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Custom Data Content

K

Krothos

Well-known member
When will PF1 HLO allow custom content, to be able to use our own data sets for our house rules? Is this on the roadmap for this product?

For example, create a unique weapon tailored to spiritual weapon. Or use ShadowChemosh's Community Pack.
 
Similarly, before I decide whether to pay to convert, what happens to a character with custom content when it gets imported into the new system? Does it just strip it all off?
 
My group plays a Dragonlance game, and makes extensive use of custom user content as a result, including custom races, custom feats, custom deities, custom archetypes/prestige classes, and a lot more that I've been able to work up in the Hero Lab Classic editor.

While the interface looks polished and I'd really like to have the ability to track the characters and their opponents in a web interface that I could share with my players, the absence of any ability to make use of custom content is a deal-breaker.
 
Without custom content (aka the Community Packs), PF1 in HLO format is as useless to me as PF2 is (and ever will be). . .
 
While I completely understand that coding such a tool into HLO looks like a nightmarish task, as well as allowing the integration of user-created content...

I would gladly pay extra for such a service to be made available.

Whether it be the "Editor's Package" or some other method.

It's not that the Hero Lab program let me down in any way, not at all, it's a godsend and I'm happy having spent hundreds of dollars purchasing all of the PF1 content for it.

My GM, however, like any creative would build and add custom items and perks to his game, whether they were combined feats to reduce the feat-tax, or a slightly-modified Crown of Blades to reward a player.

Either way, I'll happily wait since I still enjoy the use of the Classic program, but I will keep my eyes open for any mention of custom content in HLO's future.
 
Daniel V said:
Rob had a post on the matter a while back
http://forums.wolflair.com/showpost.php?p=289852&postcount=28
Click to expand...

In light of this, the concerns regarding the ability to deploy custom content are readily apparent, and not at all easily overcome at a feature-implementation level.

The obvious (to me, anyway) solution to tidily remedy this concern, without actually solving the "whelk vs. Supernova" scale of problem presented by the reliance on custom-scripting that a lot of HLC custom data content requires, would be an additional service tier above "Patron" level that, for an additional (recurring) cost, provides for the availability of a "sharded" instance of the HLO service to be extended to the subscriber such that they effectively get a sandbox for themselves and their group to use in which errors/issues/problems would be limited to impacting that group rather than the HLO userbase as a whole.

Even doing something like this would involve some fairly massive shifts in the underlying service infrastructure (I'm sure), to allow for the ability to leverage access to all of the existing HLO validations and data packages (that the subscriber had purchased) without needing to actually instance their associated service-level logic into the sandbox environment, if it's actually practically feasible at all.

I obviously don't know the kind of contracts LWD has entered into with Paizo related to the ability to provide the LWD-coded-and-curated representations of Paizo's content in the context of HLO, or if the above suggestion would be compatible with those agreements, but it seems to me to be likely to be a more practically scale-able and implementable solution than trying to directly curate and validation-check all submitted custom content.

Here's hoping that there's something that can be done to achieve this, eventually!
 
I don't quite understand Rob's response, since he seems to imply that the entire server is single threaded whereby if one user's HL scripts lock up then the entire server is screwed.

Isn't this better served like most server systems by spawning a separate process for each user to handle their own character? So it would only be their own process which locks up - and then simple OS controls to limit CPU time on a process would resolve this technical aspect too.
 
See, I am not sure how it all works, but for me it seems to be connected to the overall engine on the server at all times. This is instead of having a program on the actual computer you are using like in HLC.

The move to an App is frustrating in some ways, but it does allow one to access it from a wide range of devices using a browser to access it. I hope that it can, at some point, actually have the same or better functionality as the program at some point, but it is far from getting there now.
 
Farling said:
I don't quite understand Rob's response, since he seems to imply that the entire server is single threaded whereby if one user's HL scripts lock up then the entire server is screwed.

Isn't this better served like most server systems by spawning a separate process for each user to handle their own character? So it would only be their own process which locks up - and then simple OS controls to limit CPU time on a process would resolve this technical aspect too.
Click to expand...
It may be that they spin up as many servers as needed but those servers share the same compiled scripts that make up a Hero Lab game system, keeping the storage and RAM needed for the server itself low.

In order to isolate users from each other they'd have to give each user using custom content their own game system folder equivalent. My desktop Hero Lab's PF1 game system folder takes up ~650 MB, not counting the help files or the backup folder. An extra 650 MB of storage space per user and RAM per simultaneous server instance could add up.

Of course, this is just brainstorming and might not be it at all. :)
 
From Rob's comment about a runaway script impacting all connected users (http://forums.wolflair.com/showpost....2&postcount=28) and the outage/update posts, it sounds like HLO runs on a single server or a very small number of servers. I've been managing servers for over 30 years and I've seen what he's talking about many times.

There are several ways to address something like this but they're all expensive, probably beyond LW's budget - microservers or containerizing the app (Docker or similar) where each user gets their own server/container instance when they connect. It could also run as a cloud-based serverless app, again each connection spawning a separate instance. These are also more difficult to manage and support than a "traditional" web app so add more cost.

It might be possible to monitor each user's processor and memory consumption and terminate processes or connection that exceed a threshold, it depends on how HLO is implemented and kind of monitoring is available to LW.
 
So I am running Rise of the Runelords for 1e. My characters now all have runeforged dominant weapons.

How do I get those weapons into HLO for PF1? I don't see any way to do it.
 
I found it, and that’s helpful.

But it looks like I need to add the bane property separately, even though it is part of the Dominating property (and I thought it was dominant, not domineering.)
 
Yes, it should be dominant, not domineering. The other runeforged weapon abilities look correctly named.

It mentions the bane in the domineering special ability, but it doesn't appear to actually apply bane so you can toggle the bonuses on. That should probably be reported as a bug.
 
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