TheRPGSite

Does this matter?

Quote from: Wizards of the CoastYou have a new broadcast on your site at The Wizards Community!

Wotc_Josh from the group D&D Insider Beta has sent you a broadcast.

Subject: D&D VT Community Announcement

  I wanted to inform you all about an important decision that Wizards has made regarding the D&D Virtual Table  and Virtual Table Beta. While we appreciate the enthusiasm and participation in the Beta phase, we were unable to generate enough support for the tool to launch a full version to the public. Effective July 30, 2012 the D&D Virtual Table Beta will be coming to an end and the VT will be closed.

  Over the next three weeks, we encourage you to wrap up your existing campaigns and make sure to gather contact information from your online group members so that you can stay in touch if you like. We realize that because all data generated in the tool is in a proprietary format usable only by the Virtual Table, it is not possible to export your campaigns for use in another tool. You can, however, take screenshots of any notes, maps or adventures that you would like to hang on to or use in your home games.

  We would like to thank everyone who participated in the VT Beta and look forward to continuing to support D&D game play through our D&D Insider digital tools and D&D Next.

Ouch.

But I thought it was weird business decision, when all they had to do was offer out license of approval (like those old useless Nintendo Gold Seal of Approval stickers) for any third party apps that are compatible. Given all the free tools available, it seemed fruitless to compete in this arena. I hope they weren't stupid enough to dream they could start it as a for-profit service...

Quote from: Rum Cove;558292Does this matter?

No.

Considering how far roll20.net has gotten from a standing start that is at least half the time they put into the VT, Wizards should just leave code projects to professionals... or possibly, to the amateurs.

It could have mattered, had it succeeded. Now, it's just another in a looong list of failures for WotC.

Quote from: Benoist;558308It could have mattered, had it succeeded. Now, it's just another in a looong list of failures for WotC.

Just in case anyone in the thread wasn't aware, but this would be the second attempt at a DDI-linked Virtual Tabletop to fail. The first was brought down by 'outside circumstance':
http://www.enworld.org/forum/news/315975-wizards-coast-dungeons-dragons-insider-d-d-4th-edition-hasbro-some-history.html

QuoteAt the point of the original Hasbro/Wizards merger a fateful decision was made that laid the groundwork for what happened once Greg took over. Instead of focusing Hasbro on the idea that Wizards of the Coast was a single brand, each of the lines of business in Wizards got broken out and reported to Hasbro as a separate entity. This was driven in large part by the fact that the acquisition agreement specified a substantial post-acquisition purchase price adjustment for Wizards' shareholders on the basis of the sales of non-Magic CCGs (i.e. Pokemon).

This came back to haunt Wizards when Hasbro's new Core/Non-Core strategy came into focus. Instead of being able to say "We're a $100+ million brand, keep funding us as we desire", each of the business units inside Wizards had to make that case separately. So the first thing that happened was the contraction you saw when Wizards dropped new game development and became the "D&D and Magic" company. Magic has no problem hitting the "Core" brand bar, but D&D does. It's really a $25-30 million business, especially since Wizards isn't given credit for the licensing revenue of the D&D computer games.

It would have been very easy for Goldner et al to tell Wizards "you're done with D&D, put it on a shelf and we'll bring it back 10 years from now as a multi-media property managed from Rhode Island". There's no way that the D&D business circa 2006 could have supported the kind of staff and overhead that it was used to. Best case would have been a very small staff dedicated to just managing the brand and maybe handling some freelance pool doing minimal adventure content. So this was an existential issue (like "do we exist or not") for the part of Wizards that was connected to D&D. That's something between 50 and 75 people.

Sometime around 2006, the D&D team made a big presentation to the Hasbro senior management on how they could take D&D up to the $50 million level and potentially keep growing it. The core of that plan was a synergistic relationship between the tabletop game and what came to be known as DDI. At the time Hasbro didn't have the rights to do an MMO for D&D, so DDI was the next best thing. The Wizards team produced figures showing that there were millions of people playing D&D and that if they could move a moderate fraction of those people to DDI, they would achieve their revenue goals. Then DDI could be expanded over time and if/when Hasbro recovered the video gaming rights, it could be used as a platform to launch a true D&D MMO, which could take them over $100 million/year.

The DDI pitch was that the 4th Edition would be designed so that it would work best when played with DDI. DDI had a big VTT component of its design that would be the driver of this move to get folks to hybridize their tabletop game with digital tools. Unfortunately, a tragedy struck the DDI team (http://kotaku.com/5032443/xbox-developer-dead-in-murder+suicide) and it never really recovered. The VTT wasn't ready when 4e launched, and the explicit link between 4e and DDI that had been proposed to Hasbro's execs never materialized. The team did a yoeman's effort to make 4e work anyway while the VTT evolved, but they simply couldn't hit the numbers they'd promised selling books alone. The marketplace backlash to 4e didn't help either.

Greg wasn't in the hot seat long enough to really take the blame for the 4e/DDI plan, and Wizards just hired a new exec to be in charge of Sales & Marketing, and Bill Slavicsek who headed RPG R&D left last summer, so the team that committed those numbers to Hasbro are gone. The team that's there now probably doesn't have a blank sheet of paper and an open checkbook, but they also don't have to answer to Hasbro for the promises of the prior regime.

As to their next move? Only time will tell.

I do a lot of beta testing, and in specific I make sure THIS NEVER HAPPENS:

QuoteOver the next three weeks, we encourage you to wrap up your existing campaigns and make sure to gather contact information from your online group members so that you can stay in touch if you like. We realize that because all data generated in the tool is in a proprietary format usable only by the Virtual Table, it is not possible to export your campaigns for use in another tool. You can, however, take screenshots of any notes, maps or adventures that you would like to hang on to or use in your home games.

We would like to thank everyone who participated in the VT Beta and look forward to continuing to support D&D game play through our D&D Insider digital tools and D&D Next.

Microsoft did something recently like this with the Office Live transition.

Nobody is going to invest their time and money into a company that does not respect their time and money. There is no excuse to not provide the formats (even in the raw) to users to make the transition easier. And if WotC signed a contract which required this, then shame on them, because it means people will be far less likely to bother putting the time in to test their products, which will lead to fewer people using them, which will lead to more beta products being cancelled.

The cherry of course is how it seems WotC looks forward to you willing to go through all this again.

Well done WotC!

Quote from: chaosvoyager;558374I do a lot of beta testing, and in specific I make sure THIS NEVER HAPPENS:

Funny, I've been working in software engineering for fifteen years and I've never heard of an application's primary data storage schema being designed by the beta testers.

Say what you will about 4e, VTT is the biggest fuckup in the history of D&D as a brand, and in the history of WotC as a gaming company.

Hope they learn something from this before it's too late.

As 4e perisheth, so too doth the VTT.

I remember AM promising it to be the bees knees...

Wow, if there is a WotC failure I wish I was WRONG to predict, it is this. What a shame!

Quote from: 1989;558416As 4e perisheth, so too doth the VTT.

Indeed.  

Maybe they'll realize they need to lift off the treadmill-go pedal.

Derp.

This won't be the end of a WOTC vtt project. I guarantee you this will show up again.

WOTC wants to sell you a monthly digital subscription and auto-charge your credit card. VTT is a value add to their current offerings and can lure more people to signing up, therefore it will show up again.

No doubt this was just to make way for a deal with another partner to develop something for 5E.

Quote from: bryce0lynch;558791This won't be the end of a WOTC vtt project. I guarantee you this will show up again.

WOTC wants to sell you a monthly digital subscription and auto-charge your credit card. VTT is a value add to their current offerings and can lure more people to signing up, therefore it will show up again.

No doubt this was just to make way for a deal with another partner to develop something for 5E.

I wouldn't be surprised but after failing to get the product out during the whole 4E product run, the 5E version better be fully developed and ready to deliver before they mention it.

The sad thing is, 4th Edition would have made a helluva MMORPG.  Too bad they didn't have the license at the time to just do it instead of trying to lead up to it with a digitally delivered pen-and-paper 4e.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;558794I wouldn't be surprised but after failing to get the product out during the whole 4E product run, the 5E version better be fully developed and ready to deliver before they mention it.

and the likelihood of that?  zip, i'd say.  their track record is firmly in the SUCKS department when it comes to that.  how many suckers would they get to preorder it?  :rotfl:

Got to agree with beeber. Look. Since WotC took over D&D they have clearly demonstrated at least one thing: that they will fuck up EVERY.SINGLE. digital offering they put out there for the D&D game, and any related digital platform (Gleemax...) for that matter. They SUCK at it. PERIOD.

Yeah, I mean its not like there was a murder suicide or anything to hold up the works.

Quote from: Gib;558820Yeah, I mean its not like there was a murder suicide or anything to hold up the works.

It's way too easy to fall back on the murder-suicide thing as an excuse. Murder suicide wasn't involved in Gleemax. It wasn't involved with the 3rd ed digital tools. It wasn't involved in any other fuck-ups. Come on, man. That's bullshit.

Murder/suicide is always my excuse.

Quote from: Gib;558822Murder/suicide is always my excuse.

It's a good one though. It plays on emotions and triggers that "oh noes, I understand..." kind of reaction in all of us. ;)

Don't buy a Chevy and if you do buy a Chevy, don't buy the Chevette.

I always figured that WotC got the 'computer end fuckup virus' from Avalon Hill, who couldn't seem to make anything decent out of their numerous board games.  Of course, a lot of that is due to the way the Dotts ran AH --and is also part of the reason why AH ended up getting sold to Hasbro-- but still, the Dotts had absolutely no concept of what it would take to make software work.

