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Gritte
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Old August 19th, 2015, 07:09 AM
I've been a loyal Hero Lab for Pathfinder user. I can't imagine playing the game without it. I've purchased every book, companion, and campaign data file. I have hundreds of dollars invested in Hero Lab. When deciding on feats, spells, etc. it's so much easier to have everything in front of you than flipping through tons of books. Oh, and I make my book purchases based on the characters I build in Hero Lab.

A few weeks ago I decided I wanted to start paying ShadowRun 5e. One of the reasons I decided on ShadowRun versus other games was I knew Hero Lab supported it. I started buying the 5e books, purchasing the 5e Hero Lab modules, and building my first characters. However, I was rather displeased to find that some of the recent handbooks were not available yet in Hero Lab.

I understand your company's economics and the fact that Pathfinder brings in more revenue than ShadowRun. However, if you can't support all products at the same pace and timing regarding product releases then I struggle with that. I'd like to remain a loyal Hero Lab user, but I expect the same great customer service across all platforms. Please!
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Pollution
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Old August 24th, 2015, 04:47 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gritte View Post
I've been a loyal Hero Lab for Pathfinder user. I can't imagine playing the game without it. I've purchased every book, companion, and campaign data file. I have hundreds of dollars invested in Hero Lab. When deciding on feats, spells, etc. it's so much easier to have everything in front of you than flipping through tons of books. Oh, and I make my book purchases based on the characters I build in Hero Lab.

A few weeks ago I decided I wanted to start paying ShadowRun 5e. One of the reasons I decided on ShadowRun versus other games was I knew Hero Lab supported it. I started buying the 5e books, purchasing the 5e Hero Lab modules, and building my first characters. However, I was rather displeased to find that some of the recent handbooks were not available yet in Hero Lab.

I understand your company's economics and the fact that Pathfinder brings in more revenue than ShadowRun. However, if you can't support all products at the same pace and timing regarding product releases then I struggle with that. I'd like to remain a loyal Hero Lab user, but I expect the same great customer service across all platforms. Please!
It's more like Paizo sends LW the text of their new books early, so that LW can input the data into HL.

Catalyst doesn't. As in, when you can get the book, so can Rob et all.

Now, let's pretend we're putting in a quality. Nothing difficult, just a simple quality like say....Otaku to Technomancer. It's easy enough. A little text, a quick modification to drain. Takes all of....5 minutes. Okay. So there's 20 new qualities in the book that just came out. There's 100 minutes. Assuming they're all simple qualities with only one level, rather than multiple, only hit one or two stats, doesn't require changing a base calculation (like say Type O system from Augmentation).

So, 100 minutes of work. No big deal, right? under 2 hours work, yeah?

Okay, so there's your qualities. Next, we have new gear. Well, that's a BIT more difficult to input, just because each piece is slightly different and may affect multiple dice pools, and you don't want to miss any. We'll say it takes about 10 minutes at the longest to put into the software. There's about 50 new pieces of gear to add in, so you're looking at 500 minutes, bringing us to 600 minutes of work total, or 6 hours.

Not bad, right? That's like a day's work. No big deal.

Spells? Echoes? Programs? Each of these take anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes to put in. We'll be nice and say in the end, you're only inputting 100 new things into the database from the book. Let's take an average of 8 minutes per thing, for 800 minutes. Bringing our new total to 1400 minutes, or 23.33 hours work, we'll round it to 24 (something always breaks) and say that's only 3 days work. WTF? why isn't the book package out yet???

Well.....let's talk about other systems in the book. What if there's an optional rule? What if there's a section that contradicts another rule in the core book, or another supplement? What then? THEN you get into the ugly part about this software. Crap, okay, let's do it.

Let's talk about alternate character generation systems, shall we? Do you know how to put that into HL? I don't. In fact, I can't. Nobody but LW can. It's hard coded into the program and it breaks all manner of things to try to integrate it. Are you a programmer? Can you code? Have you ever built a SR character generator in any kind of format? I have. I did it in Excel for 4th edition. It was a MASSIVE undertaking to add in alternate generation systems. Each one took the same time to put into the code as building it in the first place. It's a pain in the ass. I'll be nice, and say that the LW team (being gods at programming) can recreate the wheel in multiple systems in just under 2 weeks, bug free. It takes a LONG time. So we're now at 2 1/2 weeks of work for one person to get everything in.

Okay, so that's still not too bad right? Wrong. What about errata? I mean, SR5 has to have errata for its errata at this point, it's so badly written and proofed. So, what's a dev to do but make a call to Catalyst asking for official clarification. Well, in a perfect world, they'd pick up the phone and get an answer in 10 minutes.

This is not a perfect world. This world sucks. Let's call it 2 weeks to get that answer. So, now we're at a month.

A MONTH. Of not doing ANYTHING but SR5 for Hero Labs. No RW developing, no Paizo support, no new system for HL being put in. Nothing.

EACH book takes a MONTH to get from "ah, rules!" to "here, give us your money." And I'm being generous with how fast these guys can work. In a real world situation, it's more like 6-8 weeks PER BOOK.

Now, I know what you're thinking, "but Pathfinder products are available, like, the day they come out, and there's a TON more rules and stuff in there than in SR5..." Yeah, we went over that. LW gets advanced copies so they can get their MONTH of work done before the book comes out. Catalyst doesn't do that. Catalyst makes LW basically wait for the street date before getting them the rules, and I wouldn't be shocked to hear that the rules they get are the same PDF's that we get. Meaning, instead of being able to look over a file and grab each part separately, they have to go through all the flavor text to find each nugget of crunch from each book. For fuck's sake, in SR5 there are multiple instances of the cost for something being 50 pages later/earlier than the actual item description. It's a pain in the dick to work with SR. Hell, it's hard to play. Oh, and all that searching for crunch for Hero Labs is like another 3 or 4 hours work on top of the MONTH it takes to get done with a single book.

