How far down the list is the calendar feature?
 

I apologize if this has been answered before but I was unable to find it. Since you have given priority to many other projects how far down the line is the user defined calendar option? Basically when do you all expect to get something out to the public on this?

Bruce

As far as I understand it, the Realm Works team doesn't want to give any specific dates, as that has caused some upset in the past. Calenders are a loudly and frequently requested feature on the forums, but failed to garner enough votes during the survey to make it into the top three. I think they were still in the top 10 though, don't recall the specifics.

If it makes you feel any better, I'm eagerly anticipating calenders myself, so I feel your pain.

I believe calendars were still top 5, which puts them somewhere after player journals (the current holder of "what gets done after content market and web access?")

The timeline for them is measured in months (rob alluded to late Q3 2015 at one point, but that might be generous, depending on the usual slippage expected with intermediate features - I would be happy with that).

Aaron is correct with his reasoning, and I can assure you that LWD really want to give us calendars, but they fell foul of "please all of the people some of the time".

(Please don't take this as a negative comment about LWD's priorities, it's just the way any sensible company will work.)

Bruce, You haven't found it because it has not been answered. Other than soon,..... after.........
Chemlak is correct the priority is targeted (as relayed via LWD) Content Market & Web access.

Not likely.... we have already seen the first quarter of the year now in the rear view mirror, with none of the "target goals" yet being achieved. IT would be something just short of miraculous for it to occur before next year based on previous history. So, all we can do is to wait...... patiently.

This made me chuckle....:D
so, Ditto for me

If we see it in calendar 2015, I will be pleasantly surprised, just based on various past scenarios of 'man, didn't see THAT coming' and other unforeseen situations.

Like other comments, this should not be construed as negative, just acknowledgement that 'things happen'. LWD seems to have mentality of 'do it right' when it comes to reworking things to work correctly for the long haul and I think we all appreciate that, whether or not be realize or acknowledge how it affects us.

I'm not sure how to read the update that just came out in terms of the proximity of the Content Market.

Weogarth
Asst Chief Calendar Bigmouth

What's also important to note - even when it's not the calendars that are coming up next - there are regular update intervals that are improving the product for all of us.

Yes, as someone who really could use calendar functionality, it was tough to read the survey results, but the good news is that they have a *lot* of functionality they are working on. The product development is very active and updates are frequent. RW's money is going to come from people who want to buy prepackaged adventures on the CM and for most of those folks calendars are not going to be a high priority, but they are what will keep RW in business so that us world builders have a great product to manage our realms.

I for one really want the calendar functionality with all the bells and whistles.

But I also want a financial sound product, that will keep LWD in business for years, continuously developing RW. If this means, that the calendars are taking a backseat, I suppose that's how it has to be.

Still hoping for functionality to be implemented soon, though :-)

And while we wait - could we please get an easy way to type dates in the Gregorian calendar we have now? Maybe simply type the date directly? At the moment it takes so long that I never use it - I simply make a new text snippet and write the date there (when I can use the Gregorian calendar).

Yes, very much agree with this. I don't want calendars nearly so bad that they go out of business or have to drop support of the project.

Agreed
Yep, to add to this unless your calendar with in your campaign closely resembles a Gregorian it is essentially worthless

I agree, certainly one feature should not be at the cost of the "life of the program"(whether that be calendars, printing, exporting, etc).
Further, let it be said I don't begrudge LWD in making profit, all companies are in the business to make $ it's how they stay in business. I would even revist this post (http://forums.wolflair.com/showpost....2&postcount=57) as a reminder to all. (thanks MNBlockhead)


I would however counter (just for the sake of devil's advocacy), that the calendars are a feature that already exists just not in a release eye satisfying, polished manner yet. LWD has said as much.
(see here>http://forums.wolflair.com/showpost....2&postcount=27)

It is, simply (and that word alone is subjective), the user-interfacing is not what they hope to deliver, as also reported many times in the past. BUT what elements have not ALREADY gone through evolutions? even the "Header Tab", the now titled " Story Almanac" and MANY other elements have all grown and have been re-invented and honed as items that were released, then didn't go as planed or could be improved.

:confused:But to hide behind a poll (that was at best skewed) and say it was the preference of our market that has led us to not do this currently is akin to polling cab drivers and farmers on what type of vehicle they would prefer to haul things around with.. Obviously those two "demographics" would have differing "McGuffins" they would be hauling and would be motivated differently as to their choice of tool to haul with.