Quote from: flyerfan1991;558831I always figured that WotC got the 'computer end fuckup virus' from Avalon Hill, who couldn't seem to make anything decent out of their numerous board games.  Of course, a lot of that is due to the way the Dotts ran AH --and is also part of the reason why AH ended up getting sold to Hasbro-- but still, the Dotts had absolutely no concept of what it would take to make software work.

Nonsense.  Telengard and B1 Nuclear Bomber are fine games!

Quote from: thedungeondelver;558833Nonsense.  Telengard and B1 Nuclear Bomber are fine games!

As was Computer Squad Leader.  A fine example of vaporware, that was.

After reading this, I wonder if there is anything that WotC/Hasbro cannot fuck up with the D&D brand.

Quote from: jeff37923;558843After reading this, I wonder if there is anything that WotC/Hasbro cannot fuck up with the D&D brand.

Do we really want to know the answer to this question?

Quote from: Benoist;558847Do we really want to know the answer to this question?

as someone who has written off 5e (i already have what i want for d&d, thankyouverymuch) the only thing they could do right is to release/re-release all the old stuff on pdf. . . .

Quote from: Blackhand;558789Indeed.  

Maybe they'll realize they need to lift off the treadmill-go pedal.

Derp.

They did stop the treadmill, at about the same time that they started releasing D&D boardgames and the "Essentials" books meant to be evergreen products. The splat-book-a-month schedule that had been going on since 3.5 never resumed.

I'm always bemused when people who don't actually work in or have any experience with the software industry assume that any of this stuff is easy (or in some cases, possible).

As we say around here at the daily scrums, if it's so easy you should be able to knock out a functioning proof-of-concept in a day or so.  Let us know when you're done.

Quote from: daniel_ream;558877I'm always bemused when people who don't actually work in or have any experience with the software industry assume that any of this stuff is easy (or in some cases, possible).

As we say around here at the daily scrums, if it's so easy you should be able to knock out a functioning proof-of-concept in a day or so.  Let us know when you're done.

i'm not saying it's easy; more like WotC always seems to bite off more than they can chew.  like the marketing folks are running the show, no practical knowledge of what can be done.

Seriously though, this is not really newsworthy news. Everything I wanted out of the VTT I can get, and have been getting, elsewhere. At this point, it's as if Walmart suddenly announced they were not going to make cars.

Quote from: daniel_ream;558877I'm always bemused when people who don't actually work in or have any experience with the software industry assume that any of this stuff is easy (or in some cases, possible).

As we say around here at the daily scrums, if it's so easy you should be able to knock out a functioning proof-of-concept in a day or so.  Let us know when you're done.

The ease and/or difficulty of production isn't the issue. The issue is constant over-promising and under-delivering. Making good software in a timely fashion isn't easy and so shouldn't be undertaken carelessly.

Leave software production to the pros. If that takes too much money & effort then just stick to tabletop products instead of half-assing something.

This is a surprise?  Every single piece of software produced by WOTC has been crap.  Hell, they have yet to make a better product than the old Core Rules cd and that came out in what, 1996?

Quote from: Exploderwizard;558893

Quote from: daniel_ream;558877I'm always bemused when people who don't actually work in or have any experience with the software industry assume that any of this stuff is easy (or in some cases, possible).

As we say around here at the daily scrums, if it's so easy you should be able to knock out a functioning proof-of-concept in a day or so.  Let us know when you're done.

The ease and/or difficulty of production isn't the issue. The issue is constant over-promising and under-delivering. Making good software in a timely fashion isn't easy and so shouldn't be undertaken carelessly.

Leave software production to the pros. If that takes too much money & effort then just stick to tabletop products instead of half-assing something.

Over-promise and under-deliver is part of the problem, but Daniel's cute comment misses the point entirely. It's not simply that WotC has messed up something that might, in actual fact, be nigh impossible - it's that they've messed up something that multiple other amateurs and small startups have already created working versions of. That person you told to go knock out a proof-of-concept? They came back to you with it ages ago...now why can't you deliver?

Quote from: Bobloblah;558898Over-promise and under-deliver is part of the problem, but Daniel's cute comment misses the point entirely. It's not simply that WotC has messed up something that might, in actual fact, be nigh impossible - it's that they've messed up something that multiple other amateurs and small startups have already created working versions of. That person you told to go knock out a proof-of-concept? They came back to you with it ages ago...now why can't you deliver?

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. "It's really hard," doesn't really apply here.

However, I will give WotC one minor benefit of the doubt.

Sure there have been some good VTT's out there, but the ones that have the game engine code baked in are rare. Fantasy Grounds is about the best for a d20 game.  All the others either are bare-bones communication sharing tools (really not much different then a slightly upgunned WebEx) or have to be programmed using a lot of XML definition files to get any game functionality into the interface itself.

A big strike against them though is that they presumably were coding for one game, 4e, which should be the easiest thing to do.  The other VTTs are trying to be open and support multiple games, which increases the complexity.

Also people give MapTools, Battleground et al. a break because it's free, so they ignore the fact that it is "under construction".  WotC can't do that.

Personally I suspect the problem was a conflict between the people who wanted a boardgame with 3d graphics and the ones who wanted a proto-MMORPG.

Quote from: The Butcher;558403Say what you will about 4e, VTT is the biggest fuckup in the history of D&D as a brand, and in the history of WotC as a gaming company.

Hope they learn something from this before it's too late.

Yeah, and a real surprise considering all the other successful software ventures they have pursued.  :)

Quote from: JRR;558896This is a surprise?  Every single piece of software produced by WOTC has been crap.  Hell, they have yet to make a better product than the old Core Rules cd and that came out in what, 1996?

That was pretty fucking awesome.  I still have mine floating around somewhere, but I like the Dragon Archive more.  For the time, the interface was pretty damn good on that.

Quote from: CRKrueger;559159However, I will give WotC one minor benefit of the doubt.

Sure there have been some good VTT's out there, but the ones that have the game engine code baked in are rare. Fantasy Grounds is about the best for a d20 game.  All the others either are bare-bones communication sharing tools (really not much different then a slightly upgunned WebEx) or have to be programmed using a lot of XML definition files to get any game functionality into the interface itself.

A big strike against them though is that they presumably were coding for one game, 4e, which should be the easiest thing to do.  The other VTTs are trying to be open and support multiple games, which increases the complexity.

Also people give MapTools, Battleground et al. a break because it's free, so they ignore the fact that it is "under construction".  WotC can't do that.

Personally I suspect the problem was a conflict between the people who wanted a boardgame with 3d graphics and the ones who wanted a proto-MMORPG.

I've seen screenshot of a beholder getting fire-balled in the (1st pass at a 4e) 3D VTT... it was basically a 3d boardgame.. but it was awesome for the period it was being developed in.


I'm tempted to make my own with UDK (but, as mentioned it wouldn't have any specific rules functionality).

Quote from: Bobloblah;558898That person you told to go knock out a proof-of-concept? They came back to you with it ages ago...now why can't you deliver?

Good job! Now, can you scale it beyond a hundred simultaneous users and build in some security and a reduced attack surface while you're at it?  And make it work on every browser running on every version of Windows with every possible combination of "Internet security" software, antivirus and the built-in Windows firewall?  And make sure it tolerates dropped connections gracefully, and so on, and so on...saying "those amateurs kicked out something that sort of works, now why can't you" is like asking Orange Julius why they can't open a location on your front lawn because the kid down the street's been running a lemonade stand all summer.

Making good, reliable software is hard, and WotC's track record in this area is about average.  You should see some of the construction estimating software I've had to work with, and that's from professional software development companies working in a specific niche with well-defined requirements.

Oh, and over-promising and under-delivering is the norm in this industry.  Look, be angry that WoTC didn't give you your shiny toy all you like, but realize that they're far from unique as far as successfully producing software goes.

Quote from: daniel_ream;559181Making good, reliable software is hard, and WotC's track record in this area is about average.  You should see some of the construction estimating software I've had to work with, and that's from professional software development companies working in a specific niche with well-defined requirements.

I shit you not, the medical records software company I worked for was still storing the data as a blob in MSSQL.  In 2008.  Using a Java interface.  And this was the industry leader.

Quote from: StormBringer;559185I shit you not, the medical records software company I worked for was still storing the data as a blob in MSSQL.  In 2008.  Using a Java interface.  And this was the industry leader.

I've a good idea which software company you're talking about, and the medical software industry makes the IRS look like NASA.

Quote from: daniel_ream;559181Good job! Now, can you scale it beyond a hundred simultaneous users and build in some security and a reduced attack surface while you're at it?  And make it work on every browser running on every version of Windows with every possible combination of "Internet security" software, antivirus and the built-in Windows firewall?  And make sure it tolerates dropped connections gracefully, and so on, and so on...saying "those amateurs kicked out something that sort of works, now why can't you" is like asking Orange Julius why they can't open a location on your front lawn because the kid down the street's been running a lemonade stand all summer.

Making good, reliable software is hard, and WotC's track record in this area is about average.  You should see some of the construction estimating software I've had to work with, and that's from professional software development companies working in a specific niche with well-defined requirements.

Oh, and over-promising and under-delivering is the norm in this industry.  Look, be angry that WoTC didn't give you your shiny toy all you like, but realize that they're far from unique as far as successfully producing software goes.

