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- The Lone Wolf Development Team
Kickstarter Clarification Questions
- Thread starter Griffonbait
- Start date
Nothing has been finalized yet, but we're currently expecting to use Azure (Microsoft). We're running a Microsoft server environment, so integrating with Azure appears to be easiest. Also, the database will be maintained ourselves, with third-party cloud storage only being used for blobs (e.g. map images, audio, video, etc.).
merlinsghost
Active member
After doing some testing with Realm Works on a Windows Server 2012 (Standard) box logged in with the Administrator account that was NOT a Domain Controller, nor did it have any Roles assigned to it, I can tell you the following:
RealmWorks 104 will install and run.
RealmWorks 107 will install and run.
RealmWorks 112 will install but will NOT run.
RealmWorks 113 will install but will NOT run.
RealmWorks 114 will install but will NOT run.
112, 113, and 114 all gave the same error (I had the system send an error report and entered my e-mail address): Object reference not set to an instance of on object. I can send error reports for each version, but suspect it is the same issue across all 3 versions.
The results were the same with and without Active Directory configured/installed.
Something that I found rather amusing: After running versions 104 and 107 (112, 113, and 114 failed to get past software start), Windows was able to tell me via system tray alert that there were new versions of the software available. When I clicked on the little bubble, it took me right to the beta download page in my default web browser.
I will also test Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise if I can find the time.
Apparently, we broke something specific to the server side of things with regards to the client version. Thanks for testing the various versions, since that will help to bracket the problem space for sorting this out. We've got the crash reports here that you sent, so we'll figure out what changed and get things working again.
Thanks for the test results!
I think this ties into another question I saw about per-player revealed knowledge. I suspect the desired goal is to have multiple parties adventuring simultaneously in the same world - party A's actions have consequences for party B. Related to this, is it possible to associate Characters with Accounts and Parties, and assign inheritable Rights and Permissions at each level?
An example:
I am running a world with two gaming groups present: one party for my college friends (Beth, Jim, Gwen, and Sue), and one party for the family of one of those friends (Gwen, Fred, Emily, and Sue). Gwen and Sue are in both parties (Sue's my wife, in this example), and thus run two characters each. In party 1, Gwen is running Serena, and Selena in party 2. Creating two separate games doesn't work well because of all the double-entry of data after the split occurs. Likewise, adding all Accounts to one game doesn't work, as Fred will get the information from Jim's game. Organizing Accounts into Parties helps, but fails with Gwen and Sue as they have no good way to tell which data was learned from which game. Allowing Gwen's Player Account to be tied to multiple Characters, and then forming parties of Characters means I can do the following: reveal information to party 1; reveal information to Serena; and reveal information to party 2. Gwen the player knows all three pieces of information, but either of us can look at the Selena/Serena characters to know whether or not her current character knows the information in question (and if it's the information only given to Serena, Beth can ask "How did you find that out? It's not something we all learned.").
That's not something we had considered previously, but the architecture we've designed should be able to accommodate it cleanly. There's also the extra complication for players to be able to view what's revealed from the perspective of individual characters. I'm not sure if this would be part of the initial roll-out of the feature, but it's definitely doable with our current design. I've added this to the todo list so we can make sure this gets slated for inclusion at an appropriate time.
Here's a couple more quick thoughts before I forget them:
Can you set things up so that revealed information is keyed to game time? Specifically, I'm thinking about characters who have been Raised - especially in sequential campaigns where one or more dead from Campaign 1 are brought back in Campaign 2, and not all of the original knowledge was "made public" such that everyone would know it (they have secrets the new party needs to find out).
Can information be revealed to NPCs? Here, I'm thinking about "nemesis parties" where the PCs are in a race towards a future confrontation. Some information the PCs will get first, and some the nemesis group will get. This would also benefit information brokers and spies, who would tend to gain private knowledge over time.
I'm pretty sure these would flow naturally from my previous suggestion about PC-level knowledge instead of account-level knowledge, but I thought I should toss them out just in case.
I am absolutely looking forward to this, and can't wait to stop by at GenCon and find out what other ideas the first few months reveal.
