RPM Pré Beta Discussion...

[nickT]

I am amazed at how fast you respond to these threads, you must have started composing your reply to my last missive before I had sent it

4. can you highlight the creature with the highest current initiative, (this means that if you move to someone else to do a AOO you can go back to the right creature without having to check on the creature list)

As you correctly guessed points 2 and 3 refered to the battle map
but I managed to fox you with point 4, that is also refering to the creatures on the battlemap

My feeling is if you are using a battlemap at all, it should effectively be to replace the 'Creature list' screen, while it doesn't have all the functionality of that screen you should be able to pick up all the info you need to run the combat from the Battlemap, 'execute action' screen and the log screen. There will be times that you need to check something on the 'creature list' or 'creature view' screens, but these should be kept to a minimum.

I would tend to use the battlemap as a visual aid to my players, so I would fill as much of my screen as possible with it, to allow players the far side of the room to see. One useful addition could be large font name banners that flash up when the mouse travels over a creatures position to enable distant players to see who was who.


I suggest disabling the 'current creature initiative completed' button when ordering by name, this could save some confusion.

Do you mean code scriptlets for all the various spells?

yes thats right, any idea when that will be implemented, (any time you have a couple of spare months I expect )

I will give you a little time to do some coding, answer other messages,eat sleep, work etc now and see what other pearls I can dig up


NickT

 

[Nunya]

Bugs n stuph

Bad news,

I couldn't test the combat features of RPM this weekend because I couldn't even create the 5 characters I wanted to test with. Most of the problems stem from a bug while adding items to a creature. I'd be going along merrily adding items to a character when I'd start getting a message that an item couldn't be added because it already existed. At this point the program would become extremely unstable and I suspect the DB was corrupt.

Another bug noticed was that when creating a creature with the wizard it would default to the race of the currently selected creature. If this happened to be Elf, then the sub-race field would have "High" selected(even after changing the race to Human). When I click "Next" to go to the next screen I get a message asking me if I want to quit to protect the DB(even if I cleared the sub-race field). A script window would be popped up behind the other windows. Even if I closed RPM, this partial character would be in the DB because I can never create him again(Key Violation. Must be generating the same ID as the partial in the DB, maybe the ID generator table was rolled back while one of the others wasn't).

I tried creating each character using a fresh DB and exporting it. I then started from a clean DB and imported all of them, but strangeness would start occurring. The last straw for me was when 75% of the items from one of the characters disappeared after importing the last creature(again I couldn't re-add the items due to the "already exists" message). I don't know if this was caused by the import or something different. Another bug is that after importing a creature, I have to re-select my adventure to get them to appear in the list screen or creature screen.

Anyway, my opinion is that RPM is a bit farther away from a Beta than we thought. If I can't enter a bunch of characters and have them work just for character management, then I can't use any of the other features either.

 

[Luke]

Re: Bugs n stuph

Bad news,
....
If I can't enter a bunch of characters and have them work just for character management, then I can't use any of the other features either.

It's annoying, but not necessarily that disheartening.
Once you got in into the position of the item adding problem, you were stuck, and further playing only serves to reinforce that negative state.
The reason I made the tutorial, and made it specific, was to "keep you away" from things that could get you into trouble. The idea was to play with other features (especially import/export) after trying the combat tutorial. Those that followed the tutorial from the start without playing around, seemed to do really well.

Don't confuse a "pre-beta" stability with "beta" readiness. This is about a set of very new features that will need an entire stability regression test. As is typical with software, round 1 is about finding out if the basic idea behind the features is what's required, and then comes the stability fixes.

On the good side, I did get e-mails of this nature early on, and have already tackled the problems. You should have already recieved an e-mail, or seen messages, about these getting fixed.

Regards,

 

[Luke]

PreBeta 2 available for testers

I've been hard at work, and the pre-beta testers are being e-mailed with a link to the latest release. I've packed all requests as reasonably as I could at this stage. There are other feature requests, but I'm a day late on my update promise already:

Key Stability fixes:
- You used to be able to sometimes get yourself into a broken state with adding new items/creatures, if you crashed out, or did an import. Major fix.
- Certain abilities used to cause problems with some creatures, where you couldn't move onto them in the list. Major fix.

