My feedback on Unity (open beta)

[Weissrolf]

Hello everyone.

I am posting my ongoing feedback about Unity (open beta) here in form of short notes. This is no rant, just reporting my experiences, interpretations and personal judgement.

- Installation on a Windows 10 (64 bit) system went smooth. I had to check manually whether my already present Classic installation is overwritten, because no popup/message told me that Unity can be installed alongside Classic. This could be improved.

- Right after the installation finished the updater seemed to have downloaded all systems at once. That was a bit surprising, I would have thought that this happens on a per usage/need basis?!

- After entering my username and password the updater seemed to have downloaded everything a second time?! This seems like an unnecessary strain on the download server and may be problematic for those with limited internet bandwidth.

- I (strongly) dislike the button/dialog fonts being fixed in size and being more blurry than necessary. Everything - including graphical elements - seems to be displayed via simple bilinear resampling with too strong anti-aliasing put on top.

For me fonts were always one of FG's weakest visual points. Unity does not seem to improve much over Classic, it's rather "different" than better, in several places it is clearly worse. One big problem is the use of gray-scaling anti-aliasing instead of Cleartype/sub-pixel style anti-aliasing (likely due to the use of OpenGL on Unity's part?). This is emphasized by the use of some (small) fonts that do not play well with this.

This is worst on the dice. On the D20 I cannot discern a 6 or 9 from each other or from just a blob of whitish-gray on black in Unity. No such problem in Classic. It's made even more difficult by missing a feature to always orientate dice after rolling completed so that the results can be read without any awkward angles.

So much for my very first impressions of Unity right after installation.

[pollux]

Right after the installation finished the updater seemed to have downloaded all systems at once. That was a bit surprising, I would have thought that this happens on a per usage/need basis?!

I'm not sure what the rationale here is.

After entering my username and password the updater seemed to have downloaded everything a second time?! This seems like an unnecessary strain on the download server and may be problematic for those with limited internet bandwidth.

This at least is necessary. If you own any licensed content, it can only download it after you log in. Like if you buy the D&D 5e Player's Handbook, this is the first moment at which it could be downloaded and installed. Previously you've just installed/updated the programs itself, and now you start getting content for the first time.

[LordEntrails]

FYI, the installer actually only installs the updater. Then when you launch it runs the updater, which downloads the program. Because if the installer actually installed FG, it would no doubt be out of date anyway and you would have to update right away, so instead of downloading the program twice, you just download the program once, when the updater runs following "install".

So, it may look like it is downloading twice, but it's just downloading separate things in 2 steps.

[Dr0W]

It didn't download everything a second time. It probably ran a check if everything was downloaded. First time you downloaded just the free basic stuff that everyone gets. Second time you downloaded what you've purchased on the store. Either way both times they checked all your owned files for updates.

[Trenloe]

As Dr0W says - FG will only download the new "Stuff" - if you already have the most current products they won't be downloaded.

Don't confuse the green product progress bar along the bottom of the updater with actually downloading and updating a product - this is just a progress bar showing the updater stepping through all the products you own. The blue bar above the green bar is used to show progress of individual product downloads.

[Weissrolf]

In reply to four well meant replies it seems that a little clarification is in order. I am describing what is happening, you are replying what is supposed to happen. These are two different things.

After first installation FGU downloads all data for the Appdata\Smiteworks folder, about 184 mb in total. This includes rulesets for various RPGs: 2E, 3.5E, 4E, 5E, CoreRPG, Cypher System, Fate Core, Numenera, PFRPG, PFRPG2, SFPRG, The Strange. This is before logging in with my username and password!

Once I logged in for the first time I saw FGU download (not just check) all these packages again, on top of my 4 purchased packages. In fact, once I delete my login credentials I see FGU download all of these packages again. A simple uninstall + reinstall does not do this, in this case my credentials are used with the reinstall and only one download happen. I have to specifically change my login credentials. Using my 50 mbit line this takes several minutes to complete and taxes the download server (which I assume costs Smiteworks money).

In the end I reentered my login credentials and - of course - the updater downloaded everything from scratch again.

[CatDadCode]

Tried to help see if I could reproduce your issue: https://youtu.be/-PqUvHse0OQ

[Weissrolf]

Thanks for the video, very helpful!

Some remarks: At the start of the video you are already logged in. This is why your purchases are listed in the download list. Uninstalling and reinstalling FGU does not delete your credentials. So when you reentered your credentials and got that "wrong password" message (I got the same) you did not change your credentials, you just reentered them as they were before. This is why no download happened at that point.

Only once you deleted your credentials manually and clicked the "Log In" button were your credentials really changed. On a side-note for others: Just deleting the name and password and hitting "Save" does not delete them, the "Log In" button part is needed for the credentials to really be changed/saved.

You also do not have to start FGU, you can just hit "Update" once you change credentials to reproduce the re-downloading.

One more thing: When you cancel the download at some point and change credentials back again then the download counter may list negative numbers (like -4/16). It will only re-download those negative numbers then and skip the rest from the point were you cancelled last time using the corresponding credentials (in my last test it downloaded from -5/15 to 1/16 and then started skipping).

Anyway, as far as I can tell this will happen to all users that install FGU for the first time and then enter their credentials for the first time after the first update run. So Smiteworks' server will have to deliver these packages twice to every user and the users will have to wait for two runs of downloads before they can start using FGU.

It's not much of a problem for me personally, just reporting. The font thing is much more of an issue.

[Weissrolf]

- Messing around with uninstalling, reinstalling, changing credentials and manually deleting the Appdata\Roaming\Smiteworks folder left me without the "5E Sample Campaign". I suspect that the Appdata folder deletion is the cause, but reinstalling FGU does not reinstall said sample campaign.

- Uninstalling FGU leaves an empty "Smiteworks" folder within Program Files.

[LordEntrails]

You can get it (or an older version of it) here; https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...rial-Available