Is CardVault dead?

[Contagion]

I am looking for a reason to renew my license. I don't see anything being done on CV in 2 years which is an eternity in software.

Also, it looks like LWD is trying to dump their own datafile maintenance onto anyone who will take them which is not a good sign to me. I believe their focus is solely on Army Builder.

Would you renew your CV license? If not, what other program would you choose?

[rob]

In a word, "No". :-)

The major reasons that nothing has been done on CV in two years are three-fold....

First, CV received five rather substantial enhancement releases over its first 18 months. This made CV a solid, stable, and capable product that had no glaring need for new functionality.

Second, the major thing we want to overhaul and enhance next within CV is the inventory mechanism. Our plan has been to re-work that at the same time that we add inventory capabilities to Army Builder. The timetable for adding that capability to AB has been pushed back due to other higher priority things that were needed for AB (and that we hadn't planned on). It makes a lot of sense for us to re-work the inventory for CV at the same time we add the functionality to AB, since it allows us to concurrently leverage the same new technology for both products.

Third, we're a TINY company. Our development staff consists of TWO people, one of whom also manages all the day-to-day operations of the company (that's me). So we're definitely spread very thin. Yes, our focus was almost exclusively on AB for about 18 months. The same applied to CV when we developed it, as we put AB completely on hold during that period. Right now, we've had an opportunity come up to work on a new project that is time-sensitive. Consequently, our focus is on that project for the moment. After that, we'll be going back to work on the existing products.

With regards to your claim that we are "trying to dump" the creation of data files, you apparently missed similar requests from us when we first launched CV. With AB, users have been doing virtually all data file creation from the very beginning (1988). With CV, we took on that role initially to help jumpstart the product, but we never had any plans to continue that forever. There are two reasons. The first is simply that the time we spend doing the data files is time we CAN'T spend working on product development. Since there are only two of us (one of which is effectively parttime), the time spent on data files represents a non-trivial amount of time that is lost from product development. Secondly, since we don't play all of the games ourselves, a user who plays the game will typically do a MUCH better job in creation of the data files than we can accomplish. Given those factors, if you were in our position, what approach would YOU take?

In answer to your renewal question, there is no compelling need for you to extend your CV license right now. You can continue to use the existing product and continue to have access to all data file updates. You'll find all the updates listed on our website, and there's a convenient link on the Help menu to go directly to the webpage. You can download updates from the website and then import them into CV via the appropriate option on the Tools menu. Or you can extend the license for about $8 and retain the convenience of the integrated Updates mechanism. Either approach is perfectly reasonable, and the choice is entirely yours.

As far as what other programs are out there, I don't believe there are any. We created CV to fulfill what we viewed as a void in the market. Since CV's release, no one else has released a similar product that I'm aware of. There are a variety of freeware tools that are designed for specific games. None of them have anywhere close the level of functionality provided within CV, but you might find one that suits your needs.

Lastly, there is absolutely no reason to draw rash conclusions based on incomplete information, such as you did within your post. If you have a question, we'll be happy to answer it to the best of our ability. Once you have all the facts, you can then make a reasoned decision about how you want to proceed. But to leap to conclusions without the facts serves no one - and some people can interpret it as rather rude. :-)

I hope this answers your questions adequately. If not, let us know what's still unclear and we'll do our best to get you an answer.

Thanks, Rob


At 04:30 AM 5/22/2006, you wrote:

I am looking for a reason to renew my license. I don't see anything being done on CV in 2 years which is an eternity in software.

Also, it looks like LWD is trying to dump their own datafile maintenance onto anyone who will take them which is not a good sign to me. I believe their focus is solely on Army Builder.

Would you renew your CV license? If not, what other program would you choose?

[Cullyn]

Random quick question in relation to renewing one's license and the ability to download updates. I know that without a current license, you cannot automatically download data file updates. However, those are reasonably easy to obtain and import. My question, however, is in regards to pricing data. I'm just now getting interested in getting a rough vaulation of my inventory of Magic cards. I do remember that MOTL was setup as a partner site at one point for price updates. However, when I try to update my price list now I receive a two-part error. The first that it cannot find any partner site, and the second that my license has expired (which it has). Additionally, I can't seem to find an easy way to manually import a price list into my inventory as I could updates to the data file.

In short, my question is this: Do you need a current license to be able to access partner sites through the program as well, or is there just something off with my installation?

My apologies if this has been answered somewhere before

[Cullyn]

I'm impatient and didn't mind supporting you guys anyway, so I went ahead and renewed my license. Actually... I had to give myself two years just so that it wasn't still expired. Anyway, it does indeed matter. If you do not have a current license you cannot download pricing data from partner websites.

All that aside, and I'll probably continue to renew as long as the product is viable anyway, a simple question. Is there a way to import pricing data like you can data files if your license is expired?

[rob]

I just looked into this. The intent with the pricing data was that it was something only available to licensed users, so it's not available in demo mode. However, access to pricing data should remain available to an expired license, and that's not how it currently works. I'm putting this on the todo list.

-Rob


At 10:49 AM 10/12/2006, you wrote:

I'm impatient and didn't mind supporting you guys anyway, so I went ahead and renewed my license. Actually... I had to give myself two years just so that it wasn't still expired. [img]./modules/mdforum/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img] Anyway, it does indeed matter. If you do not have a current license you cannot download pricing data from partner websites.

All that aside, and I'll probably continue to renew as long as the product is viable anyway, a simple question. Is there a way to import pricing data like you can data files if your license is expired?