BattleMap
- Action window has a "Grab BattleMap" option to merge the 2 windows together for combat. They work very well off each other this way.
- Creature colouring is done by party, so combats are far more obvious.
- A short name default makes the BattleMap much more readable now.
- !!! You can double-click on the map now to add creatures directly to that spot. If you add multiple creatures (eg: via the "List Grid"), they will be spread in a group around the spot.
- The currently selected creature is now obvious, with a white surrounding circle that shows 5' reach.
- A "Center on creature" option make the BattleMap automatically zoon in on the currently selected creature.
- As you move creatures on the map, you are told how far they've moved. Movement will result in either a "Step", or a "Movement" action, depending on how far you move.

Action/Combat
- Fixes with enabling the "Next" on creature actions.
- Dying creatures try to stabilize with popups where you can override the dice roll.
- Initiative/Actions buttons have been re-arranged to be more obvious, and flow more smoothly.

General
- CharGen: Fix of con modifiers for certain situations
- CharGen: Adding classes by "List Grid" is now case-insensitive.
- Better auto-updating between windows (List, BattleMap etc), as changes happen (create or delete creatures).

Summary
- Apologies to those caught out with stability issues. I've been dogged by 2 bad ones ("bad" meaning you're pretty much stuck), and I think they're fixed now.

- I'm glad there was a general call for expansion of "BattleMap" features. I wasn't sure how much peopl would use it, but the effort is well worth it.
I'm starting to see how very, very quickly encounters can now be created, visualized and played out.

** In particular, I'm very happy that masses of game rule detail is instantly available as you need it, yet it only takes a few mouse-clicks to work your way through it, whilst correctly following the game rules.
This is, to me, the most important thing about designing software to help out at the gaming table.

Regards,
Luke

 

[Nunya]

Re: Re: Bugs n stuph

It's annoying, but not necessarily that disheartening.
Once you got in into the position of the item adding problem, you were stuck, and further playing only serves to reinforce that negative state.
The reason I made the tutorial, and made it specific, was to "keep you away" from things that could get you into trouble. The idea was to play with other features (especially import/export) after trying the combat tutorial. Those that followed the tutorial from the start without playing around, seemed to do really well.
Regards,

Heh, sorry if my post sounded a bit aggressive. I was quite frustrated at that point because I really wanted to try it under a "real" situation last weekend. Being a developer myself I understand what you were trying to do. I've tried to do the same with my testers and, of course, it was kind of nice being on the other side.

Anyway, prebeta 2 let me import the characters and I was able to start adding items to the broken guy. Now I can run a combat. It's just much easier working with characters I know well enough to spot problems in the proggy.

One other thing. Your response ranks at the top as far as I'm concerned. There are few in this industry(software) that respond as quickly as you do. Now I know 2(no, the other one is not me).

 

[CRGreathouse]

I'll try to do some testing and do a nice write-up for you (longer than my last one). As you may and may not know, I'm helping Morrus with data entry - it's extremely time-consuming. Added to working on the ENnies (not to mention the real world ), it's tough to do a good solid test.

 

[Cergorach]

About the tutrial:
Well written, and pretty clear (i'm talking about usability, i suck at grammer, thus i don't know much about that part).
1.) Setup and screen setup is pretty simple and straightforeward. Pretty usefull to give the hotkey ith each action. I want to have a list of all the hotkeys, this would be very usefull!
2.) Quick and dirty creation of two opposing forces, everything goes smoothly. The Grid i a beautifull tool for the quick generation of an encounter, wish i had found it earlier...
3.) Combat:
a.) Skill check: Had some trouble with this one in the first prebeta, now it works pretty well (i see you changed the layout of the Execute Action screen, looks good). I really like the ability to select multiple opponents and use the Don/Next button to quickly go through them all.
b.) Initiative: Works well, just wish i could edit it a bit more quickly with just using the keyboard (i think tht's reallyimportant because a lot of us really hate using a mouse on your upperleg, and touchpads are not really great IMHO).
c.) Attack: Works excellent, but how do you use Concealment and particulary Cover for AC? How do i confirm a critical? Do i have to do that manually? Any ideas to do that automatically?
4.) Battlemat: Works reasonably well for keeping track for where everyone is. But i would like to have a square grid (5'x5', or 10'x10', or larger depending on zoom), it's now 5'x10', very annoying...
5.) XP: Looks good for standard play, but we use FRCS experience rules, any idea if something like that can be implemented?