I'll certainly give you the over-promise under-deliver being endemic; I'm currently working for one of the world's larger software companies, and we've certainly been guilty of it. Having said that, you are still over-stating the difficulties and under-playing the fully working versions of these products on the market. I have used several of them, and they simply aren't the mickey-mouse toys you're equating them to with your lemonade stand comment. There is a vast gulf between "okay, the software doesn't do everything yet" and "screw it, we're not releasing anything."

Quote from: StormBringer;559185I shit you not, the medical records software company I worked for was still storing the data as a blob in MSSQL.  In 2008.  Using a Java interface.  And this was the industry leader.

Quote from: flyerfan1991;559191I've a good idea which software company you're talking about, and the medical software industry makes the IRS look like NASA.

The enterprise software space has a lot of software that would make the average consumer either choke, or believe they just entered a timewarp to the 80s. I'm not sure comparing with consumer software is terribly relevant, as the considerations, particularly in terms of reliability, are very different.

Quote from: StormBringer;559185I shit you not, the medical records software company I worked for was still storing the data as a blob in MSSQL.  In 2008.  Using a Java interface.  And this was the industry leader.

When you have fucked around with MeditechOS running Data General AVIION 9500s, get back to me.

MSSQL...luxury!

I am actually a creature of low tech habit when it comes to tabletop rpg stuff. I still draw maps on paper with pencil & colored markers, hand write character sheets, and sit in the same room with my fellow gamers.

I'm just wondering how many DDI subscribers kept up their accounts largely because of the promise of the VTT?

IMHO the subscription model for pen & paper rpg material sucks donkey balls. This may end up being WOTC's last hurrah in the tabletop rpg software market.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;559196When you have fucked around with MeditechOS running Data General AVIION 9500s, get back to me.

MSSQL...luxury!

No but I programmed PCLs with ladder logic and interfaced them with microcontroller boards using 8052 chips running a mishmash of BASIC and assembly. With the whole thing running a Plasma torch on a X-Y cutting machine in realtime.

pfft.. the guys at my new job are still fooling with knives made out of stone.

Quote from: Gib;559208pfft.. the guys at my new job are still fooling with knives made out of stone.

That nothing we cut metal with water and stone.

Quote from: Bobloblah;559194I have used several of them, and they simply aren't the mickey-mouse toys you're equating them to with your lemonade stand comment. There is a vast gulf between "okay, the software doesn't do everything yet" and "screw it, we're not releasing anything."

I had a quick spin through the market leaders when this thread came up; IMHO, the free ones are worth exactly what you pay for them, and the for-pay ones are amateurish for the price they're asking, likely due to the problem of economies of scale.

And none of this even touches on the problem that you either use a centralized client-server model (which has its own technical challenges) or watch all that money you just spent developing your client vanish down the black hole of rampant piracy.

Quote from: CRKrueger;558795The sad thing is, 4th Edition would have made a helluva MMORPG.  Too bad they didn't have the license at the time to just do it instead of trying to lead up to it with a digitally delivered pen-and-paper 4e.

I'm sure D&DNext will also have the "make no rule that can't be trivially implemented as computer code" paradigm as well.

Quote from: estar;559227That nothing we cut metal with water and stone.

You guys have water?

And WotC kills the one chance to make 5e successful.

5e really does sound like a Swan song at this point, does it not?

Quote from: Benoist;5593205e really does sound like a Swan song at this point, does it not?

Swan song? More like a death rattle.

Quote from: Benoist;5593205e really does sound like a Swan song at this point, does it not?

Yeah but look on the bright side, at least they didn't go out with 4e.

And honestly, Hasbro won't let the D&D name die anyway.

If they screw up 5e, I believe it will be over.

4e went for the new. It failed.

5e is, supposedly, going for some of the old. But will it still be too new?

I am worried. I see too many novel things in 5e, e.g., advantages/disadvantages, that just don't pass the test of what feels like D&D. How could it? It's never been in any previous edition.

Something like Microlite would be a better kernel upon which to base 5e, imo.

4e failed because they did not advertise or market their product. WotC wrongly expected the fanbase to do the word of mouth advertising for them.

But without marketing to teens and college kids, word of mouth advertising is very limited. As people age, their social circles become smaller and tighter.

Adults are less likely to share hobbies with non-hobbyists. Teens are the opposite.

That's why you need to engage teens. Teens in 2012 are online. If you can't offer then an engaging online experience, your product will not be a high profit success.

My buddy's son loves the Ticket to Ride app on his iPad. He was so excited to learn that they made a boardgame out of his favorite computer game!

5e could be the bestest evar D&D of all time, but nobody is going to give a shit. Adult gamers already have their favorite edition. RPGA gamers will buy 5e to continue in their hobby of Living campaigns. But that's the end of the line without a real marketing push.

The VTT was key to that marketing.

Quote from: Spinachcat;5593374e failed because they did not advertise or market their product.

Au contraire, they marketed it on the premise that everyone, from 3.5 gamers back, were idiots and played D&D wrong, and 4e finally fixed everything.

No, they marketed it and were as successful as say, Chevy would be marketing a new Corvette by saying people who admired (and owned) '66 Stingrays were idiots who didn't know the steering wheel from the clutch flywheel.  

This entire mess is their own fault, they get what they deserve.

Quote from: Spinachcat;5593374e failed because they did not advertise or market their product. WotC wrongly expected the fanbase to do the word of mouth advertising for them.

But without marketing to teens and college kids, word of mouth advertising is very limited. As people age, their social circles become smaller and tighter.

Adults are less likely to share hobbies with non-hobbyists. Teens are the opposite.

That's why you need to engage teens. Teens in 2012 are online. If you can't offer then an engaging online experience, your product will not be a high profit success.

My buddy's son loves the Ticket to Ride app on his iPad. He was so excited to learn that they made a boardgame out of his favorite computer game!

5e could be the bestest evar D&D of all time, but nobody is going to give a shit. Adult gamers already have their favorite edition. RPGA gamers will buy 5e to continue in their hobby of Living campaigns. But that's the end of the line without a real marketing push.

The VTT was key to that marketing.

Fuck the teens you need the 8 year olds .

My daughter is 7 she woudl play Moshi Monsters all day if I let her out of the cellar for more than an a couple of hours a day.
its just role playing mixes with collecting and logic puzzles (which you can do in rpgs anyway)

Take D&D make a facebook and some IPad/android apps get the name totally back in front of people then when you have 1m active facebook players create a way to let them link together in real time.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;559338Au contraire, they marketed it on the premise that everyone, from 3.5 gamers back, were idiots and played D&D wrong, and 4e finally fixed everything.

No, they marketed it and were as successful as say, Chevy would be marketing a new Corvette by saying people who admired (and owned) '66 Stingrays were idiots who didn't know the steering wheel from the clutch flywheel.  

This entire mess is their own fault, they get what they deserve.

Ayup. WOTC sold the 'newer is always betterer' line and it proved to be as true as the old 'housing market always goes up' crapola.

Quote from: jibbajibba;559339My daughter is 7 she woudl play Moshi Monsters all day if I let her out of the cellar for more than an a couple of hours a day.

Laugh point.

@Spinachcat:

4e failed because, in releasing it, WotC replaced an RPG with a miniatures boardgame founded upon mechanics disconnected from any sort of reality.

3.5 was bad enough, but 4e was a whole new level of fail.

I'm not sure 4e killed Dungeons & Dragons™ brand. What killed it was the OGL, which ironically(?) is also the greatest gift Wizards of the Coast ever bestowed upon the hobby. Even if 4e had been the greatest thing since sliced bread, the cat was out of the bag. A revival took place among older games. 4e just exacerbated it with it's design.

BTW, I fully agree that WotC did a shit job advertising 4e to existing fans.

But existing fans are only one group and we know they will soon fracture. The Edition Wars made it clear that new editions sell well at first, but then the fandom splits into fans of the new edition vs. those who retreat to their old favorites.

The important advertising is getting new blood to buy your product and aggressively marketing the game past its initial launch phase.
 

Quote from: jibbajibba;559339Take D&D make a facebook and some IPad/android apps get the name totally back in front of people then when you have 1m active facebook players create a way to let them link together in real time.

There is a very good D&D game on Facebook. Check out Heroes of Neverwinter - even if you aren't a 4e fan.

Too bad WotC didn't promote it significantly.

Quote from: Spinachcat;559344There is a very good D&D game on Facebook. Check out Heroes of Neverwinter - even if you aren't a 4e fan.

Too bad WotC didn't promote it significantly.

You know what kills me?  WotC could have kept the "older" players happy with a code-once-never-look-back facebook or web-based flash game and thrown some FB ads up that said "Play Classic D&D online!" and had some thing where armor classes went down instead of up and set it in a generic dungeon that was purportedly in Greyhawk (and done one for faerun by changing like 10 sprite graphics and mapnames) and not changed another thing outside of what they already had...then kept ad-banners up for 4e onward, and had more cash trickle in.

Yes, I'm that cynical about much of the OS market.  Hell, I'd have played it (REWARD GOOD BEHAVIOR).

To quote Ozzy, though: "Just like the wounded, and when it's too late, they'll remember, they'll surrender."

Quote from: jibbajibba;559339Fuck the teens you need the 8 year olds .

I agree. Market to the kids AND their gamer parents. You know. Us.

Quote from: Endless Flight;559343I'm not sure 4e killed Dungeons & Dragons™ brand. What killed it was the OGL, which ironically(?) is also the greatest gift Wizards of the Coast ever bestowed upon the hobby. Even if 4e had been the greatest thing since sliced bread, the cat was out of the bag. A revival took place among older games. 4e just exacerbated it with it's design.

