Zaphod Beebledoc
Well-known member
Hobbits would love that!
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- The Lone Wolf Development Team
How long, Really?
- Thread starter Madmaxneo
- Start date
Hobbits would love that!
Just adding my $0.02 here...
I understand fully that this is a complex piece of software you are developing here, but people have a limited attention span for anything anymore. We were told 1st quarter '16 would see the release of the content market. It is now mid August. Personally, I expect delays to pop up. Murphy's Law and all. I have been waiting patiently for the Pathfinder module to buy because I find that I just don't have the time to do ALL the data entry for my campaigns. I do have time to modify an existing module, however.
Having said that, my patience is wearing thin. I understand all that you have said on the matter. I know it is coming. I understand the obstacles you face in such a behemoth undertaking, but my patience wears thin. I still have faith you can get it done though. I wish for you all great health and godspeed. You will need it to succeed here.
I understand fully that this is a complex piece of software you are developing here, but people have a limited attention span for anything anymore. We were told 1st quarter '16 would see the release of the content market. It is now mid August. Personally, I expect delays to pop up. Murphy's Law and all. I have been waiting patiently for the Pathfinder module to buy because I find that I just don't have the time to do ALL the data entry for my campaigns. I do have time to modify an existing module, however.
Having said that, my patience is wearing thin. I understand all that you have said on the matter. I know it is coming. I understand the obstacles you face in such a behemoth undertaking, but my patience wears thin. I still have faith you can get it done though. I wish for you all great health and godspeed. You will need it to succeed here.
I feel as though my description of what's going on can be misunderstood, and that I should clarify further.
I characterized what we're doing as a "partially automated production line" comprised of "a number of tools". It is not a single tool and requires a multi-stage process. There is nothing even resembling documentation or tutorials for using them. It is not designed to be intuitive or consumer-friendly. It is (mostly) not integrated with the Realm Works client. This is not something we can release to anyone in its current form, and would take significant effort to reach that point. It is a messy hodge-podge of developer utilities and hacks to get the job done.
That's not to say we're philosophically opposed to making some kind of tooling like this available in the future, but it would be really bad form for us to make any kind of promises in that regard until we deliver on those we've already made. Right now we need to focus on getting the Content Market delivered, and these internal tools are a means to that end.
Mystic Lemur
Well-known member
The more questions you try to answer, the more questions people will have. For myself, I am glad to know why there were delays, but it doesn't change the fact that delays occurred. I love RW. My biggest problem right now is finding the time to do everything I want with what the product is already capable of. And y'all make it "worse" by continuing to add new things. 
I think it is also highly unlikely that any such tool(s) would ever be released to the public, on legal grounds.
Why?
Because LoneWolf's licensing discussions with the publishers have emphasized protecting their intellectual property in RealmWorks' Content Market. Tools that make it easier for people who pirate PDFs to also extract that content and load it into private Realms would increase the incentive for the dishonest to try to get around LoneWolf's policing of the Content Market, and to try to sell pirated copies of content.
Yes, it is another example of how the few bad actors spoil things for the honest people, but I don't think it is an unreasonable conjecture.
Viking2054
Well-known member
I'm not sure this would actually be a big problem with Realm Works. Since distribution has to be through LWD's cloud system for Realm Works, there is the possibility of built in policing (by LWD and the IP holders) as well as public policing by concerned individuals of anything offered up to the public. If an IP holder informed LWD of IP infringement it could be taken down quickly and the offender notified that if they did it a second time they'd be banned for a certain time frame if not for life. I would imagine that anything put up on the content market by an individual might require some kind of certification that it is holey your own material and does not include anyone else's Intellectual Property.
I think fair use would cover an individual importing the information from a PDF they own to be used with their gaming group(s) via player access. The big downside to providing the tools LWD is using would not necessarily be piracy, but a loss in revenue through the content market from those that already own the PDF version of an item also up for sale through the content market.
"Abby fine reader" (an OCR reader) scans tons of pages and text, so copyright issues are probably not the reason. But LWD has an interested to stay on good terms with all those publishers, who hope to be able to multiply their sales with books, pdfs and soon the LWD content market for the same thing.
Real quick thoughts on the tools...
* Making them available should have no legal issues. If someone uses them on a pirated PDF they acquired, that's fine. The key requirement of publishers is ensuring that users can't re-distribute the material, which is the big problem with pirated PDFs. That can be solved by simply shutting down anyone who tries, since we'll have control over the conduit used for distribution.
