How to create a custom calendar?

[AEIOU]

@Joe: I was afraid you were going to say that.

[kbs666]

Originally Posted by Joe

Before everyone flies into a frenzy on this, I'm not entirely sure I have the complete picture. It's possible I have some kind of secret Dev access to calendars that I had forgotten about, and just assumed it's beta available. Still, from the looks of the code, it's beta only.

However, I also want to note that as far as I have known, it has been beta-available for a long time, and we haven't made any recent changes to that. So I would not consider this any massive step towards calendar release in either case.

Puts away torch and pitchfork.

[Joe]

It appears we are both a little wrong and a little right.

Beta members DO have access to create custom calendars, as well as use the "test calendar" feature. But the ability to use a custom calendar as your game's live calendar was restricted some time ago.

Sorry for the confusion, hopefully this clears things up.

[Greebo]

So, back to my question / idea:
The underlying software is by and large present, albeit with restricted access, right? So, would it be helpful in any way, if we were collecting ideas for a GUI?

[Viking2054]

Why not just remove the restriction and let the rest of us pound our heads against the GUI if we want, while we wait for an updated GUI? We understand the GUI for Calendars may be less then desirable in its current form, but why not give everyone equal access at this point in time?

[kbs666]

I've done some fiddling and the problem is beyond me. If there are no built in assumptions I don't see how to build a GUI that is useful.

One guy could want a pretty standard matrix style calendar with days, weeks, months and years. Another guy could want something where there are no days, or no years or something else weird that violates the assumptions of what most people think when they say calendar.

[AEIOU]

Plenty of ideas have been presented. Please look back in the forums over the last two years. Lone Wolf is not lacking great ideas or how to implement. What they need is time which is a very limited commodity with such a small team of programmers.

Calendars were not the top priority PER THE USERS (we were polled). They are coming but we don't have an ETA. I don't anticipate seeing any calendar improvements until after the Marketplace and player journals are final. Given the pattern of major releases every 6 months or so, I'd reckon Christmas or GenCon 2017 for calendars as realistic expectations.

[GuernseyMan]

It has been a bone of contention since the Kickstarter. I pop by the forums every now and then to see if its been implemented and then wait another few months before trying again.

With the nature of my current compaign the software's a non-starter without it so I've not really played with it much. Keep up the hope though.

[Joe]

Originally Posted by Viking2054

Why not just remove the restriction and let the rest of us pound our heads against the GUI if we want, while we wait for an updated GUI? We understand the GUI for Calendars may be less then desirable in its current form, but why not give everyone equal access at this point in time?

We've already gotten a decent amount of feedback and suggestions on the current calendar GUI. We know it needs some serious work before it's usable.

The problem with letting people use the current calendar system is that they'll be creating a lot of data. We don't yet know how we might need to change the underlying systems and data structures behind calendars. Remember this affects not just the calendars you'd create, but all the topics with dates based on them. This could mean a serious headache for us later on when converting people's data to the final form. There's also a chance that some decision we make would render some of this data un-convertable, and we really want to avoid that.

As of right now, we are focusing hard on the Content Market. Calendars have not been forgotten, but they currently have no announced ETA.

[Chemlak]

Thanks for the info, Joe. As most people know, I really want calendars, and can't wait until they're available for general release, but I'm happy to wait for enhancements to however they function right now before I get them.