I really do think this is a huge part of it, especially when one factors PF into the equation.
Anyway, I sneered at 5e when everyone else was cheering, but I don't think its going to be a total loss. I really do think they have every opportunity to at least  catch up to Pathfinder.

Quote from: Gib;559359I really do think this is a huge part of it, especially when one factors PF into the equation.

The OGL did exactly what it was intended to do, which is ensure that no one company could control D&D.

And why Dancey wasn't fired on the spot for suggesting it I'll never know.

Quote from: daniel_ream;559374The OGL did exactly what it was intended to do, which is ensure that no one company could control D&D.

And why Dancey wasn't fired on the spot for suggesting it I'll never know.

Because he convinced them that they would have everyone putting out d20 and OGL products, all of which required the Core Rulebooks to play.

Quote from: daniel_ream;559374The OGL did exactly what it was intended to do, which is ensure that no one company could control D&D.

This is so obvious that I cannot come up with satisfactorily insulting response. You're the smart guy, so I leave it up to you; try to work in douche bag and pedantic- if you can.

Quote from: Gib;559385This is so obvious that I cannot come up with satisfactorily insulting response. You're the smart guy, so I leave it up to you; try to work in douche bag and pedantic- if you can.

How about "you're a thickheaded moron with no understanding of how large companies value IP; also, the next time I see a cheap copy of DCC I'm going to buy it and send you photos of me lighting it on fire just to spite you" ?

Oh wait, that's me insulting you.  Sorry, I get turned around sometimes.

Anyhoo, I find it hard to believe that at any point Dancey actually said to anyone at Hasbro that part of the purpose of the OGL was to diminish their control over their IP, because that should have got him fired on the spot. I can believe that that was his intent, and I can believe he sold the rest of WotC on the idea, but as soon as anyone at Hasbro got a whiff of it it should have been spiked.

The notion that sales of tons of third party material would magically boost sales of the core books was silly on the face of it and contradicted by market experience, and even if that weren't true, it did not necessitate giving away the homeworld.

Thickheaded moron is kind of redundant, really. One or the other would have been fine, because they nearly always come together, whereas there are many varieties of douchebag, pedantic and otherwise.

Also I said nothing about WoTC and how they value( or should have valued) their IP. However, as long as we're stating the obvious, your position regarding the OGL seems pretty much spot on to me. I mean, really, what kind of dumbass creates their own competition?

P.S. I don't really want DCC.

Quote from: daniel_ream;559374The OGL did exactly what it was intended to do, which is ensure that no one company could control D&D.

And why Dancey wasn't fired on the spot for suggesting it I'll never know.

Because Peter Adkinson agreed with him. Note that he sold WotC shortly after.

Quote from: flyerfan1991;559191I've a good idea which software company you're talking about, and the medical software industry makes the IRS look like NASA.

It's sad really.  Maybe the medical software folks are allergic to best practices, so how about just some not totally shithead-stupid practices?  I mean, haven't databases been around and improved on since the 60s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_management_system#1960s_Navigational_DBMS)?

Quote from: Bobloblah;559195The enterprise software space has a lot of software that would make the average consumer either choke, or believe they just entered a timewarp to the 80s. I'm not sure comparing with consumer software is terribly relevant, as the considerations, particularly in terms of reliability, are very different.

It was 'enterprise' software only because that sounded flashier.  Front line records clerks and billing specialists are the intended audience, so the level of computer expertise is expected to be minimal.

I know what you are saying, the software is usually more designed for performance than interface.  Nonetheless, trying to extract information from a un-indexed block of text using Java is a far cry from trading looks for performance.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;559196When you have fucked around with MeditechOS running Data General AVIION 9500s, get back to me.

MSSQL...luxury!

Does Meditech ever plan on changing their interface, or do they think everyone still uses AS/400s?  :)

Quote from: daniel_ream;559436Anyhoo, I find it hard to believe that at any point Dancey actually said to anyone at Hasbro that part of the purpose of the OGL was to diminish their control over their IP, because that should have got him fired on the spot. I can believe that that was his intent, and I can believe he sold the rest of WotC on the idea, but as soon as anyone at Hasbro got a whiff of it it should have been spiked.

The notion that sales of tons of third party material would magically boost sales of the core books was silly on the face of it and contradicted by market experience, and even if that weren't true, it did not necessitate giving away the homeworld.

i guess dancey must be some sort of idiot genius--after all, not only did he bamboozle the WotC/hasbro higher ups on the OGL, but people keep referring to him on messageboards about this or that.  talk about charisma.   and as far as the hasbro higher-ups?  he probably just waved higher $ ideas about what the OGL could do, and they believed him.  everyone got fucked, except the generic "d&d" fan.  and thus sprouted the OSR, and we know how that's going.  

ugh, to sleep for me :idunno:

Quote from: StormBringer;559449Does Meditech ever plan on changing their interface, or do they think everyone still uses AS/400s?  :)

The last time I touched that antiquated SHIT it was all still running on Motorola 88k RISC boxen.  (DG 9500s with a few of what we called "Optical boxes" that were PC-tower sized but effectively mini-frames that managed the massive, massive Optical storage units we had a couple of).

As I was leaving they were switching to intel based rack units running NT4 Server...the migration was finished around 2000 but well after I left.

Quote from: beeber;559499i guess dancey must be some sort of idiot genius--after all, not only did he bamboozle the WotC/hasbro higher ups on the OGL, but people keep referring to him on messageboards about this or that.  talk about charisma.   and as far as the hasbro higher-ups?  he probably just waved higher $ ideas about what the OGL could do, and they believed him.  everyone got fucked, except the generic "d&d" fan.  and thus sprouted the OSR, and we know how that's going.  

ugh, to sleep for me :idunno:

Idiot genius is about right from where I'm standing.  On the one hand - yay OSRIC (and about 30 other games :P ) on the other hand one of the big factors behind the RPG and FLGS collapse from 2000-2007ish was the d20/OGL glut (note: not the only one, just one of the big ones)

Quote from: Endless Flight;559343I'm not sure 4e killed Dungeons & Dragons™ brand. What killed it was the OGL, which ironically(?) is also the greatest gift Wizards of the Coast ever bestowed upon the hobby. Even if 4e had been the greatest thing since sliced bread, the cat was out of the bag. A revival took place among older games. 4e just exacerbated it with it's design.

It took both, the OGL and the incompatible design. If 4.0 was similar in design like Pathfinder (i.e. a 3.5e variant) then it would be a vastly different situation. You would still have the retro-clones (including 3.5e) but it would have been far less impact.

To put it another way the design of 4e caused the damage, the OGL allowed gamers to route around it.

Quote from: Benoist;559444Because Peter Adkinson agreed with him. Note that he sold WotC shortly after.

I think it's a little more than that. Paraphrasing from the excellent Designers & Dragons book, modules don't generate s much profit as the core books but without them being published the core book sales tend to trail off. Thus WOTC could make tons of profit on core book sales while relying on others to publish the modules, and assume their risk, they needed to drive those core sales.

I also believe there's a quote somewhere from Ryan (or someone else at WOTC) that they never anticipated/intended the release of rule sets ...


Ryan is one of the most important people in the hobby, ever, because of this, IMO.

Quote from: estar;559558It took both, the OGL and the incompatible design. If 4.0 was similar in design like Pathfinder (i.e. a 3.5e variant) then it would be a vastly different situation. You would still have the retro-clones (including 3.5e) but it would have been far less impact.

To put it another way the design of 4e caused the damage, the OGL allowed gamers to route around it.

This, this, a thousand time this. Those claiming that it was all OGL, or just 4E, or lack of marketing, or whatever, want a nice simple explanation. Many factors aligned to facilitate the torpedoing of the D&D brand, and these were all stepping stones along that path. Where I do think the explanation is simpler is in the OGL meaning they can likely "never go home again."

I also have trouble believing that there was no bounce in Core Book sales for WotC due to the rush in the industry to D20; if nothing else, it appeared to hammer much of their competition. I've rarely followed industry insiders close enough to notice, but has anyone (theoretically) in the know ever spoken to this (the effect on competitors)?

Quote from: bryce0lynch;559565I also believe there's a quote somewhere from Ryan (or someone else at WOTC) that they never anticipated/intended the release of rule sets ...

I don't have a source that I can link too but I believe what he actually said that he believe people will try to release rulebooks but didn't think they would ever do as well as the ones Wizards sold or even impact their sales.

And largely he was right until 4.0. In fact because of the glut, throughout the 3.5e era a large Wizard only customer base developed. Something I heard from a dozen game stores owners throughout the country (I traveled a lot on business in the mid 2000's).

I feel this customer base is what allowed 4.0 to gain initial acceptable and one of the primary reasons that the Wizard's D&D staff deluded themselves that breaking compatibility would work. But when Paizo was able to gain credibility with Pathfinder then 4.0 became just another RPG in a sea of rival RPGs. Which for a mid-level game company wouldn't be a problem but for Hasbro/Wizards a epic disaster.

Remember 4.0 does have its fan base and sells very well for a RPG. The disaster is that it doesn't sell what Wizards needs it to sell.

At the end of the day, a tabletop RPG is

- a social activity where you sit around a table with friends,
- a game of creativity with unlimited possibilities, and
- a toolbox which every DM/GM/whatever applies according to his own tastes.

