are you signed up for the FG newletters? You would get email information from Smiteworks regularly from there.

As it stand, when a player connects to a host client (the GM) the player's FG loads the ruleset that the GM is running. There is very little chance of the player's version causing any trouble and if it did, FG would either throw console errors or outright crash. Nothing FG does should purposely disconnect a player from the host. So when you say 'kept kicking him out of the game', what was specifically happening to the player. Did you see chat messages saying '<player> disconnected.' and '<player> reconnected.'?

[Nickademus]

The update available COULD be enhanced to have a link to the release notes, or a popup that shows them, but that's really not necessary, and if I were the professional dev involved, I would opt to spend dev resources elsewhere since there is a clear and simple way for people to accomplish everything that the original poster wanted.

I'm pretty sure that release notes are listed on the launcher below the link list.

[lordjeb]

I'm pretty sure that release notes are listed on the launcher below the link list.

The history is there, but I don't believe it shows the changes for the about-to-be-downloaded update.

[Nickademus]

That's an interesting idea...

[JohnD]

Must impossible with the damn OS pushing updates left right and centre with no advance notice.

[brokenbikez]

I will simply leave this right here lol

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?40386-Why-all-the-negativity

[Ram Tyr]

The update available COULD be enhanced to have a link to the release notes, or a popup that shows them, but that's really not necessary, and if I were the professional dev involved, I would opt to spend dev resources elsewhere since there is a clear and simple way for people to accomplish everything that the original poster wanted. Give us new content and features for game play - the updater is good enough. :)


I'm pretty sure that release notes are listed on the launcher below the link list.


The history is there, but I don't believe it shows the changes for the about-to-be-downloaded update.
How about adding a link to the launcher... like the other ones there... Something like the following

**
Read the latest update notes available. (If your update button indicates an update is available click here to read all about it.}
**

Then the devs just have to maintain that page (the page that the launcher points to) with the latest update notes... they would be replaced each time a new update comes out. (Assuming that the update notes are kept in their normal place, this is just one extra thing to do once the link has been placed in the launcher. Then, as usual, once the update is applied the "log" visible on the launcher could contain the notes as they do already. Of course, if someone clicked the link when no update was available it would just take them to the last update notes posted... which would also be described in the launcher... and already applied to the installation. (Since no update is available.)

Just an idea if folks think this kind of info is needed. I am kind of with the folks that feel the info is already available as long as you don't need an email reminder.

[JohnD]

How about adding a link to the launcher... like the other ones there... Something like the following

**
Read the latest update notes available. (If your update button indicates an update is available click here to read all about it.}
**

Then the devs just have to maintain that page (the page that the launcher points to) with the latest update notes... they would be replaced each time a new update comes out. (Assuming that the update notes are kept in their normal place, this is just one extra thing to do once the link has been placed in the launcher. Then, as usual, once the update is applied the "log" visible on the launcher could contain the notes as they do already. Of course, if someone clicked the link when no update was available it would just take them to the last update notes posted... which would also be described in the launcher... and already applied to the installation. (Since no update is available.)

Just an idea if folks think this kind of info is needed. I am kind of with the folks that feel the info is already available as long as you don't need an email reminder.

There would still be a group of users that would not read it. No matter what they do, there will always be people that are issues.

[LordEntrails]

How about we all let this go unless we have something to add in a positive manner that will help the OP? I think we all are aware of things that could have been done.

@bluedreamer, as mentioned, it does not seem likely that the update was the cause of the connection troubles. If you would like help trouble shooting, please let us know.