Test Release v3.2.0

[Moon Wizard]

callahan09,
* No, the Unity version is slated to be Fantasy Grounds v4, and it will not be compatible with v3.x clients.

spite,
* I'm only seeing perhaps a couple second delay when adding/removing modules. Do you have any info on your specs of your machine? (OS, CPU, etc.)
* On the default module groups, Doug and I just started discussing how we want to handle groups with module data that does not have groups by default. In the live version, any module data marked with groups (even empty groups) will be placed in their groups. (If empty group defined in a module, the module name is used instead.) However, the MM data was not ever marked with groups (not even empty groups), so the MM data is currently showing up in the empty group. We are evaluating the best approach for this data.
* On the duplicate monsters, this is a combination of two different situations. The first is that some modules are set up with NPCs in 2 different locations, so we'll need to rebuild those modules so that the NPCs are only included once. This only affects a handful of modules. The second is that the same creature is defined in different modules. I think our decision here is to leave those as is. They are usually duplicates, but they can actually vary between modules and we can't assume anything about them. (i.e. the name is just a title of the record, but does not imply uniqueness.)

Regards,
JPG

[spite]

Specs are I5-4460 3.20ghz processor
8gb RAM
Windows 64bit
Don't think it's relevant but Nvidia GTX 660 ti GPU.
This is all running on an SSD hdd aswell, timed it before, took 15 seconds for monster manual, 18 seconds for player handbook to open. And 8 seconds/9seconds to close respectively. Not sure what it is, it's not a huge issue, but certainly something new with this version.

About the module groups, that's cool, just wondering if there is a way to show a selection of groups at any one time instead of one or all/none.

Duplicate monsters, that's interesting. The monsters in my picture are from a parsed module, and are duplicate. Is there perhaps something in that parser that cause them to come up twice?

[spite]

Not sure if it is intentional, but all my players can now see and use combat tracker as if they are the DM, they can roll, see hidden NPCs, see all actions and use them. They can not hide or show NPCs but they can still see it all and utilise everything.

For example, this is what my players see when connected with the hidden NPCs and the sword clicked to show actions, the rolls on the left are the rolls made by players not GM https://puu.sh/pnnkB/f558ad2279.jpg

[callahan09]

callahan09,
* No, the Unity version is slated to be Fantasy Grounds v4, and it will not be compatible with v3.x clients.

Hmm...

I wasn't around during the time of v2, I only just bought my license about a month ago, so I don't know what the last upgrade was like. Are all of our purchased content, rulesets and modules, going to remain compatible with v4?

And I also just spent (this week) nearly $100 on the ultimate license... is this going to carry over to v4 or if not will there at least be a small price to upgrade my license to v4? As a general concept, the ultimate license will still exist for v4 in some way, right? Where I can GM and host a game for people using a demo version of v4? And whether upgrades are free for v3 users or not, I hope that there is at least a distinction for us ultimate owners vs regular license owners. I don't really know what I mean by that... I guess I'm saying, if you want to ask $5 to upgrade to a regular license of v4, I hope it's a similar price for people who own ultimate v3 to upgrade to ultimate v4, and not just upgrade to regular v4 with the typical ultimate upgrade price of $115 (when not on sale) to then have ultimate for v4. Hopefully I'm making sense, but I feel like I'm struggling to be clear haha. How far away is v4 anyway? It sounds like it's not that far away the way you've mentioned some things here, but I could be wrong, it's hard to tell as someone out of the loop like me

[callahan09]

Not sure if it is intentional, but all my players can now see and use combat tracker as if they are the DM, they can roll, see hidden NPCs, see all actions and use them. They can not hide or show NPCs but they can still see it all and utilise everything.