DM's & Players (the demographics in this case) would most certainly weight calendars differently, but as the average table has anywhere between 2 to 3 times the ratio of players to DMs this "voting alone" skews the result. Even LW conceded they were surprised that calendars were lower than Journals. I'm not sure why they were surprised, I wasn't. Just looking at the demographic it was predictable as to what Mcguffins where being hauled around. The confusing part is even Rob's statement above comes to the same determination.. :confused:

Regrettably, it would seem, I have only myself to blame as I have encouraged my players to participate and vote when the poll was available. And since my ratio is at 10 to 1 it certainly diluted an important tool choice, leaving us only to wait, ...............patiently................:(

Lastly, as noted in Rob's second response above, the fundamental flaw is the interpretation that "the [journals] big attraction to GMs". The problem is LWD didn't poll DMs (GMs) they polled customers. While DMs may be a subset of this, they never had an "equal voice" in a tool that, ironically, is entirely dependent on the DMs to use.

@ the community, I am sorry for my shortsightedness in encouraging my players participations, as it skewed the intent of my interpretations of the program (and presumably LWD) to provide a campaign management tool:o

As to the economics, I wholly agree. For RW to be viable it must be self supporting and the market place has always had my support both from a forum perspective but also from a in future monetary one.

IT was just my expectation that the calendar system would be in tandum with those efforts just as the other "improvements" ALREADY here.

Keep the faith. Slowly but surely all will be made happy.

I hear ya,, but its like all those years in the pew, patience was never a virtue I had in abundance.:eek:

Now perseverance.. that's a different matter! :D

Why is every so often my typed posts simply disappear before I am able to post them?

Many times my players have asked me what year it is. The first time this happened I had to look it up in my game session notes (which are rare and usually hard to find). At times they have asked me what season it is. I usually go with whatever season is current.
Just the other day I was asked about seasonal holidays (they are on the calendar) and I gave a generic answer. But I will probably forget by the time it becomes current.
I have been told I am a good GM, but my players don't notice the flaws I see all the time.
Like my horrible lack of keeping world game time.
I can barely wait for the day they finally add the calendar system. There is so much I need to add and tweak once it is in place.

In the meantime, does anyone know of an alternative way of keeping track of the calendar in the world? Is there a web page that has that capability or some way that the players can see the timeline as it happens? Hopefully something I can link to Realm Works the players can click on to access....

FYI, I have a FB page for my game. Are there any kind of timeline add ons for Facebook?

Bruce

Honestly, I think you answered the big question surrounding calendars yourself here. In most games (certainly not all), the players want to know the year/season/month for flavor. They really are NOT exacting about that stuff. And they won't even notice if you mess something up, especially in regards to dates. Why? Because they aren't paying close enough attention. The flavor is for the game session at hand, not usually an issue of continuity or precision for timing of events. Yes, there ARE exceptions - I'm just talking about the frequent case.

So, while the GM agonizes over all sorts of little details, the players don't even notice! This is why calendars are often vastly more important to GMs than the players of those same GMs.

My recommendation is to not sweat the details that the players don't care about. I used to be like you, worrying over all sorts of little minutiae. Then a friend - and excellent GM - told me to re-think how I do things. After making the switch, it's made running games a LOT more fun and a LOT less stressful. I also think I've become a much better GM in the process. And I first GM'd a game 38 years ago, so it was many years before this wisdom was imparted to me and I finally saw the light. :)

Hopefully, this little bit of wisdom is helpful to someone else. I'm just passing it on from someone wiser than I. :)

Don't get me wrong, I don't sweat the small stuff. I have never actually kept track of things like in game time.
But over the years and the many campaigns I have run the campaign cohesion can suffer drastically.
Right now it isn't a serious problem but over time as things happen it can be. You're right that it is primarily for me, the GM. But it also eventually falls into the players hands in one form or another though they may never know it while suffering the effects of it.
I like to run long running campaigns. I want to get into a campaign that will run for years to come. A calendar feature will definitely improve the feel and structure of the campaign. It will also help when running adventures that happen in the past.

I haven't yet found a tool out there that works for me (and my probably bizarre requirements).

My solution for the time being is a spreadsheet, that maps out the entire year in months and days, including the state of the two moons. I simply type the year in question and I get the dates, days and moon phases (I have a leap year).
The moon phases are important for a number of reasons, among others, people see them as omens.

Admittedly, it requires some spreadsheet knowledge, but not that much.

I have a map and I have decided what types of climates the various areas of the map have (temperate/inland, temperate/coast, tropical, etc).

