18 months on : FG vs. Roll20 vs Foundry

I am going to look at the negatives for Foundry and FGU. I have no significant time with roll20 as a GM so I can't speak about it.

I think that the core problem with Foundry is that it is still in beta. Changes will happen because more features are implemented. The steady stream of upgrades has created burn-out for extension developers and extensions can get wildly out-dated as a result. For a 5e player, a further complication is that the dev for the 5e ruleset is also the Foundry developer and as a consequence, the 5e ruleset is well behind several others (WFRP in particular, is excellent).

The negatives for FGU have largely been echoed previously in this thread. They should have improved the UI - it's a no-frills trip back to 2003 that makes GMs spend too much time telling players how to accomplish simple tasks when we should be gaming. It's also a bit behind on visual gloss (animation) and not even in the game for sound effects. Also, a lot of the older modules are very low quality in terms of graphics. I could really rant here, but I will simplify it by saying that Smite should have minimal standards for what is acceptable for a module and should sweep out some of the aging products that offer very little of value to a GM.

POSITIVES... let's end on a good note.

Foundry has the ability to be hosted on a server and hence even GMs with poor connections can host visually rich campaigns. There are a good number of free extensions / rulesets. The multimedia support is outstanding. Development speed is noticeable and it is continually improving.

FGU has the best automation of well supported rulesets. (That's mostly 5e, 2e, and Savage Worlds - hopefully I've not missed one.) It has superb support for effects. The community here is amazing and you have to credit Smite with having made mostly good choices in the management of the community.

MOVING FORWARD...

I think that Foundry is ahead in the areas that they've worked upon. They will get effects in soon and once all the individual elements are built, they'll dig in on automation. They will close the gap as they reach 1.0.

FGU has a great community and that might be really beneficial to them as competition heats up. Smite needs to get sound added, they need to get animation going, and they need to fix-up their difficult interface. Since they have an actual software client, in my opinion they should try to link in a PDF viewer. If they added PDF support and used PDF notes for hiding data, they could let all of us spend NO TIME entering text while having it right there as the authors intended. (PDF support is purchasable as a support library specifically for Unity, so this is far from an impossible dream.) I would also love it if Smite tried to work a deal with Syrinscape for a sound engine - let it play / work without a subscription to Syrinscape, but make it super-easy and even more feature rich with a sub. Smite should take advantage of being a software solution and do the things that a web solution cannot - that is how they find and maintain a competitive edge.

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Originally Posted by Topdecker

Also, a lot of the older modules are very low quality in terms of graphics. I could really rant here, but I will simplify it by saying that Smite should have minimal standards for what is acceptable for a module and should sweep out some of the aging products that offer very little of value to a GM.

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Do you have some examples?
I think updating such things would be a logistical nightmare (contact old converters/publishers, etc.)

I don't know what "low" quality means for you in this context but I can say when I adapt a product I'm limited to 1000x700 (jpg). So if something is bigger than that it gets scaled to at best 1000x700.

Jason

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Originally Posted by jharp

I don't know what "low" quality means for you in this context but I can say when I adapt a product I'm limited to 1000x700 (jpg). So if something is bigger than that it gets scaled to at best 1000x700.

Jason

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Best practices for dev conversion definitely needs a re-visit with FGU now being the platform to develop for.

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Originally Posted by celestian

Best practices for dev conversion definitely needs a re-visit with FGU now being the platform to develop for.

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Maps are bigger now in Unity only modules (about double the FGC standard). Not changing the limits for other images as yet. Some modules have quite a large number of images and increasing those would add considerable bloat to modules and other resources.

A few thoughts and questions:

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Originally Posted by Topdecker

They should have improved the UI

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I often see this mentioned. How would YOU improve the UI, and what effect do you think that improvement would have?

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Originally Posted by Topdecker

It's also a bit behind on visual gloss (animation) and not even in the game for sound effects.

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I agree. I would enjoy animation and sound ... BUT, I already have players whose potatoes and toasters can't handle LOS and dynamic lighting. There IS some animation effect I've used to simulate running water for example. I had to turn it off. Your note on Foundry having the ability to be hosted on a server is a valid point. Unfortunately, although it would be good for GMs with poor connections, it wouldn't fix problems for players with poor connections.

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Originally Posted by Topdecker

Also, a lot of the older modules are very low quality in terms of graphics. I could really rant here, but I will simplify it by saying that Smite should have minimal standards for what is acceptable for a module and should sweep out some of the aging products that offer very little of value to a GM.

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I have several points about this:
1. That's really on the original module creators, not smiteworks.
2. "Low quality" is an opinion not every GM shares.
3. Many GMs LOVE the older modules. There's some nostalgia there. A lot of OLDER GMs do a lot more theater-of-the-mind. I hadn't played D&D for 25 years when the Covid lockdown pulled me back in. One thing I noticed was that a lot of people now try to play D&D like it's a video game: music, sound effects, animated graphics ... next they'll want each player to have controller support for character movement, and animated tokens that actually fight (actually, that DOES sound kinda cool!). My point is: tabletop rpgs aren't supposed to be a video game. Yes, I like pretty maps too. I was very disappointed in Waterdeep Dragon Heist for it's old-school black-and-white maps after playing LMoP with it's very lovely maps. But 25 years ago, my group didn't even HAVE maps. I had three giant green laminated hex boards, and if combat got too difficult, I sketched it on the board in dry-erase marker.

I totally get the point about how cool graphics are. I love to make pretty maps. I would love to be able to animate more water, and have animated torches, etc. But maybe that's not really the focus of table-top rpgs. At the very least, I'd let consumers decide, and as a company ask smiteworks to put at least one example of a game map as an image for the adventure in the store page.