For example, this is what my players see when connected with the hidden NPCs and the sword clicked to show actions, the rolls on the left are the rolls made by players not GM https://puu.sh/pnnkB/f558ad2279.jpg

This reminds me of something... I've always wondered why the combat tracker for players doesn't allow them to open up similar "tabs" as the GM can open up for their NPCs in the combat tracker? As it is right now (unless I just don't understand how to do some things, which is of course a possibility!) I have to have my character sheet open in order to roll an action, whereas a GM can pull down the "actions tab" in the combat tracker on their NPCs to roll their attacks right there, without having to open up the NPC sheet individually. I always felt like each player should be able to open up those tabs (for their character only) in the combat tracker. On a side note, the list of actions for player characters don't appear in their "actions tab" on the combat tracker... only NPC's have that. The actions tab is blank for player characters. I always thought that was kind of weird, as well. But if it's so the GM can't roll on behalf of the PC's that's a design choice, I suppose. But I definitely think the PC's owner should be able to run their character in combat right off the combat tracker.

[viresanimi]

Every update for FG has been absolute free so far. The devs have said that they "might" do a kickstarter to help the project along, or that there "may" be a fee this time and that recent customers would probably pay less, if anything. As far as I recall that is.

But as it is, Smiteworks has always been fair, if not generous with its customers, so I wouldn't worry. Personally I wouldn't mind paying something for the upgrade.


Vires Animi

[callahan09]

Every update for FG has been absolute free so far. The devs have said that they "might" do a kickstarter to help the project along, or that there "may" be a fee this time and that recent customers would probably pay less, if anything. As far as I recall that is.

But as it is, Smiteworks has always been fair, if not generous with its customers, so I wouldn't worry. Personally I wouldn't mind paying something for the upgrade.


Vires Animi

Thanks for the response. To be honest, I wouldn't mind paying for the upgrade either, because I *absolutely LOVE Fantasy Grounds* in my short experience with it so far. It has been transformative to my RPG experience. I'm playing more than ever now! I want Smiteworks and the FG team to succeed at all costs, so I'm buying DLC left right and center, I'm trying to recruit friends to buy in, and I'll continue to want this software to be a success because of how meaningful it has been for me. I've been buying roleplaying books for years with nobody to play them with, but Fantasy Grounds has opened so many doors, I've already found two play groups through these forums and I'm having a great time with them.

There are a couple of conditions for me paying for an upgrade (at least any time soon), however:

1) I'd like it to be a really fair price for current owners, particularly for my expensive ultimate license to carry over most of its value.
2) If they are going to be asking existing license holders to pay anything, then they must, at least for a some length of time (I don't know how long is fair, but at least a year I'd think) offer support for v3 (not to mention that v3 must still be available to download and run our licenses on). Because what they can't do in my opinion is force people to pay to upgrade, while leaving existing owners without access to the software they paid for already. I think that makes sense, but I haven't finished my coffee yet this morning. Haha

[dulux-oz]

Hey callahan, on a tangential topic, its great that you're getting so much out of FG, but have you explored some of the excellent Community Extensions available that make the FG experience even better? check out the Extensions sub-forum of the Armory forum, or the FG Wiki, if you haven't already - you'll be glad you did

[Moon Wizard]

spite,
* Which modules do you have open before toggling the MM? Which lists have you opened already? (I'm trying to figure out where the bottleneck is. It does take 3-4 seconds to turn on and 1-2 seconds to turn off once the NPC window has been opened on my machine. Also, Win10 (64-bit) / i7 / SSD)
* Toggling multiple groups may be an option in the future; I'll have to see what it takes and figure out how to make it obvious in the UI.
* The parser can be configured to output to 2 different locations. (Once to the original NPC list, and once to the library.) You only need the library option with this version.
* Thanks to your players for letting you know about combat tracker. It's a bug I'll get in next cycle.

