Much Needed Status Update

[rob]

I think @markelphoenix is onto something here. For playing around a table, with everyone on HLO and linked to the campaign, then some of the functionality may be useful. However, for a VTT, the dice rolling and encounters are already set up. So, while CT may be useful for in person play, there's a different paradigm for integrating with a VTT (and, quite frankly, I believe quite a bit less work if we stick with the bread and butter character generator/tracker). We don't need/want to recreate encounters, stat blocks, and rolls outside of the VTT when we're online.

This argument runs counter to many of the comments littered across these forums, where users lament how poorly things like dice rollers behave within some VTTs. There is also the question of the level of granularity provided by dice rollers. For example, our dice roller breaks down damage rolls into all of their constituent elements (e.g. 5 point slashing plus 4 point fire). We can also toggle criticals on/off without losing the original roll. This has all been designed with an eye to the future, where we'll be able to automatically detect resistances and apply those appropriately. The VTTs don't even have the necessary information to manage all of that, but we do, so we can leverage it to further streamline all the bookkeeping for a game.

That's just the dice roller. There are many other aspects where CT will be able to do things that VTTs simply cannot hope to do, unless they want to start tracking all of the gory details for each game system they support.

 

[rob]

For me, the main benefit of HL was that it would dynamically update all the stats when a character received a buff or debuff. The added benefit to this for HLO is that a group buff can (in the future?) be applied as a single action, rather than having to edit each character individually.

When GMing, I've always run the monsters from within HL, never using whatever map system is being used for live or online play; for the same reasons, that PCs can debuff monsters and all the stats will be updated live.

For me, Integration of HLO with a VTT would allow the HP to be displayed on the character's token (effectively providing a health bar for other players to see the party member's health).

^^^ THIS ^^^ is the driving concept behind HLO, Campaign Theater, and ultimately VTT integration.

 

[rob]

Since I'm running Pathfinder Second, I haven't had a lack of content issue. I realize that I'm lucky that way; way back when I originally got Hero Lab it was for Mutants & Masterminds, and it used to drive me crazy that M&M bugs were not getting fixed while there was a steady release of material and fixes for Pathfinder.

This is an unfortunate reality of RPG software. There are the bigger ones that bring in the revenue and the ones that we support simply because we love the games. The ones that pay the bills need to be given priority so that we can later devote the time to the ones that don't. If all we cared about was making money, half the games we've supported over the years never would have been touched.

As for the bigger question, I could be wrong but it looks to me that the same functionality that is being developed for VTT integration will also contribute to things like customized character sheets and character export/import, which I think are good things even if I never try my hand at doing a simple MapTool framework.

That's exactly the idea. The same mechanism should support both purposes.

 

[markelphoenix]

Thank you for your replies.

In regards to prioritization of game setting source books,
is there anyway to crowd source materials? So people could use unofficial 'compilations' from the community or 'home brew' while we wait for the official implementation?

 

[bruuuuuu]

There is currently no user-accessible editor for data files, or content of any sort, which can be used outside of a single character for one user. For a single character, there are a variety of custom items and abilities you can add, along with manual adjustments to the character, but nothing more formal than that yet.

 

[Duggan]

There is currently no user-accessible editor for data files, or content of any sort, which can be used outside of a single character for one user. For a single character, there are a variety of custom items and abilities you can add, along with manual adjustments to the character, but nothing more formal than that yet.

Something which I definitely hope will change in the future since one of the great advantages of Hero Lab (and one of the things that helped let Lone Wolf support some of the less popular systems) was the editing system. It let GMs create their own custom material for their campaigns and it let users submit fixes, expansions, and the like for supplemental material.

 

[Sylverlock]

[*]Pathfinder 2E Advanced Player’s Guide – On track to release at the end of July, in time for GenConOnline

I was wondering, do you had a firm release date for the APG yet? I've got my PDF from Paizo and I'm signed up to play GenCon Online in 6 days and I need to make a new character. I really would love to have HLO help me with that. Any update?

 

[rob]

Something which I definitely hope will change in the future since one of the great advantages of Hero Lab (and one of the things that helped let Lone Wolf support some of the less popular systems) was the editing system. It let GMs create their own custom material for their campaigns and it let users submit fixes, expansions, and the like for supplemental material.

This is vastly harder within HLO than Classic for one very simple reason. We need to safeguard against user errors with PERFECT success. HLO is a shared resource on a common server that all users access. If a user error is not caught, it can cause everything to fail for everyone. Within Classic, the only one impacted by a user error is the user himself. Not within HLO.

This gets even more complex due HL scripting being an pretty powerful language. For example, it would be trivial in a script to introduce an infinite loop. It's also quite possible to accomplish that in a non-obvious way that spans multiple scripts and procedures. Obviously, an infinite loop would completely screw all other users on the server at that time, so we'd have to detect such errors and deal with them in some reasonable way that doesn't negatively impact the system while giving reasonable feedback to the creating user.

That's just one basic example of hundreds (perhaps thousands) that need to be dealt with.

