I don't see the feature you're talking about or else don't know how to access it.
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- The Lone Wolf Development Team
Realm Works Feature Survey – Charting the Future
- Thread starter liz
- Start date
I don't see the feature you're talking about or else don't know how to access it.
I believe that some of the calendar features are currently disabled, even for the Beta team, which includes the ability to map calendars to each other.
Kendall is correct, though, since I know I'm going to have at least 4 calendars running alongside each other, mapped together:
1) The Calendar of Harptos
2) The Gregorian Calendar
3) Phases of Selune
4) Phases of Luna
For campaign reasons, 1 & 2 will be mapped so that 1 January 2000 0:00:00 is equal to 1 Hammer 1369 0:00:00, and I'm going to get Selune lined up according to the Forgotten Realms calendar tool (which I downloaded from WotC years ago), and Luna lined up to the Gregorian calendar.
Then all my date snippets will be in the Calendar of Harptos with the ability to see the others.
Kendall is correct, though, since I know I'm going to have at least 4 calendars running alongside each other, mapped together:
1) The Calendar of Harptos
2) The Gregorian Calendar
3) Phases of Selune
4) Phases of Luna
For campaign reasons, 1 & 2 will be mapped so that 1 January 2000 0:00:00 is equal to 1 Hammer 1369 0:00:00, and I'm going to get Selune lined up according to the Forgotten Realms calendar tool (which I downloaded from WotC years ago), and Luna lined up to the Gregorian calendar.
Then all my date snippets will be in the Calendar of Harptos with the ability to see the others.
gloranphile
Well-known member
All I can do here is speak for myself.
I've never used any of Lone Wolf's other tools, mostly because they don't fit in with my particular system of choice (RuneQuest 6e).
When I saw the sample video on Kickstarter, and read through the plans for the future of Realm Works, I saw the potential, and backed it as a beta user. This means I invested quite a bit of my personal money in a product from a company I'd never used before (far more than what people pay for just the GM side of RW today).
But I didn't just do this blindly, throwing my money to the wind. I did my research on Lone Wolf and what others had to say about products like HL. The overwhelming consensus was that they do good work with solid, quality products.
I've seen Realm Works from (almost) the beginning, with the smaller beta releases and later on, the release candidates, it became an ever stronger tool. One I feel proud of backing. Rob and his team have put out a solid, quality GM tool that has completely changed the way I prepare, play, plan, and share information with my players.
Is it lacking some much-wanted items (like Journals, calendars, etc.)? Of course it is, but that's why Rob and the team wanted to get our feedback on what's important to us!
It will come in time. When [insert wanted survey item here] shows up, some people will be happy, but not everyone. That's the nature of the beast. Does everyone love Microsoft Word 2013 over 2004, or Windows 8.1 over 7? Or the changes to Facebook that come out every week? NO.
The benefit of seeing something like Realm Works grow is the small company that makes LWD uniquely approachable. They WILL try to fix errors and problems, and are being extremely open to what WE as users want by asking us. That beats Microsoft or Apple or any major corporation out there.
I for one am happy to be a small part of that, by voting for what I think is important and by posting constructive and helpful requests in this forum. The rest, I leave up to Rob and his team.
I've never used any of Lone Wolf's other tools, mostly because they don't fit in with my particular system of choice (RuneQuest 6e).
When I saw the sample video on Kickstarter, and read through the plans for the future of Realm Works, I saw the potential, and backed it as a beta user. This means I invested quite a bit of my personal money in a product from a company I'd never used before (far more than what people pay for just the GM side of RW today).
But I didn't just do this blindly, throwing my money to the wind. I did my research on Lone Wolf and what others had to say about products like HL. The overwhelming consensus was that they do good work with solid, quality products.
I've seen Realm Works from (almost) the beginning, with the smaller beta releases and later on, the release candidates, it became an ever stronger tool. One I feel proud of backing. Rob and his team have put out a solid, quality GM tool that has completely changed the way I prepare, play, plan, and share information with my players.
