18 months on : FG vs. Roll20 vs Foundry

At least for systems/rulesets - PF2 in my case - having a community of enthusiasts code and enter data leads to faster turnaround times and maybe even better product quality (less strain on single authors). Their main motivation is "I want to play that, too" and some "this is something I am proud of producing". Of course both system/rulesets and content preparation are not free, but these volunteering enthusiast pay for end-users in time and effort. Some offer Patrons, like the author of PdfToFoundry (which I became a member of) and some explicitly don't want money (like the PF2 folks).

And a group of people deciding on both priorities and interpretation of rules (for automation) eases the situation of the whole system userbase being dependent on the goodwill of a single person, like with those FG rulesets that are maintained by a single person.

I use 23 extensions on FG and 88 modules on Foundry (some of which are shared libraries), with many of those being features I want/like, not necessarily what is needed to play. The PF2 system needs less addons than other systems and tends to "eat" the most important ones for better compatibility and support. 6 of my Foundry modules are updated to use features of the next major Foundry update. 3 modules are "outdated" for the current version already, but after testing all my modules I find these to still be working (v.8.9, v9 might be different).

Knowing that Foundry is still v0.x software and innovating left and right I am not too bothered by the whole modules situation yet.

All I was saying is we have the unity engine if you read the original post about what makes the other tables good we could have that too. We shouldnt have any competition over here because we can have it all on the unity engine. Especially for the price that is charged per ultimate lic......For example dice skins/effects. They could hire 1 guy to code and put those in the store and the sales from that alone would cover his salary and then some. Our community shouldnt be shrinking right now. And it is frustrating seeing half the games posted are people sniping players off from our community to other VTTs. The Foundry being the biggest and that goes unmoderated.

Hywel, that's an excellent explanation. I've also made a LOT of maps since coming back to D&D. For my last campaign, I'd mapped out 41 locations, some with more than a dozen levels. I experimented with lighting, and experimented with effects (like making water move, etc.). Some of my players were on VERY slow connections with computers that couldn't handle some of the maps, but that was a hardware problem, and not a problem with FGU.

As well, I made a bunch of images of characters, items etc., but got scolded by an older player for not doing more describing, lol.

For voice, I use discord, but it would be NICE if FGU had a built-in system that included a whisper mode. It would also be cool if it included a built-in voice changer, lol. I'm not great at voices. There's a chatroom app that amplifies voices as you come near the person in the virtual environment, and silences the voice as you move away. That would be cool for in-game communication. All the GM to hear everybody, but in-character voice depends on location. You could have three buttons: in character, out of character, and private. Think I'll suggest that!

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Originally Posted by toastsniffer187

They could hire 1 guy to code

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SmiteWorks searches already for some new people, posted here: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/home/...ortunities.php

that is already from some weeks ago, and the positions are still not filled (even months?). So, it is seemingly not so easy to simply find someone doing something. There are a lot of different tasks SmiteWorks need to do as a small company, and as others already said other things had higher priority :) Of course more employees can help to solve all the tasks faster or do more projects simultaneously, but as I said, it is not like that the posted positions are filled in just a couple of days. You should not forget that we are speaking about a niche product of a niche hobby :)

Fantasy Grounds is an advanced system on an outdated frame-work. Foundry is a growing system on a modern frame-work.

When the most modern PCs are continuously bogged down by FG displaying a simple table of text then that is what pushes people away, though, not some animated effects on top of the bog.

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Originally Posted by Weissrolf

Fantasy Grounds is an advanced system on an outdated frame-work. Foundry is a growing system on a modern frame-work.

When the most modern PCs are continuously bogged down by FG displaying a simple table of text then that is what pushes people away, though, not some animated effects on top of the bog.

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Outdated framework is Unity engine or the XML/LUA codebase for rulesets?