We've made some inroads towards this goal, but we still have a LOT of work yet to do. So this is something that's still quite a ways off from being exposed to users.

As an interim solution, we've been providing significantly more flexibility to let users customize elements of characters directly within the product, which I believe has greatly reduced the need for the editing system. We have more enhancements along these lines planned, which should allow users to more readily fill in the remaining gaps.

 

[rob]

I was wondering, do you had a firm release date for the APG yet? I've got my PDF from Paizo and I'm signed up to play GenCon Online in 6 days and I need to make a new character. I really would love to have HLO help me with that. Any update?

The street date for the book is this Thursday, so you should be able to get it in the wee hours of Thursday morning.

Based on where things stand today, it looks like we'll have about 95% of the book ready for Thursday. The few remaining bits should be available the following Wednesday in an update.

 

[Snow Crash]

Just generally disappointed. Was a long time supporter of herolab classic while playing pathfinder 1.
Was not excited to hear about switching to an online supscription based service. But gave you the benefit of the doubt and signed up when we started playing Shadowrun 6.

i understand things are difficult on your end. But understand it from my point. You've happily taken my money and the money of all my players and yet support has dwindled rapidly and I am left in limbo with a character generator that has only partial functionality. Players begging to use equipment and options that have been out for several gaming sessions now but can't unless we go back to manually adding the options with a pen and paper which begs the question, why are we paying you money?

 

[rob]

@snow crash:
All of these setbacks have been disappointing for us, as well. Having an employee do what we experienced was incredibly painful. I wish I could just snap my fingers to fix things overnight, but I can't. The only thing we can do is work to steadily dig ourselves out of the hole that we got into, which is exactly what we've been doing. And it's gonna take time for us to complete that process.

As to whether you should continue using HLO while we undertake this effort, that's a question only you can answer. HLO absolutely offers a long and growing list of great features for SR6, albeit without the latest supplements. Some groups will be content to hold off introducing those supplements into their games until we can get them added, while others will require all the new shiny bits now and explore other options. Whatever you choose on your end, we're gonna continue making headway on our end - slower than everyone wishes were possible, ourselves included, but headway nonetheless.

 

[markelphoenix]

@snow crash:
All of these setbacks have been disappointing for us, as well. Having an employee do what we experienced was incredibly painful. I wish I could just snap my fingers to fix things overnight, but I can't. The only thing we can do is work to steadily dig ourselves out of the hole that we got into, which is exactly what we've been doing. And it's gonna take time for us to complete that process.

As to whether you should continue using HLO while we undertake this effort, that's a question only you can answer. HLO absolutely offers a long and growing list of great features for SR6, albeit without the latest supplements. Some groups will be content to hold off introducing those supplements into their games until we can get them added, while others will require all the new shiny bits now and explore other options. Whatever you choose on your end, we're gonna continue making headway on our end - slower than everyone wishes were possible, ourselves included, but headway nonetheless.

Wait, employee did what? If y'all got done dirty that buys a lot of forgiveness in my eyes.

 

[Duggan]

Wait, employee did what? If y'all got done dirty that buys a lot of forgiveness in my eyes.

I don't think they've elaborated on it too much, but the impression I got was that the server code for Hero Lab Online (and maybe as far back as RealmWorks) wasn't written properly, which is part of the reason for all of the outages. And it sounds so far like it wasn't anything malicious, just an employee who didn't quite make the bar (and boy am I familiar with that situation...), but when your flagship product keeps going down, it's not good.

Honestly, it's one of those situations where being nice can really come back to bite you, since an underperforming developer (or worse, one who looks to be putting out good output only for it to turn out their code is buggy and needs to be rewritten) not only puts you in the hole for their wages, but also for the cost of fixing their work. You want to give people a chance, but you have your company to look out for.

 

[dacoobob]

Honestly, it's one of those situations where being nice can really come back to bite you, since an underperforming developer (or worse, one who looks to be putting out good output only for it to turn out their code is buggy and needs to be rewritten) not only puts you in the hole for their wages, but also for the cost of fixing their work.

There's a big difference between "being nice" and failing to implement an effective QA process. My boss is a super nice guy, but he also reviews my work before we send it out-- which i appreciate.

 

[markelphoenix]

Kind of curious if they use Test Driven Development with gated deploys around a CI/CD pipeline. May be harder for a smaller outfit as well, but pair programming creates interesting environment of collaboration and skill sharing. Also reduces doom states by making sure that a sole developer can't continue to spiral down a pit of doom, given that they always have a co-pilot to step on the breaks. Earlier, the better.

 

[rob]

I have avoided going into too many details, since that's just airing dirty laundry, but I guess it's important for context on how we got here.

About 3.5 years ago, I nearly died, and the recovery was protracted. I was on truly nasty meds that both clouded my brain AND made it so I could only sleep about 3 hours out of every 24, which just compounded the brain fog. I talked regularly with the developer that messed up, and I provided what guidance I could in that mental state. This was a VERY senior developer, and I beseeched him to bring his "A" game, since I was seriously gimped. Alas, it turns out he was going through issues outside of work, and that massively impacted his work performance. So I wasn't able to provide the necessary oversight, and he brought his "D" game (the server limped with lots of issues). It wasn't malicious on his part, but it certainly was bad timing, and I was in no state to recognize the problems as they were unfolding.