Whereas any sort of computer application is

- inherently antisocial, because it encourages to people to stay home and do everything via a stupid screen,
- a limitation on possibilities because it can only do what the programmers have programmed into it. And the same is true even for a toolbox app like some DM-ing program - for a parallel example, just look at how fucking hard and messy it is do draw a simple broken line in a superbly powerful editing program like Photoshop, simply because the designers never thought people might want to do it.
- and finally, an inevitable codification on one level or another that limits the DM in his options.


Digital "enhancements" of tabletop roleplaying are doomed from the start.

Quote from: Premier;559591Whereas any sort of computer application is

- inherently antisocial, because it encourages to people to stay home and do everything via a stupid screen,
- a limitation on possibilities because it can only do what the programmers have programmed into it. And the same is true even for a toolbox app like some DM-ing program - for a parallel example, just look at how fucking hard and messy it is do draw a simple broken line in a superbly powerful editing program like Photoshop, simply because the designers never thought people might want to do it.
- and finally, an inevitable codification on one level or another that limits the DM in his options.


Digital "enhancements" of tabletop roleplaying are doomed from the start.

This may be true in one sense, but speaking for myself and those I game with, it's not a replacement for face-to-face play, it's for when that's simply not possible.

Quote from: Bobloblah;559592This may be true in one sense, but speaking for myself and those I game with, it's not a replacement for face-to-face play, it's for when that's simply not possible.

This is true for me as well.

Quote from: Premier;559591- a limitation on possibilities because it can only do what the programmers have programmed into it. And the same is true even for a toolbox app like some DM-ing program - for a parallel example, just look at how fucking hard and messy it is do draw a simple broken line in a superbly powerful editing program like Photoshop, simply because the designers never thought people might want to do it.

Virtual Tabletop work where other computer technologies failed because the Whiteboard is one of those simple ideas that have infinite applications and doesn't require a programmer to anticipate everything a user tries to do.


The basic concept is that it allows you to show an image to everybody participating. So anything you want to show, like a dungeon map, all you need to do is scan it in and you can show it. Add dice rollers, character sheets, and automated table lookup and you have something that works perfectly with tabletop roleplaying games.

Because you are doing the same things in the same ways as regular tabletop roleplaying its complementing normal play rather than act like a rival substitute like CRPGs, MMORPGs or LARPs.

Even in an age of email and cell phones the #1 use of those technologies are used for is arrange meetings for people to get together. The same with VTTs, people rather game in person but now you have an alternative.

Because of VTTs I was able to referee D&D Next sessions for Benoist, the DungeonDelver and several of their friends despite we were scattered throughout the North American Continent. And they can correct me but largely we were doing the same thing as we would if we were sitting around a table, including the banter, the laughter, the gripingm the kids interrupting, the dogs barking, the cokes being spilled, and above all rolling dice (virtual).

Quote from: thedungeondelver;559501The last time I touched that antiquated SHIT it was all still running on Motorola 88k RISC boxen.  (DG 9500s with a few of what we called "Optical boxes" that were PC-tower sized but effectively mini-frames that managed the massive, massive Optical storage units we had a couple of).

As I was leaving they were switching to intel based rack units running NT4 Server...the migration was finished around 2000 but well after I left.

Ha!  I had another job in the mid-2000s supporting a major national hotel chain.  They still used honest to gods AS/400s with the text interface and everything.  And they used dumb terminals to expose the clerks at the facilities to that interface!  Complete fail at all points of contact!

I guess the puzzler for me is why a large-ish company like WotC with presumably decent resources behind them from Hasbro can't get their shit together for a virtual table.  Back in the TSR days, when computers were still carved of a piece from oak trees, it is more understandable.  But they still managed to put out the Core Rules CD and the Dragon Archive CD.  Both of which are far, far superior to anything they have done since.  Hell, the character generator that came with the first printing of the 3.0 PH should have been a no-brainer, but they fucked that up, too.

Quote from: StormBringer;559683Ha!  I had another job in the mid-2000s supporting a major national hotel chain.  They still used honest to gods AS/400s with the text interface and everything.  And they used dumb terminals to expose the clerks at the facilities to that interface!  Complete fail at all points of contact!

Does this explain something about the VTT?

Quote from: Bobloblah;559684Does this explain something about the VTT?

It seems like no one wants to invest in updating their software infrastructure.  I would not be surprised in the least if the virtual table was ultimately held up because of some Java incompatibility issue, because they are using a much earlier version.  Rather than looking a bit ahead and building a Flash application and now trying to implement something in HTML5, they will stick with the ancient, creaky technologies that were barely sufficient for the tasks to which they were put 20yrs ago when they first came out.

Quote from: StormBringer;559694It seems like no one wants to invest in updating their software infrastructure.

Those ROI calculations are nowhere near as simple as you might think.

Quote from: StormBringer;559694It seems like no one wants to invest in updating their software infrastructure.  I would not be surprised in the least if the virtual table was ultimately held up because of some Java incompatibility issue, because they are using a much earlier version.  Rather than looking a bit ahead and building a Flash application and now trying to implement something in HTML5, they will stick with the ancient, creaky technologies that were barely sufficient for the tasks to which they were put 20yrs ago when they first came out.

Nice segue; I really didn't think you'd manage it.

Quote from: daniel_ream;559718Those ROI calculations are nowhere near as simple as you might think.

No, I would imagine not.  Banks aren't still using COBOL because they are lazy, obviously.  But for smaller organizations, the switchover doesn't seem terribly onerous.  And Microsoft would be more than happy to help, I am sure.  I tend to place these decisions into more of a 'tech blind spot' than anything, with managers having no clear idea what benefits and upgrade provides, only seeing the overall cost.  As long as they get their numbers, they don't really care how.

Quote from: Bobloblah;559735Nice segue; I really didn't think you'd manage it.

:hatsoff:

Quote from: Bobloblah;559735Nice segue; I really didn't think you'd manage it.

:hatsoff:

Quote from: StormBringer;559742No, I would imagine not.  Banks aren't still using COBOL because they are lazy, obviously.  But for smaller organizations, the switchover doesn't seem terribly onerous.  And Microsoft would be more than happy to help, I am sure.

The tech industry suffers from fads the same way the fashion industry does, and software engineering as a discipline is still in its infancy.  If a company, large or small, is entirely dependent on their IT infrastructure, then changing it needs to be seamless and cheap (or at least worth the investment given the projected lifetime of the new system).

Realistically, it's almost never either.

(Aside: Microsoft is not, in fact, happy to help; they don't do consulting.  They'll refer you to a local VAR).

Quote from: daniel_ream;559751(Aside: Microsoft is not, in fact, happy to help; they don't do consulting.  They'll refer you to a local VAR).

Actually they do provide combined consulting/training, for example, Sharepoint for the Cal State system, but it has to be a big project.

Quote from: CRKrueger;559753Actually they do provide combined consulting/training, for example, Sharepoint for the Cal State system, but it has to be a big project.

I was going to make a similar response about them dealing directly with software OEMs. So, yeah, they do, and a lot. You just have to be worth their time. And this is still fairly off-topic for the VTT.

Quote from: daniel_ream;559751The tech industry suffers from fads the same way the fashion industry does, and software engineering as a discipline is still in its infancy.

I'm looking at you, Java.  :)

QuoteIf a company, large or small, is entirely dependent on their IT infrastructure, then changing it needs to be seamless and cheap (or at least worth the investment given the projected lifetime of the new system).

It's likely not an easy argument to make, but ease of maintenance should be factored in there somewhere.  Having to find one of the handful of COBOL programmers out there and pay them blackmail money has got to be far less attractive than setting up an off-the-shelf commercial database like MSSQL or Oracle or something.

Quote(Aside: Microsoft is not, in fact, happy to help; they don't do consulting.  They'll refer you to a local VAR).

Well, yeah, not the heavy lifting part.  Getting their hooks into the banking industry's software, though?  Balmer has got to be messing his pants over the thoughts of that.

Quote from: Bobloblah;559755I was going to make a similar response about them dealing directly with software OEMs. So, yeah, they do, and a lot. You just have to be worth their time. And this is still fairly off-topic for the VTT.

Not entirely.  There are plenty of ways to get technology implemented, although it may not be as inexpensive as the bean counters like.  It feels like WotC (and TSR before them) just went with whoever called them first without looking around.  The independent programmers making their own virtual tables attests to that.

There is some degree of inertia behind still having COBOL on minis in the banking world, but part of it is also that they haven't had the cost for maintenance exceed the projected costs for upgrade yet.  Gods know why not, IBM must be charging them out the ass for maintenance contracts.  But WotC doesn't have (literally) tons of legacy hardware to worry about.  Console games cost tens of millions to produce, but as I understand it, most of those costs are on art assets like cut-scenes and voice over work.  The actual game engines are not what generally pushes the ship date back.

Quote from: daniel_ream;559751The tech industry suffers from fads the same way the fashion industry does, and software engineering as a discipline is still in its infancy.  If a company, large or small, is entirely dependent on their IT infrastructure, then changing it needs to be seamless and cheap (or at least worth the investment given the projected lifetime of the new system).

Realistically, it's almost never either.

(Aside: Microsoft is not, in fact, happy to help; they don't do consulting.  They'll refer you to a local VAR).

I have to agree with Daniel. Pretty much every job I've had over the last 15+ years has involved trying to upgrade from one technology paradigm to a new one. They have all taken 4x or longer than originally estimated, cost at least twice as much as originally estimated, and always have a huge productivity/usability loss that lasts years after the changeover. 50% of them failed completely (meaning those guys are still using the old technology they were trying to get away from years ago).