callahan09,
* We haven't finalized the plans for the pricing on the Unity version yet. We definitely want to make sure that new and long-standing users feel like they are getting value, so we've thrown around a lot of ideas. Once we're getting closer to release, we'll probably solidify on a course of action.
* One of our main goals for the Unity build is to preserve as much DLC compatibility as possible. For Adventure/Data modules, this is fairly straightforward. For rulesets/extensions, some of them may need some adjustments.
* PC and NPC records are quite different in almost every game system, so the combat tracker entries reflect this difference. Also, the PC records are more dynamic and more detailed.
** PC actions are much more prolific and varied than NPC actions. The UI already struggles a bit with NPCs that have lots of actions, but it would be much worse with PCs who usually have 2-3 more available actions than an NPC.
** PC actions change over time (levelling up) vs. NPCs being primarily static, which is MUCH harder to synchronize with the combat tracker. NPC actions are only parsed once when added to the tracker.
** There used to be a PC mini sheet, but people always wanted just as much information on the mini sheet as in the main sheet. So, it wasn't so mini any more. The same issue would happen with the combat tracker.

Cheers,
JPG

[callahan09]

spite,
* Which modules do you have open before toggling the MM? Which lists have you opened already? (I'm trying to figure out where the bottleneck is. It does take 3-4 seconds to turn on and 1-2 seconds to turn off once the NPC window has been opened on my machine. Also, Win10 (64-bit) / i7 / SSD)
* Toggling multiple groups may be an option in the future; I'll have to see what it takes and figure out how to make it obvious in the UI.
* The parser can be configured to output to 2 different locations. (Once to the original NPC list, and once to the library.) You only need the library option with this version.
* Thanks to your players for letting you know about combat tracker. It's a bug I'll get in next cycle.

callahan09,
* We haven't finalized the plans for the pricing on the Unity version yet. We definitely want to make sure that new and long-standing users feel like they are getting value, so we've thrown around a lot of ideas. Once we're getting closer to release, we'll probably solidify on a course of action.
* One of our main goals for the Unity build is to preserve as much DLC compatibility as possible. For Adventure/Data modules, this is fairly straightforward. For rulesets/extensions, some of them may need some adjustments.
* PC and NPC records are quite different in almost every game system, so the combat tracker entries reflect this difference. Also, the PC records are more dynamic and more detailed.
** PC actions are much more prolific and varied than NPC actions. The UI already struggles a bit with NPCs that have lots of actions, but it would be much worse with PCs who usually have 2-3 more available actions than an NPC.
** PC actions change over time (levelling up) vs. NPCs being primarily static, which is MUCH harder to synchronize with the combat tracker. NPC actions are only parsed once when added to the tracker.
** There used to be a PC mini sheet, but people always wanted just as much information on the mini sheet as in the main sheet. So, it wasn't so mini any more. The same issue would happen with the combat tracker.

Cheers,
JPG

Thanks for the answers. I can certainly understand all that you said about PCs vs NPCs on the combat tracker. I hadn't actually thought about the fact that once you add the character to the combat tracker, if all those details were available within the tracker, then when I update the character sheet, does it update the combat tracker too? If not, then you have to manually remove the character & put it back on the tracker. One way is a challenge for you (development), the other is a challenge for us (the players). You'd rather not release it in the latter manner which could cause confusion to your users, and then with other things probably being more important to development, you don't undertake the challenge of the former, and that's besides the point that having so many actions for a PC could overwhelm the interface anyway and even if you had it working from a technical standpoint, it may not be pleasant from a user standpoint.

So, a quick suggestion that I don't think would be too challenging to implement, and maybe it already exists but I just don't happen to know how to do it... Can you make it so that if I click (doubleclick, probably) somewhere on my character's line on the tracker, it brings up my character sheet with the actions tab already at the front (regardless of which tab was active the last time I had the character sheet open, because when I open my character sheet from within the combat tracker, I pretty much always want to go to the actions tab)? Sometimes I find that I have to move a lot of things around to open my character sheet, but the one place that I always instinctively want to click to open it is from the combat tracker, which doesn't do it (at least not in Pathfinder and 5e, which are the two rulesets I'm playing right now). What do you think of that?