* There are no "self competition" concerns here. Look at Hero Lab. We make all the same tools we use fully available, so anybody can create their own data files from the books/PDFs they own. Some users do that, but the vast majority value their time more than the money it costs to have that already work done for them. That will be the same with Realm Works.
* The big issue is that the tools aren't even remotely ready for anyone else to use. I wouldn't even consider letting a trusted 3PP have access to them right now, since there are too many gotchas littered across them. Even with lots of signs saying "Here be dragons!" within the tools, our own people have gotten themselves into trouble on a few occasions. So the tools are in no way ready for controlled use by trusted parties, let alone ready for the average user to dive in with! Getting there will take time to improve the tools, and that time competes with everything else we're trying to get done. Making the tools available is definitely something I want to do, but it's a lower priority than many other things, which need to be completed first.
* An additional issue with the tools is that we're employing some commercial libraries and tools into the overall process, since there's no value in re-inventing wheels. Those external components would currently need to be purchased by someone who wants to use the tools we've created, and two of them are expensive (i.e. lots more than the cost of Realm Works). So making the tools available to users is a non-starter until we can resolve that issue in some reasonable way. I think it's doable, but it would require still further work on our part to put into place, making the overall task that much more time-intensive.
Hope this helps clarify things!
* Making them available should have no legal issues. If someone uses them on a pirated PDF they acquired, that's fine. The key requirement of publishers is ensuring that users can't re-distribute the material, which is the big problem with pirated PDFs. That can be solved by simply shutting down anyone who tries, since we'll have control over the conduit used for distribution.
* There are no "self competition" concerns here. Look at Hero Lab. We make all the same tools we use fully available, so anybody can create their own data files from the books/PDFs they own. Some users do that, but the vast majority value their time more than the money it costs to have that already work done for them. That will be the same with Realm Works.
* The big issue is that the tools aren't even remotely ready for anyone else to use. I wouldn't even consider letting a trusted 3PP have access to them right now, since there are too many gotchas littered across them. Even with lots of signs saying "Here be dragons!" within the tools, our own people have gotten themselves into trouble on a few occasions. So the tools are in no way ready for controlled use by trusted parties, let alone ready for the average user to dive in with! Getting there will take time to improve the tools, and that time competes with everything else we're trying to get done. Making the tools available is definitely something I want to do, but it's a lower priority than many other things, which need to be completed first.
* An additional issue with the tools is that we're employing some commercial libraries and tools into the overall process, since there's no value in re-inventing wheels. Those external components would currently need to be purchased by someone who wants to use the tools we've created, and two of them are expensive (i.e. lots more than the cost of Realm Works). So making the tools available to users is a non-starter until we can resolve that issue in some reasonable way. I think it's doable, but it would require still further work on our part to put into place, making the overall task that much more time-intensive.
Hope this helps clarify things!
One other thing about tools: as a creator who has access to such things, I'd want a toolset that works from my source files. PDF is an output format, one that loses much of the extra information known even at the level of a layout document (or set of layout documents). Depending on your creative process you might be able to provide even more information than that. A set of tools that fit my process should not only be smoother (because the process is known) but also be able to incorporate intentions and other extra information known at various levels.
The problem, of course, is that everyone's process is different, so the tools and the creative process have to adapt to fit.
The problem, of course, is that everyone's process is different, so the tools and the creative process have to adapt to fit.
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Converting from PDF is probably the most cost efficient. If you have enough content that needs to converted paying an IT pro to look at your sources and figure out how to convert them might be an option but you'd need some sort of direct access to the underlying RW db. Ultimately this is why I was hoping for some sort of PDF to RW tool no matter how primitive.
I've messed around with a tool that just took a large amount of text and broke it down to individual sentences, pretty easy to do with regular expressions, which was my first try at breaking a PDF into snippets. It really doesn't save that much time compared to all the other parts of converting a PDF to a RW's realm.
I was very interested in what else LDF was doing to speed up their work flow.
full DB access oh *dreams*
Uh huh. Be careful what you wish for.
Philderbeast
Well-known member
came to read this hoping for some new info... unfortunately it seems like its still coming soon(tm)
I bought this software to run my rune lords campaign, and that's has been dead for 2 years now and I still cant buy the campaign in the tool i bought to run it.
its not all doom and gloom, but I'm surprised you didn't realize the need for automated tools for adventure important a Long time ago, although at least you have them now.