NOW, that being said, LW does a great job of passing around the work load so that Guy A is doing Cyber, and Guy B is doing PACKS and Guy C is doing Qualities, etc.. So the work is actually only taking 3-4 weeks to do. But it still has to be finished and checked for accuracy before it's released, so there's your extra time on top of that.

FINALLY (yes, I know, wall of text here), don't forget that LW JUST got back from GenCon. That is a TON of frickin' work to go to GenCon for your company. It takes months of planning and preparation, during which, you ain't coding HL, you're booking flights and hotels. You're packing, you're planning, you're setting up and practicing demos so that people know how your software works in the first place.

Seriously bro, cut them some slack.

tldr; We're behind on books because it takes a fuckload of time for each book to be programmed into HL + Catalyst doesn't give enough if any lead up time for LW to work out the plug-ins + GenCon + Coding is hard.
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BrotherPrætus
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Old August 25th, 2015, 12:20 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pollution View Post

tldr; We're behind on books because it takes a fuckload of time for each book to be programmed into HL + Catalyst doesn't give enough if any lead up time for LW to work out the plug-ins + GenCon + Coding is hard.
As the meme says...

♫ 99 little bugs in the code. 99 little bugs. Take one out. Patch it around. 117 little bugs in the code. ♫

Programming is not an easy thing, especially if you have 1 little typo hidden somewhere forking things up. As for the quality and consistency of the books, I sometimes wonder if they might not be better if FASA had the license back.
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Mathias
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Old August 26th, 2015, 04:09 PM
All the pieces of Data Trails for the release are in place, but there's still a number of things I still need to go back and improve based on some conversations I've had with Colen about how to handle certain things, and a bug list from our internal testing that I need to deal with. So before the next release, I'll need to finish the Data Trails to-do list, make some more progress towards my to-do list on the general bug tracker, do some more testing of the release, and the monthly Pathfinder release is coming soon. I'm not going to finish all that this week. It's more likely to be mid-late next week. So that means that the Data Trails release will not happen this month, but will be in early September.

I'm about a week behind where I had thought I'd be back when we gave the estimates earlier this month - The details of how hosts, IC & AIs work turned out to be more work to implement than I thought they'd be - they're further from the rules for agents and from the 4th edition rules for AIs than I thought on first read, which meant less re-used mechanics. So unless Chrome Flesh & the remainder of Run Faster is quicker than estimated, push the estimates for those back a week or so, too.
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Pollution
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Old August 28th, 2015, 03:58 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by BrotherPrætus View Post
I sometimes wonder if they might not be better if FASA had the license back.
I don't.....

I know.

Sorry, I love SR, but it feels like all of 5th is just schlock. Rushed, not edited properly, conflicting, half-assed schlock.

There's some cool stuff, but then there's some real head scratchers. Like Data Trails.... So.... You put out a book for the Matrix....but ignored Technomancers except for 2 qualities and 3 pages out of 185...

"Oh, but there's a whole chapter about stuff Technomancers can do with Deep Runs, and the Foundation..."

Yeah, about 90% of which was flavor text, and it turns out that ANYONE can do the same....

Seriously, Catalyst has REALLY screwed the pooch with SR this edition. 4th was SOOOO good, and fixed a ton of issues with 3rd, while expanding the world and adding some really cool stuff. But 5th just blows by comparison.
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Pollution
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Old August 28th, 2015, 04:02 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mathias View Post
tldr: Soon.....
Thanks for the update Mathias! I can imagine AI being a pain in the ass.

If it makes you feel better, 99% of Chrome Flesh is simple stuff.

Qualities should be fairly simple (save a few ugly ones).
Augmentation is pretty easy, just boosts certain stats/rolls.
Wireless Skillsofts are simple as all get-out. Just add a lifestyle option if the player has the chrome for it (either skillwires or chipjack I believe).

Everything in that book is pretty simple crunch. I think there's a few roadblocks for coding purposes, but that's because I'm not a certified HL Backend God like you are. :-D

The biggest pain in the butt I see in Chrome Flesh is the CFD malarky. There's some optional rules and whatnot that'll bite you, but again, 60% of that book is flavor text with no rules, 35% is STUFF/CRUNCH, and the rest is optional rules IIRC.

Again, thanks for the update, you're a gentleman and a scholar.

Last edited by Pollution; August 28th, 2015 at 04:04 AM.
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Vytek
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Old September 1st, 2015, 11:55 AM
I can't wait for the updates to Run Faster, and Chrome Flesh. Data Trails didn't add that much to the mix.

I'm a huge fan of 5E. I wish they would spend more time playtesting, and hire a copy editor for their books. The missing information, and typos oh my.
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Shaman964
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Old September 1st, 2015, 11:57 PM
Maybe the reason there was not too much technomancer material in Data Trails is because Technomancers are getting their own source book and associated e-book. As announced on CGL's upcoming general release list for SR5.

I look forward to being able to get the next set of expansions when they are available as HL helps cut down on my prep time.
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Leonim13
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Old September 2nd, 2015, 12:00 AM
I also wish to see some updates and improvements on SR4, like, as I said on FB, adjusting dice pools according to wounds and spells, the "customize" button not being greyed when you buy a vehicule or a drone, and so on.
SR4 is prefered over SR5 by most of the DMs, due to the abondant available resources, books and internet.

It's like HL is mostly rolling for Paizo and Pathfinder

Last edited by Leonim13; September 2nd, 2015 at 12:02 AM.
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Gritte
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Old September 2nd, 2015, 07:35 AM
Mathias, can you provide an update? I know you mentioned Data Trails mid-late this week.
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