State of D&D Software

[Ranger REG]

Call me a skeptic when it comes to WOTC's ability to show corporate wisdom in such matters.

They must have shown some corporate wisdoms when they granted CMP the license to provide tech support for the deeply flawed e-Tools.

 

[The_Gneech]

Which sucks pretty badly, btw. Codemonkey did their best to clean up the mess that Fluid made of etools and once they got it usable and reliable, WOTC pulls the rug out from under them. If WOTC makes their own character generator, I wont hold out much hope for it considering the fluid debacle. I hope to be proven wrong, but that's how I feel at this point.

That's pretty much my take on the matter, too. E-Tools was a botched job in the first place that was held together by the best efforts of CMP. With the yanking of the license for new products, E-Tools is now pretty much as good as it's going to get, and the long-awaited RPG Toolkit is going to be severely handicapped by not being able to use WotC material.

I hear that the HERO System has very good character generation software...

-The Gneech

 

[Charwoman Gene]

They must have shown some corporate wisdoms when they granted CMP the license to provide tech support for the deeply flawed e-Tools.

You know what the problem was with E-Tools?

Really?

The ugly interface design.

I SAW the WotC's "Master Tools" point man make the decision to listen to posters on this bard whining that the wanted a "regular Windows interface" and they pushed Fluid outside of their comfort zone and killed it.

I wish I had the time and psychosis to do my own software... no one gets the design right for me.

 

[ShadowDenizen]

yeah well WotC has traditionally shafted more than it helped gamers and especially gamers with poor math skills.

As one of the aforementioned, I'll agree with the second part of that sentence.

 

[Henry]

I SAW the WotC's "Master Tools" point man make the decision to listen to posters on this bard whining that the wanted a "regular Windows interface" and they pushed Fluid outside of their comfort zone and killed it.

I was one of those whiners. I still stand by it, because to me the interface was nothing wrong, it was the back end that needed serious work. Heck, I use PCGen extensively, and there's nothing artsy-nonstandard about it. In fact, I dropped the Fluid Chargen demo within six months of the release of 3E, partly because it had no new sourcebooks, but mostly because it was too weirdly built to be of regular use.

Now, I wish I and the rest of the community had pushed them harder to using XML or similar for the database, in hindsight. I was convinced it was the better way, but originally I wanted Access because of familiarity.

These days, with all kinds of additional material, crazy rules add-ons, etc. Customizability is the number one feature that a Chargen program needs to be wildly successful (in addition to few bugs).

 

[Psion]

You know what the problem was with E-Tools?

Really?

The ugly interface design.

Ugly and clunky.

Let's face it, if you use a computer for gaming, this is probably not the only thing you use it for. You need to flip back and forth between windows. The only MasterTools interface was one of those full screen aps with lots of glitz but really not conducive to organizing a set of apps on the desktop.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

I was one of those whiners. I still stand by it, because to me the interface was nothing wrong, it was the back end that needed serious work.

Yeah, see, if fliud knew how to design a more standard interface, it would ahve been a good shift, but basically they were totally out of their league. I supported it too, but the devs were not a good match for the project.

 

[Ghostwind]

The newest version of Heroforge *should* be out in time for Christmas. You won't believe what it will do now.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

The newest version of Heroforge *should* be out in time for Christmas. You won't believe what it will do now.

See OP, does it do druid forms completely including Magic Items not functioning?

And I LOVE Heroforge, just HATE customizing it.

Good thing I'm a lapsed Beta tester and can find out myself.

 

[Nightfall]

They must have shown some corporate wisdoms when they granted CMP the license to provide tech support for the deeply flawed e-Tools.

Nah that was blind stupid luck there Ranger man.