With these two things I can make the seasons and the dates quite consistent. The maps (a large one and a detailed one) are divided into 60 km and 5 km hexes resp. so the players can easily see how far they can travel by road in a day.
And yes, kilometers - none of that imperial confusion here. :-)

The various holy days, celebrations etc. that happens regularly, I simply put into RW, under The Church (so far they are all religious) in Groups. I have made a sub-group called Sacred Days.

Since we haven't run a full year circle yet, I am simply adding things here as we go forward.

Apart from that, I looked at

• Aeon Timeline
• yEd Graph editor

The Aeon Timeline might be useful for timekeeping.

I've spent a lot of time looking for something and so far I'm still using a spreadsheet and waiting for the calendar feature to be developed for RW. I use my spreadsheet to give me the date on 4 different calendars and to track time in the campaign. I include Gregorian so that I can enter sessions in RW and then just paste the dates for the other calendars.

What this isn't good for is past dates. Short of hiring someone to create a custom script that would convert past dates into my custom calendars, I've given up on entering past events into Realm Works. I put these on a spread sheet using the most prominent custom calendar but do not bother converting to other calendar formats at this time.

I have used a spreadsheet before and but didn't keep up with it as much as I needed to. Thanks for all the great ideas so far.

On the Aeon Timeline development page I found this quote from a book called “Writing: A User Manual” by David Hewson:
“Yet writers still agonize over time. They nag people who make writing software to include some kind of timeline feature so they can map out the chronology of their story to the last second. They – you may wish to look away here – plan their tales in sad columns in Excel spreadsheets as if they were lines on a P&L statement (and may the Lord have mercy on their souls).”

So appropriate to this whole calendar thing!

@Madmaxneo:

So true...

If I didn't already have a sig, I would use that. But then again I can shrink the font down and add both...lol.

The Aeon Timeline software is amazing. It does everything I expect Realm Works to be able to do except integration into Realm Works and the related linking. If the devs were having trouble with coding I would push them in that direction.

The only issue I have with the Aeon software is that it costs $40 for either PC or MAC! To expensive for me right now but I really really need some good timeline software.

@Madmaxneo

Just for your info:

The calendar system - according to the info so far - has been largely done and should be able to do some wonderful things. It is not quite where LW wants it to be and apparently especially the user interface is wanting.

So LW has actually come pretty far with the whole calendar thing.
Right now it is taking a backseat in order to get some other important aspects of the RW package done.

But trust me, we are a few, that are eagerly awaiting the calendar system.


(Disclaimer: This is my understanding of the calendar situation)

PS: And if you already knew this, sorry for stating the obvious...

I agree that it's a bit costly. It does allow you to try it free for I think 20 days and it's days you use it not 20 calendar days. During that time you could put your hat in front of the GM screen for donations. ;) :D

Isn't it rather ironic that the recent uproar demanded that the interface be improved. But when RW holds back a feature because the interface is definitely in need of work, they get raked over the coals for not just releasing it and updating the interface down the road? I find it amusing anyways.

No I didn't know any of it. I had not heard anything about how far they are with it. I did see a real good demo of the calendar at last years Gencon and I hope to see more of what the calendar can do this year. The last I knew was that just about everything had taken a back seat for the content market. Which brings me to.....
What recent uproar over the interface?

I tried Aeon but didn't end up buying it because it doesn't support multiple custom calendars. I know, I know, how *practical* are multiple custom calendars? Do I expect my players to be doing calendrical calculations? No.

For me, it is for building flavor text, so I can use the appropriate calendar when putting dates into documents, on monuments, etc.

What I most want is the ability to build a time and be able to toggle it among multiple calendar formats.

I hear you. In the two worlds I would primarily use there are multiple calendars, in Shadow World I believe there are 4 or more.... But I haven't used Shadow World in a real long time. In Mithra (HARP) there are two calendars though so far they always only reference one of them so Aeon is usable. I just wish I could link it to RW and use the links interface. Oh well I will of course wait for the RW calendar.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. :D

It is ever thus!

I mucked around a little with the free trial of Aeon, and while I was fairly impressed with the features-- there are a lot of bells and whistles, and a lot of customizability; I like the fact that you can change eras, month names, days and the like enough that I really hope to see that sort of thing in RW when calendars are finally ready to roll.

But I wasn't quite impressed enough to suddenly consider dropping $40 on a piece of software that I will most likely have to hand-import, piece by piece, into RW to fit with the rest of my world. Or it at least didn't catch me the way, say, Scrivener did, where after a day I was all "Take My Money!!!"

So I'm still sort of bated-breath waiting for some custom calendar goodness from the LW folks, eventually.

As we all are...

So far it seems best to handle it by home-cooked spreadsheets and text documents.