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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Myrdin Potter" data-source="post: 7611705" data-attributes="member: 6843593">Squeatus - my opening to my response to your original post pointed out that you were asking to break backwards compatibility. To be clear, the original straw man argument you made was about the goals of the Kickstarter somehow being misrepresented and then there was a bunch of programmer stuff afterwards.Smiteworks has made it crystal clear that the underlying Lua/ruleset engine was not being touched and that the main efforts they were making were around networking, expanding the memory space (64 bit), native Mac and Linux, and improving the graphics engine to make it more modern and to allow more tools for mapping in the program itself. They specifically said backwards compatibility was one of the key design goals.They have a tiny staff and they cannot update all the DLC and ruleset all at once and breaking the current program would kill their business. I think they made the absolute best choice for this KS, and I especially applaud them not adding to the scope as the KS grows but instead adding more free DLC and assets.I am not a good enough programmer to comment specifically on your programming points, but I have seen little evidence that there is some set of “grognards” that are holding the modernization back. I see two things doing that - resourcing (small staff) and large installed user base in a niche industry with other choices. I can guarantee you that, except for the UI, Smiteworks developers would agree with most of the programming points you are making. I do still take exception to a few of your points. First, programming a ruleset is hard work. I understand why their small staff so they are not going to leap in and help anyone that says they are starting. In the case of celestian and 2e AD&D, in all my interactions with him he has been quite complimentary of the help he received. He doesn’t like some of the restrictions, but they also changed the base code a few times to help him as well. If I were one of the 2-3 ruleset experts at Smiteworks, I would not get too invested until a programmer has done the work. I also see documentation steadily moving forward.For the DLC authoring tools, I know that they made changes to almost all the things I complained about. In particular, I voraciously complained about creating classes and backgrounds (you used to need to use an outside tool and special codes inside of it). Now, for 5e (and many other rulesets) you can do that right in the program. I was starting to get loud about reference manuals and the celestian solved that for the community.Otherwise, my experience with programmers is that many love a specific tool or way of doing something and they seem to love to argue about it. I can’t parse all your suggestions for improvement for importance, but I recognize many of them and can remember Smiteworks comments on quite a few of them. Even Lua is 5.0 and from my limited knowledge a version 5.1 has been out for a while.The one thing I do know is that they listen to their customers and I am sure they read your comments and where they agree work is already planned in the background.I am very happy with the success of the KS so far. I think their automation engine is the best for 5e and their DLC available is the deepest. I am looking forward to better networking (I travel a lot and use PureVPN) and less memory problems.</blockquote>

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