STILL No Character Builder Update?

[Cor_Malek]

I really want to subscribe to D&DI for the Character Creator, but dang, I don't want to pay the five bucks for it... especially if you guys are saying there hasn't been an update in a while.. .

I just want the ability to keep track of my character while we play in 4.0e.. but.. dang, 5 bucks? That's a meal in my stomach.

Do not renew it after initial purchase then. Keep track of when the next update comes out and buy the shortest sub possible shortly after it does - remember, that you get the CB with all the stuff that was released, ever. Heck, buy it today - you'll get everything that was already released and updated, and you'll either get another update with essentials, or get a refund for the month (so basically you get +1 month free ). No update in time beats no CB at all.

As to problems with CB - it requires Net Framework or whazzitcalled installed (same stuff GTAIV needs) - what system do you use? Do you have it up to date with everything? There really isn't that much to the CB itself, it's not a complex or demanding program, your computer should do just fine.
I once managed to launch the demo on Wine layer on Ubuntu, but then I was so happy with myself that I tinkered with it more and had to nuke whole Wine from the orbit to launch anything, and wasn't able to reproduce the configuration since. It installed on XP with no problems though.

CB is fun to play with for me to the state where I keep the demo on hard drive just to tinker around with it, create some characters (ah, the elusive 4th level, what would you bring to me...) and use it to participate in some plot threads regarding 4e adventures... And I don't even play the 4e If I did, I'd certainly buy at least one subscription - the retroactive content access makes it more than worth the buck (and note the discrepancy in worth of goods - 10 bucks would buy here: 100g of really good green tea (that's a lot of friggin tea - you brew green (and white?) three times)/7 great beers (or 14 cheap but good ones)/a bottle of Chianti/a bottle of Carlo Rossi + about 8-portions of bolognese to go with it (if cooked, only a glass of wine and one portion in a restaurant)...).

As to meal in the stomach - I feel you, brotha! People often don't realize how small fees can accumulate to monstrous amounts of lost cash. But sometimes we just have to let it go, sometimes the same wine/tea/book costs x2 as regular, but is worth ten times as much. In this case it might be equivalent of one meal (or several in many countries outside of US, actually), but if you start playing with it in Saturday morning, you might find that, suddenly - it's already midnight , and you missed several meals either way. And that's with the demo.

If you have enough green tea or exercise to justify the cholesterol - try out my version* of French toasts (definitely not a breakfast recipe):
[sblock=recipe]- 2 beaten eggs
- add a tablespoon of milk (after you beat the eggs! Otherwise it's hard to mix it together) and mix it. You might want to add salt, or other spices at this point.
- dip bread (preferably full grain, definitely not toast-bread) - it makes for ~3 loafs per egg if the bread is dense, set aside and put frying pan on (no need for oil if it's Teflon)
- Put the loafs on the pan, and cut several slices of tomato, turn the loafs over, put a lid on pan.
- cut enough slices to cover the loafs, turn the loafs over again.
- After a while (~1 min?) turn them over yet again, put the tomato and cheese on topside, and put the lid on top again (otherwise the cheese won't melt). Wait only a while - so that the cheese melts but not too long, or it'll give moisture to the loafs. If you catch the right moment they're going to be crispy [/sblock]
Voila! 2 eggs, 6 loafs of bread, half of tomato and some cheese will immobilize for an hour even me, and I can take a lot of food in. It's very nutritive, so it's not empty calories, and it's a good excuse to get the DDI sub. Don't overdo it though if you're blood type 0 though.

* I actually though it was standard, then I though it was the European version, and finally it seems that the closest variation to this, is the Hungarian Bundáskenyér (fluffy bread), proving yet again that Lengyel, magyar – két jó barát, együtt harcol, s issza borát.

 

[drothgery]

I am being 100% serious...and thankfully, the machine, is not my primary machine.

It's just a laptop I decided to borrow from my sixty-two year old father and my mother in an attempt to have a laptop to run the character creator while we play 4e.. and sadly, it's ... really, really, really, really slow.

So slow, that I may not even be able to use it for my idea.