Is it lacking some much-wanted items (like Journals, calendars, etc.)? Of course it is, but that's why Rob and the team wanted to get our feedback on what's important to us!
It will come in time. When [insert wanted survey item here] shows up, some people will be happy, but not everyone. That's the nature of the beast. Does everyone love Microsoft Word 2013 over 2004, or Windows 8.1 over 7? Or the changes to Facebook that come out every week? NO.
The benefit of seeing something like Realm Works grow is the small company that makes LWD uniquely approachable. They WILL try to fix errors and problems, and are being extremely open to what WE as users want by asking us. That beats Microsoft or Apple or any major corporation out there.
I for one am happy to be a small part of that, by voting for what I think is important and by posting constructive and helpful requests in this forum. The rest, I leave up to Rob and his team.
FWIW, I'm more than happy enough with RW to keep using it and LWD's insistence on a quality product and 'doing things the right way' are a large part of that.
I am slightly bummed out about the calendars and the timeframe that Rob is guestimating for them but I will use the journals a lot and the content market is going to be critical for the long-term health of the product.
That being said, I'm seriously put out by all the negativity and lack of civility in this thread, some of which has (as I feared it would) caused delays in the product cycle.
I hope, as someone mentioned, that this thread will have some sort of net positive effect down the road.
I am slightly bummed out about the calendars and the timeframe that Rob is guestimating for them but I will use the journals a lot and the content market is going to be critical for the long-term health of the product.
That being said, I'm seriously put out by all the negativity and lack of civility in this thread, some of which has (as I feared it would) caused delays in the product cycle.
I hope, as someone mentioned, that this thread will have some sort of net positive effect down the road.
Hah, Chemlak, sounds like you're running the same campaign as me
Anywho, good to know it's there, even if currently disabled. That doesn't really address my query about the Content Market and the integration of all said content that (most likely) will not be Gregorian calendar, but good to know there's a system in place for one day.
Kendall-DM
Spy
They aren't currently surfaced. In the very beginnings of RW, there was a great deal of functionality to add multiple calendars, and to line them up according to a date (all of them). Those are not present. However, since I had originally created multiple calenders back then (and broke them a bunch), mine are still there, though I'm only able to use one live calendar (the others are there, but if I don't make them live, they don't really do anything at the moment).
Kendall-DM
Spy
Not as much as I had!
Windows 8.1 is my bane, just one of the worst products Microsoft has produced, especially for software development. Hate that product, but my boss has forced me to at least have one of my VMs set up with it.
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I run Windows 8.1 on 3 out of 4 of my systems, my main desktop, my Laptop, my media PC. My surface Pro is now Windows 10 Preview.
With the edition of Start 8, Fences and Modern Mix all from Stardock I think windows 8.1 is fine. Terrible out of the gate with out Start 8 though for non-touch screens, but the back end is rock solid. My systems have never been so stable. Fences is just awesoem for me, as I run 5760x1080 Eyefinity, and fences is just a great program. Modern Mix is nice, since I can run any Metro App in a desktop window.
With the edition of Start 8, Fences and Modern Mix all from Stardock I think windows 8.1 is fine. Terrible out of the gate with out Start 8 though for non-touch screens, but the back end is rock solid. My systems have never been so stable. Fences is just awesoem for me, as I run 5760x1080 Eyefinity, and fences is just a great program. Modern Mix is nice, since I can run any Metro App in a desktop window.
PetriWessman
Member
Well, for what it's worth, I'm also a Kickstarter backer, and of course I'm a bit disappointed by some features taking a long, long time to materialize. On the other hand, I'm also a software developer myself and am all too familiar with how difficult guesstimating timetables for stuff like this is, especially when building a brand-new platform and type of product. Delays suck, but they also happen and sometimes there is no easy way to speed things up (taking resource considerations into account).