That said Realm works is still a good tool and has its place, but knowing what I know now, I would not buy it to run a published adventure in its current form, or even in an established game setting, its just to painfull to get that level of content in. if your home brewing that, then I would say its indispensable.
I bought this software to run my rune lords campaign, and that's has been dead for 2 years now and I still cant buy the campaign in the tool i bought to run it.
its not all doom and gloom, but I'm surprised you didn't realize the need for automated tools for adventure important a Long time ago, although at least you have them now.
That said Realm works is still a good tool and has its place, but knowing what I know now, I would not buy it to run a published adventure in its current form, or even in an established game setting, its just to painfull to get that level of content in. if your home brewing that, then I would say its indispensable.
gloranphile
Well-known member
So here's the thing with my 1.6 GB realm.
I personally inputed 800+ pages of the Guide to Glorantha (think a complete guide to Tekumel or some other highly-detailed world), along with all the images and maps by hand myself . While it took me several months to complete, it was worth it. And whenever the team changed things in the program, my realm broke it. A lot. But this was a good thing since it helped make RW better for all of us.
Was that the end of my time in RealmWorks? No.
I spend lots of time creating advanced information for my PCs, plots, NPCs, etc. This is time well spent for me, as even the act of typing out these items makes me remember them even more for game time.
Now, not a ton of people play in Glorantha. That means every single book written for the world will likely never get entered into RealmWorks. It's just not feasible for LWD or small companies to take the time to do it. This means that for those of us who don't play Pathfinder or D&D, we're going to have to do the work ourselves, and personally, I like it that way. I know where everything is in my realm!
And my next game will likely not even be in Glorantha. I'm planning a superhero game set in a modified modern world. So I'll go into Realm Works and create a brand new Realm from scratch again.
Because that's what we do as GMs. We create. We imagine and we make happen.
RW makes my life easier. I don't have to sort through thousands of Topics to find what I'm looking for. I can do a search or click a link. I'm very happy with my purchase and look forward to creating more realms in the future!
I personally inputed 800+ pages of the Guide to Glorantha (think a complete guide to Tekumel or some other highly-detailed world), along with all the images and maps by hand myself . While it took me several months to complete, it was worth it. And whenever the team changed things in the program, my realm broke it. A lot. But this was a good thing since it helped make RW better for all of us.
Was that the end of my time in RealmWorks? No.
I spend lots of time creating advanced information for my PCs, plots, NPCs, etc. This is time well spent for me, as even the act of typing out these items makes me remember them even more for game time.
Now, not a ton of people play in Glorantha. That means every single book written for the world will likely never get entered into RealmWorks. It's just not feasible for LWD or small companies to take the time to do it. This means that for those of us who don't play Pathfinder or D&D, we're going to have to do the work ourselves, and personally, I like it that way. I know where everything is in my realm!
And my next game will likely not even be in Glorantha. I'm planning a superhero game set in a modified modern world. So I'll go into Realm Works and create a brand new Realm from scratch again.
Because that's what we do as GMs. We create. We imagine and we make happen.
RW makes my life easier. I don't have to sort through thousands of Topics to find what I'm looking for. I can do a search or click a link. I'm very happy with my purchase and look forward to creating more realms in the future!
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Bravo! Well said.
When I saw this topic had a new post I groaned and wondered who was beating the dead horse this time. I'm glad that wasn't the case.
MNBlockHead
Well-known member
For me RW is for creating new content. I use it when creating adventures and my home-brew campaign world, because it is better suited for that than MS Word, Google Docs, Evernote, Onenote, etc.
For published adventure paths, like Curse of Straud or Storm Kings Thunder (which I've bought), and which I would run outside of my world and as stand-alone adventure paths, I wouldn't bother with the data entry, even if they were available in PDFs. I don't find typing (or copy-pasting-formatting) large volumes of existing content fun. If they were available for purchase in the Content Market, I would buy them in a heart beat. Otherwise, paper is good enough for me.
For published adventure paths, like Curse of Straud or Storm Kings Thunder (which I've bought), and which I would run outside of my world and as stand-alone adventure paths, I wouldn't bother with the data entry, even if they were available in PDFs. I don't find typing (or copy-pasting-formatting) large volumes of existing content fun. If they were available for purchase in the Content Market, I would buy them in a heart beat. Otherwise, paper is good enough for me.