After finally getting off the meds, it took me a full 18 months to finally flush them all out of my system. I began regaining a little clarity last spring (7-8 months after stopping the meds), and I finally was able to actually get a good night's sleep (read: 6 hours) this past April. Having some semblance of clarity last summer, it became apparent things were messed up with the server code, but I assumed it was a handful of issues that could be addressed and worked with the developer to address them. When that merely uncovered new issues, I launched a detailed code review and discovered the extent of the problems - they were fundamental design failures. At that point, all I could do was accept the reality of the situation and figure out how to salvage things, which is why the server code has now been rewritten.

That doesn't change the fact that we are now more than a year behind where we should be in terms of progress. And all the frustrations of users due to these setbacks is a reality we're slowing working to repair.

As for instituting things like pair programming, that's not really feasible with a development team of only 4, especially when spread across a range of dissimilar technologies (JS-client, C#, C++, etc.) and domains (client, server, HL engine, licensing/sales). We utilize peer-review of all checkins within the client, where we have two very capable developers with that expertise. However, we don't do that on the servers (C#) and in the HL engine (C++), where only a single developer has good domain knowledge right now.

We also employ peer-review of all checkins within the data file team, where we have a team of 6 working on those.

FWIW, we do use a CI/CD pipeline for the client-side development. And we have a dedicated QA person.

I'm not sure if that answers all the questions that people have, but that ought to at least provide some useful context.

 

[markelphoenix]

I have avoided going into too many details, since that's just airing dirty laundry, but I guess it's important for context on how we got here.

About 3.5 years ago, I nearly died, and the recovery was protracted. I was on truly nasty meds that both clouded my brain AND made it so I could only sleep about 3 hours out of every 24, which just compounded the brain fog. I talked regularly with the developer that messed up, and I provided what guidance I could in that mental state. This was a VERY senior developer, and I beseeched him to bring his "A" game, since I was seriously gimped. Alas, it turns out he was going through issues outside of work, and that massively impacted his work performance. So I wasn't able to provide the necessary oversight, and he brought his "D" game (the server limped with lots of issues). It wasn't malicious on his part, but it certainly was bad timing, and I was in no state to recognize the problems as they were unfolding.

After finally getting off the meds, it took me a full 18 months to finally flush them all out of my system. I began regaining a little clarity last spring (7-8 months after stopping the meds), and I finally was able to actually get a good night's sleep (read: 6 hours) this past April. Having some semblance of clarity last summer, it became apparent things were messed up with the server code, but I assumed it was a handful of issues that could be addressed and worked with the developer to address them. When that merely uncovered new issues, I launched a detailed code review and discovered the extent of the problems - they were fundamental design failures. At that point, all I could do was accept the reality of the situation and figure out how to salvage things, which is why the server code has now been rewritten.

That doesn't change the fact that we are now more than a year behind where we should be in terms of progress. And all the frustrations of users due to these setbacks is a reality we're slowing working to repair.

As for instituting things like pair programming, that's not really feasible with a development team of only 4, especially when spread across a range of dissimilar technologies (JS-client, C#, C++, etc.) and domains (client, server, HL engine, licensing/sales). We utilize peer-review of all checkins within the client, where we have two very capable developers with that expertise. However, we don't do that on the servers (C#) and in the HL engine (C++), where only a single developer has good domain knowledge right now.

We also employ peer-review of all checkins within the data file team, where we have a team of 6 working on those.

FWIW, we do use a CI/CD pipeline for the client-side development. And we have a dedicated QA person.

I'm not sure if that answers all the questions that people have, but that ought to at least provide some useful context.

It answered a lot. Thank you for the honesty, vulnerability, and clarity. LoneWolf will continue to have my business and support.

Given that my day job is in Enterprise Software Engineering, I am not sure what if any support I can provide given my contractual obligations, but if there is ever any volunteer opportunities, I'm pretty sure volunteer passion projects done on personal hardware would not count as moon lighting.

 

[thaX]

Thank you, Rob, for your very candid insights on the background of company woes.

I am glad that you are better and hope that you are treating yourself and your time with care.

The whole situation seems like one big problem that the crew you have and yourself is tackling one piece at a time, and I have seen the improvements with the App over time. With the influx of revenue as the new features have been implemented, I hope you can get a couple of more people in to help out with the catch up.

 

[markelphoenix]

Rob, is there any way to open source the Shadowrun source material, or allow volunteer efforts?

Right now, I know of Genesis Character Generator and an Excel Character Generator that is being maintained by community. If given the opportunity, I would be surprised if people did not contribute.

 

[VaultScrolls]

You still have my support, both rob & LW! If I can provide any help with the data file work just let me know! I use HLO about everyday in some way with PC management for playing Starfinder. I couldn't imagine not having it!