Vpenman said:If the Core Rules Database had been open, someone would have done something bad with it. I am thinking of creating "items" that really didn't work with the program or that overwrote existing, legitimate items.
Yes, true.
These would have been distributed by various means. People's programs would have stopped working as they expected. Some of these people would have blamed us. Certainly there would have been a customer service problem that would be costly to address.
Yes, there would be problems and the blame would be on the publisher/developer, and incorrectly. Most EULAs state that they essentially will not support any "hacks", i.e. 3rd party tinkering. So customer service would just politely ignore the service request.
I believe what we did in Core Rules where the program handled the database operation, including the transfer of data among systems, was the best solution for the overwhelming majority of our customers.
Sure, no one is saying its not. And thats a failing of eTools. However, having access to the underlying data store for advanced users is an added bonus. Anything created by these users as 3rd party material is used by the end-user without any support from the original publisher/developer.
This is exactly what happens in the game world of Quake, Unreal, half-Life, et al. and all their variations. People produce mods or maps or other 3rd party content [I happen have done so for UnrealTournament] but in no way are id, Valve, Epic, etc. responsible for any 3rd party material.
Also, we know from experience, that the ODBC problems many have had with Access are not uncommon. (Although our install program would have checked for these and offered to install the current ones if it did not find those on the target system).
Thats not a fault of Access. Thats a fault of the execution of the installation prodedures.
I believe an open database would have benefitted very few customers and had the potential to cause harm to a great number.
Thats fine, your belief.
This pretty much explains why we went the custom database route, even though Access would have been less expensive to develop. We believed, and I continue to believe, the custom database was the best solution for the majority of our customers.
We? I assume that means you were part of the CoreRules development team?
Frankly, I think you are off-base with your assumptions. My philosophy is fairly technology agnostic. I use the best technology possible to fit the project and end-user needs and to meet design and development schedules. Frankly, since the % of users who are Access wizards is low [but I don't agree as low as some people think] in the community of D&D gaming end-users, I don't perceive that there is a problem using a proven technology such as Access as a data store rather than designing a custom solution [or using a properitary format when accepted non-proprietary formats are available].
We'll do what we can with what we got. Anyone can pick up a copy of PCGen, grab a d20 book and code away making their own files. Flexibility, expandability, and portability (shame Etools wasn't for MAC or *NIX) is all part and parcel making a good product.
I have to disagree. To me Mac or *NIX support is meaningless, I don't run them so using software designed for cross-platform unless its been optimized for each platform [i.e. games like Quake3 and UT2003]. PCGen isn't. To me, I find that the use of their own proprietary, and poorly thought-out, storage format for the data is a drawback entirely. The things that are part and parcel of making a good product are the same things that make up "software engineering" and unless they are applied, you don't have a great product.
Etools is windows based as the majority of people use and run winderz, can't blame them, i stilll want to run it on my IPAQ though dangit!
Well, I do believe that Wizards did a marketing survey, not sure how extensive, etc. But I'll bet it showed that a great majority of the gamers that responded use Windows. Thats born out time and time again in various surveys. Windows is the dominate consumer OS. Period. And consider it was WotC's first product in this area, I'm all for choosing one platform and going with it to produce the product. After all, look how questionably [depending on your side of the fence] eTools is?
Where did you hear that? All I heard was that the sourcecode had been delivered to WotC. Nothing further. Although not sure I'd be all that interested in their source than I am with PCGen's source. I'd be much more interested in what Luke is doing under the covers [Sorry Luke, I still don't like your UIIf this sourcecode release is true
