Setting this feedback thread in advance for Randy's Digital Insider #16, due to go live tomorrow.
All around, this is one of the better insider articles. Lots of good preview information, and some great news in response to our feedback here on the forums about the availability of past issues for subscribers, and the logout timer for compendium users.
This would do many things that would be helpful for many gaming groups. First there is the group that plays in a location where internet is not available, for instance in my home town there is a group that meets at the local public library which does not offer a wifi connection. Second would be the DM who has to work on things a little here and there, since there is no persistant connection, no timeout issues. Third is the most useful I think, users of the Monster builder could save their data which could be made to pull into the encounter builder then or at a later time. This would be a huge improvement.
While it would be nice to just assume that everyone is going to have a internet connection and large sums of time to sit and work on an adventure and have a fun time using the apps. Making that assumption is bad. The apps likely already use Java, so making them into standalone apps wouldn't likely be hard. Doing this would remove a block many of my players and DM friends have cited as a reason they will not subscribe.
Not that I am paying right now. I'm still waiting for the auto-renewal system to get nuked before I sign up.
Thank you for addressing the magazine debacle as well!
really.. I love that this is all such a direct response to the community.
I'm especially pleased with being able to peak ahead to next month's editorial calendar. It was one of my pet peeves that on Oct 30th, I couldn't even see what was going to be coming out on November 3, and had to wait 2 more days to find out. (Of course, I was really trying to get a look that far ahead by the middle of the month, but that doesn't really count).
I'm still eagerly waiting for the full release of CB. Being able to build my 5th level ranger would be SOOOO nice.... of course he'll probably be 7th or 8th by then, but now it's so tantalizingly close...
I was even pleasantly surprised at how quickly fixes were put in place for the beta release of CB. I was able to work through my own issues, but by the time I read the posts about people with similar problems, most had been dealt with and some of the fixes had already been put in place.
Of course I will continue to haunt the DI to find hints of when the REST of the resources are coming... hopefully soon?!
So I just got my subscription. I use to get Dragon magazine via mail. Is that still an option?
There are no print versions available. Online/Digital versions are the only versions now.
Can I link it to my online stuff. I mean I like x number of months of issues up, but I also like being able to go back and look at old ones on the fly. Thats the big question I have, but yet to see discussed. I'd be happy with just full back stock ability (IE I pay less than 10 bucks a month and am able to see all issues since I started to subscribe cause I don't want to miss anything).
The plan is that when you're logged in/subscribed you'll be able to re-download every issue that you're entitled due from the months you've been subscribed. For example - If you subscribe for Oct, Nov, December, then quit until March, in March you'll get the March issue, and be able to review Oct - Dec. Jan and Feb will not be a part of your account.
There are myriad reasons for this, not the least of which is that to give 100% access to the previous issues means that a user for $15 (the planned single-month cost when everything is done) would get a year's worth of issues - something that a year-long subscriber is paying far more for. That dilutes the value of a year-long subscription unfairly.
There are plans that will allow subscribers who miss an issue or two to purchase back issues and have them added to their account.
The biggest issue we have found so far is that Vista users who were set-up to use the 64-bit version of the operating system could not run the program at all. We fixed this bug and deployed a new version within a couple of days.
Perhaps this is actually "The biggest issue we have found so far that we can fix." Because as far as I am concerned the more general form of this statement should read "The biggest issue we have found so far is that non-win32 users could not run the program at all, and that we have fixed the bug for vista 64 users only."
You have made an unfortunate decision to make the tools not only windows only, but based on the latest (buggy) release of a windows only technology, so new that even well established methods of cross platform support and emulation fail, increasing the subscription cost from 4.95 a month to 4.95 a month and a one time outset of 180 for a license to another operating system, and the installation pain that comes with it.
I'd be exceptionally curious at what wizards.com's web analytics shows is the browser/OS break down of its customers, and I expect that it is disproportionally skewed towards non-windows users over other typical websites.
I don't need the compendium - I have all the books in PDF, so I can just search through them. (Regular expressions are your friend.) Our DM prints out articles we need to play. (One guy in our group is running a Bard.) I used to enjoy reading the articles, but I don't need them for our weekly game. I really have no reason to subscribe and it makes me a little sad.
Now that you've locked the interesting stuff away, I find I don't even come to the forums much anymore. I would have paid $5 a month just for the Character Builder. But instead of building it in something cross-platform, you decided to post a "Windows only" sign. I guess that was the easy solution. Would it really have been that hard to write it in Java? We're using that to create some pretty serious web apps here. Works on any operating system with a web browser.
