New Character Builder from WotC!

[Scribble]

He may be venting a tad here, but a cancellation of a sub, partnered with a letter of complaint is an effective tool in consumer activism. I've been told by some managers (in a few different fields) that as few as 20 such complaints can set off alarms in corporate HQ.

While I agree with your statement overall... My guess is 20 is not the same for gaming... As I think the default state of gamers when responding to anything tends to be "fly off the handle..."

 

[Dumnbunny]

I run a small firm specializing in web-based business applications, so I thought I'd offer some counter-points.

20 character limit, exporting, and sharing

It's true that is isn't a matter of just adding on another hard-drive. However, even with everything else factored in storage is cheap. One of the sites my company designed and is maintaining is one which allows ranchers and feedlots to upload post-mortem photos of cattle for veterinary review. We're seeing a large numbers of photos being uploaded per day (one recent tweak was to allow users to queue more than 100 photos for upload per batch), and with the different resized and tiled version of the photos, each takes up about 2-3 MB at the low end. I'm paying about 15 cents per GB per month. Start with characters in XML format taking up about 100K, then figure out how many characters would fit in that 15 cents worth of space. Sorry, I'm not buying the storage cost argument, not a bit.

Silverlight vs. HTML

Yeah, HTML 5 is not quite ready for prime-time. IE9's wide adoption may help with this, but that's not today. However, you can come up with some very user-friendly interfaces using HTML4 and Javascript.

Silverlight is simply a poor choice if your goal is "ultimate portability." Consider the large and growing number of environments, not just Windows and OSX, but the Linux, the iPad, Android devices including the upcoming Android tablets, the upcoming Blackberry tablet (based on what they're calling Blackberry Tablet OS), the upcoming WebOS-based HP tablets, and whatever else is coming along.

But don't take my word for it. In a recent blog post, Bob Muglia, President of the Server and Tools Division at Microsoft, stated that while they were committed to Silverlight as a platform for in-house corporate apps as well as Windows based mobile device apps, maintaining a runtime across all the available devices was "practically impossible." "We think HTML will provide the broadest, cross-platform reach across all these devices."As for leveraging the team's .NET skills, .NET languages can be easily used on the server-side for web-application development.

I think character builder is just the tip of an iceberg.

I'm going to judge the character builder on what it is or isn't now, not on what it may or may not be at some unspecified point in the future. And while I'm going to wait and see what the next couple months brings, some of what I'm seeing and hearing aren't exactly filling me with the warm glow of hope.

 

[drothgery]

Silverlight is simply a poor choice if your goal is "ultimate portability." Consider the large and growing number of environments, not just Windows and OSX, but the Linux, the iPad, Android devices including the upcoming Android tablets, the upcoming Blackberry tablet (based on what they're calling Blackberry Tablet OS), the upcoming WebOS-based HP tablets, and whatever else is coming along.

But if your goal is not "ultimate portability" but merely going from the 90% of desktops and laptops that a pure Windows app gets you to 99% of desktops and laptops, then going with Silverlight is fine (as non-Windows, non-Mac OSX consumer desktops and laptops are virtually nonexistent; while Moonlight works on Linux, it implements Silverlight 2 and the current Silverlight version is 4).

 

[renau1g]

"ultimate portability" was from Bill Slavicsek.

"There are five things I really, really like about the new Character Builder.

1. It’s ultimately portable. I can use it on any computer or computer-like device, wherever I am."

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (The Next Wave in Digital Offerings)

 

[tentfox]

If they chose to go HTML + Javascript it would give them access to iPad and Unix. The phone platforms would be almost unusable in a webpage unless they make an entirely new interface for users who connect from a phone.

Considering the extra time which would be needed to get a web page application to the level that the silverlight app looks (which might not even be possible at all) would simply not be worth it. The other option would of course be Java, which would give them the massive user base of people who run Unix with no other OS at all. Then they would probably need a new development team because they are all .NET programmers, and the UI would be harder develop because .NET is the bees knees while Java is lacking.

For an end user on either a PC or Mac computer you lose nothing for them choosing Silverlight. I have no clue why people would complain about this? I can validate complaints about other aspects of this, namely the character limit and reduced featureset, but Silverlight?

 

[garyh]

The only issue I have with Silverlight is that if you're on a computer where you don't have admin rights, say work or the library, then you can't run the CB there. Which sorta nixes the whole "portability" argument. I'd never even heard of Silverlight before the CB info referred to it. So I'm guessing it's a lot less ubiquitous than, say, Adobe PDF Reader or Java in terms of things installed for use on browsers.

My main issues, as I've discussed in this thread are the 20 character cap and lack of export.

 

[tentfox]

It is a web plugin like adobe flash, or desktop like adobe air. I have a feeling that this particular one is desktop one (but I do not know for sure) because I believe I saw it mentioned it was a 15 meg download, which is pretty hefty for a plug in.

The major browsers support it, although it is rather new with a low development base which is probably why you did not hear of it before. You can see a showcase of stuff done in it here Showcase : The Official Microsoft Silverlight Site.

I personally doubt it will ever catch on for web however, there is already flash for art centric, Java for code; and world is moving away from plug-ins. It is however what is used for making windows phone 7 applications and I believe the future of silverlight lies there.

 

[Alan Shutko]

But if your goal is not "ultimate portability" but merely going from the 90% of desktops and laptops that a pure Windows app gets you to 99% of desktops and laptops, then going with Silverlight is fine (as non-Windows, non-Mac OSX consumer desktops and laptops are virtually nonexistent; while Moonlight works on Linux, it implements Silverlight 2 and the current Silverlight version is 4).

FWIW, according to Sitecatalyst Netaverages, non-Mac, non-Windows is about 8.3% of desktop browsers.

https://netaverages.adobe.com/en-us/index.html

 

[tentfox]

This wiki article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems#Web_clients paints a very different picture. Assuming all of other are some unknown desktop operating systems, then we have Mac and PC with a total desktop coverage of 98.13%. Now these statistics only take in to consideration OSes which browse the web, which for Silverlight Desktop coverage seems fair to me.

 

[Kafen]

The only issue I have with Silverlight is that if you're on a computer where you don't have admin rights, say work or the library, then you can't run the CB there. Which sorta nixes the whole "portability" argument. I'd never even heard of Silverlight before the CB info referred to it. So I'm guessing it's a lot less ubiquitous than, say, Adobe PDF Reader or Java in terms of things installed for use on browsers.

My main issues, as I've discussed in this thread are the 20 character cap and lack of export.

Export would come at a later date, yes?