Ideal all-in-one RPG software package

[Redrobes]

If I decide to go install Opera or OpenOffice or what have you, I just download the appropriate file for my system and go.

Yes but that is a distinct application binary and installation per system type. If you mean PC, Mac and Linux then that is at least 3. If you want x64 and x64 then double that again.

In terms of the perfect RPG application specification then sure what your asking for is perfectly acceptable and you shouldn't have to justify your desire in a thread like this asking for that opinion but from a developers point of view were a few good men on a budget - in fact often lone gunslingers on no budget whatsoever. I know of nobody who is doing this as their day job. Keeping one application bug free on one system is hard enough and will consume all your time.

Your right, you should not have to be a programmer to use an app. Mine does not need frameworks but then mine does not work on a Mac or Linux. So when people say I want it to work on a Mac too and on a machine with no resources then something has to give and thats where the developer makes the choice about what he is going to offer.

But this thread is a pie in the sky thread. So heres my perfect solution, I want Macs and Linux boxes to natively run PC code

 

[schporto]

If I decide to go install Opera or OpenOffice or what have you, I just download the appropriate file for my system and go. I don't have to download the program *and* then go hunt down and install all the dependencies seperately, because everything's bundled (as it should be... they're the programmer and know what their program needs, I don't!)

Those are fairly large programs with a large number of people working on them. Opera says it has 12-15 million installations. Directly supporting those different OS versions is difficult.

If someone's going to be lazy and force the end user do some of the leg work for them, then they should at least provide links (or better yet, locally hosted downloads wherever feasible) to all dependencies they know work with their program, and provide instructions on how to install/configure them to work with their program.

This I definitely agree with. If you try to install ethereal, it requires (for most uses) WinPCAP. During the install it checks for this, and then gives you a link to go get it if you need it.

Don't really see a problem here, either. Most RPG systems are based on fairly consistent formulas. So having a "builder" which lets you use the most common formulas like building blocks ought to be enough for most purposes; then you can give access for those people who want to dig into the nitty-gritty and do more esoteric stuff. Kind of like the Formula Builder in Excel vs. writing it out yourself.

It is not impossible. But this is a difficult requirement. You are right that Excel does it well. But they (Microsoft) have had ~15 years to get it to this point. There have been constant refinements to the interfaces, and how formulas are shown and help on those formulas is given. And Excel also has nice breaks into different levels. Type in the cell for simple formulas. Formula builder for more complex stuff. Solver for more complex. VBA for still more complex. Doing this in a DnD app is going to be tougher I think. We start getting away from math formulas into object interaction. So a will save is your base will save plus wisdom ability modifier. Unless they have Force of Personality, in which case they use their charisma. Except they are currently under a Owl's Wisdom, so should they actually use their Wisdom modifer because it is higher? This example is for the most part straight forward. If people are still asking questions here and of the Sage about how rules work, how is a computer going to do it? Let alone, how are you going to tell a computer how to do it?
All the above said - I would love to be proven wrong. The whole complex example is part of why computers would be good at this. I'm just suggesting that it is a difficult problem.
-cpd

 

[Jeysie]

Re: Program dependencies: I've just been burned too many times by frameworks that, well, don't work.

Java my group can't use, for instance, because it causes too much "clog" on several of the computers in my group. It's too resource heavy to have the plug-in and the program running.

And then there's my frustrations with OpenRPG, a while back. OpenRPG itself installed just fine, but I had trouble trying to track down a version of Python for Win98 (since the OpenRPG site claimed it works with Win98, but linked to a WinXP version of Python), and then I couldn't figure out how to install it properly and get it configured to mesh with OpenRPG itself. And while I'm not a computer pro, I don't consider myself a scrub, either.

And we won't get started on my various troubles with GTK+ (never did get GAIM to run right) or .NET, or... gah, it's a headache. And then of course there's the times when two different programs only run with two different versions of the same framework...

Well, you know.

Peace & Luv, Liz

 

[Redrobes]

Yes I agree that frameworks can be a problem. They solve one issue and create another. They are supposed to present a standard binary interface to a machine no matter what platform you are running on. The problem that has been created is that different versions of the same type of framework are not compatible - they might be backward compatible but almost certainly not forward compatible. So any app has a framework version dependency instead of a platform dependency. Developers using frameworks should stick to interfaces present in older versions which are not deprecated and state the version that it is designed for and thoroughly tested against. Oh yes... and then provide a link to the download for it.

I steer well clear of frameworks. In fact I have a general policy of minimizing all 3rd party software. I have to make exceptions of course but they are limited to freeware with source code libraries - usually the ISO standard image and compression libs.

Anyhoo, its getting a bit off topic. But you can see how having no framework and multi-platform is one of those opposing requirements for an all singing and dancing RPG app.

Shall we say that a requirement should be that it works with a wide variety of platforms and versions of dependencies, states clearly which ones its designed for and for any of them, installs easily and cleanly and works without any hiccups or bugs.

 

[thpr]

It is not impossible. But this is a difficult requirement. You are right that Excel does it well. But they (Microsoft) have had ~15 years to get it to this point.

I would postulate that the general purpose nature of spreadsheets (a VERY large market relative to RPG tools) is more important than the 15 years. Billions of dollars in profit to support hundreds (thousands?) of developers doesn't hurt either.

The whole complex example is part of why computers would be good at this. I'm just suggesting that it is a difficult problem.

Indeed.

The problem is that this interacts with a number of areas in computer science that very few people will have enough background to handle all at once. Building an editor like the one proposed requires some serious thinking about data visiualization and computer/human interfaces, areas that are highly specialized and not likely to be the hobbies of the programmers that would most likely be writing the core of the program. It wouldn't hurt to have a business process modeling background, either.