Well, I'm just whining. I hope you didn't drive away too many other people. Would hate to see the online stuff fail just because you alienated 10% of your audience.
1) The current beta doesn't include level 4-30
2) Martial Power is not included (and that's what we now want to play with, right?)
If they want to keep beta testing activity high, I recommend to release all the content as soon as possible to subscribers, in a version that's protected from piracy, if that's a concern.
Reposted from this thread about the community's desire to see more levels in the CB
I'm really enjoying the character builder. It's even been a great tool for introducing the game to some new players in my group. I couldn't tell if the new data going into the compendium (props on the speed) is also going into the character builder on Tuesday too. Does any one know?
Also, you read my mind on increasing the inactivity time on the compendium. There were about 3 instances in my last game session where I had to take time & log back in to look up a skill. Thanks for looking into this.
Happy Turkey Day everyone.
That said, we are hoping to include a batch of changes, including some additional data, into the Open Beta branch of the code which we'll be making availabe in December.
Randy
DDI isn't perfect, but I believe you are making progress most every week. I love the content, the character generator is great, I look forward to seeing things get better and better over time. I understand why some are cranky about some of your decisions, however.
keep it improving...and figure out how to get paypal working.
I'd also like to throw my hat in with those who want the auto-log out time to be increased.
Your people don't know what they're doing.
As Iunderstand it Randy was/is fairly senior in the whole Insider project, and then we get this article from him that just shows that either there is something very wrong wit WotC's understanding of web delivery or somebody is flat out lying.
Specifically:
When we built our sign-in system, we included a timer that automatically logs people out if they aren’t doing anything. (This is good both for security reasons (folks who walk away from public terminals, etc.) and also to make sure our servers don’t accumulate too many simultaneous connections.
Lets pull this apart... First of all there isn't even an attempt at realistic security on the dndinsider site at all -- either from a subscriber point of view or Wotc's view.
Some example problems:
Passwords are sent in plain text - not ssl/https at all for the login. This is a far bigger security risk than people 'leaving a session logged in'.
Maxlength of Password and e-mail set to 200 characters: This shows a real misunderstanding of a lot of things. First of all, e-mail addresses are specified as having a maximum legal length of 320 characters (check your rfcs guys). True, addresses that long are unlikely, but still, it speaks of misunderstanding. Second, you /really/ allow 200 character passwords? Or are you just asking for people to attempt sql injection/buffer overruns on you? Again, assuming you're doing the very minimum of using length checks and passing sql paramters via stored procedures to avoid injection attacks then you're ok. But to have a setup that invites people to have a go at hacking and then talk about not wanting saturated connections... Again, you're either naieve, missed the point, or people are lying to you.
Amazon seems to manage quite will with permanent logins for one-click shopping (ie, using my credit card) and haven't been overrun with fraud claims. Yet the dndinsider team don't even seem able to save a cookie and remember my e-mail address in my login box. I mean, just have a check box under the login thats unchecked by default that says 'Remember by login details'. Cookies aren't evil in the case of remembering login details and such (browser caches are far more evil for that), when people talk about evil cookies its more to do with tracking their activity and using the info to target the user -- and that's largely a falacy anyway -- your IP address already allows them to do that without leaving any imprint on a machine. Don't beleive the 'net hype about things and practices. Research understand the issue, form are genuine opinion, truly understand why you're /not/ doing something as well as why you are. This is fundamental good IT practice.
As for the whole server overrun issue... if you want to keep connections to your servers undercontrol... REDUCE THE NUMBER OF IMAGES ON YOUR SITE! Yes the site looks cool, but there are 97 image references on a page. Remember, even when the bandwidth is saved because the image is cached, the browser still connects to the server to ask if the image is updated and its ok to use the cached version (sending a http 304 not modified message back).
Finally (for now) simply being 'logged in' should never cause your servers to saturate. Me sitting here reading a page for a half an hour doesn't put any strain on your servers. Once the initial load has been made, your server does nothing. Sure it holds some session state either in memory on in the database, but thats in the order of a few kb (unless you're being inefficient with what you're storing in there). Even the most feeble modern web server has 2GB of memory in there which equates to 100,000 user sessions, and 1GB for running the server, and I really hope you have at least a small web farm running things rather than one server.
