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D&D 5E Screenshot Hero Lab 5e (Non-Official, Homebrew)

schekker

Explorer
Not to be too negative, but I don't see this home-brew 5e characterbuilder becoming available.

Firstly, while you might be very proud of your achievement (and I agree, it is an achievement to be proud of), having one person writing something for the current available material is not the same as writing well scripts which can easily be maintained by a group of less talented (and far cheaper) people and which can easily be expanded to new material. If I were herolabs, I would be writing my own data-files, not using those of someone else, even if they were free. I might borrow a few bits if that was an option, but I doubt they will need that. Giving it for free would certainly not be enough for me. I would want at least a license to use the code any way I see fit, or even your copyright on it.

Secondly, I don't see WotC using herolabs. It's U.I. is too technical. Don't get me wrong. I think herolabs is a great program, but it is not as intuitive to use as WotC's 4e characterbuilder. I haven't played with dungeonscape, but from what I saw it looked less threatening than herolabs.

Thirdly, using herolabs would put Pathfinder on par with 5th edition, and I don't think Hasbro would like that. It would not be good for their branding.

The only reason I can see WotC chosing for herolabs is if they are in full panic mode, like 5th edition is faltering because of lack of online support and they need to fix that hole now, so take whatever option is available. But I don't see them being in that position yet.

Just my thoughts, and no, I'm not happy about them.
 

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MagicSN

First Post
Btw over at lone wolf forums i posted my current todo list to show how far i am with finishing. It is down to 11 items, most of it minor stuff like code changes to specific magic items.
 

MagicSN

First Post
[MENTION=99368]schekker[/MENTION]: expendability has been a big design
Criteria for my datafiles. I just would hope people would stop believing
Stuff done by companies has advantages over big private projects. There
Is NO advantage in starting over from scratch again.
To my credits i have a backgrounds i have 15+ years in commercial software dev, 5 of them games-related. Code-commenting so the code could be used by other devs was another thing.
 

schekker

Explorer
Herolabs wouldn't have to start from scratch. They can start from their Pathfinder (or other) modules.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems herolabs hasn't shown interest in taking over your work so far. That tells me they simply aren't interested. Perhaps because they already have something in-house available, perhaps because they know from their contacts with WotC that no license will be forthcoming, perhaps they simply don't want to support third-party supplied code, perhaps legal told them not to. I can think of a many reasons why they would not be interested, and of very few why they would and not have contacted you yet. And that does not mean there is something wrong with your implementation, just that they are not interested.

To my credit I have 20+ years in commercial software development, and considerable experience with taking over software developed by others, although all of the above is still pure speculation by me and nothing more :)

And I surely hope I will be wrong as I'm really looking forward to a good characterbuilder.
 

MagicSN

First Post
Herolabs wouldn't have to start from scratch. They can start from their Pathfinder (or other) modules.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems herolabs hasn't shown interest in taking over your work so far. That tells me they simply aren't interested. Perhaps because they already have something in-house available, perhaps because they know from their contacts with WotC that no license will be forthcoming, perhaps they simply don't want to support third-party supplied code, perhaps legal told them not to. I can think of a many reasons why they would not be interested, and of very few why they would and not have contacted you yet. And that does not mean there is something wrong with your implementation, just that they are not interested.

Or it might just still be "too early to think about even" as without an official licence all regarding 5e will be uninteresting to them.
 

SkidAce

Legend
Supporter
I suspect they have it already coded and waiting for some sign or hint from WotC as to what the future will hold.

"I" would have coded it ahead of time...just in case.
 

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