Announcement from Anthony Valterra

[Ranger REG]

Well, the same message was posted over at the Wizards board on the eTools section.....

So I hope this means they are turning to the guys that did PC Gen to fix eTools.

If they do nothing with eTools and PC Gen becomes the app, then I am going to be mad, since I have bought their product.

Unless the newly-formed software company is given the chance to fix e-Tools and integrate with their PCGen features, it would definitely pissed every e-Tools owners who have given the software product a chance still. Although I don't know what is going to happen to Davin and his ETHelper program (he is responsible for raising e-Tool from a mediocre to a decent program despite some absent features).

While a lot of people are demanding Wizards to upchuck e-Tools, there are other who still want e-Tools to continue and improve.

 

[Chaz]

OMG I hate PCG. I sure hope they are going to still fix ET. While I do want more functionality from ET, I dont want to see it made into some crappy java program. I sure hope more in depth info will come out soon. This doesnt seem like good news to me at all so far. But in all fairness, anthony has again given us some info while at the same time telling us little. I hope for more soon.

 

[karianna]

Hi all,

Karianna here (I'm the admin monkey for pcgen).

OK, firstly I'm only the evil assistant for teh head guys, so please don't take what I say too literally, I'm in NZ (not in the states) and have not personally dealt with Mr Valtera (although at this stage I'd like to thank him for taking the step to help _all_ gamers in the community, yay him!!)

To be perfectly honest I don't think WoTC and CMP have a final option nailed down yet, there are a couple of good options on the table, and I think next year will be about narrowing those options down to one. I'm not sure at all about the future of E-Tools, but I've personally always maintained that the 2 can co-exist.

Feel free to mail me off boards with any specific q's that you have about PCGEN etc (that you can't be bothered saturating the boards with)

happy gaming all!!

 

[Mynex]

Hi all,

Karianna here (I'm the admin monkey for pcgen).

OK, firstly I'm only the evil assistant for teh head guys, so please don't take what I say too literally, I'm in NZ (not in the states) and have not personally dealt with Mr Valtera (although at this stage I'd like to thank him for taking the step to help _all_ gamers in the community, yay him!!)

To be perfectly honest I don't think WoTC and CMP have a final option nailed down yet, there are a couple of good options on the table, and I think next year will be about narrowing those options down to one. I'm not sure at all about the future of E-Tools, but I've personally always maintained that the 2 can co-exist.

Feel free to mail me off boards with any specific q's that you have about PCGEN etc (that you can't be bothered saturating the boards with)

happy gaming all!!

okay, firstly, there is only _ONE_ Evil Assistant, that's me. BAD MONKEY, BAD!!! Into the cages with the paramecium!!! (good news for BD/Leopold, not so good for Karianna *evil grin*)...

To address the other points... CMP and WotC are talking, that's known, this is nothing but an official acknowledgment of that conversation. Or is it? *evil maniacal laughter*

*cough* sorry about that, slipped into 'Brain' mode there.

Seriously though, there's nothing to tell at this time, when we have something definate to tell, we will.

 

[cgplaer2000]

OMG I hate PCG. I sure hope they are going to still fix ET. While I do want more functionality from ET, I dont want to see it made into some crappy java program. I sure hope more in depth info will come out soon. This doesnt seem like good news to me at all so far. But in all fairness, anthony has again given us some info while at the same time telling us little. I hope for more soon.

Same here Chaz. PCG is glacially slow, has an inconsistent and poorly designed user interface, no clear design philosophy, and poorly implemented data management. It has many other faults, but I'm not saying anything that hasn't already been said many other times elsewhere, so I'll stop.

The announcement was annoying, not helpful. If WOTC is not prepared to say anything, pls wait until ready. Then all of us to digest the news, and respond usefully.

 

[merton_monk]

PCGen is no longer slow. Anyone who says java is slow because it's java, hasn't dealt with it much lately. Java 1.3 and especially 1.4 is really quite fast and has come a long way since it's birth. Java will never equal or surpass C++ or similar compiled-to-machine-code languages for sheer speed, but for generating a character the difference between the two is negligible. The mantra "java is slow" might have been on target 4-5 years ago, but now it's simply not true.

Any version of PCGen beyond 4.1.2 is about 100 times faster than it was before (the technical term for that is 'zillions') - if you gave up on PCGen because it was slow, give it another look. http://pcgen.sourceforge.net is where to get it. The problem with the speed wasn't java, it was because of some non-optimized code trying to recalculate bonuses way too many times. Once that bottleneck was removed, it was full speed ahead.

