Are custom calendars possible yet?

[reallemon]

I saw that they were available to beta members, but that seems to be from 7 months ago or so. Are these available yet? If not, is there an ETA on when they will be?

[EightBitz]

Custom calendars are not available right now. If I recall correctly, the way they implemented them proved to be problematic. I think this was about the time when they took a poll to ask everyone to rate upcoming features in order of preference.

I don't know the ETA.

[Merion]

I think they said that there was only a small group of people who really wanted this, so they pushed this back as it is appearently a complex matter. If I remember correctly.

[Vargr]

A small group perhaps - but certainly very vocal!

I believe it is some way down the road, just out of sight - or so I like to imagine it...

[Barwickian]

A small group perhaps - but certainly very vocal!

Some of us are not so vocal about it, but still very keen to see it happen. ;)

We've been waiting patiently because we know and accept the content sharing and content market is the top priority.

[mazzy]

Some of us are not so vocal about it, but still very keen to see it happen. ;)

We've been waiting patiently because we know and accept the content sharing and content market is the top priority.

INDEED!!! oh, did that come out a bit loud, sorry... ;)

But to reiterate what the others have said, there isn't an ETA but I believe it is still very much on their "List o' things to do!"

[EightBitz]

Out of curiosity, those of you who want custom calendars, how do you customize them? Do you keep basically keep the same calendar format, and rename the months or use a different offset?

Or do you restructure the whole thing? With months of different lengths than we use, and different year lengths?

What's the scoop?

[Barwickian]

For me, I want to be able to create:

The Gloranthan Calendar (42-week year broken down into 5 8-week seasons, each of 7 named days, and a 2-week Sacred Time)

The Hârn Calendar (360 days of 12 30-day months)

The Third Imperium Calendar (basically an offset Julian) with corresponding conversion to Gregorian and Zhodani.

The Hijri Calendar (lunar celendar of 354 or 355 days broken down into 12 months), with conversion to Julian and Gregorian.

Give me a few months and I'll want the Greyhawk calendar as well.

At the moment, my main campaign is in Golarion, which uses the Gregorian calendar with different month names. I can cope with it as is.

It seems simpler to allow me to create custom calendars

[AEIOU]

Calendars were one of the the runner-up items when voting on features many years ago. The top priorities were market and journals. Maybe web access was in there? Printing and exporting received an honorable mention because we were indeed a very small but very vocal group.

Market is so close we can almost smell it.

Journals we haven't heard much about.

Calendars remain on the horizon and we try not to talk about them as we usually get worked up when we do.

Printing and exporting coincided with changes to html and how the Market is being implemented. This was released "early". I've noticed fewer pitchforks and torches lately so this was probably a good thing.

[the_redbeard]

I just freaking can't stand the calendar interface the program has now. I finally figured out how it is intended to be used, but I wish I could just type a freaking date. If there is a way to type the date, I haven't been able to figure it out. UGH. Wouldn't being able to just type the date be a simpler interface than the mouse clicking popup, which doesn't make clear which portions are clickable? It's one of the aspects of RW that moves me to profanity.

I simply delete the supplied date snippets and insert my own. It's much better for my blood pressure.

[kbs666]

You really want to know about my calendar system?
There's the solar calendar most people use.
12 30 day months with a 5 day new year holiday.

There are 3 lunar calendars (3 moons) important to spell casters
Not alignment based but oriented towards spontaneous versus memorized casters with the third moon governing hybrid casters. This is sort of based off Dragonlance but only sort of, the moons all have their own orbital period.

The elves, dwarves, dragons and multiple human cultures each have their own calendars which all matter to the back story of the campaign as well.

I think at last count my spreadsheet for my campaigns calendar system had 15 different dating systems and 9 different calendars.

[MaxSupernova]

Printing and exporting coincided with changes to html and how the Market is being implemented. This was released "early". I've noticed fewer pitchforks and torches lately so this was probably a good thing.

As one of the primary "pitchforkers" about printing, no it's not really a good thing.

I've just mostly given up hoping that this program will do what basic things I want from it in any sort of timeframe that will make me care.

I had a tiny glimmer of hope looking at the XML, but then I saw the process involved in outputting a couple of topics and the amount of effort required to make the resulting data at all useable and I threw in the towel.

I keep reading the forums here every once and a while, but I mostly consider this lost time and money.

[kbs666]

As one of the primary "pitchforkers" about printing, no it's not really a good thing.