On the plus side, I am satisfied with what we have right now, in that it's already a very useful product. I'm currently entering data into RW in prep for my about-to-start FFG Star Wars game, and now, having spent many many evenings typing in stuff and customizing tags and topic templates, I'm starting to have the beginnings of a very nice cross-linked database of ships, planets, races, etc. It's already much more useful in this sort of data organizing than anything I've used previously.
Sure, it has a lot of rough edges, missing functionality, and I'm forced to run it via Parallels on OS X (no native OS X version) so it's a bit slow. Nevertheless, it's already a great tool for my needs, and I expect it to get even better as features get added and I learn how to use it better.
On the plus side, I am satisfied with what we have right now, in that it's already a very useful product. I'm currently entering data into RW in prep for my about-to-start FFG Star Wars game, and now, having spent many many evenings typing in stuff and customizing tags and topic templates, I'm starting to have the beginnings of a very nice cross-linked database of ships, planets, races, etc. It's already much more useful in this sort of data organizing than anything I've used previously.
Sure, it has a lot of rough edges, missing functionality, and I'm forced to run it via Parallels on OS X (no native OS X version) so it's a bit slow. Nevertheless, it's already a great tool for my needs, and I expect it to get even better as features get added and I learn how to use it better.
Well, to be honest, you cant expect everyone to be in that camp, and the definition of "promises never made" is also not entirely true... especially not when it comes to printing. All you have to do is go back to the kickstarter Q&A to find that.
As I said in an earlier post, people who fall into the LWD can do no wrong camp arent really much more constructive than the LWD can do no right camp.
My two coppers.
I have heard this over and over, yet no one has put forth this statement of promise, I just scanned the entire Kickstarter site for RW, best I can come up with is the FAQ that states Export will be a future feature they hope to have.
There is no explicit promise made.
So can you provide this?
@Exmortis: Look for questions from Steven Wells and responded to by Rob. Basic printing was absolutely confirmed as a short term goal with export being a little longer. I don't have the energy to search for it again but it was black-and-white and straight from the horse's mouth.
Another fun one to look for would the start time for the cloud timer. Lots of things were stated in the heat of the Kickstarter and if people want to look through the old posts, this one gives them a goodie to find while they dredge up others.
Another fun one to look for would the start time for the cloud timer. Lots of things were stated in the heat of the Kickstarter and if people want to look through the old posts, this one gives them a goodie to find while they dredge up others.
I guess it depends on what you mean by promise. Going back to the Kickstarter Comments:
LWD in the RW Kickstarter said:
Plans change.
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no argument, that plans change, i just know that multiple people saw the print as far back as two years ago.
There is also this one.
first this:
Hi, am a backer at $1 but may increase that amount. I have two concerns, the ability to print the contents of my personal RW database, and whether Lone Wolf Development will claim and rights to whatever personal, original content I create and upload to RW. I think the "can I print everything" question has been answered in a previous reply from LDW: "You will also be able to select multiple content elements for printing. So if you're just trying to generate a PDF, you could select multiple elements and print them, outputting them as PDF instead." I want to be able to print everything in case the RW cloud goes down or is corrupted, and a personal printed backup would be best. So it sound like I'll be able to print everything hardcopy? And what kind of rights will LWD have to any personal, original content that I create and upload to LWD or the RW servers? I just don't want to face a situation down the road where I create something, have it backed up to the RW cloud, then later have LWD say "we own that" or "you have to get our permission to use whatever you stored on our cloud, even if it is your own original content".
and this was the response... while it was mostly about content ownership, it was also about printing.
https://www.kickstarter.com/project...tools/comments?cursor=2304440#comment-2304439
im just trying to explain why some people might be frustrated.... im happy to wait. not everyone is,and thats also understandable.
