Nightstorm
First Post
Nope I win the argument.
E-Tools owners, please grade it
- Thread starter Airwolf
- Start date
Now I can act like I'm 13 too!Nightstorm said:
Quite a few things, actually. Others have mentioned how much the moving target problem slowed e-Tools, so I won't comment on that.
While using the latest tools would have helped considerably, though it would take time to get up to speed with them. An object-oriented, garbage-collected programming language with a strong GUI class library would be best for this kind of job, but programmers at a game-focused company like Fluid are unlikely to be familiar with that kind of programming. It's mostly practiced in C++ inside of major commercial software companies (yes, this means Microsoft), and in Visual Basic (and to a lesser extent C#, VB.NET, and Java) building internal apps at nearly every mid-sized to large company in America.
IMO, the best tools today for C/C++ guys on a Windows platform -- which I'm assuming Fluid's team were -- would be the C# language and Visual Studio.NET. But I'm guessing that they wrote the program in C++ using Visual C++, because it was the language they knew best, and because VS.NET wasn't out when they started the project. Switching tools wouldn't speed them up right away, though, because it takes time to become familiar with a new style of programming, a new language, a new development environment, and to a new major class library. And they'd make a lot of mistakes by trying to write C++ in C#. Note right here that this means the program wouldn't work on Windows 95.
Since I'm one of those boring corprate guys builds internal apps all the time (and I'm really good with VB.NET, which is in most cases just as functional as C#, but easier for someone who's spent the last three years working in Visual Basic like me), I'll bet if I really worked at it, I could make a chargen program that worked for the kind of characters that I play and was useable for me on my PC.
But...
I love toolbars and hate menus; I don't know how a UI that I like would play out with other people, and I don't have access to a diverse set of testers. I'm a terrible artist, so many of the toolbar buttons would be mind-bogglingly ugly. Certainly the documentation would suck; I would have wrote the thing, so I know how to do everything with it. I might declare out of hand that you can't build a character with more than three classes, because who the heck does that, anyway? Items that were hard to code in might not be in the program unless I needed them for a character that I was working on. I really don't like half-orcs, so I wouldn't hurry with putting them in. And since rangers got the shaft, and I'm a Wheel of Time nut anyway, the Woodsman goes in... anyway, that's the kind of thing that's covered in the 'for me' part.
Getting install programs to work right can be painful for a lot of reasons. My program might very well look terrible if you weren't using a 19" monitor at 1152 x 864 x 32bit color under Windows 2000. That's what I use; you probably don't. Testing with large fonts, odd resolutions and color depths, every supported OS -- and this includes the non-US English versions, even if you're not translating anything -- is a massive effort for any commercial product. And I'd have to test on computers both much faster and much slower than mine, and those with considerably less memory. Which is the 'on my PC' part of the equation.
Anyway, dealing with both the 'for me' and the 'on my PC' problem are only parially dealt with even by the latest development tools, you still need good design and testing to deal with that. Which is why it takes a lot longer to develop a commercial product than a roughly equivalent one-off program that you'd write for yourself or some specific client.
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Nightstorm
First Post
Gee thanks. That sheds all kinds of light on the subject. Thank you for using a vocabuary far above me. Reminds me of my time working the art gallery circuit when the artists would use art speak to make those uneducated in art feel little. I will defend PCGen for many reasons but the one remains the same. The People at PCGen( and I have no Idea who "they" are) have done what they have done by a labor of love. Love for the game and a desire to share that with others. Yes alot of what they had was taken away by WOTC. But the fact is that even though it isnt as easy to use, it still outdoes E-tools and it shoudnt. And what about the program that everyone sing praises of? you cannot use anything outside of the three core books. How many years has this game been out ? Two? You can dick people around only so much . I guess if I want the rest of the feats, prestige classes , and what not I'll have to wait a few more years for the second disk to come out. Oh but wait I will not have to.All I have to do is spend my time online getting patches made by fans who have spent hours of time putting info into a program that should already be there.What am I getting at? It would be nice that I, a person that has already spent over 3oo dollars in gaming books could get a computer program that made creating characters for the game easier. And that includes being able to use ALL of the info from the books I've bought. Am I mad? YOU BETTER BELIEVE IT. The fact that I've spent time replying to this over three times has wasted far too much of my time. So there. I've said what Ive said and that is it .