I've just mostly given up hoping that this program will do what basic things I want from it in any sort of timeframe that will make me care.

I had a tiny glimmer of hope looking at the XML, but then I saw the process involved in outputting a couple of topics and the amount of effort required to make the resulting data at all useable and I threw in the towel.

I keep reading the forums here every once and a while, but I mostly consider this lost time and money.
You wanted printing. You got printing! It was never going to be simple to print due to the way the program works and the coming CM. What's your beef now?

[EightBitz]

As one of the primary "pitchforkers" about printing, no it's not really a good thing.

I've just mostly given up hoping that this program will do what basic things I want from it in any sort of timeframe that will make me care.

I had a tiny glimmer of hope looking at the XML, but then I saw the process involved in outputting a couple of topics and the amount of effort required to make the resulting data at all useable and I threw in the towel.

I keep reading the forums here every once and a while, but I mostly consider this lost time and money.

This issue is kind of a double-edged sword. If they had JUST added a print feature, then we would have JUST had a print feature. It would have been easier to use, but limited to that scope.

With XML, they gave the community to the ability to transform and adapt the data. It's more effort, but there's also a community here with people who are able expend that effort.

There's a script to import from Obsidian Portal, which I'm sure many people will find useful. There's my script that transforms into HTML which not only allows for printing, but for web publishing.

As one of the first (if not THE first) pitchforker about printing, I'm pretty happy right now, but I understand having other frustrations. In what other manner would you like the data to be usable? Maybe I, or someone else, can help.

If you'd rather, feel free to send me a PM or an email.

[Greebo]

Out of curiosity, those of you who want custom calendars, how do you customize them? Do you keep basically keep the same calendar format, and rename the months or use a different offset?

Or do you restructure the whole thing? With months of different lengths than we use, and different year lengths?

What's the scoop?

My fantasy world has a year of 480 days and two moons with different cycles leading to a variety of solar, lunisolar and lunar calendars used in-game, several of them relevant to the back story and to spellcasting traditions.

On top of that, my science fantasy realm has planets with different year lengths (including seasons etc.) that somehow have to relate to the standard caldendar based on the homeworld (the fantasy world above)...


So, reading about the ability to set up custom calendars was my original motivation to invest into RealmWorks. And even though I love the program, I am anxiously awaiting the implementation of custom calendars.


:)

[Bidmaron]

In order to claim fulfillment of the kickstarter promises, it is my understanding calendars will have to get done eventually?

[daplunk]

It's on the to do list.

As you can see from above though... implementing the calendar isn't black and white... there's some people around here that think about dates and moon patterns way more than I thought was normal in a game. ;)

[Chemlak]

I barely have to say anything anymore. People answer these things for me.

I don't know the whole deal, but I believe non-friendly UI plus some hooks into things that could be made more flexible are the barriers to calendars going live (well, and the time to fix those issues).

I know they're coming, and I'm cool with that. I still keep my title for a while longer.

[Grey Mage]

Chemlak,

I am with you. Sit back and be patient and it will get here.

Don't really understand people that constantly go back to things that were done (or not done) and/or said in the past. Doing so really doesn't change anything in a positive manner, so why bother unless they want to come right out and own the fact they are doing so to be negative?

Yes, this software started out with stated goals, several of which did not get met. It happened, get over it and move on. Or find things about the development you can be positive about. There are lots of them there. You just have to look.

Calendars are something that I was excited about from the beginning. Still am. I figure they will get here sooner or later. Then I get to start moving 25+ years of campaign history from binders and .txt files over. Now doesn't that sound like fun??

In parting, let me say this, for all of you people that do want calendars sooner rather than later, remember to highlight that desire when LWD does the next survey (which is after CM deployment IIRC)!

[Vargr]

I make the calendars based on completely different cultural concepts and understanding of the world. And then I base some plots around that.

Imagine elves (the type that lives for ever (or close enough not to make any difference)) - why should they even bother having calendars where the largest lump of time is one measly year?

[kbs666]

Imagine elves (the type that lives for ever (or close enough not to make any difference)) - why should they even bother having calendars where the largest lump of time is one measly year?
Elves would still want to track when to plant crops and do other seasonal activities so having an annual calendar even if they didn't track a year count would make sense.

But they might certainly latch onto a more infrequent cyclic event for an even longer measurement of the passage of time. The precession of the equinoxes and the other Milankovitch cycles could all be noticed and used to define an "epoch."