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Originally Posted by Topdecker

in my opinion they should try to link in a PDF viewer. If they added PDF support and used PDF notes for hiding data, they could let all of us spend NO TIME entering text while having it right there as the authors intended.

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Here's some old info on PDFs,
https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...ormation-Index

but I don't know if it works in unity or just classic. I AGREE 100% that having the ability to convert a pdf easily into fgu would be cool ... but I have no idea how they would do that. Whether or not you can get text from a PDF depends hugely on whether OCR was part of the pdf. Even when I have a good pdf, text can be garbled horribly to the point it's less work to just retype it.

It would be great though.

Final Thought on Foundry:
I think it's great to have competition. I think competition can inspire and motivate. I think competition is almost always good for the consumer ... not always, but almost always. My biggest concern with Foundry, and this may change when they get bigger, is that at the current time they have very, very few licensing deals. Right now, there's a tool to skim data from D&D Beyond, and I know the creators at D&D Beyond and the people at WotC don't like it one bit. They're working, last I heard, on a way to block it, because that data is licensed for use through DDB, but people are pulling that data into foundry and sharing it with players through foundry, which is a copyright violation.

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Originally Posted by jharp

I don't know what "low" quality means for you in this context but I can say when I adapt a product I'm limited to 1000x700 (jpg). So if something is bigger than that it gets scaled to at best 1000x700.

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Wow, alright, that would explain it. The remainder of this isn't aimed at you, Jason - you are just explaining it.

I am pretty sure that there are Unity games with bigger texture files than that. After some thought, I'll say that virtually all Unity games that use textures have bigger texture files than that.

I've hosted Foundry sessions that had 1920x1080 streaming video (MP4) as an animated map with LOS data. 45mb with 6 players all getting it and we had a 2-hour battle on it. I also regularly toss out maps > 10mb, though I generally try to stay under 4mb. I have many VTT maps that over 220mb in size and while I've never used one without downsizing it, the point that I am making is that content providers keep making them bigger and bigger. BTW, Foundry says no at 50mb for a file size (or it did).

If the point of moving to Unity wasn't to unlock more visual and sound capabilities (i.e. bigger video files), what was it? I realize that expanding large maps consumes more memory, but video memory is measured in gigabytes and a 1000x700 jpg is probably measured in kilobytes.

I don't understand why they are tying at least one of your hands behind your back.

https://i.imgur.com/xlVqvDJ.jpg

Yeah.

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Apart from the very few products that have been released very recently everything must still function in Classic. Classic is limited by being 32 bit and therefore has considerable memory restrictions. Map images were therefore limited to max 2048x2048 and <1Mb. General images are limited to either 1000 wide or 800 high. As I said above in Unity only modules the maps can now be double what the Classic limits were but general images are not going to be bigger at least in terms of pixel size but personally I have increased the quality a bit for the ones I’ve done. General images really don’t need to be any bigger than those limits anyway. Having a bigger image of an NPC doesn’t add anything. Maps are the one thing that can benefit from being a bit higher quality and that is happening now in Unity exclusive modules.

One other point to make is that developers can only work with the material they are provided with. There will be stuff out there that was not of great quality to start with; so the developer can only do what they can.

That image size guideline seems extremely and probably needlessly restrictive - at least where it applies to maps. Other images, sure, because the resolution isn't needed. But maps, it's the game board, the beating heart of a VTT.

60x40 grids with 100px per grid seems roomy. Yes, 6000x4000px. I am guestimating that might take 72mb of memory - but let's be cautious and say it takes 100mb. So 1gb of video memory = 10 such images open. It's just math.

The 4gb RAM with 2gb of graphic memory minimal system requirement should be able to handle 10 such images, and still have plenty of memory for other things.

There is a point where you are trying to keep the system requirements low so more people can participate, but man, you're doing those customers with mid-range and better systems a real disservice.

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Originally Posted by Zacchaeus

One other point to make is that developers can only work with the material they are provided with. There will be stuff out there that was not of great quality to start with; so the developer can only do what they can.

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That's where standards come in aka customer satisfaction -vs- another product. It should be 'We're sorry, we'd like to develop your product as a module for Fantasy Grounds, but the core images aren't up to our mapping quality standards. Do you have better images for maps?' Legibility of a map seems like a pretty low bar, but it is being missed.

FWIW, I've frequently taken the time to redraw the maps for FG material that I am using and then provide them as modules or individual files for other to use. The images in those modules are far, far larger than your current standards and, over the span of years that they've been out, not a single person has told me about a memory or display problem.

Anyhow, I am disappointed that going to Unity hasn't brought about much change in terms of image quality. It should be closer to an order of magnitude of improvement, not doubling what had previously been a very very conservative maximum for image sizes.

Here is another way to look at it. I get a FG module, look at the maps and sigh, rebuild them by hand, and send my 4000x3000 map out and have zero problems ever. Zero problems. From my limited perspective, it doesn't feel like you guys are pulling the wagon and the comments about technical limitations seem incorrect and flawed. Your products work with larger maps. Period. You just don't provide them.

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Originally Posted by Topdecker

... and, over the span of years that they've been out, not a single person has told me about a memory or display problem.

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I had a lot of problems in my last game. Most of my players were in Australia (I'm in Japan). Several of them told me their computer was old, their internet connection not so fast, etc. We regularly had problems. It took time for maps to load. Players often saw only a black rectangle. They had computer freezes waiting for maps to load. They had lag. Not all of my players had this. Those with newer computers and faster internet were fine. Maybe you're just lucky. For me, I was half-tempted to go old-school theater of the mind just to keep the game going.