FG2 Design Query

[Ghoti]

I was just curious as to the reasoning behind the design decision to require a completely new ruleset (or a nearly complete copy of a ruleset) just to implement some minor interface changes. To wit, if I wanted to play D20 Modern using the "stock" D20 rules, I can, but if I also wanted to reskin FG to have a more modern look without changing the game mechanics (i. e. the character sheet, the available modules, etc.), I (seemingly) need to unpack the D20 ruleset, make my changes, and let my players slurp the whole shebang to their systems when the connect. This doubles the hard drive space used by rulesets, for what (in my opinion) should be a very minor change.

Now, this on its face isn't such a huge deal, but for the time being, I am stranded on (effectively) dial-up, which makes the prospect of sending ten or fifteen megabytes per player slightly less than appealing.

Is there any way to minimize this, or possibly to send the clientside ruleset that players get when the slurp one down in advance?

As a practical example, I'm working on a campaign set in far-future with space travel and whatnot. I'm still musing about whether to run D20 or Savage Worlds (the ruleset for which I have purchased.. Would my players need to purchase it too? This affects my decision in regards to this.). I was hoping to reskin, and was also thinking of adding more 'mood lighting' options (if this is possible) for (as an example) when the ship the players are on goes into Red Alert.

Any insight or advice would be immensely helpful, and I offer humble apologies if my post-workday stream-of-consciousness rambling was too tangled to parse :)

[Doswelk]

I was just curious as to the reasoning behind the design decision to require a completely new ruleset (or a nearly complete copy of a ruleset) just to implement some minor interface changes. To wit, if I wanted to play D20 Modern using the "stock" D20 rules, I can, but if I also wanted to reskin FG to have a more modern look without changing the game mechanics (i. e. the character sheet, the available modules, etc.), I (seemingly) need to unpack the D20 ruleset, make my changes, and let my players slurp the whole shebang to their systems when the connect. This doubles the hard drive space used by rulesets, for what (in my opinion) should be a very minor change.

Now, this on its face isn't such a huge deal, but for the time being, I am stranded on (effectively) dial-up, which makes the prospect of sending ten or fifteen megabytes per player slightly less than appealing.

Is there any way to minimize this, or possibly to send the clientside ruleset that players get when the slurp one down in advance?
I did find a way to minimise download to clients (when I did it I had two PCs and the full and lite client, but I think this does work with one PC and the thick client) I have done this for my last campaign:

Start FGII in GM mode start campaign, activate all the modules you wish to use, start another FGII in join game mode, the "client" will download the data from the "gm"

After the download finishes and the select a character screen is displayed you can quit out. Go to your FGII application folder then the cache folder. In there should be a folder that matches the campaign name, open this, there should be a campaign.dat file.

Each player goes to their FGII application folder then the cache folder and creates a folder that has the same name as your folder in your cache directory, then they copy the campaign.dat file into that, if all goes well there is download when they connect.

(Although how you get the file to them with dial-up is another issue), when we started out Necessary Evil campaign, I uploaded the .dat file to an FTP share and told my players to download it... You may have to resort to USB pen drives, CDs etc..

[Griogre]

You might find this thread (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7585&highlight=Hosting+Dialup) helpful on another technique of hosting on dialup which uses a technique of client modules to minimize file transfers to players. This is primarily for adventures though.

As far as Savage Worlds, the players don't have to purchase it. They will have to log in and build characters on the server however, because of a current FG limitation.