rob
February 14th, 2008, 10:24 PM
Greetings,
I figured it was high time for us to provide a status update on where
things sit with respect to Hero Lab. This might be a little long,
because I want to cover everything, so grab a soda and buckle up....
First of all, a quick explanation for the lack of recent feedback on
the forums. Colen has been overseas for the past three weeks, so his
internet access has been limited. He's also spent as much of his
available time as possible on development, so that's why he's been
offline. For my part, I needed to sequester myself and just get a lot
of stuff accomplished within the Hero Lab Engine. By eliminating just
about all of the day-to-day distractions and focusing solely on
development, I've been highly productive and managed to get all sorts
of critical coding done over the past few weeks. So please forgive
any recent silence on our part. Hopefully, you'll all agree it was
worth it once we get the next release of HL out the door.
Speaking of the next release, we're working hard on the campaign
functionality that we promised. We got started on it much later than
originally planned due to delays on other fronts (e.g. the World of
Darkness data files), but we've made major progress over the past few
months. Our plan has always been to release the overall campaign
functionality in phases. However, as we got deeper into it, we
realized that all the pieces were tightly interwoven, so we've needed
to develop large chunks of all the different pieces along the way. As
a result, we're also looking at *possibly* including more pieces in
the initial release than originally planned. Final decisions will be
made next week, after Colen returns. But we should have the initial
phase of campaign functionality out within the new few weeks. We
should also have some preview material out before the end of the
month - if not the full release.
I'm sure many of you are wondering what's up with the various,
individual game systems. Here's a quick recap.
With regards to the D20 System (i.e. the 3.5 version), the
announcement of 4th Edition has not tempered our efforts, and we're
still fully committed to supporting 3.5. This next release will
include extensive support for one of the few remaining elements of
the SRD that we don't have in place yet. Specifically, we've added
support for animal companions, familiars, paladin mounts, hirelings,
and the like. There is also all the campaign functionality that will
be tailored for d20.
The status of D&D 4th Edition remains a complete unknown at this
point in time. At the start of January, Wizards announced a plan
for the 4th Edition OGL and the opportunity to be an early adopter
for a $5000 buy-in. We were keenly interested; however, the license isn't available for us to view yet. Our best guess is that we'll actually
have something we can *start* to assess in the middle of March. We'll
need to consult with our legal counsel before officially committing
to any course of action vis-a-vis 4thEd, which brings us to the end
of March at the *earliest* for announcing our plans. Yes, I realize
this completely sucks, but it's the reality of the situation dealt by
Wizards. As soon as we have something concrete in our hands, we'll be
focusing on it intently.
Please note that the above situation with 4thEd means the question of
whether Hero Lab will support 4thEd as a separate game system or as
part of the 3.5 game system remains completely unanswerable. We have
every intention of supporting 4thEd, but we don't know what our
options will be yet, let alone how we'll pursue it.
The status of the World of Darkness data files can be summed up
pretty simply. All of the campaign functionality will be tailored for
WoD in the next HL release. We'll also be adding a few things to the
VtR/WoD files at that time. Beyond that, the next major release for
WoD will be the Changeling core material. This was decided based on
input from players and from White Wolf. No exact date has been slated
for CtL yet, as we first need to get everything wrapped up for the
initial campaign release.
For Mutants & Masterminds, all of the hard stuff is done. For
example, you can create powers with alternate powers, and those
alternate powers can be similarly customized - all with just a few
mouse clicks. In fact, all the stuff that causes an M&M player to
curse during character creation is clean and easy in HL. However,
we're still getting all of the other stuff into place. We also did a
complete make-over of the interface for M&M, and that took much
longer than planned - in fact, it's not quite completed. So I don't
have a concrete date yet for even a public preview. I realize we're
months behind on what we had planned for the M&M files, but we're
spread incredibly thing on personnel resources, and there are only a
fixed number of hours in each day. With a little luck, M&M ought to
see the light of day in March, shortly after the initial campaign
release goes out. M&M will also have tailored campaign support when
it releases.
Runequest support has met with a serious setback. :-( We had a person
in place to spearhead development of the RQ data files, and a bunch
of the initial work has been done. But that person had personal
considerations arise that forced him to opt out of the effort, so no
further progress has been made on RQ in the past couple of months.
We're pursuing a new solution for RQ, but there's nothing definitive
to report at this time.
The Cortex System (Serenity & BSG) was officially licensed near the
end of 2007. We expect to get development underway late next month
and are targeting release for late summer. We'll be meeting with the
MWP folks in April to map out all the details, so we should be able
to announce concrete details about how things will work at that time.
Last, but not least, is the Authoring Kit. Many of you have been
asking us when we'll release all the tools and documentation for
developing data files from scratch for whatever game system you want.
Our current plan is to get the Kit into *Beta* testing in late April.
For those of you who are eager and don't mind limited documentation,
we'll make the Kit available at around that time. Based on the
feedback we receive, we'll figure out when the Kit will be officially released.
I think that covers everything. I'm now going to go through all of
the forum posts and answer what questions I can. Colen will be
answering the more technical posts about the d20 files when he gets
back to the office next week.
