Do you know if it is posible to have the Monster compendium as well as the other DDi content running in my PC like the character builder does, instead of accessing the info bymeans the web (feature on the other hand that I never use).?
The Character Builder is the only offline product at this time, and I suspect we won't ever see the Compendium moved to an offline format. Too much data
actually, the amount of data is not an issue in our modern times. still i believe they'll never do an offline compendium, as this would negate your need to buy the monthly fee, and this is what they're aiming for.
actually, the amount of data is not an issue in our modern times. still i believe they'll never do an offline compendium, as this would negate your need to buy the monthly fee, and this is what they're aiming for.
Actually a lot of users are going to have to be warry of how these application work. Time Warner just announced 3 new sites that they are going to be capping data usage (or what I like to call Data rationing). I am part of one of those markets. We are voicing our displeasure, but my guess is that they will go ahead and do it and see what the fallout is.
These applications (especially the ones that are not out yet - if they come out at all) could be a big deal for these people. The plans start at 5Gb per month with the highest announced with a price 40Gb per month with a $1 per month overage.
I suggest everyone pay attention, as all the other ISP I am sure are:
http://www.stopthecap.com seems to be the rally point for these.
in europe its now widely accepted that you need limitfree internet to really use broad-band. let's see how they talk in 2-3 years about that, when this will be present in the us.
it's funny to see, how those things repeat itself every couply of years, and usually with some delays between europe and the U.S.
in europe its now widely accepted that you need limitfree internet to really use broad-band. let's see how they talk in 2-3 years about that, when this will be present in the us.
Well, unfortunately the powers that be don't want competition with their cable systems.
Anyways - does anyone know how much data is actually transferred with these applications?
assumptions:
+a powers text has on average 400 characters.
+encoding is unicode, but mostly english characters are used in the powers. ( unicode uses from 1-4 bytes for every character)
+transportation format is xml (more overhead than a custom format, but a lot more usable for everything else)
+data is gzipped for transport
400 (characters) * 1.5 bytes (unicode) * 1.4 (xml-overhead is likely high) *0.5 (good compression of text can be even better than that, especially with highly reoccurring texts like xml formats usually do)
=> <0.5 kb per power transferred.
which means, going once to wizards.com/dnd is the same amount of traffic as transferring 4000 powers.
of course, for upgrade to the software (new rules, new classes, new images) there has to be transferred much more - but at most it's the amount of data the full ddi-cb install has.