The GUI has pretty much settled down now, so it's fairly coherent and the documentation is being actively kept up to date. We have Documentation Monkeys (Doc Monkeys for short) who take it as a matter of pride to make sure it stays that way, and they get to take the bananas away from the Code Monkeys who 'forget' to tell them about some new feature that needed adding to the documentation.



Bryan McRoberts
Code Monkey Publishing, Co-Founder
Benevolent Dictator of PCGen

 

[cgplaer2000]

PCGen is no longer slow. Anyone who says java is slow because it's java, hasn't dealt with it much lately. Java 1.3 and especially 1.4 is really quite fast and has come a long way since it's birth...snip...The mantra "java is slow" might have been on target 4-5 years ago, but now it's simply not true.

Any version of PCGen beyond 4.1.2 is about 100 times faster than it was before (the technical term for that is 'zillions')...snip...
The GUI has pretty much settled down now, so it's fairly coherent and the documentation is being actively kept up to date....snip

I have Java 1.4, and am currently "using" PCG 4.2, so my observations about PCG's (lack of) speed remain accurate, at least as far as my experience with the program is concerned. Admittedly it is a subjective impression, but it is still true. I've had to redo every character/NPC I've created in PCG, probably due to inconsistencies between versions. The changes in the program (much less the data) required to accomodate OGC/OGL also have limited its utility to me.

If e-Tools didn't exist, I'd probably (reluctantly) go back to using PCG, as the other chargens out there are even more obscure (at least for me who has been using PCG since version 2.7.1)

Just one person's opinion...

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Glad to hear that dicussions are taking place. I don't think that allowing PCGen to use the material is going to kill off E-Tools, just make it easier to do char gen on non-PC machines.

I have been using PCGen since before 2.0, while it used to be slow it is now fast enough for me, even on my older 450 Mhz machine, on my new computer I have no problem at all, at all.

My only complaints about PCGen is the lack of automatic dice rolling, now THERE is something that I'd love to hear WOTC allowing. Heck, an easier to use point buy method would handle that. (I seem to recall point buy being easier in 2.7x, but that could just be the rosy glow of nostalgia.)

My reaction to WOTC asking for removal of the splatbooks was to drop the splatbooks from my game. Not for any vindictive motive (after all I bought them) but because PCGen makes creating NPCs so much easier, and if my NPCs can't use the material neither can my players... If the Code Monkeys can get permission my players will be happier.

The Auld Grump

 

[Twin Rose]

Could it be that they just realized thet PCGen is a better program and want to sink money into something that works instead of something that doesn't?

I'm not a economics major or anything, but that makes sense to me.

I don't believe there was ANY mention of Wizard's of the Coast investment money being placed in the hands of CM. Best to steer clear of even the rumor of something like that, or WOTC would likely pull away faster than you can blink.

 

[Hollywood]

The problem with the speed wasn't java, it was because of some non-optimized code trying to recalculate bonuses way too many times. Once that bottleneck was removed, it was full speed ahead.

Thats not the only bottle neck Merton. There is quite a bit of spaghetti code in the software too that doesn't help. The Swing GUI toolkit that Sun's Java uses doesn't help matters tremendously either.

Otherwise, Java is surprisingly fast especially when doing nothing with GUIs. Speed difference between it and the .NET framework is very small if any at all. The difference really comes out when dealing with the GUI which MS has integrated better at a low-level since they only have one target platform. And yes, code thats compiled directly into machine language will be faster that those that are compiled for use in a virtual machine.

Personally I haven't found PCGen to be that slow, but then again I have fast PCs and laptops and use enough Java GUI software [Netbeans comes to mind] that I'm *used* to the difference in speed. However, I myself stopped using PCGen because I got tired of characters not working in new versions, the proprietary and totally goofy LST files [whatever happened to the push to covert it to XML... a NON-proprietary and reasonably thought out data representation format], and lastly the poor GUI design which still exists to present day.

Not to mention, since I mostly run Windows 2000/XP OS's, I tend to prefer Windows programs as opposed to cross-platform programs [not that I'm against the later]; yet there are no up-to-date Windows character generators either.

I don't believe there was ANY mention of Wizard's of the Coast investment money being placed in the hands of CM.

Hope not. If WotC is going to give any investment money to 3rd party developers, then all the major 3rd party RPG tools out there [PCGen, RPM, CS, etc.] need to be evaluated and the best one, maybe two, selected. Or provide just a flat investment to all or absolutely none to any [the prefered solution].