Looking for a simpler PC Gen...

[mattcolville]

You do realize that's actually what he was saying.

"Knowing how to create a product for the intended users, not you."

Means that it would have been good if the intended users could use it easily, and not just the designers.

Correct. PCGen is very impressive for what it is; a complex piece of software designed by many, many people not working in the same place at the same times or under any kind of production-oriented model.

However, I find it highly suboptimal for its intended use. It is exactly what I would expect from an open-source endeavor.

Honestly, the only 3E/d20 character generator program I've seen that was simple and intuitive was the original software with the PHB. I'm not quite sure why Fluid moved away from the basic design concepts there to the hodgepodge that is ETools (even if it's my generator of choice).

From what they've said on various forums; they listened to people who hated the interface. It seemed to them that a lot of people hated the GUI and wanted something more like the Windows Interface. They listened to those people, and we got an Access database as a result.

 

[Glyfair]

From what they've said on various forums; they listened to people who hated the interface. It seemed to them that a lot of people hated the GUI and wanted something more like the Windows Interface. They listened to those people, and we got an Access database as a result.

Bah! The interface could have used some tweaking and optimizing, but the basic concept was exactly what a program that's going to be accessible to a casual computer user should use.

I would say; if the acronym "JRE" is meaningful to you, you are a highly-educated power-user.

And a casual user isn't necessarily going to understand the "sub-tree" that kingpaul throws around earlier in this thread.

 

[daan]

From what they've said on various forums; they listened to people who hated the interface. It seemed to them that a lot of people hated the GUI and wanted something more like the Windows Interface. They listened to those people, and we got an Access database as a result.

You make it sound like you can only have a good UI with a bad backend

 

[kingpaul]

Tconsider targeting them a little more in the interface design: hide the levers and gears and deliver more streamlined interface panels with cognizant explanation for simple users while allowing users to switch to a grognard mode once they get the feel of the interface.

Believe it or not, we've tried to get coding sub-teams together to overhaul the interface. GUI and speed are consistent issues raised. I know the current code team has been streamlining the code to improve speed over the past several months.

However, there have been 2, that I know of, attempts in the past several years to get the GUI overhauled. Each time, the sub-team has just disappeared.

 

[kingpaul]

It's not a matter of being unable to read documentation, or even to find it. It's a matter of being inundated with tech-speak from the get go, so users who are not tech-saavy feel overwhelmed, and move on.

Where do the docs fail then? Outside perspectives are great, but we need to be told where, specifically, the weak points are.

PCGen is a very powerful chargen, but from the get-go it's surrounded by parlance that intimidates the average role-player.

Specifically where?

 

[kingpaul]

However, I find it highly suboptimal for its intended use.

Where does it fail as a character generator?

 

[kingpaul]

And a casual user isn't necessarily going to understand the "sub-tree" that kingpaul throws around earlier in this thread.

Really? Windows Explorer is set up in a treeing schematic for folder hierarchies. I would have assumed, apparently wrongly, that users familiar with Windows (which is still the predmominant OS) would be familiar with that set-up.

 

[Deadshot]

Really? Windows Explorer is set up in a treeing schematic for folder hierarchies. I would have assumed, apparently wrongly, that users familiar with Windows (which is still the predmominant OS) would be familiar with that set-up.

I think its the lingo that you are using. I am familiar with how Windows works but I don't say things like 'sub-tree'. Think of it this way, write the instructions to use the program like you are explaining it to a Mom or someone else who doesn't multi-task on their computer each day. RPG's have enough lingo of their own without throwing in the computer lingo also.


As a possible solution to the generator issue, has anyone taken a look at DM/Player Genie for usability?

 

[LrdApoc]

Believe it or not, we've tried to get coding sub-teams together to overhaul the interface. GUI and speed are consistent issues raised. I know the current code team has been streamlining the code to improve speed over the past several months.

However, there have been 2, that I know of, attempts in the past several years to get the GUI overhauled. Each time, the sub-team has just disappeared.

No I believe it. I was a member of the documentation team at one point in PCGen's long life (and boy that was early on) - but the problem is one that you have to find a way to address. Unfortunately I'm not an interface programmer myself so I can't be of much use but the concept of usability studies, a cobbled together idea and a base to work from might be the most logical first step - everyone has an opinion, the task might be to determine what skills you need, what resources the underlying architecture allows you to use and who can create the interfaces.. I see multiple interfaces unfortunately to serve the varied user bases and not alienate.

Let me step aside form the critical perspective and do some back patting here a second, King Paul you are gracious for speaking up in answer to these many comments, I hope you understand that I at the least appreciate someone taking the time to discuss this here. I realize of course you could easily send us all over to the PCGen forums looking for answers and you always step forth when PCGen makes its appearance in a thread.

As to the earlier question of the RPGExplorer plug - honestly I want to support the open sourced initiative, though I was impressed with RPGE.

 

[karianna]

We're listening

Hi all,

This thread has kicked up a massive new discussion on our developers list. All of our developers agree that the UI is too complicated . What we're looking to do now is to complete several of the UI feature requests we've had out there for years (recommendations from UI experts in the past) which will at least make the UI consistent.

In the mean time we'll continue working on separating the core rules engine from the UI so that we can replace the Java/Swing UI with something new and flashy.

Oh, and just so people know, we've run coder profilers all over PCGen and it's not the UI layer that actually has the performance bottlenecks, so we can and will start to tackle these performance issues for our next production release.

I'm not sure if people are going to the 'correct' sourceforge web page that we'd like users to go to. If you visit http://pcgen.sourceforge.net/ then you'll end up on the home page that's designed for the end users, which is different from the home page that the development team use.

Thanks for all of the feedback!