Believe me, I really love the whole dndinsider project, but I fear you have people making some very poor technical choices in your organisation -- either that or the people speaking in public are very misinformed. I don't expect any confirmation of your technical specifications or security practices, that would be dumb to discuss in the open, but the points I've made aren't just aimless rants, they're genuine issues that you shoudl be concerned about far more so than the risk of someone leaving an account logged in at a public library.
As for the whole server overrun issue... if you want to keep connections to your servers undercontrol... REDUCE THE NUMBER OF IMAGES ON YOUR SITE! Yes the site looks cool, but there are 97 image references on a page. Remember, even when the bandwidth is saved because the image is cached, the browser still connects to the server to ask if the image is updated and its ok to use the cached version (sending a http 304 not modified message back).
*100%agree* this is just the dnd main page:
Documents (1 file) 79 KB
Images (85 files) 1339 KB
Objects (0 files)
Scripts (18 files) 134 KB
Style Sheets (5 files) 48 KB
Total 1599 KB
(not including that flash-application at all)
@saitir: you got a pm.
The Encounter Builder includes an updated list of monsters, and the monsters now link to detail pages from the Compendium.
I'm confused. It sounds like he's saying that when you display and print the encounter it should print the corresponding monster stats from the Compendium (assuming you use an existing WoTC monster). I think this feature would be incredibly cool but I can't seem to find it in the Encounter builder. Is it planned for a future update or am I misunderstanding what he means?
I'm confused. It sounds like he's saying that when you display and print the encounter it should print the corresponding monster stats from the Compendium (assuming you use an existing WoTC monster). I think this feature would be incredibly cool but I can't seem to find it in the Encounter builder. Is it planned for a future update or am I misunderstanding what he means?
Same question from me.
I want to comment and suggest some things for the Logout dilemma.
I have an idea about a QUICK LOGIN feature. When the system is about to dump somebody have an audio/visual alert pop up. Then the user can hit the QUICK LOGIN button and give JUST their password. If the user misses the chance it goes back to the standard login.
This is tricky and requires computer cycles but it would be a welcome alternative to the complete login. MUCH easier.
Any comments? If you have to dump us, make it easier for us to stay on. This could work.
Bob
I'm confused. It sounds like he's saying that when you display and print the encounter it should print the corresponding monster stats from the Compendium (assuming you use an existing WoTC monster). I think this feature would be incredibly cool but I can't seem to find it in the Encounter builder. Is it planned for a future update or am I misunderstanding what he means?
I'm the guy in charge (roughly) of the Bonus Tools. The Encounter Builder now includes links to the Compendium, so when you see a monster on the list that you're selecting from, you can click on the little "eye" icon and pull up detail page with the monster's stats. It used to be you'd get a little tooltip that would give you header information for the monster. Now you can get the whole stat block.
You still print the Compendium detail pages separately from the encounter list. The functionality of printing a number of monster stat blocks together and using the encounter stat block format is an item on my to-do list, but right now there are higher priorities above it.
No, the new Compendium data will not show up in the Character Builder yet. Once the CB is launched we do indeed intend to update it on approximately the same monthly schedule as Compendium, but those "real time" updates will not begin until we've officially launched.
That said, we are hoping to include a batch of changes, including some additional data, into the Open Beta branch of the code which we'll be making availabe in December.
Randy
Now that you've locked the interesting stuff away, I find I don't even come to the forums much any more.
I would suggest you are not alone in this, thread development and discussion rate seems to have fallen of dramatically since subscription was implemented, and not just on these forums.
This was an inevitable side effect of subscription access, but I suspect it is further aggravated by the absence of a place that subscribers can freely discuss the content of the magazines without running into infringement issues.
I also suspect that a significant proportion of the user base for the site is not rooted in the windows OS. (I really need to get remote access to me windows machine sorted so I can run the character builder on it without leaving my main (Linux) machine.)
No, the new Compendium data will not show up in the Character Builder yet. Once the CB is launched we do indeed intend to update it on approximately the same monthly schedule as Compendium, but those "real time" updates will not begin until we've officially launched.
That said, we are hoping to include a batch of changes, including some additional data, into the Open Beta branch of the code which we'll be making availabe in December.
Randy
Hey Randy,
any chance we'll get some more levels in the CB open beta release? Or perhaps a version just for subscribers that resembles more the one you have for internal use
I'm the guy in charge (roughly) of the Bonus Tools.