I know this has probably been answered in other threads but i diddn't know it couldn't do templates. Diddn't they say it could when they said only core classes and so forth.
I am confused....
Oh and by the way, i am currently completing a year 12 programming course (that i am terrible at by the way) using Java.
I agree with the install comments but it is not that hard to create a character generator, i have made a few myself, using databases and stuff. Of course they are pretty crappy, but if i can do that i think professional programmers could make a program capable of that!
I am confused....
Oh and by the way, i am currently completing a year 12 programming course (that i am terrible at by the way) using Java.
I agree with the install comments but it is not that hard to create a character generator, i have made a few myself, using databases and stuff. Of course they are pretty crappy, but if i can do that i think professional programmers could make a program capable of that!
Note that I haven't seen PCGen or e-Tools, and I have built character generators for older editions of D&D. Right now I think that a pencil and paper works well enough for my needs, especially since half the characters I create are for d20 Wheel of Time rather than D&D, so I haven't bought E-Tools.
I haven't gone near PCGen because I have a much more strict understanding of IP law than the PCGen team does.
I did get a little jargon-heavy. but to sum up...
1) The 'best' tools for building the kind of program E-Tools is and what Fluid actually used probably aren't the same, because the best tools for what Fluid usually does (games) aren't the same as the best tools for building boring-looking business apps. And it takes time to switch tools, no matter how good you are at programming.
2) Testing is a pain. Ensuring that a program works well on the absolutely huge variety of PCs out there is difficult even for the simplest of programs.
3) Building installation routines is a form of torture.
4) Getting something that works for you up to commercial quality is a lot more work than you think.
5) Moving targets really slow you down.
I haven't gone near PCGen because I have a much more strict understanding of IP law than the PCGen team does.
I did get a little jargon-heavy. but to sum up...
1) The 'best' tools for building the kind of program E-Tools is and what Fluid actually used probably aren't the same, because the best tools for what Fluid usually does (games) aren't the same as the best tools for building boring-looking business apps. And it takes time to switch tools, no matter how good you are at programming.
2) Testing is a pain. Ensuring that a program works well on the absolutely huge variety of PCs out there is difficult even for the simplest of programs.
3) Building installation routines is a form of torture.
4) Getting something that works for you up to commercial quality is a lot more work than you think.
5) Moving targets really slow you down.
WizarDru
Adventurer
Nightstorm said:
It shouldn't? Why not? I'm guessing you're not a big fan of Linus Torvald, then? (and just so I'm not accused of speaking over your head, I'll save you the google search...he's the fella for whom Linux is named). An open source project that is as well-run as PCgen is should easily be able to contend with a small company like Fluid. PCgen has a stated design intent and hasn't changed direction radically during development. They have a larger group to perform the work, and they can collectively call upon a huge base of developers to work on the task. PCgen is an example of well the open source approach works.
You also seem to equate 'trying to make a reasonable assessment of' with 'sings the praises of'. I currently use both tools. eTools has some serious flaws in it, the greatest of which is the lack of Templates. This is a serious mistake, and it costs the program big-time. This hardly makes it useless and flawed beyond reason.
Further, I'm guessing you haven't used PCGen that extensively, either. I personally think PCgen has made ENORMOUS strides from it's earlier releases. So much so, that it is extremely useful...but it has it's share of bugs and flaws, too. That you haven't discovered these doesn't mean they aren't there. The more rules that exist, the more complex the model will have to be. Both tools apprach the problem from different directions, and have varying degrees of success with different tasks.
If you are disappointed in eTools, and there's no reason you shouldn't be, then by all means state your dissatisfaction. But don't be suprised if you make a bald-faced statement in ignorance of how software development works, and then get called on it by people more knowledgable than yourself on the subject.