I agree with what was said by the toastsniffer187.
We have a powerful tool called UNITY and with it we could make FANTASY GROUNDS much better and for that I believe that YES, we should look to other tools aimed at our target audience, which is the RPG PLAYER, who wants agility to conduct their adventures but at the same time want to give wings to your imagination and make them real through AUDIOVISUAL RESOURCES, I know that many will talk about THEATER OF THE MIND, but that sounds like laziness to me.
Some will mention about the LICENSING that SMITEWORKS has on many products, but we know that not all LICENSED PRODUCTS receive the same attention, offering "MEDIOCRE" PRODUCTS and there is also the fact that most do not care if it is OFFICIAL or NOT.
WE (At least the vast majority) want these features that give a SPECIAL TOUCH to their TABLES and more than that we want AGILITY in the PROGRAM we use (FANTASY GROUNDS) and when I refer to AGILITY I don't just mean with AUTOMATIONS but also when loading the GAME TABLE, AGILITY when presenting something without LOCKS during NARRATIVE.
Anyway, this is MY VISION about what happens, about what I saw that attracts PEOPLE to the other PLATFORMS.

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Originally Posted by Valyar

Outdated framework is Unity engine or the XML/LUA codebase for rulesets?

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Outdated frame-work seems to be especially the code-basis/implementation of FG itself. Again, it is not even able to display a table of text without bogging down the most modern of computers. It does not matter at this point whether this is a limitation of Unity + Lua 5.1 or a limitation of what SW codes on top of this, it does not work well either way.

When you run a Porsche in 1st gear on an acre then driving the Porsche doesn't move you any faster than driving a Trabant.

To touch upon what Celestian and Similarly are saying, I think both sides of their perspectives have merit. I've been in games where it's just a screen (and sometimes a map) and just relying on theatre of mind. I've enjoyed those games as a player, and I've been in games that are a audio and visual delight because of the immersive nature that those games have on the senses. As a GM, the latter is more my style as I like to prepare as much as I can and immerse the group in the sounds and such. Don't think any particular style has less value as long as you are telling a good story and paying attention to the group. That's all that matters.

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Originally Posted by toastsniffer187

All I was saying is we have the unity engine if you read the original post about what makes the other tables good we could have that too. We shouldnt have any competition over here because we can have it all on the unity engine. Especially for the price that is charged per ultimate lic......For example dice skins/effects. They could hire 1 guy to code and put those in the store and the sales from that alone would cover his salary and then some. Our community shouldnt be shrinking right now. And it is frustrating seeing half the games posted are people sniping players off from our community to other VTTs. The Foundry being the biggest and that goes unmoderated.

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Running a business, and a software application is not so easy.

Your "Just hire 1 guy ..." As has been pointed out, they are looking to hire (but not for dice skins), but finding the right person is not easy. And hiring the wrong person can do more damage to the product and company than any value they add. Next, how many dice sins do you think they are going to sell? And at what price? Because I think if you dive into the economics, you will find a challenge not losing money on dice skins. Not that their are not high value opportunities, but they are already working on hiring for those things.

As for other comments about Unity being limitless, and such. No engine is limitless, they all have their shortcomings. As well, people should consider the complexities of software development. Had SmiteWorks just built FGU from the ground up and dropped the XML/LUA architecture etc. They would have then obsoleted ~1700 products in their store, and hundreds or thousands of community modules and extensions. Sure, maybe their would have been some way to convert the old format to the new format, but such a converter would have taken time to develop as well. And that whole process would have had it's own drawbacks and people wo would have thought it bad/negative.

In short, none of us know all the challenges faced in the development and deployment of FGU. And, second guessing decisions we are inadequately informed about that were made years ago is pointless. We might as well discuss water under the bridge. What we can do is to consider what FGU is today and the direction and manner the developers are going in. And then decide if it is the VTT that fits our needs. And if it is, then help with bug reports and voicing opinions on what is next. And if it's not the VTT of choice, then move on and go do the same for whatever option that is you chose.

On another note, if anyone sees recruiting in the FG forums for platforms other than FG, please report the post and the issue will be dealt with quickly.