I am not sure what resolution the bonus tools are intended at, I myself am running 1280 x 1024 on a 19" monitor and I find the text to be hard to read. Is there some way the tool could have the option of moving to a new window or something that would allow expanding the page to make the whole thing bigger and therefore easier to read. I have no problem with the rest of the site's text just the ones in the tools. I noticed that it is a different font, that could be the main problem for me, I am not sure.
The Encounter Builder now includes links to the Compendium, so when you see a monster on the list that you're selecting from, you can click on the little "eye" icon and pull up detail page with the monster's stats. It used to be you'd get a little tooltip that would give you header information for the monster. Now you can get the whole stat block.
As a separate issue I was testing out what you describe and it works but the people who update the compendium need to change something in how they are doing their references at the bottom of the entries. I looked up a Kir-Lanan Wing (Level 3) and at the bottom was told "First published in Touched by Darkness." with the link for the source being http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4mst/products . This was not helpful at all. I tried a search on the WOTC site and it was not helpful either. It was not until I did a general internet search for "D&D Touched by Darkness" that I found it was a name of a LFR module CORE1-5. Why could this have not been included in the name? It would have quickly and easily told me where to look for the source should I want to. Obviously I would have to sanction a table for the module to get it but that is another issue. In short if you are going to put references on a entry have it be something that is useful otherwise you are wasting not only your time but mine.
As a separate issue I was testing out what you describe and it works but the people who update the compendium need to change something in how they are doing their references at the bottom of the entries.
I'll look into what we can do better. I'm not sure why the link sent you to the generic product page instead of to the RPGA adventures page. This was set up before I took over, so I'll have to look into it to figure out what's going on. Our source references and links could be better.
That said, we are hoping to include a batch of changes, including some additional data, into the Open Beta branch of the code which we'll be making availabe in December.
Randy
I hadn't noticed this post! I suppose we will have to make sure we do this is all in
Hopefully the "some additional data" is the book you are all looking for.
I don't know if this is where I should post this but it would be great if the compendium had a pronunciation guide. My friends and I are constantly screwing up creature and city names...not to mention NPC names. Any chance of some kind of guide going in?
Long-term, this seems useful, but pronunciation guides are new information that would have to be written and checked. We already have plenty to do just getting information that's already written into the Compendium.
Passwords are sent in plain text - not ssl/https at all for the login. This is a far bigger security risk than people 'leaving a session logged in'.
An idle timeout is pretty worthless as a security measure -- it only prevents some exploitation based on easy opportunity not any serious attempt to take over an account. As saitir mentioned, you sent username/password combos over plain text which makes it quite easy to capture for later exploitation. If you aren't willing to use https for logins, then you are not making user accounts any safer with an idle logout -- because if someone cared they would have stolen their auth tokens or hijacked their session long before an idle timeout helped.
It's understandable that you don't want to deliver your entire site over https, but most sites will have you login over https, create your session cookie, and redirect the client to http for access to the site content. And then if the user wants to access some critical site area (purchases, user info, etc), they are required to reauth.
One more issue: your cookies aren't limited to a single IP address. Since your session cookies are going over http (like everything else), a user's session cookies can be grabbed and since your sessions are not limited to a single IP address and used by someone else. It can be a perfectly valid business decision to ignore this to avoid annoying people on laptops that might be regularly changing WiFi networks -- but in terms of protecting user accounts this is something you do before setting session timeouts to values less than 4 hours.
Honestly your "security" priorities should be:
1) https login
2) security zoning the site
3) session IP limitation
4) short idle timeout
Banks do all of these, but that is because of the critical nature of their data. Wizards' should be doing the first two.
Amazon seems to manage quite will with permanent logins for one-click shopping (ie, using my credit card) and haven't been overrun with fraud claims. Yet the dndinsider team don't even seem able to save a cookie and remember my e-mail address in my login box. I mean, just have a check box under the login thats unchecked by default that says 'Remember by login details'.
I have to agree. There is zero reason that an opt in 'auto login' should not be available. Any serious web content vendor (which you want to be) does this because it:
1) allows you to monitor your customers more carefully.
2) improves the customer experience
Win Win. Make it happen.
Cookies aren't evil in the case of remembering login details and such (browser caches are far more evil for that),
Just don't put the login info in the cookie -- it should be a key that gets reset regularly.