Really, it's the 256 MB of memory that's the big problem. A 1.7 GHz P4-M isn't all that slow compared to a netbook Atom (though the latter is far, far more power efficient), and as long as you have a few gigs free for swap space, the 30 GB hard drive isn't a huge problem either. But spending $50 on memory for a laptop that old probably isn't practical (surprisingly, crucial.com still sells DDR1 notebook memory, which if my memory's not failing me, should probably be what that laptop uses; if it uses the even-older notebook SDRAM, then it's $150 for 1 GB of RAM, and definitely not worth it).

 

[Festivus]

Somehow I sense a business opportunity here. Rent a virtual Windows 7 box that you can connect to with a remote desktop client. Heck, Wizards could even offer a service like this for a surcharge to the DDI fee, not that I would expect them to. I haven't looked, but I bet you can find such a service... problem is it probably will cost as much as a monthly payment on a new Dell PC.

 

[kmdietri]

Well, I don't know if this was their intention, but as someone who hasn't bought a book since they stopped being sold as pdf's if they delay much longer I may... just may have to go out and buy some dead tree copies.

 

[Minifig]

I was reading the July Errata and it said that the next update for the Errata would be October 5th...

So maybe the next update is October 5th for everything big.. including the Character creator?

 

[shmoo2]

Uh, it's still October. Until the calendar hits "November 1st", they're ok.

and we plan to update the Character Builder in early October.

The latest information we have from WoTC is that the September 21 update was moved back to early October.
You're suggesting they have until November 1st to make it by the end of early October?
I think most of us reasonably expected to get the update by October 15 at the latest, if they were to meet the above estimated deadline.

 

[Mapache]

Somehow I sense a business opportunity here. Rent a virtual Windows 7 box that you can connect to with a remote desktop client. Heck, Wizards could even offer a service like this for a surcharge to the DDI fee, not that I would expect them to. I haven't looked, but I bet you can find such a service... problem is it probably will cost as much as a monthly payment on a new Dell PC.

Amazon already offers such services: how to run #dnd character builder on mac, linux and ipad - Brindy's Blog

 

[Holy Bovine]

I was reading the July Errata and it said that the next update for the Errata would be October 5th...

So maybe the next update is October 5th for everything big.. including the Character creator?

I wouldn't put stock in any quoted date until you see it on the October calender myself. As long as there is an update this month I won't be too disappointed if its late October as opposed to early.

 

[Minifig]

I wouldn't put stock in any quoted date until you see it on the October calender myself. As long as there is an update this month I won't be too disappointed if its late October as opposed to early.

I'm not putting any stock in it what-so-ever, but, I thought it was interesting that the July 2010 Errata said that they'd update again ..October 5th.. 2010.

So.. That would explain why we've seen a massive delay.

That and we're also getting ready for a massive change over to the Essentials system, so they may be converting the entire character creator to get ready for the Essential systems. They may need to over-haul the entire thing so that it works with .. well.. at least what we do know about Essentials.

 

[Lord Xtheth]

No, it would be unprofessional to give us some arbitrary date that they can't be sure that they can uphold. You see this sort of thing happen all the time in the video game industry and I can tell you I would rather wait until they can finish the work properly than some half finished update because they want to keep to a strict release date.

Duke Nukem Forever?

Kidding aside, here's my theory as why its taking so long:

Essentials made it so the character builder requires a <"New format">. WoTC employees were instructed from <Date X> forward to write every entry for the CB update in the <New Format>.

The <New Format> requires re-writing of ALL of the old data to comply with the <New Format>. I'll take a further guess and say they probably need to put new "tags" on powers, feats, etc. to be properly understood under the <New Format>. Any previous information will not work properly with the <New Format> and will cause bugs, crashes, dead computers, etc.

Re-Writing everything from <Date X> on to now in the <Old Format> will only take MORE time and effort (That they can't spare because they're busy updating everything to the <New Format>), so that is out of the question.

There is a whole bunch of information in the <Old Format> that needs to be changed to the <New Format> and it's taking alot longer than WoTC expected. Overtime is out of the question because (just let me remind you this is all guesswork at the moment) someone at Hasbro says "overtime is not in the budget for this progect".

As soon as everything is converted into the <New Format> we will get the release.

Does this stop me from wanting my Dark Sun update NOW? No

There, I said it. If I'm right, give me XPs when the NDA is over!