There is also this one.
first this:
Hi, am a backer at $1 but may increase that amount. I have two concerns, the ability to print the contents of my personal RW database, and whether Lone Wolf Development will claim and rights to whatever personal, original content I create and upload to RW. I think the "can I print everything" question has been answered in a previous reply from LDW: "You will also be able to select multiple content elements for printing. So if you're just trying to generate a PDF, you could select multiple elements and print them, outputting them as PDF instead." I want to be able to print everything in case the RW cloud goes down or is corrupted, and a personal printed backup would be best. So it sound like I'll be able to print everything hardcopy? And what kind of rights will LWD have to any personal, original content that I create and upload to LWD or the RW servers? I just don't want to face a situation down the road where I create something, have it backed up to the RW cloud, then later have LWD say "we own that" or "you have to get our permission to use whatever you stored on our cloud, even if it is your own original content".
and this was the response... while it was mostly about content ownership, it was also about printing.
https://www.kickstarter.com/project...tools/comments?cursor=2304440#comment-2304439
im just trying to explain why some people might be frustrated.... im happy to wait. not everyone is,and thats also understandable.
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Prompted by some of the above posts, I just finished going through everything from the Kickstarter today. And it seems that I have some crow to eat. 
There were a wide range of discussions about printing in direct messages to backers, in the general comments, here on our forums, and even via emails in some cases. Some of the things I remember outlining in detail actually occurred through one-on-one channels and not in the general comments. And all of it just became blurred together in my brain.
From a closer look at exactly what I said in the general comments, I can now see how printing could be readily construed as an intended part of the product (but definitely NOT export). In my brain, I conflated discussions from assorted places and did not keep clear about what was said where. For those of you who have run a Kickstarter, I'm sure you're nodding your heads about how easy that is. In any case, I owe everyone here an apology for that! Sorry!
Going back through every post from the Beta team prior to the Kickstarter, the ability to print content was actually brought up once. I obviously forgot about that instance as well, but its statistical significance is still quite important. Printing was mentioned a single time out of a Beta team of about 100 GMs over the span of a year. We went into the Kickstarter with Realm Works focused squarely on electronic delivery and printing was not something we felt was important. This lack of importance was basically echoed by the Beta team.
When the Kickstarter began, some people wanted printing, so we came up with what we thought was a viable solution for simple printing. The fact that printing would be simple was stated on multiple occasions, with anything more being something that would be determined by user demand after V1.0 came out, but I can definitely see how I conveyed that simple printing WOULD be included. The details about printing being dependent on some assumptions was communicated to some people, but I clearly failed to do so widely in the general comments. After the Kickstarter, when we realized a critical assumption for printing was not valid, the idea for simple printing fell apart. I haven't spent the time to dig through all of that stuff, but I'm pretty certain that discovery WAS communicated to backers.
So where does that leave us? As was stated in the Survey Update last week, we recognize that printing is important to a meaningful number of users, even though the survey results put it smack in the middle overall. We further said that we were looking for ideas on how to provide some basic printing relatively soon, and that was no joke. I've already spent time brainstorming creative solutions that would allow us to provide simple printing with a comparatively small amount of work. I actually have one promising idea, but it's just that - an idea. It still needs to be thought through before it gets discussed publicly. I intend to spend that time after we get the upcoming release out the door. If, and that's a BIG if, the idea is sound, we might be able to get some basic printing into place by summer. And we'll let everyone know if it's going to happen.
Every GM runs their games differently. So every GM has different wants and priorities for a tool like Realm Works. And every GM believes their priorities are the absolute #1 thing we should be working on. As much as we'd love to be able to do that, it's just not possible. So we're doing the best we can with the limited resources we have available.
Beyond that, the time I spend here on the forums (and researching everything from the past) is time that isn't spent on development. That delays everything a little bit further. Pretty soon, it starts to add up to multiple days lost, which means multiple days of delays. Then the days add up to weeks. So I'm really caught between a rock and a hard place here. I want to engage in discussions with you all here. I want to make you all happy. And I need to focus on writing software in order to deliver any new capabilities. All I can really do is let you guys dictate how much time I need to spend here and make sure you know the very real costs of my time here – i.e. how quickly we get new features into the product, which means how quickly we get to the features YOU want.