Can you set things up so that revealed information is keyed to game time? Specifically, I'm thinking about characters who have been Raised - especially in sequential campaigns where one or more dead from Campaign 1 are brought back in Campaign 2, and not all of the original knowledge was "made public" such that everyone would know it (they have secrets the new party needs to find out).
Can information be revealed to NPCs? Here, I'm thinking about "nemesis parties" where the PCs are in a race towards a future confrontation. Some information the PCs will get first, and some the nemesis group will get. This would also benefit information brokers and spies, who would tend to gain private knowledge over time.
I'm pretty sure these would flow naturally from my previous suggestion about PC-level knowledge instead of account-level knowledge, but I thought I should toss them out just in case.
I am absolutely looking forward to this, and can't wait to stop by at GenCon and find out what other ideas the first few months reveal.
I have to say, character level info is extremely important to me. I can understand its not going to be at roll out, but I hope its going to be pretty soon, because without it, i think the usefulness for some of us is going to be limited. and a lot of DM's that allow the "passing of notes", I would imagine. I absolutely have to keep track of what characters know what, and provide that information to the players who are in charge of those players. Without character level tracking, I will still have to keep my own notes, limiting the amount i would use the product, I think. I might not be in the majority of DMs, but I dont think I'm in the minority either. This is ESPECIALLY true for play by post gaming that exists on bulletin boards. Just my two cents.
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I also agree with pyremis about the revealing info to NPCs too. Because sometimes I have to keep track of what NPCs have learned what, and what the PCs have told what NPCs what.
For example: The PC's may have bluffed the captain of the guard that they are one thing, but told the truth to the head of the merchant's guild.
For example: The PC's may have bluffed the captain of the guard that they are one thing, but told the truth to the head of the merchant's guild.
Once we get the individual (non-group) reveal capability exposed, you'll be able to control who knows what. This might be tied to time, such as the example you provide, or space, such as a PC going off on his own at some point, or something else entirely, such as some characters being unconscious during an event.
That's not something we had envisioned, but I guess you could do it that way. I would think it would be easier to make a private note of what the various NPCs do and don't know as part of the info for those NPCs. Trying to track them as a separate party seems like a lot of unnecessary work to me. But I guess you could do it once we get individual control into place on a character level (as opposed to player level).
We'll have some seminars at GenCon that delve into more details about the product, so keep an eye out for those and definitely strive attend them.
There are a lot of things that seem simple on the surface and that ultimately have some nasty gotchas once you start trying to put them into place. Since character-level revealing isn't something we've thought about in depth yet, there could be some surprises lurking that we haven't uncovered. As such, it would be inappropriate for me to promise something that I'm not confident will be implemented at a particular time. I *believe* it should be doable as an extension of the mechanism that we've already got in place within the engine. But I might be overlooking something pivotal, so I need to be cautious with what gets promised.
Wouldn't this information be easier to track within the info for the NPCs? For example, couldn't you just make a note on the captain that he's been bluffed by the PCs to believe X?
That just seems a whole lot simpler to manage and track. Or am I missing something here?
What if the same information was linked to multiple Npcs?
Inputting the info for each individual NPC would become tedious especially if there were a lot that needed to be updated.
Perhaps some mechanism to link one piece of info to multiple Npcs stat blocks and auto populate the relevant field with the correct text. Batch linking perhaps?
Inputting the info for each individual NPC would become tedious especially if there were a lot that needed to be updated.
Perhaps some mechanism to link one piece of info to multiple Npcs stat blocks and auto populate the relevant field with the correct text. Batch linking perhaps?
Could you please give me an example of what this might be? I'm not coming up with a scenario that makes sense in my head. Then again, it's 5am and I need to get some sleep soon, so that could be the problem.
That introduces a whole new arena of complexity. So I hope this can be modeled cleanly without having to go there.
It might be. I might be overthinking things, but I could imagine a situation where it would make sense to have a relationship between NPC -> PC in a database (i imagine its a sortof internal database?)