May the dice be with you,
Rob
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rob Bowes (rob@wolflair.com) (408) 927-9880
Lone Wolf Development www.wolflair.com
I figured it was high time for us to provide a status update on where
things sit with respect to Hero Lab. This might be a little long,
because I want to cover everything, so grab a soda and buckle up....
First of all, a quick explanation for the lack of recent feedback on
the forums. Colen has been overseas for the past three weeks, so his
internet access has been limited. He's also spent as much of his
available time as possible on development, so that's why he's been
offline. For my part, I needed to sequester myself and just get a lot
of stuff accomplished within the Hero Lab Engine. By eliminating just
about all of the day-to-day distractions and focusing solely on
development, I've been highly productive and managed to get all sorts
of critical coding done over the past few weeks. So please forgive
any recent silence on our part. Hopefully, you'll all agree it was
worth it once we get the next release of HL out the door.
Speaking of the next release, we're working hard on the campaign
functionality that we promised. We got started on it much later than
originally planned due to delays on other fronts (e.g. the World of
Darkness data files), but we've made major progress over the past few
months. Our plan has always been to release the overall campaign
functionality in phases. However, as we got deeper into it, we
realized that all the pieces were tightly interwoven, so we've needed
to develop large chunks of all the different pieces along the way. As
a result, we're also looking at *possibly* including more pieces in
the initial release than originally planned. Final decisions will be
made next week, after Colen returns. But we should have the initial
phase of campaign functionality out within the new few weeks. We
should also have some preview material out before the end of the
month - if not the full release.
I'm sure many of you are wondering what's up with the various,
individual game systems. Here's a quick recap.
With regards to the D20 System (i.e. the 3.5 version), the
announcement of 4th Edition has not tempered our efforts, and we're
still fully committed to supporting 3.5. This next release will
include extensive support for one of the few remaining elements of
the SRD that we don't have in place yet. Specifically, we've added
support for animal companions, familiars, paladin mounts, hirelings,
and the like. There is also all the campaign functionality that will
be tailored for d20.
The status of D&D 4th Edition remains a complete unknown at this
point in time. At the start of January, Wizards announced a plan
for the 4th Edition OGL and the opportunity to be an early adopter
for a $5000 buy-in. We were keenly interested; however, the license isn't available for us to view yet. Our best guess is that we'll actually
have something we can *start* to assess in the middle of March. We'll
need to consult with our legal counsel before officially committing
to any course of action vis-a-vis 4thEd, which brings us to the end
of March at the *earliest* for announcing our plans. Yes, I realize
this completely sucks, but it's the reality of the situation dealt by
Wizards. As soon as we have something concrete in our hands, we'll be
focusing on it intently.
Please note that the above situation with 4thEd means the question of
whether Hero Lab will support 4thEd as a separate game system or as
part of the 3.5 game system remains completely unanswerable. We have
every intention of supporting 4thEd, but we don't know what our
options will be yet, let alone how we'll pursue it.
The status of the World of Darkness data files can be summed up
pretty simply. All of the campaign functionality will be tailored for
WoD in the next HL release. We'll also be adding a few things to the
VtR/WoD files at that time. Beyond that, the next major release for
WoD will be the Changeling core material. This was decided based on
input from players and from White Wolf. No exact date has been slated
for CtL yet, as we first need to get everything wrapped up for the
initial campaign release.
For Mutants & Masterminds, all of the hard stuff is done. For
example, you can create powers with alternate powers, and those
alternate powers can be similarly customized - all with just a few
mouse clicks. In fact, all the stuff that causes an M&M player to
curse during character creation is clean and easy in HL. However,
we're still getting all of the other stuff into place. We also did a
complete make-over of the interface for M&M, and that took much
longer than planned - in fact, it's not quite completed. So I don't
have a concrete date yet for even a public preview. I realize we're
months behind on what we had planned for the M&M files, but we're
spread incredibly thing on personnel resources, and there are only a
fixed number of hours in each day. With a little luck, M&M ought to
see the light of day in March, shortly after the initial campaign
release goes out. M&M will also have tailored campaign support when
it releases.
Runequest support has met with a serious setback. :-( We had a person
in place to spearhead development of the RQ data files, and a bunch
of the initial work has been done. But that person had personal
considerations arise that forced him to opt out of the effort, so no
further progress has been made on RQ in the past couple of months.
We're pursuing a new solution for RQ, but there's nothing definitive
to report at this time.
The Cortex System (Serenity & BSG) was officially licensed near the
end of 2007. We expect to get development underway late next month
and are targeting release for late summer. We'll be meeting with the
MWP folks in April to map out all the details, so we should be able
to announce concrete details about how things will work at that time.
Last, but not least, is the Authoring Kit. Many of you have been
asking us when we'll release all the tools and documentation for
developing data files from scratch for whatever game system you want.
Our current plan is to get the Kit into *Beta* testing in late April.
For those of you who are eager and don't mind limited documentation,
we'll make the Kit available at around that time. Based on the
feedback we receive, we'll figure out when the Kit will be officially released.
I think that covers everything. I'm now going to go through all of
the forum posts and answer what questions I can. Colen will be
answering the more technical posts about the d20 files when he gets
back to the office next week.
May the dice be with you,
Rob
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rob Bowes (rob@wolflair.com) (408) 927-9880
Lone Wolf Development www.wolflair.com