CMP: On its way out?

[BarakO]

Not my place.

As I said, I'm a contractor.

 

[Glyfair]

Yea, CMP has been known for their "We never really promised you anything." stance---and then using levity to lighten any potential response.

Well, I know the Eberron Interactive Atlas was due out at GenCon and then was announced as not being ready until probably September. ProFantasy said back in June or July that the maps were done at that time.

 

[karianna]

This (oddly enough) plays squarely into PCGen's hands. Since they are free they will certainly stay around----now if they would only create a gui based tool that would allow for creation of Prestige Classes and Feats...And not run sooooo sloooowwwllyyy
but I have already addressed that elsewhere...
(edited to address Barak's post)

You'll be pleased to know that one of our senior code monkeys has been tackling the speed issues with a nice wee code profiler. Start up and source loading times have decreased dramatically in the latest alpha builds (this is for the 5.12 release coming up). We'll keep improving the general performance, we know it's the 2nd major bugbear of the app

 

[2WS-Steve]

You'll be pleased to know that one of our senior code monkeys has been tackling the speed issues with a nice wee code profiler. Start up and source loading times have decreased dramatically in the latest alpha builds (this is for the 5.12 release coming up). We'll keep improving the general performance, we know it's the 2nd major bugbear of the app

For me speed is actually the main bugbear of the app -- though I keep hoping that one of these computer upgrade cycles (go core2duo!) will eventually render that moot.

since you're here I'd like to mention two things:

1) For some reason it really bogs down with high level characters for me. I make a wraith + Wiz3/Clr3/Mystic Theurge 5 and just selecting the classes to add caster levels to really bogs down. This is surprising because loading scads of data sources doesn't slow it down as much and I'd think that would require a lot more data mangling.

2) It'd be nice is PCGEN had some plain message boards of their own in addition to the mailing lists. For part-timers like me, message boards seem to work better. The yahoo archives are pretty hard to scan through and I'm already subscribed to too many mailing lists for sundry other purposes.

 

[Mercule]

I've been waiting for RPGF for some time. I really haven't had any faith in its release for quite a while, though. Currently, I'm just hoping CMP sticks around long enough for at least one more update of PCGen.

On the other hand, PCGen is looking stronger all the time. If it speeds up quite a bit and some of the apparent memory leak/rendering issues disappear, I'll be happy. I'm pretty comfortable editing LST files by hand, but I sure wouldn't sneeze at a slick editor, either. My players will be happy if the GUI gets a bit of polish and there was a character sheet that looked pretty much exactly like HeroForge.

 

[thpr]

1) For some reason it really bogs down with high level characters for me. I make a wraith + Wiz3/Clr3/Mystic Theurge 5 and just selecting the classes to add caster levels to really bogs down. This is surprising because loading scads of data sources doesn't slow it down as much and I'd think that would require a lot more data mangling.

Well, as the code monkey who happens to be running that code profiler to improve performance, I can say there *is* an explanation for why this occurs (the issue is both source count and character complexity - the latter being a worse problem, because while the sources are a linear impact, the character level is partially exponential).

Suffice it to say we know the root cause of the problem, although this is not something we can fix overnight. It is deeply rooted in some of the core code in PCGen. The rest of the team has spent tremendous effort since 5.6 to break the code into more flexible pieces (I won't bother with the metrics, but there has been a tremendous amount of improvement), so we can actually get at the problem. I have spent much of the last six months lining up the pieces to reach an endgame where we can squash this particular issue.

We're getting there, stay tuned.

 

[thpr]

I'm pretty comfortable editing LST files by hand, but I sure wouldn't sneeze at a slick editor, either.

Nice to know I've got both you and iwarrior-poet signed up as beta testers for a new editor.

 

[Mercule]

Nice to know I've got both you and iwarrior-poet signed up as beta testers for a new editor.

Done. I'm in the process of adding Tome of Battle and Races of Eberron. Those should probably give an editor a good shakedown.

Same name at gmail.

 

[thpr]

Done. I'm in the process of adding Tome of Battle and Races of Eberron. Those should probably give an editor a good shakedown.

eek. This is where I admit to choosing a poor combination of words. It was an "I'm keeping you in mind" statement rather than an ability to send something now (unfortunately). :\

However, that doesn't mean it will be an eternal wait; due to the nature of the proposed architecture changes, it will be one of the first pieces that must be built. (being able to browse the data gives the ability to validate data import/export integrity)

 

[Steel_Wind]

Well, as someone who bought a large number of CMP datasets and also who has personal experience in narrowly avoiding becoming a squashed raccoon on the highway of Hasbro's electronic licensing decisions...

I'm for showing CMP some love. These guys aren't in the biz to get rich. They are doing their thing the best way they can and I hope they find a way to make some dough and make it all work.

Stick it out guys and good luck.

/me flashes a Don Cherry "Thumbs Up"