Transferring Topics Between Campaigns

[RampagingHoardes]

I was wondering is there a way to transfer topics that have been created into other campaigns within your realms?

I was thinking of adding some things and I will need it in other realms as well and really hate to create all this stuff twice. For instance all the spells in the game so I don't have to ever look them up

Anyone know if this can be done or is there a feature request for this yet?

thanks

 

[AEIOU]

Sooooooooon....

Player edition brings tech needed to share content. Once we can share content, we can share with ourselves and create "master" realms that will act as base campaigns.

Disclaimer: Soon is a relative term. Please keep your hands and feet within the ride at all times. Soon can take on a variety of characteristics including but not limited to stretching, choppieness, slowness, excessive speed, implosion, lightheadedness and in some rare cases reversal. Your patience is much appreciated.

 

[RampagingHoardes]

Sooooooooon....

Player edition brings tech needed to share content. Once we can share content, we can share with ourselves and create "master" realms that will act as base campaigns.

Disclaimer: Soon is a relative term. Please keep your hands and feet within the ride at all times. Soon can take on a variety of characteristics including but not limited to stretching, choppieness, slowness, excessive speed, implosion, lightheadedness and in some rare cases reversal. Your patience is much appreciated.

Thanks for the response.
Do we have to share from the master or can it be shared in any direction?
Also can we designate any as a master(ie one already created) and can this be changed once it is set?

thx again

 

[kate]

I don't think there will be an official "master" designation. The idea is to enable sharing between any two realms. So just like I will be able to share my settlement "Dwarf Fort" from my realm "Dwarf World" to your realm "Dwarves vs Goblins," I could share "Dwarf Fort" from "Dwarf World" to my other realms "Dwarf Wars" and "Dwarf Explorers." In this case, both "Wars" and "Explorers" would represent campaigns occurring within "World." I could also move the NPC "Igvan Dwarfenbeard" from "Dwarf Wars" to "Dwarf World" if he becomes a big enough fixture within one campaign to have a role as a world NPC in otherwise unrelated campaigns.

 

[Farling]

I think the sharing is at the realm level, not the topic level. So you would have a master realm which you could "import" into another realm.

 

[rob]

It's going to be a stepwise process. We'll start with realm-level sharing. Then it will be possible to share portions of a realm (topics, plots, etc.). As some point, we'll have sub-element sharing, such as a subset of snippets from a given topic.

Please note that this capability is tied to the Content Market, which will encompass sharing in general. Player Edition will not encompass all of this, but it does include a few of the core building blocks.

 

[RampagingHoardes]

It's going to be a stepwise process. We'll start with realm-level sharing. Then it will be possible to share portions of a realm (topics, plots, etc.). As some point, we'll have sub-element sharing, such as a subset of snippets from a given topic.

Please note that this capability is tied to the Content Market, which will encompass sharing in general. Player Edition will not encompass all of this, but it does include a few of the core building blocks.

Awesome news this product truly is a wonderful piece of software

 

[Acenoid]

I'm a bit sad about this, though I knew that it probably would be like this. Iam not planning to use the sharing service, so initially there will be no solution for me to create realms based on existing ones in order to "copy" settings.

Hopefully we get some elemental functionality without using the cloud.

Sorry for being so pessimistic about the service, but I know that I would only need and use it twice per year thus it's not worth it.

Maybe (to be more constructive) - it is possible to enable the "basic" function to share realms with your own account, to allow some of the basic actions, while using the cloud & whatever other sharing services are being offered via an advanced version?

 

[kate]

Maybe (to be more constructive) - it is possible to enable the "basic" function to share realms with your own account, to allow some of the basic actions, while using the cloud & whatever other sharing services are being offered via an advanced version?

Maybe the "backup" function would work for a quick and dirty copy - if you can load a backup of your "master" Realm A into new Realm B, then B starts with all the basic information in A?

 

[Farling]

Maybe the "backup" function would work for a quick and dirty copy - if you can load a backup of your "master" Realm A into new Realm B, then B starts with all the basic information in A?

