Not doing much with it
 

M&M Beta is not working for me (us really- speaking for our group on that much).

Being unable to save my work has frustrated me and because of that I have stopped working on it other then a few attempts.

Reasoning- I work on a character for thirty minutes and have to leave then come back, redo all that I did or leave the program open, or have to close it because the computer needs to go off. It kinda sucks.

I would be more willing to work on this thing if I could save my work and come back to it. Ya, I know, its driven by greed, you guys need to make as much profit as possible to make it in this world, but I need a little help on this, cause right now- not gonna buy it (to many bad memories; to much frustration).

So I purpose a time sensitive save able. Give me four months free on the program then when that time is up tell me and I either have to uninstall or pay someone for it. I would love to work on this, I really would, but as I said (or implied) its to much of a pain to have to redo and rework my last effort to get any ideas out and down.

Kinda annoyed, and very understanding, hope we can find some middle ground here.

Hi there,

All of your comments can be explained by one word in the first sentence of your post - "Beta". :)

Beta testing is intended to give selected users a look at incomplete versions of our products, without us having to polish everything enough for general release. This lets us get private feedback from our testers to make things better, without investing lots of wasted time in potentially dead-end ideas.

For example, this latest beta generated a bunch of very useful feedback about what needs the most attention from us. Based on feedback from beta testers, some areas clearly need more work than we thought - when we officially release the files, they'll be a lot more polished because of the feedback we received.

Regarding your comments on the "4 months free" idea - having a month's free trial (4 months is far too long - the industry standard is 2 weeks to 1 month for free trials) is an idea we've explored in the past. Unfortunately, there's no way we could do it without making piracy of Hero Lab much easier. Given that our older products had an extremely high piracy rate (multiple pirated copies in use for every one we actually sold), this isn't something we're anxious to return to.

Finally - as of more than a week ago, official beta testers can now save their M&M portfolios. However, you don't seem to be on the beta test list (I assume someone in your gaming group gave you the beta), so you won't be able to save - our policy is that it's fine to show beta stuff to your friends, but not to actually give them the software. It's worth noting that this would have got someone kicked out of the beta program by many companies, so please be more circumspect about posting this sort of stuff in future.

(For our other readers - yes, the M&M data files are being beta tested right now, but they still need a lot of work before we're ready to go public with them. Stay tuned for the public preview that we'll have available soon!)

My one question is how do you become a beta tester?

I think I know some one who would love to do some beta testing over winter break.

Wink, Wink, Nudge, Nudge

:)

I would also be very willing to become a tester-- I am certain it would get a lot of testing over the next 4 weeks!

You know, I could have SWORN I made a post about beta and stuff, well before Colen's post...and had seen it come up too. Was it removed? Or did it disappear on its own? Or am I hallucinating? (well, the last ou can't answer, I would think...)

You aren't hallucinating, I remember that post. It went something like "Beta testing!?Wha, where?"

Well, thank the GODS that I'm not going nuts, at least! Yes, that is exactly what I wrote. Wanting to know more about any possible beta-testing of M&M.

Although, now I more want to know where my post went?!

I know I'm going to buy it, so any chance we can Pre-order and then join the beta?

Not doing much with it
 

DannyBoy2k wrote:
>
>
> Well, thank the GODS that I'm not going nuts, at least! Yes, that is
> exactly what I wrote. Wanting to know more about any possible
> beta-testing of M&M.
>
> Although, now I more want to know where my post went?!


Sorry about that - I removed it when I was flailing around deciding what
to do with the thread. (The thread also disappeared for a while, then
came back.) Rest assured, your post is now in a better place. ;)

For everyone looking to join the beta - unfortunately this is a closed
beta right now. We're still missing important features like "Print
character sheets" and "Calculate proper bonuses to stats", thus it
wouldn't be very useful to you. :(

The public preview will be out soon, so you can all play around with it
when it comes out. We don't have any plans to let more people into the
beta right now, due to lack of features.


--
Colen McAlister, colen@wolflair.com
Chief Engineer, Lone Wolf Development

Ah. Well, I had no problem with lack of features during the d20 beta, but that all is for you to decide. I would enjoy doing it, though. :) Anyways, I'm looking forward to getting it when it DOES arrive.