Oh and you really need to audit the cookies that the Wizards' site already uses. Right now I have:
.wizards.com: 5 cookies
www.wizards.com: 9 cookies
.doubleclick.net: 1 cookie
.hitbox.com: 2 cookies
.ehg-wizardsofthecoast.hitbox.com: 7 cookies
I know you don't have control over the cookies not in your domain, but 14 cookies for a site with a single sign-on is really pathetic. You should be able to get by with a couple global cookies and then if needed some domain limited cookies for sessions to higher security areas.
As for the whole server overrun issue... if you want to keep connections to your servers undercontrol... REDUCE THE NUMBER OF IMAGES ON YOUR SITE! Yes the site looks cool, but there are 97 image references on a page. Remember, even when the bandwidth is saved because the image is cached, the browser still connects to the server to ask if the image is updated and its ok to use the cached version (sending a http 304 not modified message back).
No kidding the entire site could be made hundreds of times faster buy just doing some Webapp 101 basics. Firefox + Firebug + YSlow -- do it now. The DnDI main page gets a F (36 out of 100) -- which means that no one has done anything to try to speed up your site. Just work throught the 13 basic YSlow rules (then you can latter address the more advanced rules). Some highlights of what you need to do:
1) Make fewer HTTP requests -- 90+ requests to load a page is bad, but it is really bad that 15 are wasted on Javascript files and 6 on style sheets. I know your web design classes might have encouraged you to break your js and css into separate files for manageability -- and that is good when designing the site -- but when you move to production you should combine your css and js into single files. One larger file will always be faster than 15 smaller files!
2) Add Expires Header -- when you have 90+ images loaded on a page (which is pretty ridiculous) you are wasting tons of bandwidth on people checking to get the most recent version of the file. What you should do is set an Expires Header in the far future, which will mean that a modern browser will only issue the HTTP request if it doesn't have the file cached. If you want to change the image in the future use a different filename. This should also be done with CSS and JS.
6) Include JS at the bottom of your pages. This isn't as easy as some of the others, because it requires that your content be written for unobtrusive JS -- but it is worth it. When there are outstanding JS HTTP requests the browser will not continue to render the page, thus adding more apparent latency to the display of the page.
10) Minify -- once you've combined your CSS and JS into single versioned files with far-future expires headers (and hopefully gzipped) you can also minify them which will reduce the size of the files.
I've optimized several applications with the YSlow rules and gone from page loads with visible latency to no latency and no page redrawing. I wouldn't be surprised if you saw a 50+% drop in HTTP connections and 35+% drop in CPU usage.
Finally (for now) simply being 'logged in' should never cause your servers to saturate.
I'd like to stress this as well. The only thing an open session does is take up space in wherever you store the sessions (database, memcached, filesystem, memory). It does not "keep and open connection". I have run into an issue with too many sessions before, but that was because millions of sessions were getting created by access to an interface that wasn't stateful (so the session was irrelevant) -- and that took months to cause a db issue.
I understand that there is a lot of learning about being a web content provider, but you need to start with the basics and get them right.
I'm wondering if we can get another level of detail in the compendium. Right now the compendium has a lot of good info, but within those entries are terms, keywords, conditions, and rules that often require further definition. As of now, there's no searchable database for such rules (if I wanted to look up dazed vs. stunned, for instance; or if I wanted to know what a stance power was).
As I plan my adventures I find I need to have the books beside me at all times just to look up these little bits and thus fully understand/clarify the information on the compendium. I realize that it's not in WotC's interests to list the rules online in a fashion that would allow someone to simply copy it all down and print it, but is it possible that we'll be getting additional searchable fields in the future that would provide us with more rules information beyond what we already have?
I also believe that Wizards has a lot of things going for it with DDi, but still a lot of bugs and difficulties. As a Mac User, I would be VERY obliged if WotC would make a DDi Magazine&Compendium subscription as a separate fuction to the Bonus Tools. I love the Bonus tools; I just can't use the Character Generator or any of the future tools because they're made in .exe files. I would be just as happy, if not more so, if WotC would make them into files compatible for system consoles other than Microsoft Windows. The entire logic of making them for Windows is circular, at least as long as if you're smart enough to know how poor a system Windows is, compared to other computers.
We (the players) buy Windows so we can play Video Games.
You (the gamemakers) put your games onto Windows because we buy Windows to play Video Games.
We (the players) buy Windows so we can play your games because they're only on Windows.
And it's not like Apples or Linux can't handle these programs; Windows has no advantage in terms of media or visual specs over other PC providers.