As for spending $300 on the game....well, so what? When was it promised to you that an electronic tool would be given to you? Surely you don't think you're owed such a thing? You'd be justified to complain that an inadequate tool has been delivered to you, but I don't think you've got a leg to stand on, if your main source of contention is that you should expect it based on previous sales. No one bought their D&D books expecting an electronic tool to come along later...they bought them to play a game. Not content to wait for someone else to give them something, my players developed an Excel spreadsheet using some complicated tables to calculate everything they need. If I didn't have eTools or PCgen, I'd just pen and paper and fudge it a tad.
Come to think of it, the PCgen folks did that from the start.
JoeGKushner
Adventurer
I've only made a few characters with it. While I don't use everything under the sun to built my characters, I can see that E-Tools is going to have problems with it. Fortunately, I do know Access and own it so I'm not quite as handicapped as others may be with that.
On the other hand, it's beyond baffling that they left out some core elements of customization like templates and the ability to add classes and prestige classes.
It's okay but its not going to change the way I game.
It's pretty good for generating stat blocks too. As a GM, I find that I need lots of these.
On the other hand, it's beyond baffling that they left out some core elements of customization like templates and the ability to add classes and prestige classes.
It's okay but its not going to change the way I game.
It's pretty good for generating stat blocks too. As a GM, I find that I need lots of these.
collin
Explorer
Given that the Player's Handbook comes with a character generator CD-ROM, I'd say don't waste the $30 unless you are real handy with using Access, don't mind the bugs (I've come across 2 already) and don't mind that the user interface looks like something out of Windows 3.1. This is what happens in a computer software developing company when you have a product that goes thru 3 different creative teams, each time starting from scratch, ultimately comes up with nothing, then whipping something together in 1 month.
-Collin
-Collin
TheAuldGrump
First Post
I am giving it a 'D'. It's not hopeless but it should/could have been better. A friend of mine bought it, making me sorry for him and glad for me, he is now stuck with it and I'm not. (The store he purchased it at has a 'replace with same' policy in regards to returned software.)
With a LOT of support it can become a useful piece of software. It currently does not do as much as PCGen, on the other hand PCGen did not have to go back to square one and rethink the whole thing halfway through. (Until, perhaps, now. Getting the program OGL compliant is going to take some doing.)
However as it stands now it is terribly overpriced, difficult to use, and underpowered. The overpriced part is the only really nasty bit, I could have sworn that they were going to drop the price when they dropped so many of the functions. Of course they still had to pay for better than a year of development.
The difficult to use bit may be fixed with a good online manual, if one ever comes out. Having a steep learning curve and no documentation to speak of is a really bad combination.
The underpowered portion may be fixed as people add to the information base, ony time will tell. Certainly they will have to sell a fair number of copies to build up the kind of public support that will be required to fix all the problems.
Meanwhile, I am sticking with PCGen, which has the benefit of already having a broad base of public support. (Even though it does run pretty darned slow on older machines.)
The Auld Grump
With a LOT of support it can become a useful piece of software. It currently does not do as much as PCGen, on the other hand PCGen did not have to go back to square one and rethink the whole thing halfway through. (Until, perhaps, now. Getting the program OGL compliant is going to take some doing.)
However as it stands now it is terribly overpriced, difficult to use, and underpowered. The overpriced part is the only really nasty bit, I could have sworn that they were going to drop the price when they dropped so many of the functions. Of course they still had to pay for better than a year of development.
The difficult to use bit may be fixed with a good online manual, if one ever comes out. Having a steep learning curve and no documentation to speak of is a really bad combination.
The underpowered portion may be fixed as people add to the information base, ony time will tell. Certainly they will have to sell a fair number of copies to build up the kind of public support that will be required to fix all the problems.
Meanwhile, I am sticking with PCGen, which has the benefit of already having a broad base of public support. (Even though it does run pretty darned slow on older machines.)
The Auld Grump
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