TOPIC: Regarding new character generators

As of late, I haven't seen much movement on either TDScribe.com or TDCharacterCreator.com and that saddens me. I think both of those sites are terrific. They bring a lot of creativity to the character creation process and I genuinely hope folks are still experimenting with them.

I'm concerned I may share some (a lot?) of the blame for the silence regarding these sites. I think there was a very large misunderstanding on comments I made on their respective debut threads. ( TDS & TDCC ) I would very much like to clear the air.

In both of the aforementioned threads, I made comments alerting players that these sites were not currently approved by TPTB. I tried very hard to make it clear that this was a temporary state. We need people to use these sites to work out the bugs. That's not a slam against their creators, it's simply a fact of programming life. ALL software has bugs. Software creators rely on users to unearth and report issues so the kinks can be ironed out. It's very much like how writers can't be their own editors. It's necessary to get independent eyes on the project. It's the TD community that needs to vet these sites. Once the tires have been kicked and the engines have been thoroughly tuned, TPTB will give the green light for coaches to accept output from these sites. (sorry for the mixed metaphors)

Both Amorgen's spreadsheet and Cranston's app went through multiple iterations over many months before they were okayed for use. And in both instances, it was the forumites who did the vetting.

Please, keep using these sites to make your builds. Compare the outputs to one another. Compare them to the spreadsheet and to the app. Maybe you'll unearth a problem in the "old" methods that the new sites fixed. It benefits us all to have competing systems.

To Joshua Long and Acherin: If I gave the impression that I was dismissing TDS or TDCC, please know that was absolutely not my intention. I know my direct manner of communicating can come across as rude, especially without the benefit of body language and vocal inflection to convey emotions. Your sites make great additions to the TD community and I hope you continue to develop them. If you feel I have offended you, I hope you will reach out to me on this thread or via PM. If you want to call me out because you think I was (am?) being a dick, you have my blessing.

And finally, to players: Please keep using TDScribe.com and TDCharacterCreator.com . Support the hard work and creativity these guys put into character creation.

I will have to check out TDScribe. I have twenty different character builds with TDCharacterCreator, the site is awesome. Over these twenty builds I've found a few minor bugs but all in all I really love this thing. I can creat builds extremely fast and the summary sheet is great. Plus it has a ton of Token options for the Slotless category. I also think this is probably the easiest site to use for any Newbies.

I believe I said this before, but even if I did it bears repeating. I think giving players choice is a great thing. Ultimately being able to choose between the websites, app and shreadsheet is great. That said at this time the spreadsheet and the apps work wonderful for me. Having to enter 30+ character builds into more systems that don't give me much more (though I do like TD Character Creator's In Game Checklist) isn't something that interest me today. After Gen Con I may have interest to start loading characters into them. However they do lack (as does the app) something that I really like about the spreadsheet. I can add future tokens to it to see what they would do to my builds. I do this a quiet a bit when we do the token design process. As the tokens go through changes I can make those changes in the spreadsheet and see the changes to the characters right away.

It absolutely has nothing to do with you Druegar. The times we have talked have been a great experience.

Lifting the veil from at least from my side; I had been working on TDScribe.com for awhile and even had been getting feedback from Druegar on usability from a coaches perspective. When TDCC launched I was pretty gutted. TDCC looks beautiful from a UX perspective but does not have all the functionality that TDS does. However, since it was the first mover and prettier it seemed to have sucked the air out of the room.

TDS has a few major UX issues that need to be addressed, not doubt. Comparing TDS to TDCC is a great example of two different approaches, Function vs Form, I would say.

I had been working on TDS mostly all by myself, sans for art and the initial TokenDB scraper. Seeing what TDCC had done I knew I had to a lot more UX work to do than I had initially planned. Note I'm not a web developer by trade, I am a computer engineer. (More specifically I have been a firmware developer for awhile now, with a stint in app development.) That would result in me having to learn UX development code/approaches that live up to TDCC presentation which I realized would result in redoing a good amount of code. Between this realization, the burnout of doing this all myself, and the luke warm reception from the TD community I have pretty much not touched TDS for months.

I have been keeping a close eye on TDCC to see if Acherin would implement the functionality it lacks vs TDS but unfortunately they have not. I wonder if they have been waiting for me to improve TDS's UX or that perhaps they too did not get the TD community response they were hoping for or perhaps they too are burned out as well? No clue!

Sorry for the rambling but that is where TDS is at at the moment. I'll probably respond more to this thread when I think of it.

