• Please note: In an effort to ensure that all of our users feel welcome on our forums, we’ve updated our forum rules. You can review the updated rules here: http://forums.wolflair.com/showthread.php?t=5528.

    If a fellow Community member is not following the forum rules, please report the post by clicking the Report button (the red yield sign on the left) located on every post. This will notify the moderators directly. If you have any questions about these new rules, please contact support@wolflair.com.

    - The Lone Wolf Development Team

Quality of GM Life Improvements

A "sync only this topic" wouldn't work where you have new links appearing in the topic that are related to topics that you aren't yet synced. The links are created locally on your PC before being uploaded to the server, so these would become broken links in the player's copy.

There are (most likely) other dependencies that are affected in a similar manner.

Valid point - and don't we hate those? :p

I do not know how the code behind the program works, but this is what I would like to have. Maybe the wizards at LW can figure something out. :D

As for links - depending on how the database is organized - I might be lucky and the links (in other topics) could be updated simply and easily along with the topic I want to update - without updating all of the links. :confused:

Ah, well - we place our more or less insane visions and wishes in the fora and LW probably swear silently while trying to see if they can be implemented.
 
I'd be swearing out loud. :)

My guess, and only a guess, is that something like this would be a little dangerous to do. It being a database, its important to replicate/synchronize full database objects (tables) and not partial database objects (rows/columns).

Depending on the database design, i would imagine that what we are asking there, would mean this request would be asking for update of just rows or columns, because individual topics are likely rows within a "topic" table.

Now again, a lot of this depends how LW does the database updates/syncs, and maybe they do a whole bunch of update/insert statements when we click the sync button (but i imagine not), in which case such a thing could be possible.

Dont get me wrong, I'd love to have an individual topic sync/publish, so if it is doable, I'd be definitely voting "+1".
 
Rob's mentioned that synchs should only push data that has changed. And usually that dataset is very small in size (maps and graphics of course being the main exceptions). Instant synch is coming in the future.
 
I agree on nearly all counts. I haven't been using RW lately as much and kind of moved back to my huge word documents of doom (and Evernote) because RW still handles a bit like a whale on a high wheel. Everything lags just a little bit too much for my taste, and many things as just a little bit off for my purposes - they work, but they are annoying to use still. For example, I'd appreciate the ability to have less specific dates, i.e. only month and year.

No. 8 on this list is also something I really support. Tags, to me, have proven utterly useless - what I would like, however, is to have a "Topic: Description" type item without having to manually format it.
 
@Farling: Yes. Rob has stated that constant synch is part of the vision. Please bear in mind that they have a lot of other things that are ahead of it still. My crystal ball says that it'll be after (or part of) the GM web client roll-out. I vaguely recall that Rob's brief statement was around the time of the survey results release but it got buried in the noise around calendars.
 
AEIOU may be thinking about this post from Rob back in September where he talks about continuous syncing: Player Edition Look.

Personally: I work offline most of the time and I have yet to use RW as part of a session so I don't care that much. A feature for the future.
 
Last edited:
Wow, was it that long ago? I think you are indeed correct. And given that his comments were before the survey, I'd take the "looking at in 2015" with a grain of salt.
 
Re: Updates - I've previously stated in a request thread for a task tray icon and a resident program that you could fire up and run for this purpose. You could even conceivably close RW and it could download any updates while you're doing something else at a drip-feed.

I am 100% behind you on the live update thing. Revealing a section of map, or a few snippets and then saying "Ok, those with devices may now update them" is rather ordinary as far as revealing goes. And people constantly asking for you to put up a statement, map, picture or other snippet in the Player View so they can re-read it all the time is tedious and jarring to the flow of the game.

As it is, I get the vibe that the basic functionality of the program needs to be ironclad before they do stuff like this, and stuff like calendars and all those doodads will need to be done before they start polishing it up like this. :(

Sometimes I wish they could have another round of Kickstarter to fund all this other widget gizmo stuff, because now I'm in a position to hop on board with some cash.