Thanks!
There were a wide range of discussions about printing in direct messages to backers, in the general comments, here on our forums, and even via emails in some cases. Some of the things I remember outlining in detail actually occurred through one-on-one channels and not in the general comments. And all of it just became blurred together in my brain.
From a closer look at exactly what I said in the general comments, I can now see how printing could be readily construed as an intended part of the product (but definitely NOT export). In my brain, I conflated discussions from assorted places and did not keep clear about what was said where. For those of you who have run a Kickstarter, I'm sure you're nodding your heads about how easy that is. In any case, I owe everyone here an apology for that! Sorry!
Going back through every post from the Beta team prior to the Kickstarter, the ability to print content was actually brought up once. I obviously forgot about that instance as well, but its statistical significance is still quite important. Printing was mentioned a single time out of a Beta team of about 100 GMs over the span of a year. We went into the Kickstarter with Realm Works focused squarely on electronic delivery and printing was not something we felt was important. This lack of importance was basically echoed by the Beta team.
When the Kickstarter began, some people wanted printing, so we came up with what we thought was a viable solution for simple printing. The fact that printing would be simple was stated on multiple occasions, with anything more being something that would be determined by user demand after V1.0 came out, but I can definitely see how I conveyed that simple printing WOULD be included. The details about printing being dependent on some assumptions was communicated to some people, but I clearly failed to do so widely in the general comments. After the Kickstarter, when we realized a critical assumption for printing was not valid, the idea for simple printing fell apart. I haven't spent the time to dig through all of that stuff, but I'm pretty certain that discovery WAS communicated to backers.
So where does that leave us? As was stated in the Survey Update last week, we recognize that printing is important to a meaningful number of users, even though the survey results put it smack in the middle overall. We further said that we were looking for ideas on how to provide some basic printing relatively soon, and that was no joke. I've already spent time brainstorming creative solutions that would allow us to provide simple printing with a comparatively small amount of work. I actually have one promising idea, but it's just that - an idea. It still needs to be thought through before it gets discussed publicly. I intend to spend that time after we get the upcoming release out the door. If, and that's a BIG if, the idea is sound, we might be able to get some basic printing into place by summer. And we'll let everyone know if it's going to happen.
Every GM runs their games differently. So every GM has different wants and priorities for a tool like Realm Works. And every GM believes their priorities are the absolute #1 thing we should be working on. As much as we'd love to be able to do that, it's just not possible. So we're doing the best we can with the limited resources we have available.
Beyond that, the time I spend here on the forums (and researching everything from the past) is time that isn't spent on development. That delays everything a little bit further. Pretty soon, it starts to add up to multiple days lost, which means multiple days of delays. Then the days add up to weeks. So I'm really caught between a rock and a hard place here. I want to engage in discussions with you all here. I want to make you all happy. And I need to focus on writing software in order to deliver any new capabilities. All I can really do is let you guys dictate how much time I need to spend here and make sure you know the very real costs of my time here – i.e. how quickly we get new features into the product, which means how quickly we get to the features YOU want.
Thanks!
MNBlockHead
Well-known member
I think RW has stated its position and reasoning clearly enough. Not everyone is going to be happy with the resulting priorities—including myself. But I would rather see you spending time on developing the product and not on arguing with the long tail of minority discontent. Any further engagement on this issue is going to lead to diminishing returns as anyone still upset enough to continue arguing this is not going to be happy unless you change your development priorities. You've made and explained your decisions; best now to put all your energies into successfully executing them.
We'll still be here to argue with you about the need for calendars, exporting, and printing after the next release.
Rob, you've done your due diligence and more on this. Please go back to coding; we'll be nice for Liz.
Hehe.
Separately, a bit of an update on the more immediate release mentioned in this update. Our plan was to release an update this week with some of the enhancements mentioned at the start of the survey, but it's now being pushed into next week. Unfortunately, one of the developers was ill and that put us behind by a number of days.