I understand that a majority of the world uses Windows because they don't know any better. Why not help them know better by offering your products for other systems as well? Why does Microsoft have a monopoly on computer-console video games - oh wait, it doesn't; various games, including the hugely popular WoW, now have MacIntosh versions. So why is WotC still behind the times and forcing users to use Windows?
Does Hasbro have some sort of deal with Microsoft preventing you to issue these programs for Mac (or Linux, for that matter)? It's not like it's that hard to make the program with universal compatibility (javascript is an excellent example).
I probably will keep subscribing and and let Hasbro milk my money, because I care about the material WotC provides through DDi. I care about Dragon Magazine, as well as Dungeon Magazine. I use the Compendium quite often.
That brings me to another point mentioned in Digital Insider #16 - wasn't the content from Martial Power and Draconomicon I supposed to be in the Compendium today? Wizards updates the site with the new Dragon and Dungeon and excerpts and other content at the stroke of midnight, yet the Compendium still has nothing from the new books.
When will the content come live?
Please don't take this the wrong way; I love Dungeons & Dragons, I am very thankful to be able to subscribe to D&D Insider, and, unlike some, I've only been a player since Wizards was around: I'm a big fan of the Wizards of the Coast. I just wish some of those higher up decisions (or web-design choices) would be more universal and accepting of the populace who don't want to be using slow, confusing, and poorly made operating systems.
EDIT: Looks like as I was writing this up Draconomicon and Martial Power content were updated into the Compendium. Thank you Wizards of the Coast.
(also, because direct x programmers are a dime a dozen, therefore cheaper)
They're not doing windows only because they don't want to, they're doing it because the reality of the situation is, porting a .net 3.5 app to bsd(mac)/linux is damn expensive (impossible). They should have used open frameworks from the get go.
Next, in response ot Marandahir's post:
The entire logic of making them for Windows is circular, at least as long as if you're smart enough to know how poor a system Windows is, compared to other computers
Just love this ongoing fallacy.
If you're smart enough to know anything about operating systems you'll know that there's actually very little difference on any realistic level between linux/bsd (which includes OS X) and Windows. They all work very well when configured correctly, used on appropriate hardware and with good drivers.
For a long long time, linux had serious trouble with graphics drivers, printer drivers and various other odds and ends and that made it unusable for non-admin minded people. Most of those problems have been solved now. The last remaining linux problems really come down to common installer architecture, still a very high reliance on needing to run command line programs to get things 'just right', and a real geek persona it needs to shed.
The Mac OS (up to and including OS X) has never had games or gaming as anything like a priority. Macs were always sold to arty types, Microsoft haters, and people who needed specific software that was unavailable elsewhere. In the those days that was things like Quark, Pagemaker, Photoshop, a whole bunch of video editing tools and so on. You couldn't do those things on a Windows OS at that time, and not even think about alot of that on a linux mix (the GIMP aside). Games didn't really mesh with that aesthetic, and even though a few things dribbled out (some Sim games and so on that were more CPU intensive than graphic intensive and yes, there were exceptions) it was never a major market.
Window has always primarily suffered from backward-compatability-itis. Microsoft allowed itself to get hog tied by corporations that relied on this and that and would never upgrade unless their 15 year old applications still ran without problems. Having to support bizare old APIs, weird memopry models and so on means including a whole bunch of crap code you don't want. So no mater what the next version of the OS's good intentions were, it still had the mill stone around its neck. The homeuser spectrum of the Windows user base is pretty tiny (in pure dollar terms) compared to corporate income. Of course there are lock in benefits - use Windows at home, use windows at work. Why bother with anything else? That doesn't excuse anything, but from a pure profit point of view, you can understand it at least.
Microsoft's second big problem with Windows has been poor drivers. A huge percentage of windows crashes are down to bad drivers. Again, MS haven't helped themselves here. Just when hardware manufacturers figure out how to do it right, they change the driver model. If MS had takle Apple's stance on this sort of thing -- if we don't approve it, you can't use it, and if you do and it doesn't work tough! -- they'd have had a lot less problems. Again, given MSs history, they sort of had to take it on the chin -- Microsoft's dominance began because IBM couldn't be bothered to lock down the PC specification, and didn;'t think cloned machines were any sort of issue, leaving MS trying its best to support any random assortment of hardware.