Imagine you're trying to do an RPGA style world (or whatever the pathfinder equivalent, or other gaming equivalent is) with MANY groups meeting a certain NPC. Its important to reveal only certain things about the NPC to the PCs, so when you look at the NPC, you can click on the PC, and see what they know about the NPC, and what that NPC knows about the PC.
There are a lot of things that seem simple on the surface and that ultimately have some nasty gotchas once you start trying to put them into place. Since character-level revealing isn't something we've thought about in depth yet, there could be some surprises lurking that we haven't uncovered. As such, it would be inappropriate for me to promise something that I'm not confident will be implemented at a particular time. I *believe* it should be doable as an extension of the mechanism that we've already got in place within the engine. But I might be overlooking something pivotal, so I need to be cautious with what gets promised.
Fair enough. Im going to use it regardless, but since character level knowledge is something EXTREMELY important to track, i have to try to push for it.
Could you please give me an example of what this might be? I'm not coming up with a scenario that makes sense in my head. Then again, it's 5am and I need to get some sleep soon, so that could be the problem.
That introduces a whole new arena of complexity. So I hope this can be modeled cleanly without having to go there.
Okay let's say PC #1 tells NPC #1,2,5,6,9,10 that x=y
PC #2 tells NPC 1,2,5,6,9,10 that x=z
PC #3 corroborates the PC #1 info with NPC #2,3,4,5,9,10 and refutes the info with NPC 1,6
but PC#4 informs NPC #1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 that x=y=z
You would have to link the 3 pieces of (mis) information to each NPC cross referenced with the individual PC's information and maintain an accurate record over multiple information snippets. Confused yep me to. But over multiple campaigns with multiple players his kind of situation does occur!
Sorry if I'm naive here....
If player logins are not charged for, perhaps the easiest/simplest way to achieve per-character tracking of knowledge is for players to login with variations on their login name.
So the logins for all player/character combos in a campaign with 3 players and 6 characters might look like:
George-Helios
George-Amanda
George-Syd
Sally-Frances
Sally-Sigmund
Austin-Bertha
To simplify this for players, implement a login that asks for both your player name and character name. The program concatenates those two names for use in the database internally.
Make the character name an option in configuration so GM can decide whether to add that extra complexity. Regardless, if either of those names is blank, that's ok as it'll just add nothing when it concatenates.
Yes, I know this is a pain if a player wants to review each of their characters as they have to log in and out. But for the GM, it's easier. And quite frankly, the GM has the lion's share of needing to keep track of things so the system needs to consider them first.
If player logins are not charged for, perhaps the easiest/simplest way to achieve per-character tracking of knowledge is for players to login with variations on their login name.
So the logins for all player/character combos in a campaign with 3 players and 6 characters might look like:
George-Helios
George-Amanda
George-Syd
Sally-Frances
Sally-Sigmund
Austin-Bertha
To simplify this for players, implement a login that asks for both your player name and character name. The program concatenates those two names for use in the database internally.
Make the character name an option in configuration so GM can decide whether to add that extra complexity. Regardless, if either of those names is blank, that's ok as it'll just add nothing when it concatenates.
Yes, I know this is a pain if a player wants to review each of their characters as they have to log in and out. But for the GM, it's easier. And quite frankly, the GM has the lion's share of needing to keep track of things so the system needs to consider them first.
Yes, everything is definitely built on top of a high-performance database.
If you have multiple parties adventuring in the same world, such as a GM running two separate campaigns with two sets of players, then you'd definitely need to keep track of which PCs have learned what. However, the way that would be solved is completely different from what you're assuming in Realm Works. You would effectively "instance" the world separately for each group of PCs (similar to the way MMOs do it) and all the details of which group learns what will be tracked within each instance. So you don't have to fiddle with it all the time during play. The exact mechanism for it would be different from MMOs, but the net result would be the same.
Fair enough. Im going to use it regardless, but since character level knowledge is something EXTREMELY important to track, i have to try to push for it.
Lobbying for features is perfectly fine.
I just have to make sure I don't commit us to something we can't deliver on until it's been properly investigated. In this case, it's not a question of whether we *can* do it, but how long it will take to do it.