[Aaron]

So recently I started watching the new Voltron remake on netflix, and your comment about long lived elves having different time measurements made me think of a running gag from that show related to just such a difference. At one point they break out timepieces and compare ticks to seconds. It's a funnier gag than it seems. Those wacky aliens!

[mazzy]

So recently I started watching the new Voltron remake on netflix, and your comment about long lived elves having different time measurements made me think of a running gag from that show related to just such a difference. At one point they break out timepieces and compare ticks to seconds. It's a funnier gag than it seems. Those wacky aliens!

ROFLMAO!! Thank you for sharing and giving us a chuckle :)

[Kliqueman]

My calendar is pretty simple. 300 days in the year, 10 months, 30 days in a month. Full moon is on the 29th, 30th, and 1st of months, with a blood moon during the 8th-9th month .

[the_redbeard]

My calendar is pretty simple. 300 days in the year, 10 months, 30 days in a month. Full moon is on the 29th, 30th, and 1st of months, with a blood moon during the 8th-9th month .

So, curious: how does that impact game play?
Do you have different night lighting on full or near full moons compared to empty or near empty?
Are there any magical differences through the cycle?
Do you have religious events or festivals or fairs scheduled and do they impact game play?

[weogarth]

Haven't been on the forums in over a year due to various reasons but still using RW, still looking forward to calendars, content market and other goodies.

Pertinent to discussion in the primary thread, I tried installing Weather Master to Windows 10 about 6 months back. Ugh, what a mess. (WeatherMaster was the EndAllBeAll of calendar programs with support for other bodies like moons but was for XP and you now need registry hacks to keep it going). Probably easier to install an XP VM in Windows10. Course MS took that default feature out of Windows too

Anyhow, fortunately the calendar isn't a huge part of my game right now save for tracking time. I didn't put much work into dates in most of my content. Just happy to have this great product to work with.

That's it for now. Good to see Chemlak, Vargr and others still.

Gary/weogarth
Deputy Calendar <insert term here>

[Parody]

Pertinent to discussion in the primary thread, I tried installing Weather Master to Windows 10 about 6 months back. Ugh, what a mess. (WeatherMaster was the EndAllBeAll of calendar programs with support for other bodies like moons but was for XP and you now need registry hacks to keep it going). Probably easier to install an XP VM in Windows10. Course MS took that default feature out of Windows too
I use VirtualBox for playing around with older Windows versions, Insider Windows 10, and various Linux flavors. IMO, any actual VM setup is better than Windows 7's XP Mode. (Why? Well, the one time I tried XP Mode and went to install a program in it, the Windows 7 install got so messed up I ended up wiping the machine and starting over. Anecdotes are the best evidence!)

My Uncle still uses WeatherMaster; a while ago he bought a new machine and I had to find the workaround for him. It's too bad the developer isn't around. :(

[weogarth]

I use VirtualBox for playing around with older Windows versions, Insider Windows 10, and various Linux flavors. IMO, any actual VM setup is better than Windows 7's XP Mode. (Why? Well, the one time I tried XP Mode and went to install a program in it, the Windows 7 install got so messed up I ended up wiping the machine and starting over. Anecdotes are the best evidence!)

My Uncle still uses WeatherMaster; a while ago he bought a new machine and I had to find the workaround for him. It's too bad the developer isn't around. :(Thanks for the info. I got the XPMode working just fine actually. It was nice not having to set up the whole OS once the VM was set up. Does Virtual Box have such a setup by chance or do I need to go dig out my media and keys?

[Parody]

It was nice not having to set up the whole OS once the VM was set up. Does Virtual Box have such a setup by chance or do I need to go dig out my media and keys?
VirtualBox (https://www.virtualbox.org/) is a generic x86/x64 virtual machine. You have to install whatever OS yourself or find a virtual hard drive file someone already set up and is distributing legally. (For example, Microsoft distributes VHDs for testing your sites with IE.)

[salcor]

Parody,

How did your uncle.get his registry codes for weather master? If memory serves the company sent the required code to the software.

Salcor

[Parody]

Honestly, I don't remember; it was a long time ago and I came into the picture long after his old computer died. He'd been using WM for a while on the old machine.

[wurzel]

I've been using a custom calender for some years now. It's called "husband" and works perfectly :D

[driZzt]

Its almost August now ... custom calendars in sight? :D

[meek75]

Its almost August now ... custom calendars in sight? :D

Nope.

Still waiting for CM, nothing else has been talked talked about.