Advanced Fighting Fantasy ruleset issues

[sedgetone]

Hiya,

It appears as if the AFF ruleset has been abandoned by the developer. Is there anything that can be done from the Smitework side to fix the technical issues with the ruleset?

* Creating new items fail to give you any fields to enter weapon of armour values.
* Minor magic doesn't add the +6 bonus to cantrips.
* Unable to add NPCs

The reference content had a lot of TODO entries and screwed text. Really surprised you guys let it pass QC in its current state.

[Moon Wizard]

I reached out to the publisher and developer on Monday to ask them what their status is, and asked them to respond in the AFF support thread.

There have been various periods over time for how developing DLC content on FG has worked. Up until fairly recently, we've only performed QC on content which we produce ourselves; and left maintenance of any content other than that to the publisher and the developer they chose to perform the conversion. Any issues with DLC were forwarded to the developer and/or publisher. It hasn't been a huge issue, up until about the last year or so; which is why we've been slowly changing how we handle this stuff. The AFF content predates those changes.

I'm going to give them about a week or two to respond, then assume they've abandoned doing DLC support themselves. At that time, we usually move the content into our internal "maintenance" mode where we perform any updates needed to keep the current features working as is with any updates to the core system. We will also attempt to look at anything broken as our time permits, but maintenance projects made by developers abandoning projects are usually not our top priority. We just don't have the resources internally to do active development on game systems other than D&D/Pathfinder, which is why we don't create and offer directly from ourselves.

Regards,
JPG

[sedgetone]

Thank you guys for the effort, you have a lot on your plates and I’m sure this ruleset isn’t a big seller for you.

[eldarune]

It appears as if the AFF ruleset has been abandoned by the developer. Is there anything that can be done from the Smitework side to fix the technical issues with the ruleset?


Hi sedgetone and I apologise for the pain you are feeling. There are two main issues here:
1) Real-life and sickness have plagued Graham and I (I being the developer) over the last several months.
2) To be blunt the approval process for any change by Smiteworks is unsustainably slow for a small publishing shop like us. So we've fallen into the trap of making sure "the next release" covers as many bases as we can because we know that a) it takes a long time for SW to review, and b) it means the release after that will take an extraordinary long time as well.

To your points though, I have fixed the creating items issue (Graham is testing that now), but I am unaware of the last two issues you raise:
* Minor magic doesn't add the +6 bonus to cantrips.
* Unable to add NPCs

Could you give me more information about those please?

[eldarune]

I reached out to the publisher and developer on Monday to ask them what their status is, and asked them to respond in the AFF support thread.

I received a hail from Graham this week to say that he's been very ill, so he may have missed your communication. I've alerted him.

However, as I said to sedgetone, our biggest problem is the time it's taking to review. We'd like to do frequent small updates but not if it takes SW two months to approve the DLC. In my opinion, you should automatically approve anything that passes the checker mod that you guys developed. If we are missing forward-back buttons in the reference manual, that kind of small issue should not block a release (in my opinion), which then only adds to the cycle time for approval. That kind of minutia is something we can respond to in incremental releases.

Is there anything you can do to speed up approval time for small DLC's like this?

[Bifford]

Hi Sedgetone and the SW team.

Please feel free to note my name/username and message me if you have need. While I'm not the dev (that's eldarune), and I'm not Graham/Arion Games I work closely with them both and help if I am able (which isn't very often) and I can get messages to them (I have a Discord if you want to be there, too. https://discord.gg/325Q6CJdUz )

Sam / Bifford

[ddavison]

I received a hail from Graham this week to say that he's been very ill, so he may have missed your communication. I've alerted him.

However, as I said to sedgetone, our biggest problem is the time it's taking to review. We'd like to do frequent small updates but not if it takes SW two months to approve the DLC. In my opinion, you should automatically approve anything that passes the checker mod that you guys developed. If we are missing forward-back buttons in the reference manual, that kind of small issue should not block a release (in my opinion), which then only adds to the cycle time for approval. That kind of minutia is something we can respond to in incremental releases.

