EricLeaf said:
The heart of the problems with this project and many others at wotc was that Pokemon money dried up, thats why Hasbro sold those rights to begin with, and this obviously trickled down to a ton of other areas. Money has to be cut and I'm sure it was cut in many things regardless wether they were deemed potentially successful. This is buisness, albeit kneejerk buisness, but buisness none the less. Master Tools as it was then was completely cancelled shortly after Gencon of last year. Ryan Dancy resurrected it from the grave in January of this year with a vastly reduced budget and a reduced goals (mapper cut, etc...).
The Pokemon money drying up was obviously a problem for Hasbro/WotC. However, the fact Hasbro Interactive was losing money was an additional point. Unfortunately for Hasbro, its software business was not profitable. It appears Master Tools/E-Tools is not an exception to this. If Hasbro/Wotc had cancelled that project at the time of the Infogrames sale, it would be money ahead now.
Perhaps enough money ahead so that some of the creative people at WotC who got the axe would not had their jobs eliminated.
As I recall, MasterTools was originally slated for a Q4, 2000, ship (I still have the Jim Bishop post on that). Had that been done, the Infogrames sale would be a moot point -- plus all the additional money not spent/sales generated since that time would have made WotC and D&D look much more profitable. Which means that much less likely to fall under the axe.
Mind you I do not know why the product did not ship on schedule. But I do know that you cannot have a product that continually misses ship dates/goes over budget and not expect something bad to happen.
I do find the statement that Ryan Dancy resurrected the product in January of this year to be interesting. As I recall (apparently incorrectly), Ryan Dancy's association with WotC and this product ended in December of last year. Please, any clarification on this will be most welcome.
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In reply to your comment on disagreeing with using XML, since that was my choice and mostly my coding to get that to run, why do you think that wasn't a good choice? The XSLT transform offers tremendous power to the users to customize their output, as evidenced by the fact that the D&D character sheet and the statblock can both be made by the same XML output. [/B][/QUOTE]
One obvious problem is that many people who purchased the product could not get a printout with the operating systems indicated on the packaging. This has been confusing to many people. All it takes is a look at the postings on this and other message boards to make that clear.
Including the browser upgrade on the CD would have been a partial solution. As Microsoft would not have charged for that use of its software, I can see no good reason why this was not done. The problem was well known to both Fluid and WotC. Fluid because it noted it in the Help File and WotC because it appeared in the GenCon 2001 Sunday product demo I attended. That demo was run by Ryan Dancy and Anthony Valterra.
However, requiring a user to do a download to get a product to work is not a good solution. While people on this board may commonly do downloads, they are at best inconveniences to many.
The other problem is that there is no way -- that I know of -- to get different systems to get XML printouts that look the same. If I am wrong in this, please let me know.
The choice to use XML as the print option, and to not support the standard Windows printers, illustrates one of the fundamental design flaws in the product. That is, this product is aimed at power users -- people who have more computer expertise than is common among most people who own computers and play D&D. These are the people who should have been its target market.
A product that was better designed to fit it potential customers (D&D players with Windows computer systems and average computer expertise) could reasonably be expected to sell more units than one that expected Access competence, high speed internet access, etc.
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And finally
The other programmer on the etools project would bring those sort of topics up all the time. To me it seems to be a control issue only, that is a personal preference on controlling data or others with that data.
These projects are "tools" after all and like any other tool improper use could be damaging. Do all screwdrivers have a warning not to stab yourself in the eye, or perhaps an eye-guard to prevent that? If they did, you would annoy more responsible people with it than lives saved, and this goes for software too. Any "open" product can reap a lot of benefit by opening its data at any level. From users that want something the developers hadn't accounted for, and want it enough to do it themselves. You see this in a wide range for eTools, new stylesheets, creatures and even UI art for inside eTools.
The opposing view which you are supporting is only one of control, if the database is hidden then you and only you can update it, and potentially charge for it. I personally consider that weakness, I prefer code to stand on its merits not a hidden value that I am the only one who knows the formats. [/B][/QUOTE]
This pretty much reinforces the point that the product is aimed at power users and not the typically computer owning D&D player. Most of whom would be as likely to poke themselves in the eye with a screwdriver as they would be able to create and share custom data using an Access database.
It is not a control issue. It is simply providing a product that most of your customers can use as is.
Victor