(RealmWorks Pro edition, anyone?)
 
Sometimes I wish they could have another round of Kickstarter to fund all this other widget gizmo stuff, because now I'm in a position to hop on board with some cash.
Throwing money or people at a project does not mean the project gets done faster. In example if I put 2,700 women in a room I don't get a baby in one day. :eek:

New people to a project actually "slows" a project down why time/resources are spent getting the new programmer up to speed. In very custom built software areas like RW it could take as long as 6 months before that new programmer is not a drain on resources. This is why when the RW team actually lost a programmer they where not replaced. It would have just made things worse.

I see people mention "kickstarter" allot for this stuff and don't think they realize it is not some magical savior of IT projects. :( It works great for building a large sum of money to pay a Manufacturing Plant that already has its dies built and ready to go. Then yes the Manufacturing plant can mass produce the product.
 
I see people mention "kickstarter" allot for this stuff and don't think they realize it is not some magical savior of IT projects. :( It works great for building a large sum of money to pay a Manufacturing Plant that already has its dies built and ready to go. Then yes the Manufacturing plant can mass produce the product.

Well said.
 
Throwing money or people at a project does not mean the project gets done faster. In example if I put 2,700 women in a room I don't get a baby in one day. :eek:

New people to a project actually "slows" a project down why time/resources are spent getting the new programmer up to speed. In very custom built software areas like RW it could take as long as 6 months before that new programmer is not a drain on resources. This is why when the RW team actually lost a programmer they where not replaced. It would have just made things worse.

I see people mention "kickstarter" allot for this stuff and don't think they realize it is not some magical savior of IT projects. :( It works great for building a large sum of money to pay a Manufacturing Plant that already has its dies built and ready to go. Then yes the Manufacturing plant can mass produce the product.

Very true. It really only works to create an expansion of the existing, or run the project up initially. (Crowdsourcing is also likewise only useful if the people know exactly what is going on and the focus points and goals from start to finish so they don't mess up the later goals with errant, yet correct coding.)

I'm more just sad I couldn't contribute first time around, and it was a misplaced attempt to wish it could retroactively change.

-

Back to the topic at hand, I understand the cloud is the data repository, but could a dinky little virtual server be set up on a local area network just for the player view business during a game session?

i.e. the players could sync at the start of the session, and as long as the GM doesn't update any information, the players would just get the revealed snippets.
If the GM updates something with edited or new information, that sync behaviour would terminate and there would be a "Sync Required" dialog box and the players would need to re-sync the realm and reconnect to start receiving these updates again, preventing the need for all this crazy push and poll business - it would be a simple query and sending back a packet if anything's changed.

Thoughts?
 
Back to the topic at hand, I understand the cloud is the data repository, but could a dinky little virtual server be set up on a local area network just for the player view business during a game session?

i.e. the players could sync at the start of the session, and as long as the GM doesn't update any information, the players would just get the revealed snippets.

I suspect that when a Player syncs to the server, he is only given the snippets which are revealed by the GM. (Otherwise unscrupulous players could just hack the local database to see everything.)

If the GM reveals some snippets, then the Player version would have to sync to the main server in order to download the newly revealed snippets. (Whilst snippets no longer revealed would have their information deleted from the Player's local database).
 
I suspect that when a Player syncs to the server, he is only given the snippets which are revealed by the GM. (Otherwise unscrupulous players could just hack the local database to see everything.)

If the GM reveals some snippets, then the Player version would have to sync to the main server in order to download the newly revealed snippets. (Whilst snippets no longer revealed would have their information deleted from the Player's local database).

Yes, I suspect a similar behaviour, also video files doing this would be a few megabytes at a time, which is inefficient use of bandwidth server-side.

But I guess unless a LWD dev comes in and can knock this one out of the park, we would never know (aside from someone messing with upload/downloads and testing it all - still doesn't actually answer the original question though.)
 
Back
Top