The Backup and Restore function backs up the entire database on your machine (i.e. all the realms), not just a single realm.

 

[RampagingHoardes]

The Backup and Restore function backs up the entire database on your machine (i.e. all the realms), not just a single realm.

I do wish we had the ability to back up each realm separately and import them separately. This would be extremely helpful.

How is the sync performed? If I have a family member working on a realm separately while I am editing on another how will that reconcile? I know you have to share the database file but does the sync take the larger file the most recent or how does it figure out what to use?

I am figuring the most recent which means it would prevent two people from editing at the same time.

A lockdown feature would be nice for sharing a database where you can prevent another user from modifying a realm. That way sharing would be safer (this is assuming the sync works as i figured above)

 

[MaxSupernova]

If I have a family member working on a realm separately while I am editing on another how will that reconcile?

You aren't supposed to have more than one user access an account at once.

 

[Farling]

As Max says, only one account can be the owner of the contents of a realm at the moment.

If you edit the same realm on two different machines without doing a sync, then one of the machine's changes will be overwritten by the other machines changes when you finally get around to trying to sync the two machines with the server.

(Syncing with the server is done at the realm level, doing a local backup/restore is done on the entire local database.)

 

[kate]

I do wish we had the ability to back up each realm separately and import them separately. This would be extremely helpful.

That would be useful. Even aside from using it as a roundabout method for sharing content between your own realms without the cloud, think about a situation where you back up your realms, make changes on both A and B, and realize you've made a major mistake in Realm B such that you want to restore from backup, but don't want to overwrite the changes you made on Realm A.

 

[Acenoid]

It is just an artificial restriction. I hope they'll remove it one day

 

[RampagingHoardes]

You aren't supposed to have more than one user access an account at once.

No one has used it yet but me. we were debating buying another copy. If we are prohibited from editing at the same time I may have to or else take turns I guess. Kind of a bummer that we can't edit at the same time when we live in the same house.

Actually now I am thinking about it further it wont be possible for me to get another copy as this would require 2 separate cloud accounts which is definitely cost prohibitive for me.

 

[shayneb]

So as of right now, there is no way for me to create a topic for a magic potion (for example), and then import that into another campaign in the future?
Because certainly, MANY campaigns will make use of the same weapons/potions/etc...

 

[rob]

It is just an artificial restriction. I hope they'll remove it one day

That assertion is not even remotely accurate. Supporting backup of the entire database in one go is a simple matter of disconnecting from the database and backing up a single file. In order to backup individual realms, we need to do lots of work to extract just the right information and save it out in a custom manner that then needs to be accurately read back in. Where it gets even more complicated is that there is some data that is shared across realms, so now we have to figure out how we're going to handle that data and manage it cleanly with multiple distinct backups for each realm. If we replicate it, then how do we know which data is correct when restore a backup from a different date than the database it's being loaded into? If we don't replicate it, we have to require the user to go online to ensure we have all the correct data in place? It all gets very complicated very quickly.

Bottom line: Backup of the entire database is relatively easy. Backup of individual realms will require a significant chunk of work and extensive testing, with some very complex special cases that we'll need to handle. That means time we won't be able to spend on all the other features that users - including yourself - are clamoring for.

Please don't make assumptions about things that have important technical implications and assert them as fact. You're welcome to ask if it's an artificial restriction - that's perfectly reasonable. But assumptions are a bad thing.

 

[rob]

So as of right now, there is no way for me to create a topic for a magic potion (for example), and then import that into another campaign in the future?
Because certainly, MANY campaigns will make use of the same weapons/potions/etc...

As of right now, you are correct. That's something that the content sharing mechanism will ultimately support, as indicated up-thread a bit. But it's not in place yet.

 

[shayneb]

I hope it's definitely going to be included (though I understand that a LOT of things are probably higher-priority). Right now, I have three separate campaigns in the same "realm," just because I don't want to type a bunch of potions/monsters again, lol.
It's getting a little...cumbersome, haha.

Thanks!