Questions about Realm Works functionality

[daudvyd]

kbs666 & Farling thank you for these details. I wish there was a trial version to experiment with, but you have provided answers to all my current questions. I'll weigh the pros and cons and make a decision.

[Valyar]

Unfortunately no trial or demo. I watched daplunk's videos in YouTube and then did a leap of faith. No regrets so far.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y6-...wvP8zs_qVSrzoM

[kbs666]

I don't know if there is a video of the date picker out there because Josh and I made most of the RW videos and we certainly didn't want to showcase a placeholder feature that pretty much everyone hates.

But you should be able to find a video of the rest of the features you want. Just ask and Josh, daplunk, or I can point you to them.

[jasonbarron]

After watching all of Josh Plunket's and kbs666's video tutorials on the subject, I took the plunge and jumped in with both feet and have not regretted it since--so much functionality has been quite lovely.
With that said, I've not needed a specific timeline such as the OP mentions, and I agree that it's a shame that its not an integrated part of the program; a functional timeline seems like a no-brainer.

[kbs666]

There is a timeline, its just really bad. If you enter dates into your topics a timeline gets populated automatically. If you look at the main button bar it's right between reveal history and player view.

The problem is it doesn't allow filtering or pretty much anything else. It's just every single date in your entire realm in date/time order. The only thing you can do is change the start and end time of the list.

Hopefully major improvements are part of the custom calendar feature which hopefully will come out once the CM goes live when ever that is.

[JustinThomason]

Originally Posted by Valyar

Unfortunately no trial or demo. I watched daplunk's videos in YouTube and then did a leap of faith. No regrets so far.

Unless things have changed, Lone Wolf actually has a pretty forgiving return policy. If I recall correctly, I think they will refund no questions asked up to 30 days from purchase, which should be plenty of time for you to decide if the tool will work for you. I'm not 100% sure on the current policy, but I've personally had nothing but fabulous customer service interactions with the company.

That said, definitely check out the tutorial videos mentioned up thread - they're really helpful and show the flexibility of the tool.

[kbs666]

I do appreciate the kind words about my videos and I'm sure Josh does as well. We made them to spread the word about RW because we truly do think RW is a great tool for GM's.

[daplunk]

Thanks for watching!

[daudvyd]

It looks like some people have made their own importers and exporters, right? So, however complex the SQL database is--it is unencrypted, right? How are people connected to it outside of Realm Works? ODBC?

[Farling]

Originally Posted by daudvyd

It looks like some people have made their own importers and exporters, right? So, however complex the SQL database is--it is unencrypted, right? How are people connected to it outside of Realm Works? ODBC?

The database is encrypted.

The importer and exporter tools use the existing functionality in Realm Works to import and export data in its own XML format files.

The exporter will work fine for your own entered data, but I suspect that published information can not be exported from the tool (either as an output or an export file) due to copyright (DRM) restrictions.