DDI Monster Builder preview hidden in this month's Confessions of a Full-Time Wizard

[fissionessence]

As always, I enjoyed this month's Confessions of a Full-Time Wizard article. However, I expect this is a column many people might skip. I also expect many of those same people are interested in the DDI Monster Builder.

If that's you, give this month's column a shot; Shelly gets Peter Schaefer to let her use the Monster Builder, and she recreates a childhood imaginary friend/monster. It has several tidbits about the program that I won't spoil here, since that would kind of ruin the point of me encouraging you to read it

EDIT: Changed the title so that 'monster builder' is at the front instead of 'Confessions'.

~ fissionessence

[Rechan]

Oh, Shelly. You're so silly.

I wonder if Shelly's columns have had a positive impact on bringing in girls and the hip types.

But that's another topic.

[CharlesRyan]

I'm not a girl and I don't think you'd mistake me for hip, but I get a big kick out of her columns.

It's refreshing to see a different view of things!

[vagabundo]

Hmmm monster creation goodness.

I fear this will be the death of the DM elite; if everyone can make custom monsters some of our mysticism will be taken by the secular masses - those damn players...

EDIT: Count me as a Shelly fan too, I always chuckle.

[White Tornado]

Originally Posted by Rechan

I wonder if Shelly's columns have had a positive impact on bringing in girls and the hip types.

I have tried to get my girlfriend to read Shelly's columns, but she is "too busy" . It's a shame, I love them big-time!

[avin]

"fter the program loaded, I scanned the list of monsters from the D&D Compendium, noting several monsters were left out. "

A beta thing or something on purpose?

[vagabundo]

Originally Posted by avin

A beta thing or something on purpose?

Possibly they do something that is not compatible with the alpha program.

Or it could be a snap shot for testing and is missing a copule of months of updates. Like the MM2?

[Scott_Rouse]

Originally Posted by avin

A beta thing or something on purpose?

She may be referring to Monster with Glasses, Bee Monster, and Red Monster

[Henrix]

Originally Posted by Scott_Rouse

She may be referring to Monster with Glasses, Bee Monster, and Red Monster

Are you implying they won't be in the beta version? I hope they are in the final version, at least.

[Ktulu]

Originally Posted by Scott_Rouse

She may be referring to Monster with Glasses, Bee Monster, and Red Monster

No, no; this is too obvious and doesn't cast WotC in a bad light.

They obviously left out every monster I wanted in there. This product is no longer worth my time and I'm going to cancel my DDi subscription that I've paid for a year in advance on, thus making my knee-jerk moot.




It was a very cool article. Shelly reminds me of a friend who used to game with me (also a girl, and also with the funny). It's too bad she moved out of the group.

--Side note: I wonder how far out the builder really is. At least once a week we have been given some sort of information on it, plus images and such that make you believe most of the back-end must be finished (I work in software development; you don't usually show the enhancment to your clients until you're close to production). I'm banking on a 30-60 day window.

[mudbunny]

Originally Posted by Ktulu

--Side note: I wonder how far out the builder really is. At least once a week we have been given some sort of information on it, plus images and such that make you believe most of the back-end must be finished (I work in software development; you don't usually show the enhancment to your clients until you're close to production). I'm banking on a 30-60 day window.

Well, given that WotC has been bitten before by showing screenshots, videos, etc from software that was not in a state where it was nearly ready for release, it is probably safe to assume that if they are showing off screenshots, and talking about it in articles, that the release date is sooner rather than later.

In other words, if I were a betting man, I wouldn't bet against you.

[catsclaw227]

Originally Posted by Dr. Shelly's Monster

He went on to explain this new tool was still in development, but it promised to do for DMs what the D&D Character Builder did for PCs.

"Make it so much fun to use you kind of hope your character bites it so you can build another one?"

This made me laugh. It also makes me wonder how true this is! How many people have ditched their current PC so that they can try out a new PC they built on CB the night before.

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Originally Posted by mudbunny

Well, given that WotC has been bitten before by showing screenshots, videos, etc from software that was not in a state where it was nearly ready for release, it is probably safe to assume that if they are showing off screenshots, and talking about it in articles, that the release date is sooner rather than later.

In other words, if I were a betting man, I wouldn't bet against you.

Wait, aren't you one of this WotC forum "slaves" (I don't remember the real name of the job)?

If I were a betting man... I have no clue what I'd do. I am not a betting man.

[mudbunny]

Originally Posted by Mustrum_Ridcully

Wait, aren't you one of this WotC forum "slaves" (I don't remember the real name of the job)?

Yup. The term you are looking for is Volunteer Community Lead.[1] And I happen to occupy the position for the DDI forums.


[1]VCLs have a whole bunch of stuff that we are responsible for, but, at its most basic, we are sorta the link/connection between the community and Community Management.

Like I said above, WotC has been burned before by putting out info on something and then having to change plans. (See game table and character visualizer) They are now following the "it will be ready when it is ready" philosophy. Thus, if they are starting to release info about it (screenshots earlier on, description of it in Confessions this week) chances are good that it is close to a release-ready state.

[Moonsword]

Some developers show customers a mockup of the interface early on so they don't wind up committing to a design the customer hates and having to jerk their GUI code around at the last minute. (This is also why some developers use a separate interface layer from the actual underlying code - if the interface is just a series of hooks, you can redesign the hooks to link to different things without having to mess with the code that's actually doing things.)

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Originally Posted by Moonsword

Some developers show customers a mockup of the interface early on so they don't wind up committing to a design the customer hates and having to jerk their GUI code around at the last minute. (This is also why some developers use a separate interface layer from the actual underlying code - if the interface is just a series of hooks, you can redesign the hooks to link to different things without having to mess with the code that's actually doing things.)

And WPF is made for exactly this kind of approach.

[catsclaw227]

Originally Posted by Mustrum_Ridcully

And WPF is made for exactly this kind of approach.

That's exactly what I was going to say.

And there are some companies that have designed whole UI frameworks to use ASP.NET or Silverlight interchangeably.

I like that WOTC is using WPF, even if there's issues with requiring .NET 3.5. It provides them with some interesting flexibility and expandability.

[LightPhoenix]

I'm not a huge fan of Shelley's blog, however the abilities that Monster In Glasses has were hilarious. I laughed pretty good at Poetry Slam.

[MrMyth]

Originally Posted by catsclaw227

This made me laugh. It also makes me wonder how true this is! How many people have ditched their current PC so that they can try out a new PC they built on CB the night before.

Oh, I'd never kill a character to try out a new one. But retraining, on the other hand.

Let's just say that my group has seem some very liberal retraining amongst our members. In that our party that started out as two Eladrin, a Human, a Genasi, a Doppelganger, and a Warforged but now has a Deva, a Half-Orc, a Half-elf, a Shifter, and a Tiefling - with only the Warforged remaining the same. (All the rest are the same characters, just retconned or plot-transformed into different races...)

[avin]

Originally Posted by Scott_Rouse

She may be referring to Monster with Glasses, Bee Monster, and Red Monster

Killjoy