I still get some errors across the entire app, but i will have to play a bit more with it before i can say that they are persistent errors or just incidents. I'm very happy with the stability increase with this version, keep up the good work!

Things you don't want to hear but did come across:
1.) Can't seem to generate a new adventure in In-Game (it doesn't assign an ID), although this does seem logical, it took me a few minutes to figure out. Maybe it's a good idea to make it impossible to do certain actions in the different modes, maybe even hide the things you can't do in each mode?
2.) HD is acting up in the Creatures Tab, it seems to count levels double (added five levels of a prestige class to a character, Paladin 8), it read 8D10+5D10+5D10. When edited manually, it stays good...
3.) Finally, BAB is editable! Can finally recalculate the correct BAB (for the same reason as stated above (added the the BAB increase from the Purple Dragon Knight twice).
4.) Somehow RPM is convinced that i added the Prp twice, but the class screen only shows it once. Deleted the entry, added it again, now works ok...
5.) Special magical weapons don't seem to have any special abilities, i took a Sunblade and equipped it to the Paladin, it didn't have any plusses or other abilities. Had to make it magical the normal way, but couldn't add any magical abilities for weapons (there weren't any available to choose from).
6.) Magical abilities for magical weapons, are actually special abilities for armor.
7.) Paladins don't have Lvl. 0 spells, i adjusted the spell prograssion table in Class maintainance. I needed to restart RPM before the Update function would work for the Paladin in the Creatures window.

Lot's more to come...

 

[warhookdm]

Pre-Beta BattleManager Tutorial

Luke,
Disregard complaint 4 in my E-mail. I found it. After some thought , and a review of other posts... every time 1 of my PC's rolled in the threat range for a critical, they got the critical! I will monitor this, but I suspect a bug... at low levels, most critical threats should NOT actually score a crit...also, I think it was rolling 3d8 for the longsword crits too...Now, I KNOW that's a minor bug, but it's in there...
Again, so far this thing is MOST impressive!
warhookdm

 

[Luke]

Progress, and EL

Thanks to those participating in the pre-beta release!

Some testers have done an absolutely fantastic job with their reponses - even updating and correcting the supplied tutorial!

I'm getting much more focussed progress happening this way! I'm getting very, very encouraging feedback.

I'm hard at work on PreBeta 3, which I hope to release soon.

In particular, I'm calculating and displaying the Encounter Level (EL) for groups, so you get a much better idea of what's an appropriate encounter for your players! This is using a much more exacting and inclusive formula than you can possibly get from the books!

Regards,

 

[nickT]

Test with Players!!!

Hi Luke,
Sorry it was so long before I got back to you. I did a test of RPM last Friday, and decided to give it a real going over! I had 7 PCs, 3 NPCs on the players side fighting 15 creatures, (Ghouls) added to this I ran it on a slower machine, (500M).
The result was unfortunately unplayable, the screen refresh took several seconds, and I eventually had to pack it in and run manually since I had players sitting about twiddling their thumbs, waiting for the chance to attack the baddies. The situation was made worse by my use of the mouse rather than hotkeys. However it does emphasise the need to streamline the program. My biggest concern with RPM has always been how it performed in front of a group of players, and this experience confirms the importance of just that.
All that sounds very negative, (and lets be honest it is) but I hope that you can improve some of these points in later releases, because I still believe that RPM has the potential to be 'a really useful program' here are some of the other points that I noticed while testing:-

1. Grab Battlemap sometimes causes the program to fall over if the map is not displayed on the screen.

2. Sometimes the weapon used field is not cleared properly, and you end up with a PC supposedly using a bite/claw attack.

3. you need a multiple targets option on the Battlemap ,(acleric was attempting to turn the ghouls)

4.When in combat you need some system to indicate if the currently displayed character has attacked and if so how many times, I found that when I was distracted, I could not determine if the creature on the screen had already attacked.

5. A warning if you are attacking a creature already dead/unconcious.

6. I found that I had to keep reinputing weapons and target information for the players, because I lost it all when they had to make a saving throw against paralysation.

7. You can attack without having a weapon/attack chosen, this will register a hit but do no damage, this is especially irritating with point 6.

Lots more to add but I have to get the kids to school.

Keep up the good work I know you will get this licked!

NickT