A humble suggestion to Smiteworks major updates in FGU

[SilentRuin]

I would like to suggest that while new features are neat and cool and sometimes even useful - that they slow the pace of the release. Make it stay in TEST much longer.

Why you might ask?

So my players and I can get maybe a 3-6 month period of uninterrupted play time with our games. A vacation from game breaking changes, if you would.

Right now, there is almost no break in these assaults on the code for the "improvement of the game". I would very much like to just run the stuff that I have for more than 2-3 sessions without some extension breaking or general game breaking bug being introduced.

Just let me and mine play for a good part of the year. No issues introduced, no additional workload to deal with.

Just let us play uninterrupted for a good number of months. Your extension/ruleset devs will have more time to find and deal with changes in TEST. There will not be these frantic deconstructing of code and reconstructing of code before TEST goes LIVE or like in many cases (this time some extensions have been down weeks and are still down) going by without fixes in things people use in their games.

All I'm asking it is be moved up from a "meh" consideration of "that's the way it is" to...

Lets give them a break so they can just play for a while. House of healing give me time to heal please.

This opinion is only mine on no other.

[Laerun]

I would like to suggest that while new features are neat and cool and sometimes even useful - that they slow the pace of the release. Make it stay in TEST much longer.

Why you might ask?

So my players and I can get maybe a 3-6 month period of uninterrupted play time with our games. A vacation from game breaking changes, if you would.

Right now, there is almost no break in these assaults on the code for the "improvement of the game". I would very much like to just run the stuff that I have for more than 2-3 sessions without some extension breaking or general game breaking bug being introduced.

Just let me and mine play for a good part of the year. No issues introduced, no additional workload to deal with.

Just let us play uninterrupted for a good number of months. Your extension/ruleset devs will have more time to find and deal with changes in TEST. There will not be these frantic deconstructing of code and reconstructing of code before TEST goes LIVE or like in many cases (this time some extensions have been down weeks and are still down) going by without fixes in things people use in their games.

All I'm asking it is be moved up from a "meh" consideration of "that's the way it is" to...

Lets give them a break so they can just play for a while. House of healing give me time to heal please.

This opinion is only mine on no other.

Maybe consider isolated play with nobody updating Fantasy Grounds or creating a play account and a Developer account?
Asking everyone to wait is just as much to ask you and your group not to update Fantasy Grounds, at least not the play machines?

[SilentRuin]

Maybe consider isolated play with nobody updating Fantasy Grounds or creating a play account and a Developer account?
Asking everyone to wait is just as much to ask you and your group not to update Fantasy Grounds, at least not the play machines?

You mean not fix broken extensions of mine and leave everyone else to twist in the wind?

I like this idea, but honestly I doubt I'd remember not to update - nor would my players.

[LordEntrails]

This is similar to the CoreRPG2024 type discussion. But it gave me a thought. What about the channels? We currently have Live, Test, Dev. So it does mean it might be reasonable to have 2 Live channels. One for "Stable" that would only have ruleset and core updates once per quarter, and then a "Live" or such that would be what Live is today.

I think in general Live doesn't usually get as many core/ruleset updates as we've had recently, but this might also allow fewer hot fixes to "Stable" that we typically see in live.

I don't know what this would do to the current pipeline architecture or the details, but this might be feasible. Would really need to think about module updates as they would have to be compatible with both Live and Stable.

[Laerun]

You mean not fix broken extensions of mine and leave everyone else to twist in the wind?

I like this idea, but honestly I doubt I'd remember not to update - nor would my players.

I mean that you keep two environments. One for work and one for play. This is not about stopping progress, it is more about thinking of a solution. Not updating for a few months should not be a life ending discipline or something no different than a communication between your group. It is rather simple in theory. Making the entire community wait is far less impactful than just not updating for awhile. Besides, waiting will help out with allowing for things to smooth out. The choice is to always be right up to date and risk your custom game settings and addons, or chill and focus on the game play, and perhaps not both simultaneously.

[SilentRuin]

This is similar to the CoreRPG2024 type discussion. But it gave me a thought. What about the channels? We currently have Live, Test, Dev. So it does mean it might be reasonable to have 2 Live channels. One for "Stable" that would only have ruleset and core updates once per quarter, and then a "Live" or such that would be what Live is today.