My current gig involves a transition of our CRM software from an old AS/400 system to a Windows/Browser-based VB.NET system. It took 4 years just to go live and that's with some huge productivity/usability losses. From a productivity/usability standpoint, it will be another 2+ years before we get back to where we were in 2008.


That said, WotC has no hope if they can't create digital products. It is the future. The future for selling ever-diminishing returns of yet-another-edition of expensive print books is rapidly running out.

So basically, their options are to either keep doing what they are doing and squeak out a few more years, or convince Hasbro to make a huge investment and spend the next several years working on digital products (either by investing in in-house talent or outsourcing to consultants).

Quote from: StormBringer;559694It seems like no one wants to invest in updating their software infrastructure.  I would not be surprised in the least if the virtual table was ultimately held up because of some Java incompatibility issue, because they are using a much earlier version.  Rather than looking a bit ahead and building a Flash application and now trying to implement something in HTML5, they will stick with the ancient, creaky technologies that were barely sufficient for the tasks to which they were put 20yrs ago when they first came out.

What people don't realize that installed and running software represent captured knowledge. Particularly in Vertical markets like the one being mentioned in earlier post.

A rewrite is something you do as a last resort and only when the payoff is many times the amount invested in the work. It because once you rewrite software everything is out the window in terms of reliability.

Obviously you can't sit still so what you do is refactor your software. You first write a test framework that verifies your software is operating correctly. You run this framework after every change is committed using your pre-existing setup. Note you haven't done anything new with the current system other than your normal maintenance cycle.

Once you have that working you can then start altering your system to a new design. Doing it in logical increment and running your test framework after every change.  If you do this then the project will be left in a working state after every change. So when shit happens, and it always does with legacy system, you not left with your pants down.

I successfully maintained a CAD/CAM metal cutting software since the mid-80s by following this philosophy. It started on a 68000 based HP Workstation, went to MS-DOS, then Windows 3.X, then to Windows 32-bit and now in the midst of going over to .net.

Quote from: StormBringer;559756Having to find one of the handful of COBOL programmers out there and pay them blackmail money has got to be far less attractive than setting up an off-the-shelf commercial database like MSSQL or Oracle or something.

I'm not exaggerating in the slightest when I say that the latter will be orders of magnitude more expensive than the former.

Back to the topic at hand, outsourcing the VTT project probably would have been the right way to go if WotC had no in-house expertise at managing software projects.  Realistically, projects like that rarely have more than a handful of people working on them and the loss of a single major contributor will always tank the project.  Look at what happened with reiserfs.

Quote from: daniel_ream;559774I'm not exaggerating in the slightest when I say that the latter will be orders of magnitude more expensive than the former.

No, I get it.  Initial costs are going to be high.  But will they be that much higher than, say, fifty more years of using COBOL?

Quote from: estar;559771What people don't realize that installed and running software represent captured knowledge. Particularly in Vertical markets like the one being mentioned in earlier post.

Yeah, that makes sense, but you could also call that captured data, right?  Data is pretty easy to transfer around.  Building the program structure around it again, well...  That's not going to be simple.

A rewrite is something you do as a last resort and only when the payoff is many times the amount invested in the work. It because once you rewrite software everything is out the window in terms of reliability.

QuoteObviously you can't sit still so what you do is refactor your software. You first write a test framework that verifies your software is operating correctly. You run this framework after every change is committed using your pre-existing setup. Note you haven't done anything new with the current system other than your normal maintenance cycle.

Once you have that working you can then start altering your system to a new design. Doing it in logical increment and running your test framework after every change.  If you do this then the project will be left in a working state after every change. So when shit happens, and it always does with legacy system, you not left with your pants down.

I successfully maintained a CAD/CAM metal cutting software since the mid-80s by following this philosophy. It started on a 68000 based HP Workstation, went to MS-DOS, then Windows 3.X, then to Windows 32-bit and now in the midst of going over to .net.

That's the kind of plan I was referring to.  At this point, the financial industry has passed up so many opportunities for incremental upgrades, their only choice is a hugely expensive re-write.  They can't justify that cost, and there are no incremental changes because the software is so old, they are stuck with the inertia of having to use the original software.

WotC doesn't actually have that problem, however.  Whatever happened with the most recent virtual table, they were starting from scratch, and so could have picked whatever technology they wanted.  They appear to have chosen poorly, along with the contractors who were writing it.  That is the part that is really baffling.  Tech companies are stuffed with rpg enthusiasts, because that was the hobby when programming was getting into full swing.  How do they manage to keep finding the ones that don't seem to have the first clue about rpgs?  Hell, buy one of the current independent VTTs and keep them on as programmers.  Or get some new folks, as the current offerings are largely open source anyway.

Quote from: StormBringer;559683I guess the puzzler for me is why a large-ish company like WotC with presumably decent resources behind them from Hasbro can't get their shit together for a virtual table.  Back in the TSR days, when computers were still carved of a piece from oak trees, it is more understandable.  But they still managed to put out the Core Rules CD and the Dragon Archive CD.  Both of which are far, far superior to anything they have done since.  Hell, the character generator that came with the first printing of the 3.0 PH should have been a no-brainer, but they fucked that up, too.

Excuse me, TSR did put out a decent electronic gaming tool: the Dungeon Masters Assistant Vols. 1 & 2, done by Jim Ward and a handful of guys from SSI.  Covered every OS you could buy for a computer at the time, ran on everything from a vanilla Apple-II all the way up to and including fully tricked out Amigas, and did all the heavy lifting a DM could ask for.

Up until I went 64-bit, I could run it in any flavor of Windows I had, too, using the VDM.  Now I just use DosBox to run it.

(Speaking of which, I need to cook up some stuff for tonight's game...)

Quote from: thedungeondelver;559789Excuse me, TSR did put out a decent electronic gaming tool: the Dungeon Masters Assistant Vols. 1 & 2, done by Jim Ward and a handful of guys from SSI.  Covered every OS you could buy for a computer at the time, ran on everything from a vanilla Apple-II all the way up to and including fully tricked out Amigas, and did all the heavy lifting a DM could ask for.

Up until I went 64-bit, I could run it in any flavor of Windows I had, too, using the VDM.  Now I just use DosBox to run it.

(Speaking of which, I need to cook up some stuff for tonight's game...)

Ok, it's about a thousand computer years old and has a text interface, but I will grant it is the other electronic product they did well.  :)

But that brings us right back around to upgrades.  How difficult would it be to port that over to a GUI interface?  If you give me a comprehensive list of its menus, I would probably be able to hammer one out in a week or so, and I am not a very strong programmer yet.

Quote from: StormBringer;559777No, I get it.  Initial costs are going to be high.  But will they be that much higher than, say, fifty more years of using COBOL?

Enterprise level software costs millions of dollars.

Hiring a couple of COBOL tech guys is a couple hundred thousand a year at most (keep in mind you need non-COBOL tech guys after the switchover so you still retain 75% of the labor costs).

So, if the software costs you 5 million dollars (a pretty small amount for this kind of software) and only saves you $50,000 a year in costs, it would take 100 years just to break even (by which time the technology would have become obsolete many times over already).

No one upgrades an enterprise level software system to save money on programmer salaries.

Quote from: jgants;559793Hiring a couple of COBOL tech guys is a couple hundred thousand a year at most (keep in mind you need non-COBOL tech guys after the switchover so you still retain 75% of the labor costs).

Much less than that, because the C++ folks aren't just working on the one project, and colleges aren't burning up with COBOL courses.  The labour pool is diminishing, and the general programmers can be tasked with other projects when they aren't maintaining the financial code.  The cost is spread out over many departments, the return is much greater overall.  The entire cost isn't sunk on the one COBOL department, or section of the IT department.

QuoteSo, if the software costs you 5 million dollars (a pretty small amount for this kind of software) and only saves you $50,000 a year in costs, it would take 100 years just to break even (by which time the technology would have become obsolete many times over already).

Which is where Estar's incremental upgrades comes in handy.  They didn't do that, so I have little sympathy for their continued bad planning.

QuoteNo one upgrades an enterprise level software system to save money on programmer salaries.

No, that is only a facet of the costs.  Maintaining legacy servers, or emulation software for the legacy code, continually dealing with the problems of upgrading hardware with legacy software, plus the intangibles like decreased efficiency.

But all anyone wants to look at is the direct dollar amounts, so everything will creak along until the entire system blows up.

Quote from: StormBringer;559791Ok, it's about a thousand computer years old and has a text interface, but I will grant it is the other electronic product they did well.  :)

But that brings us right back around to upgrades.  How difficult would it be to port that over to a GUI interface?  If you give me a comprehensive list of its menus, I would probably be able to hammer one out in a week or so, and I am not a very strong programmer yet.

I've been working on one in vb.net - I appreciate what the originals do but there's so much more I want out of it, too...

Quote from: StormBringer;559802No, that is only a facet of the costs.  Maintaining legacy servers, or emulation software for the legacy code, continually dealing with the problems of upgrading hardware with legacy software, plus the intangibles like decreased efficiency.

But all anyone wants to look at is the direct dollar amounts, so everything will creak along until the entire system blows up.

I'm sorry, but as someone who has been doing this for a living for twenty years, I have to tell you: your grasp of the issues involved with these kinds of projects is extremely simplistic.  If you want to be able to speak to these issues with confidence, I strongly suggest getting yourself on the project team for a major systems upgrade of this type so you can see firsthand the devil in the details.

QuoteHow difficult would it be to port that over to a GUI interface? If you give me a comprehensive list of its menus, I would probably be able to hammer one out in a week or so, and I am not a very strong programmer yet.