 

[boB S]

Java my group can't use, for instance, because it causes too much "clog" on several of the computers in my group. It's too resource heavy to have the plug-in and the program running.

If you don't mind me asking (and if you don't mind answering ) what sort of hardware and operating systems are you and your group running? (From your comments I expect you are using W98) And this begs the more general question, which is very pertinent to this thread, of what is the hardware/OS breakdown of RPGers? After all one cannot design applications unless one knows what the users are using for hardware and operating systems (and browsers). Has any such poll ever been done of the gamer community?

 

[Jeysie]

boB: I don't mind answering, although I have to admit the answers may not be helpful.

I'm currently running Win98 on a 700 MHz Duron machine with 448MB of RAM that a friend somewhat recently gave me. Which is a vast upgrade from the 350 MHz K6-2 machine with 128MB of RAM that I had for about 8 years. (Ah, the joys of being stuck in lots of crappy-paying jobs!)

I don't know the hardware of my friends' computers, though I do at least know that mine is still the slowest out of all of them. Three are running some version of WinXP, I think, one runs Linux, and one fellow owns a WinXP computer but has to RP using his Win98 one for some rather weird reasons. Two of us have cable (though one sometimes has to use satellite or dial-up when he's out on training trips), I have DSL, one had AOL but *just* recently got broadband, and one is stuck in dial-up land.

One player is a tech support guy (and a very competent one) for a big computer company, one has a CS degree (though weirdly tends to need to ask me and the tech for computer advice...), two are passably computer literate, and then there's moi.

Usually it was mine and the AOLer's computers that were the sticky wickets, though sometimes the Linux guy has trouble finding compatible programs on his end to match the rest of us, and sometimes the dial-up fellow's computer runs wonky or his connection doesn't pull enough juice.

Peace & Luv, Liz

 

[boB S]

...I'm currently running Win98 on a 700 MHz Duron machine with 448MB of RAM that a friend somewhat recently gave me. Which is a vast upgrade from the 350 MHz K6-2 machine with 128MB of RAM...

I don't know the hardware of my friends' computers, though I do at least know that mine is still the slowest out of all of them...

"...Java my group can't use, for instance, because it causes too much "clog" on several of the computers in my group. It's too resource heavy to have the plug-in and the program running..."

Thanks for the info! This last quote from your earlier post is what had me somewhat puzzled. The Java people have worked hard to minimize the memory footprint of the Java Runtime Environment, though I haven't had time to see what's going on with the recently released Java 6. At least through Java 5 Win98 SE is still supported. Even with the browser plug-in Sun's site claims that only 48 MB of RAM are needed and at least a Pentium 166 MHz CPU or better. They add, "Very large programs may require more RAM for adequate performance." Even your old PC exceeds the minimum requirements. This suggests some sort of configuration problems, probably with whatever application you were trying to run that was Java-based. Of course, even this only goes to prove your other point: That a person should NOT have to go through cyber-gymnastics to get the d**n program to work like it is supposed to!

But then again it could still be a problem meeting the minimum requirements for the Java version the application uses. For instance only certain version browsers will work with a given version Java plug-in, etc. But it should be, as you aptly point out, the programmer's responsiblilty that you are at least clearly aware of what minimum requirements you must meet to run their application and to provide installations of these prerequisites or at least links (I don't like using the link approach as often the linked site is difficult to decipher what you must do next to install the whatever widget you need.) to these.

Anyway I think Java can be a viable option for programming our pipe-dream RPG program for even modest machines IF the programmer's installation routine is competently put together.

 

[JDragon]

It's already been done. It's called Excel.

QFT!

JD

 

[schporto]

I'm going to go back to the original question actually. What would I want? Or what do I think it should do?
Note this is how I like my setup. My players come with paper and dice. I use a laptop to track initiative, and display initiative and maps to players on a TV. I think it should be more of a toolset and shared libraries. I like the Unix philosophy in these regards. Smaller tools that can plug together to make more elaborate systems. So a player can load up the character generator portions. This will allow them to create a character (or advance one), print it out, and send a standard file to the DM. The DM then can load a desktop, and load in add-ins. The add-ins could be:
PC-Trackers - handles handing out loot to players, tracking exp, allows for making 'secret' rolls (i.e. disable device, spots that they don't need to know about etc).
Combat Tracker - handles in combat stuff. Spell effects, initiative, HP tracking etc. Oh and give me an undo feature that allows for "Undo last spell effect", "Undo all effects for 1 round" etc (the one banned item in my game is the Amulet of second chances from MIC because it is too difficult for me to track).
NPC Tracker - allows for a character sheet and notes.
Map - Allows for a DM and a players map.
Text Boxes - DM Text and Players text. I.e. Show the players what the gray boxed text says while you read it (or paraphrase it).
Adventure Tool - This loads a series of encounters with a DM's map. As the DM clicks on the Map different areas are revealed to the players, with the corresponding text and any images. Encounters are loaded into the Combat Tracker.

Some future type tie-ins with Microsoft Surface would be cool. Combine that with the UI from Troika's Temple of Elemental Evil. Heck have Microsoft Surface also recognize dice rolls from different players, and provide some instructions back to them (i.e. Bob, Joe roll reflex saves from the wizard's fireball!).

But whatever the software does - let me break out of it. I must be able to suddenly decree a blue bolt, or allow a player to do something against the rules if I deem it is appropriate in this case. In other words - the software must understand Rule 0.

For what it's worth Vascant's NPC Designer does some interesting bits along these lines (well for NPC design). It doesn't load all the player classes when it starts. It looks through directories for them, but then it just runs the interpreted code when you ask for it. This to me is a good feature that seems to be heavily requested.
-cpd