None of the 3 core OS branches is perfectly stable in all circumstances. You might have a stable linux machine, OS X or whatever. Personally, I've had a perfectly satisfactory Vista experience for nearly two years now. I know thats not the universal case though. And its not the universal case of OS X or Linux either.
Does that let any of the 3 OS branches off the hook for the state of things today? Certainly not. They ALL still have issues. But like it or lump it, two years (or more -- when the DNDInsider project was likely conceived) ago Windows was dominant in the home market. Windows development skills were dominant in the market place. Its got zero to do with whats best technically, and a whole lot to do with 'whats the cheapest way to target the biggest audience'. Thats what a business is. You can bet that if a study showed that 85% of gamers prefered to read their D&D manuals as pdfs rather than print books, WotC would stop printing paper books right now. Printing is expensive, shipping is expensive, storage is expensive, re-prints are risky after the initial run has sold out. Of course right now, thats not the case. But one day when we have good high res colour ebook readers, it will be the case. And people will ***** and whine about how they prefer paper copies. But they'll be in the minority. And we'll move on.
From a pureist point of view I entirely think that WotC should develop in a platform neutral way. From a pragmatic point of view, though, I entirely understand why they're chosen the route they have. In software development, pretty much all of your costs are salaries. Developing platform neutral means either more expertise (which equals higher salaries), more time(even more delayed release and higher salaries) or less functional (same salary cost as now, but lower take up of DNDInsder subscriptions, so the project gets dropped).
As i've said before, the best hope for Character builder for crossplatform is a vague hope of a silverlight version rather than a rewrite in something more open.
And that's a reply to Marandahir's post. Phew. But a simple 'Windows is cool, OS X blows' reply wouldn't really have helped.
Now Serphet's turn.
usually, Serphet, I agree with your posts. This time you're so far off, I can't believe it. But only when you get to this point:
b/c they generally don't know any better
In reference to Direct X related stuff. They onyl practical alternative to DirectX in terms of a useful programming model at the moment is OpenGL. However, OpenGL was locked in a stymied mess for a long time, was slow on updating and its current incarnation isn't actually very good with a lot of features removed with little or no consulation from the people OpenGL is supposed to target. Sure, there are loads of applications out there that use OpenGL - mostly CAD type things. But when it comes to latest and greatest graphics features on graphics cards, realtime rendering and so on, DirectX is way ahead in terms of accessing these features.
Eventually it'll catch up, but its no where near yet. There are some interesting ideas coming out now about some unified GPGPU API stuff that looks promising. But they're still not there yet. In two years time, this conversation will no doubt be very different. But remember these projects were started at least two years ago. OpenGL 3 was still a pipedream, and OpenGL 2.1 was just part of the initiative to keep OpenGL going.
As for .Net 3.5 on *nix machines... it'll get there. The monoproject is making great strides. So the 'impossible' statement is meaningless. Open frameworks are not fundamentally better than closed frameworkds. Opensource is not fundamentally better than closed source. Some open source, or open platform stuff is better, but not all. The way that Apple shamelessly abused Open Source work and turned it into OS X was masterful. More power to them. But OS X is not any more fundamentally open than Windows.
saitir: you are correct about Direct x, it ahead of openGL because of OpenGL drama. but if they had multiplatform in mind from the get go, and used opengl, it wouldn't be an issue. Things like the CB and visualizer aren't graphic intensive enough for those fancy features to really make a difference.
however performance doesn't matter, because from the beginning multiplatform wasn't a thought. therefor Direct x isn't b/c they don't know any better, I should have said: "because direct x is the obvious choice."
as for .net 3.5 via mono being "impossible" . I meant a port, not a 3rd party dependency.
yes mono 2.4 (march 09) is roadmaped to support .net 3.5.
I'm wondering if we can get another level of detail in the compendium. Right now the compendium has a lot of good info, but within those entries are terms, keywords, conditions, and rules that often require further definition. As of now, there's no searchable database for such rules (if I wanted to look up dazed vs. stunned, for instance; or if I wanted to know what a stance power was).
On our to-do list.
Right now, for the past three years, it is between 25 and 30% of the computer sales market in the US.
http://apple20.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/02/18/in-dismal-economy-macbook-outlook-slightly-brighter/
With a longer time between replacement and a higher consumer spending index, the Mac user is work more than a PC user, but in terms of absolute numbers, the choice to not do Mac catches 7 users of 10. Maybe another is willing to pay the Windows tax.
The only question is not so much technology, but how valuable that customer segment is.