As we say in software engineering, if you think it's that easy, you should be able to knock out a proof-of-concept pretty quickly.

tdd, why don't you post some screenshots?  I think this would be educational for everyone.

Quote from: StormBringer;559784Yeah, that makes sense, but you could also call that captured data, right?  Data is pretty easy to transfer around.  Building the program structure around it again, well...  That's not going to be simple.

No, estar means captured knowledge, by which he means the business logic, which is often not documented, and has been built into legacy software over years, of not decades.  Getting all of that out of legacy code, even reading it line by line, can be incredibly complex and validating that it's all been captured and implemented correctly in the new code is also incredibly complex.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;559832I've been working on one in vb.net - I appreciate what the originals do but there's so much more I want out of it, too...

Excellent.  I would like to see what you have in mind.

Quote from: StormBringer;559802Much less than that, because the C++ folks aren't just working on the one project, and colleges aren't burning up with COBOL courses.

I've done batch COBOL programming on a system dealing with large amounts of money transactions (as well as non-money data).

First, you don't really need to learn COBOL at a college.  The syntax and structure of most of what's going on in most COBOL programs is actually pretty simple.

Second, there are a lot of things that COBOL programs do and don't do that a lot of C++ programmers don't learn in college.  Examples?  Don't use floats and doubles to store currency values.  Don't try to read a million records into memory at once so you can manipulate them.  I once wrote some pseudo-code of how to do an update using two sorted data streams on a white-board and had several good software developers look at me with bewildered expressions and ask, "How do you know that works?" to which I replied, "Billions of lines of COBOL work like that."

Third, there are actually benefits to COBOL over C++ for certain things.  For example, one would have to go out of their way to store currency as a floating point number and it's a lot easier to read a COBOL core dump when a program crashes at 2AM after processing a few million records to find out why it crashed than it is to read a C++ core dump.

In fact, one of the people in my gaming group is a CTO of a division that manages retirement funds and he deliberately asks for mainframe experience on his job requisitions, not because he has a mainframe or even an AS/400 but because he gets people with mainframe experience who understand how to handle money properly and formally test their code.

Quote from: John Morrow;559843No, estar means captured knowledge, by which he means the business logic, which is often not documented, and has been built into legacy software over years, of not decades.  Getting all of that out of legacy code, even reading it line by line, can be incredibly complex and validating that it's all been captured and implemented correctly in the new code is also incredibly complex.

Come on, this isn't like decrypting RSA messages.  The business logic can be recreated, and it's probably a good time to get rid of a bunch of cruft and streamline the processes anyway.  Hell, I would wager at least 30% of the core code functions haven't been used in decades anyway.

At any rate, this little nitpicking "prove StormBringer wrong" session is fun and all, but WotC has none of these problems.  It really doesn't matter if it costs a bank $33trillion dollars to install a CD drive, or if COBOL becomes the only computer language in existence tomorrow.  But these last few posts are demonstrating that inertia appears to be a much larger problem than programming languages or legacy systems.

Quote from: daniel_ream;559837As we say in software engineering, if you think it's that easy, you should be able to knock out a proof-of-concept pretty quickly.

I worked for a semi-technical manager who was convinced that rewriting some complex stored procedures in a database to make them run faster should be easy so one weekend, he took them home and said he'd have them rewritten by Monday.  He never did manage to rewrite them, even after consulting with a database expert.

Quote from: StormBringer;559848Come on, this isn't like decrypting RSA messages.  The business logic can be recreated, and it's probably a good time to get rid of a bunch of cruft and streamline the processes anyway.  Hell, I would wager at least 30% of the core code functions haven't been used in decades anyway.

Exactly how do you know what's cruft and what some customer is actually still using unless you actually take the time to understand it all, first?

Quote from: StormBringer;559848At any rate, this little nitpicking "prove StormBringer wrong" session is fun and all, but WotC has none of these problems.  It really doesn't matter if it costs a bank $33trillion dollars to install a CD drive, or if COBOL becomes the only computer language in existence tomorrow.  But these last few posts are demonstrating that inertia appears to be a much larger problem than programming languages or legacy systems.

I would say that WotC's problem is that it's not easy to make sure that you have good programmers who actually know how to solve the problems they are being given correctly and scalably and it doesn't help that they are in the same city with a huge company that has much more to offer the best programmers in town than they could ever dream of matching.  There are a lot of people out there who call themselves programmers who should really take computer programming off of their resume.  Companies often find that out the hard way, if they ever figure it out.

Quote from: John Morrow;559851Exactly how do you know what's cruft and what some customer is actually still using unless you actually take the time to understand it all, first?

Of course!  What I was suggesting is taking completely inexperienced programmers and turning them loose after you fire all the people that had been working on the system previously and deleting everything down to bare metal!  It's best if you make sure the new programmers have absolutely no financial background whatsoever, though.

I mean, holy shit.

Quote from: daniel_ream;559837As we say in software engineering, if you think it's that easy, you should be able to knock out a proof-of-concept pretty quickly.

tdd, why don't you post some screenshots?  I think this would be educational for everyone.

Here is a proof-of-concept (http://tomeoftreasures.com/tot_first_edition_home/misc/dmassistantvol2.htm).

I mean, fuck.  Spend a little less time figuring out why things can't be done and a little more figuring out how to do them.  Programming is problem solving at its heart, right?  How is coming up with page after page of why a problem can't be solved in any way helpful?

Quote from: StormBringer;559853Of course!  What I was suggesting...

No, the problem is that you are assuming that the task is far easier than it actually is, even if you have all of the software and the legacy programmers (who are, of course, always highly motivated by the fact that when the software they maintain is replaced, they'll be out of a job).

Quote from: StormBringer;559848Come on, this isn't like decrypting RSA messages.  The business logic can be recreated, and it's probably a good time to get rid of a bunch of cruft and streamline the processes anyway.  Hell, I would wager at least 30% of the core code functions haven't been used in decades anyway.

Decrypting RSA messages is easy from a design standpoint. The math may not but in the end what you have a stream of encrypted message coming in one end along with passing the private key and a decrypted stream of message coming out the other end. The number of interactions is limited and it is straightforward to test.

The problem with type of software that John is talking about it that it is a system with many elements that combine to make up what the company uses. There are thousands of interactions that make up the system and the increase in complexity is not linear but increases geometrically.

There is always cruft but it tangled up in hard won process knowledge. The cost of recreating business logic in anything but the most trivial example is always as least two orders of magnitude more than refactoring in incremental steps with stringent testing.

Quote from: StormBringer;559848At any rate, this little nitpicking "prove StormBringer wrong" session is fun and all, but WotC has none of these problems.  It really doesn't matter if it costs a bank $33trillion dollars to install a CD drive, or if COBOL becomes the only computer language in existence tomorrow.  But these last few posts are demonstrating that inertia appears to be a much larger problem than programming languages or legacy systems.

Wizards problem is probably because Whiteboard software is one of those vertical market app that require highly specialized skills to do it right and they picked a programming team that started from scratch. Along with a moving setup of requirement starting with an overly ambitious initial set.

Quote from: jgants;559793No one upgrades an enterprise level software system to save money on programmer salaries.

Oh, I wish that were true.  I've seen enough evidence to the contrary in my line of work.

Quote from: StormBringer;559845Excellent.  I would like to see what you have in mind.

There's more I want out of it than just to duplicate the functions of the original DOS programs (but with mouse clicks).  Like, for example, I want the different methods of character generation (man sorting out roll 4d6 drop lowest die keep highest was a huge pain - Robert S. Conely wrote a code sample and let me use it).

I want the "Generating a party on the spur of the moment" system for creating a character at a given level - the DMA2 almost does it but it doesn't account for magic items.

Trying to think what else...I'll dig up my design document; it's been a few months since I looked at the project truth be told.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;560015There's more I want out of it than just to duplicate the functions of the original DOS programs (but with mouse clicks).  Like, for example, I want the different methods of character generation (man sorting out roll 4d6 drop lowest die keep highest was a huge pain - Robert S. Conely wrote a code sample and let me use it).

I've got that last one solved in a program I have been fiddling with.  Store each result as an array element, sum the whole thing, then subtract element

• .

QuoteI want the "Generating a party on the spur of the moment" system for creating a character at a given level - the DMA2 almost does it but it doesn't account for magic items.

Adding appropriate magic items for a party sounds like a very interesting problem.

QuoteTrying to think what else...I'll dig up my design document; it's been a few months since I looked at the project truth be told.

Excellent.  Are you viscerally averse to C#?  Prototyping is easy, and throwing it on the web for stress testing is a breeze.  Java has waaay too much baggage for my liking, and the Mono framework does C# pretty well.  I haven't tried VB.net in Mono yet, but I can see how it goes if you are determined to use it.

Drop me a PM.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;560015I want the "Generating a party on the spur of the moment" system for creating a character at a given level - the DMA2 almost does it but it doesn't account for magic items.

True so how do you propose generate magic items for a party? There were several methods in the DMG that one could choose from.

Quote from: estar;560197True so how do you propose generate magic items for a party? There were several methods in the DMG that one could choose from.

There were two for characters: one for when you encounter an NPC party and one for the spur-of-the-moment character creation (e.g., at a convention).

I use the latter's system to allow for whether or not PCs have any "relics" from home that they've inherited (it usually creates a set of +1 armor of a given type, a +1 ring of protection, a low-level scroll or potion).  Adds to starting character resiliency without introducing game-breaking levels of Christmas-tree syndrome.