I think in general Live doesn't usually get as many core/ruleset updates as we've had recently, but this might also allow fewer hot fixes to "Stable" that we typically see in live.

I don't know what this would do to the current pipeline architecture or the details, but this might be feasible. Would really need to think about module updates as they would have to be compatible with both Live and Stable.

It would have to preserve extensions for that version also. And would still skip the essential ask here to have TEST->LIVE be a much longer process so ruleset/extensions had time to adjust as TEST keeps adding things in to the last second of go LIVE. Gist being this would make things worse likely by killing people who used LIVE still because extensions/rulesets were not caught up yet.

More like hiding the issue one layer down so only the "true LIVE" people die by the FGU changing sword killing rulesets/extensions that did not have time to figure out what the heck happened.

[SilentRuin]

I mean that you keep two environments. One for work and one for play. This is not about stopping progress, it is more about thinking of a solution. Not updating for a few months should not be a life ending discipline or something no different than a communication between your group. It is rather simple in theory. Making the entire community wait is far less impactful than just not updating for awhile. Besides, waiting will help out with allowing for things to smooth out. The choice is to always be right up to date and risk your custom game settings and addons, or chill and focus on the game play, and perhaps not both simultaneously.

The ask was for time to let rulesets/extensions have a long lead time between TEST going to LIVE as things are constantly changing/breaking till last second. Your suggestion only lets people hide the problems longer while letting the rest twist in the wind with rulesets/extensions dead till fixed.

[Jiminimonka]

This is similar to the CoreRPG2024 type discussion. But it gave me a thought. What about the channels? We currently have Live, Test, Dev. So it does mean it might be reasonable to have 2 Live channels. One for "Stable" that would only have ruleset and core updates once per quarter, and then a "Live" or such that would be what Live is today.

I think in general Live doesn't usually get as many core/ruleset updates as we've had recently, but this might also allow fewer hot fixes to "Stable" that we typically see in live.

I don't know what this would do to the current pipeline architecture or the details, but this might be feasible. Would really need to think about module updates as they would have to be compatible with both Live and Stable.

That is a good idea, using one of the other channels and NOT updating it (this would be GM Players working to remember not to update).

I know a few people have multiple instances of FG on the same (and different) PCs. One for dev work and one for play.

[LordEntrails]

The ask was for time to let rulesets/extensions have a long lead time between TEST going to LIVE as things are constantly changing/breaking till last second. Your suggestion only lets people hide the problems longer while letting the rest twist in the wind with rulesets/extensions dead till fixed.
SO I know Moon tends to have things in Test for 4-6 weeks, but yes, he often makes a fix in the last few days before pushing live. So yea, It does sound reasonable to wait 5-7 days after the last Test update before pushing to Live.

It does probably mean that there would be things reported in Test that would not get fixed in that push, because we know until it's pushed live, there will always be people reporting issues in Test. So, maybe that wouldn't work so well? Maybe a week after any planned changes to Test or new capabilities added/architecture changes?

As a point of note, my group waited on 4.4.9 until 4.5.2 was released. Just so that all our extensions could be updated and we could avoid issues. But I know so many folks who can not prevent themselves from hitting update when the button is red :)

[anstett]

Also how would users get new content they purchased from the store?

Purchase the new token set, etc. Have to update to get those to download.

As someone recently said extensions = risk ;)

[Nylanfs]

Also how would users get new content they purchased from the store?

Purchase the new token set, etc. Have to update to get those to download.

As someone recently said extensions = risk ;)

Update to LIVE channel, then set back to STABLE?

[snupy]

I'd be more on the "wait longer before updating" camp, but I do not have to maintain extensions so that's easy for me to say I guess. If I were a developer I'd like to have enough time to update my stuff, no idea what enough means though. As a user, I like new features to be introduced at a brisk pace, ideally I'd like FG to implement all the features I "need" so that I can play without any extension.

But I agree that not having the possibility to choose what gets updated (e.g. new module vs updated ruleset) is a problem.

[JustinFreitas]

Long live FGC... it never changes.