Is there anything you can do to speed up approval time for small DLC's like this?

This is delving a bit into "how the sausage is made", but it may be helpful for other community devs to see the response as well. The review process occurs for the first time a product is submitted. It goes into a queue with other items and takes additional time to create store graphics for our store, steam, etc. As Moon Wizard states (and this product shows), it's not an exhaustive end-to-end review but is a technical review to look for broken links along with some spot checks. Our goal is to get through about 12 products every week for release. Once a product has been published, any future updates should be very quick and they no longer go through any review process beyond what the assigned community developer conducts.

1. Files are updated and committed to SVN or sent through Dropbox (depending on the developer)
2. To submit an update, the developer logs into the developer portal and searches for their product that they are updating.
3. They click Update and choose [Fixed], [Updated], [Added], or [Removed], then enter detailed notes for each
4. The update is marked as a hot fix if necessary
5. The developer clicks Submit
6. An automated email is sent to James and to the developer
7. James replies with a "Confirmed" note that indicates it is in queue for either a hotfix or a Tuesday update

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=56043&d=1675383324

56043

[sedgetone]

To your points though, I have fixed the creating items issue (Graham is testing that now), but I am unaware of the last two issues you raise:
* Minor magic doesn't add the +6 bonus to cantrips.
* Unable to add NPCs

Could you give me more information about those please?

Page 69 of the core book, Minor Magic section third paragraph:

“ To cast a Minor Magic spell requires a standard spellcasting roll with a bonus of +6 to reflect the ease of casting. A spellcaster’s total of his Magic characteristic and his Magic-Minor special skill is refereed to as his “Incantation” score.”

NPC-wise I just get an empty sheet where you can pop the name in and that’s all. Hope you guys are recovering and certainly didn’t mean to upset the apple cart. I’m going to do a clean install at the weekend and see if things are any better.

[Trenloe]

2) To be blunt the approval process for any change by Smiteworks is unsustainably slow for a small publishing shop like us. So we've fallen into the trap of making sure "the next release" covers as many bases as we can because we know that a) it takes a long time for SW to review, and b) it means the release after that will take an extraordinary long time as well.
As mentioned by Doug, the update process is pretty quick an usually painless if you follow the steps outlined by Doug in post #7.

I've had some forum communication with @Arion (example here: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?73933-Out-of-the-Pit-released&p=651748&viewfull=1#post651748) and it appears that either the release/update process hasn't been communicated properly, or it wasn't fully understood. Based off the comments in this thread, that still seems to be the case.

I know the new product release process can take a number of weeks, and that can get frustrating - if you've completed a conversion ready for release, you want to see it released!

@eladrune - I recommend you contact Smiteworks directly and make sure you're aware of the new product release and existing product update process. Whereas the first can take a while, updates should be quick - release on Tuesday 12-noon CST or if the product requires an urgent fix you can tag as a hotfix and get it released usually within 24 hours.

[Arion]

Apologies to everyone for these issues. There has been some ill health, (especially this week for me) but we are working on various fixes to the issues. Once these are done, we have another 4 or so products that are then 90%+ ready to go.

I will also hold my hands up slightly to not quite understanding the developer update process properly. I can only commit to working on this ASAP and getting the releases out there, along with plenty of new products.

[lokiare]

If you are a developer and need the information on how to do updates, send me an email and I'll get you set up.

[sedgetone]

Any news on when we’re likely to see an update to fix Items? The rule set is very limited without being able to actually add new weapons and weapons.

[ddavison]

Thanks for the report. I logged a bug and reported it to the developer to address it.

[Arion]

Hopefully the patch will get posted at the start of next week. This is something we have been discussing a lot, and it is what has held up the release of several other products that are 99% done...

[sedgetone]

Thank you, good to hear.

[sedgetone]

Hopefully the patch will get posted at the start of next week. This is something we have been discussing a lot, and it is what has held up the release of several other products that are 99% done...

Any news on if/when this patch is likely to be released?