Quote from: Opaopajr;558295I hope they weren't stupid enough to dream they could start it as a for-profit service...

They didn't need it to succeed as a solo for-profit service, but it was supposed to be a major tentpole in justifying and selling the D&D Insider service. The failure to deliver it in 2008 was crippling; the decision to shut it down now probably has as much to do with the eminent shutdown of 4E as anything else. (But also ranks as yet another horrid failure in WotC's inexplicable inability to deliver even the simplest of digital products without completely bungling it.)

I see that some people are arguing that VTT's are really, really difficult. But there are teams of two people who are turning out highly effective and fully-functional VTTs at this point. There's really no excuse for WotC's inability to execute this project. (Not to mention all of the other projects they've failed to deliver or delivered in a piss-poor fashion.)

Quote from: bryce0lynch;559565I also believe there's a quote somewhere from Ryan (or someone else at WOTC) that they never anticipated/intended the release of rule sets ...

Probably somebody else. On Usenet back in '99, Dancey was talking about having other companies release D20 games as a feature. (And it was a feature. It would have been an even bigger feature if WotC had followed through on the original business plan of re-leveraging the best OGC back into their products.)

I wrote a basic dice-rolling DSL/parser library in Scala.  It lets you say things like:

"4d6 drop lowest"
or
"5d12 keep highest 2"
or
"2d6+2"
or
"2d6 + 1d3"
Et cetera

and have the library return the result.  Since it's Scala it requires a JVM, but is usable from pretty much any JVM language (e.g. Java, etc).  I guess it could be used with .NET if you use IKVM.
EDIT:  Actually, I forgot that you can compile Scala source code to target the CLR (http://www.scala-lang.org/node/168), so the code below could be compiled directly for .NET.

Posting the code, since it's short:

Die.scala
package com.philotomy.dice
import scala.util.Random

object Die {
  val Generator = new Random
}

case class Die(sides: Int = 6, modifier: Int = 0) {

  def roll: Int = {
    generator.nextInt(sides) + 1 + modifier
  }

  private def generator = {
    Die.Generator
  }

  override def toString = {
    if (modifier == 0)
      "d" + sides
    else
      "d%d%+d".format(sides, modifier)
  }
}

Dice.scala
package com.philotomy.dice
import scala.collection.mutable.ListBuffer
import scala.util.parsing.combinator.JavaTokenParsers

object Dice {
  // for testing/example of usage
  def main(args: Array[String]) {
    val dice = new Dice("4d6 drop lowest")
    println(dice roll)
  }
}

class Dice(val expression: String = "1d6") extends JavaTokenParsers {

  def roll(): Int = {
    parseAll(expr, expression).get
  }
 
  private def expr: Parser[Int] = (
    term ~ opt("""[\+-x\*]""".r ~ term) ^^ { case x ~ o => parseExpr(x, o) }
    | term)

  private def term: Parser[Int] = (
    wholeNumber ~ "d" ~ wholeNumber ~ opt("""(drop|keep)""".r ~ """(lowest|highest)""".r ~ opt(wholeNumber)) ^^
    { case qty ~ "d" ~ sides ~ mods => parseTerm(qty.toInt, sides.toInt, mods) }
    | wholeNumber ^^ (_.toInt)
    | "(" ~> expr <~ ")")

  private def parseExpr(x: Int, opt: Option[~[String, Int]]): Int = {
    if (opt.isEmpty) x else {
      val opr = opt.get._1
      val y = opt.get._2
      opr match {
        case "+" => x + y
        case "-" => x - y
        case _ => x * y
      }
    }
  }

  private def parseTerm(qty: Int, sides: Int, mods: Option[~[~[String, String], Option[String]]]): Int = {
    var rolls = new ListBuffer[Int]
    val die = new Die(sides = sides)
    for (i <- 1 to qty) {
      rolls += die.roll
    }
    rolls = rolls.sortWith(_ < _)
    //print("Rolls: " + rolls)
    if (mods.isDefined) {
      val o = mods.get
      val dropKeep: String = o._1._1
      val lowHigh: String = o._1._2
      val num = o._2.getOrElse("1").toInt

      dropKeep match {
        case "drop" => if (lowHigh == "lowest") rolls.trimStart(num) else rolls.trimEnd(num)
        case "keep" => if (lowHigh == "lowest") rolls.trimEnd(qty - num) else rolls.trimStart(qty - num)
      }
    }
    //println(" Kept: " + rolls)
    rolls.sum
  }
}


Quote from: estar;559558It took both, the OGL and the incompatible design. If 4.0 was similar in design like Pathfinder (i.e. a 3.5e variant) then it would be a vastly different situation. You would still have the retro-clones (including 3.5e) but it would have been far less impact.

Yes. The OGL created a vast pyramid of support material with WotC's books at the top of it. That entire pyramid funneled sales straight into WotC's pockets.

Other people had attempted to create products that directly competed with the core rulebooks of D&D. None of them succeeded...

... until WotC vacated the top of that pyramid. Once they did that, there was a vacuum. Paizo stepped in and filled that vacuum. And now all of that support material funnels up to them.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;560203There were two for characters: one for when you encounter an NPC party and one for the spur-of-the-moment character creation (e.g., at a convention).

I use the latter's system to allow for whether or not PCs have any "relics" from home that they've inherited (it usually creates a set of +1 armor of a given type, a +1 ring of protection, a low-level scroll or potion).  Adds to starting character resiliency without introducing game-breaking levels of Christmas-tree syndrome.

Download and Install Inspiration Pad Pro 2.0 from Nbos
http://www.nbos.com/products/ipad/ipad.htm

In the folder where you installed it there is a generator folder. Download the following and unzip it into there.

http://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/AD&D.zip

Run Inspiration Pad Pro, select AD&D and pick Character Magic Item.

In the lower left corner select what level to generate.

Enjoy

P.S. I also coded up the Personae table from the DMG and then made another one that merged some Paizo Gamemastery NPC tables.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;560213Yes. The OGL created a vast pyramid of support material with WotC's books at the top of it. That entire pyramid funneled sales straight into WotC's pockets.

Other people had attempted to create products that directly competed with the core rulebooks of D&D. None of them succeeded...

... until WotC vacated the top of that pyramid. Once they did that, there was a vacuum. Paizo stepped in and filled that vacuum. And now all of that support material funnels up to them.

Honest question, is there still a lot of 3.x/d20 stuff/support material being made by third party publishers or whatever?

Quote from: Gib;560336Honest question, is there still a lot of 3.x/d20 stuff/support material being made by third party publishers or whatever?

There is a significant amount. Not as much as during the d20 glut, but enough to define a cottage industry.

Quote from: estar;560219Download and Install Inspiration Pad Pro 2.0 from Nbos
http://www.nbos.com/products/ipad/ipad.htm

In the folder where you installed it there is a generator folder. Download the following and unzip it into there.

http://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/AD&D.zip

Run Inspiration Pad Pro, select AD&D and pick Character Magic Item.

In the lower left corner select what level to generate.

Enjoy

P.S. I also coded up the Personae table from the DMG and then made another one that merged some Paizo Gamemastery NPC tables.

holy sheepdip this could be everything I'm looking for.

Where do you learn how to write the scripts?  I opened one up in notepad; it didn't look terribly difficult...

Quote from: thedungeondelver;560377holy sheepdip this could be everything I'm looking for.

Where do you learn how to write the scripts?  I opened one up in notepad; it didn't look terribly difficult...

There is a reference section in the help file. I can help with any difficult setup.

Quote from: estar;560527There is a reference section in the help file. I can help with any difficult setup.

Thank you.  I'm going to get hackin' on this.  I think the first thing is to do a treasure by letter type generator.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;560546Thank you.  I'm going to get hackin' on this.  I think the first thing is to do a treasure by letter type generator.

Before I found out about Inspiration Pro I coded up a program to roll treasure types for OD&D. It is written in VB.NET

http://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/RuinGenerate.zip

In the bin directory you can find the executables if you don't have Visual Studio 2008 setup.

It is a bit of a mess mainly used as a dumping ground for anything I needed.

Quote from: estar;560527There is a reference section in the help file. I can help with any difficult setup.

I'll tell you this much - I must be missing something in a big way, I can't get it to display the output for rolling 1d6 gold :(

The virtual tabletop could have been a game-changer for sure, but it seemed doomed from the start by a series of bad decisions and bad "luck" that stemmed from the same.

As it is, at least on a personal level I feel happy that the plan isn't to go in that direction.

RPGPundit

Pathfinder VT is alive (or soon to be alive).

I was at PaizoCon 2012, and during the banquet they showed off their forthcoming VT software. It was still a bit rough but it was quite functional. I believe that it is both for Windows and Mac OS X.

Quote from: estar;560556Before I found out about Inspiration Pro I coded up a program to roll treasure types for OD&D. It is written in VB.NET

http://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/RuinGenerate.zip

In the bin directory you can find the executables if you don't have Visual Studio 2008 setup.

It is a bit of a mess mainly used as a dumping ground for anything I needed.

I'll definitely have to check that out.  IPP is a bit of a headscratcher...While the basic scripts seem pretty simple, I have yet to make one that will actually output anything. :O

Quote from: thedungeondelver;560752I'll definitely have to check that out.  IPP is a bit of a headscratcher...While the basic scripts seem pretty simple, I have yet to make one that will actually output anything. :O

Post what you got and I will check it out.

Quote from: estar;560763Post what you got and I will check it out.

I'll get a sample posted up here shortly; thanks.