[rob]

Instead individually replying to many different posts that in some cases are related, I'm going to consolidate things and answer a variety of questions in one post...

Originally Posted by Duggan

And, since you were discussing personnel changes, is Colen entirely out of the game, replaced by DaveM? That's the impression I'd gotten, but I didn't want to jump to conclusions.

Over the past year...

On the Dev side, Colen has departed, as has Ian. On the CS side, DaveN is also no longer here.

On the Dev side, we have added DaveM, RyanD, Josh, and Gabe. On the CS side, we have added Rone and RyanF.

That's a healthy bit of growth for a tiny company like Lone Wolf, if you ask me.

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

I would have been extremely happy if Hero Lab could work as the 'server' for a web based UI. This is not something I feel the need to pay to have 'hosted' elsewhere, if I could do it myself. Long ago there was discussion of an API to have other programs access the Hero Lab back-end - this would have been the quickest path to an Android client. Throwing out everything and starting from scratch, while completely changing the business model - just makes no sense.

To confirm what a few others have already opined, the vast majority of our users either lack the necessary technical skills or would simply prefer to pay a couple bucks a month to have someone else do all the work and provide a solution that allows them to "just play" and use whatever device they want. That's basically the same reason why the vast majority of our users buy the data packages from us for games like Pathfinder and Shadowrun. They could write those files themselves or they can spend a nominal amount of money to have someone else do all the work and keep them maintained.

From a business standpoint, our goal is to make our products as desirable as possible to as broad a spectrum of potential users as possible. We believe the path we're chosen is the best way to achieve that.

Originally Posted by EightBitz

It absolutely will be easier [to go from HLC to HLO than the reverse]. HLO is being built with all the features and functionality of HLC, plus more. Moving content from HLO to HLC will require either building that extra functionality into HLC or downgrading the HLC dataset to make the square peg fit in the round hole.

Going from HLC to HLO will be like moving all your stuff into a larger house/apartment. You won't have to get rid of any of your stuff, because it'll all still fit.

Going from HLO to HLC will be like moving all your stuff from a larger house/apartment into a smaller one. You'll have to get rid of things that won't fit, and maybe buy a smaller bed.

Thank you for this summary! It's a PERFECT analogy!

Originally Posted by thaX

Is it too much to ask for a viewer for offline use? Even one that just shows the basic character would be enough. This would, of course, involve actually being able to save the character on one's own computer and using the save file to view that character.

A solution like this is on our "short list". However, it won't be a separate viewer. It will instead be the ability to "take a snapshot" of your character within the HLO product, which will pull all the necessary bits down from the server. That snapshot will then be able to be navigated and viewed without an internet connection. I believe I described this in a bit more detail in an earlier post in this thread.

Originally Posted by Mergon

I find HLO very good for designing characters for creating PF2 characters. But I play and DM a lot of my games from my laptop with no internet connectivity. This makes it unuseful in those situations.
I also hope they add a Save to .pdf feature. I tebd to use Firefox, and printing character sheets using 2 browsers is a pain.

As a fellow Firefox user, I feel your pain. Personally, I wish Firefox would fix the glaring problems in their printing support that have been there for quite a long time, but it seems their priorities are focused on other things.

To my knowledge, the gotcha with this request is that "saving" to a PDF is essentially the same as "printing" to a PDF. Generating a PDF typically means creating something "for print" that is simply saved as a PDF instead of going to a physical printer.

The only "solution" that I can see here - and I use that term loosely - would be to generate a humongous page that contains the entire contents of the character and all descriptions. Then it would be possible for users to have the browser save the complete page as HTML, which would allow it to be subsequently loaded and viewed in a static manner. That seems incredibly ugly to me, which is why we are planning to support the "snapshot" approach described above to enable offline viewing.

Originally Posted by darkops

It is now 2018-SEP-04 and we still don't have any communication from the team as to when the late data package will be available. In the past you guys were prompt with delivery of these products, not usually 3+ months late.

We all know that your staff are being utilized on HLO. But actions speak louder than words and right now your actions are pointing towards a huge absence of support for HLC. The optics of your decisions do not align with the statements of intention from staff and I think you guys need to find away to lessen the gap.

For the months of June, July, and partially August, the vast majority of our resources were focused on getting the PF2 Playtest into place for HLO in time for GenCon. We only had about two months to get everything into place for the PF2 Playtest. For the past few weeks now, that focus has been shifting back so we can get caught up on all the PF1, Shadowrun, and other stuff that was put on hold out of necessity to have something decent at GenCon.

There is an HLC desktop update due out very soon that includes some improvements/refinements that I think will be well-received. There is also an HLC iPad update due out not long after that with its own set of improvements/refinements. On the data file side, we've been putting stuff into place for multiple books that will start being released in the weeks ahead.

So you'll start seeing concrete evidence in the very near future that we're now actively working to get caught up on things that languished while we focused on getting the PF2 Playtest into place for GenCon.

Thanks!!!