-Joshua and to same extent Acherin. There are a few factors that has kept me and i'd be willing to bet a few others from the web builders.

-Multiple builds developed over time in the spreadsheet or mobile app. Jedi covered this above, just not feasible to move over unless/until we're comfortable on reliability and stability.

-Lack of offline support, or if there is something then advertise it. I work IT (networking) and i dislike/will not use something that if i have a flaky net connection that the site becomes useless. I know export to pdf but many times i've had to do a build on the fly in coaching room in a pug. If i could build in mobile app then export up to a website later for updated party tracker i'd use a web builder more.

Lot of great work and ideas in the websites but there is understandable caution on use.

I have used TDCC and really like it. I have not tried TDS, but I have heard very positive things from people who have.

I have to admit that TDCharacterCreator.com looks really nice compared to TDScribe (and this is coming from somebody who barely has the UI skills to create something like TDScribe). I actually had something I was working on that would have looked similar to TDCharacterCreator had I not run into limitations on time and graphics skills.

Meanwhile, in order for me to use TDCharacterCreator it would need to support parties. And what I'd like to see is that first you create the character and then you can add it into a party. But you should be able to add other peoples' characters into your party. Then as they make changes your party card will automatically update.

For both of them it would be nice to connect to a future TDCollection API to track what you own and make sure you aren't over-allocating tokens. And you could filter to only tokens that you own when making selections (optional of course).

Matt wrote: -Multiple builds developed over time in the spreadsheet or mobile app.

-Lack of offline support, or if there is something then advertise it. I work IT (networking) and i dislike/will not use something that if i have a flaky net connection that the site becomes useless. I know export to pdf but many times i've had to do a build on the fly in coaching room in a pug. If i could build in mobile app then export up to a website later for updated party tracker i'd use a web builder more.

Lot of great work and ideas in the websites but there is understandable caution on use.

Just a thought. The app does have an export feature which generates a list of tokens in the email, and provides a text file with the build. If the web page provided a text field for input, it would be a simple copy paste to convert from the app to the web page. If anyone has an interest, I can provide the file format. It's just a text file with SLOT: ITEM. Conversely, if you generate a similar text file with the same extension, it can be imported into the app.

I totally get you about working on your own on these. The app was developed over a couple years, with additions as the token set has gotten more complicated. It will take time to bring that up all at once.

For what it is worth, the IOS version is in Objective-C and the Android is in JAVA. If the source on either of those would be useful, you are welcome to it.

Tom

Rob F wrote: I will have to check out TDScribe. I have twenty different character builds with TDCharacterCreator, the site is awesome. Over these twenty builds I've found a few minor bugs but all in all I really love this thing. I can creat builds extremely fast and the summary sheet is great. Plus it has a ton of Token options for the Slotless category. I also think this is probably the easiest site to use for any Newbies.

I concur with this. I have check TDCC against the other builders (excluding TDScribe) to vet the numbers and I am extremely happy with the accuracy and more so the user experience.

I would go so far as requesting the builder to be approved.

Ed

bpsymington wrote: I have used TDCC and really like it. I have not tried TDS, but I have heard very positive things from people who have.

I've used TDCC this year to do builds for my fixed runs.
It was VERY useful for the TDT Newbie run because I have saved each player as a PDF (and emailed to the players so they can 'read up'), and I've printed them out at 30% size so I can put them on a laminated card for the new players.

A shame that I then had to recreate the characters in the app for the party card. but still a useful tool saved me from my usual routine which is to lay out 10 sheets of paper for the party and manually place tokens on them.

Steve wrote:

bpsymington wrote: I have used TDCC and really like it. I have not tried TDS, but I have heard very positive things from people who have.

I've used TDCC this year to do builds for my fixed runs.
It was VERY useful for the TDT Newbie run because I have saved each player as a PDF (and emailed to the players so they can 'read up'), and I've printed them out at 30% size so I can put them on a laminated card for the new players.

A shame that I then had to recreate the characters in the app for the party card. but still a useful tool saved me from my usual routine which is to lay out 10 sheets of paper for the party and manually place tokens on them.

I have talked with Acherin and he is making a party version where all you basically need is the person's URL of their character to add. I am sure his "day" job is getting in the way of TDCC.

Ed

MasterED wrote: I have talked with Acherin and he is making a party version where all you basically need is the person's URL of their character to add. I am sure his "day" job is getting in the way of TDCC.

Ed

If only, unfortunately summer is a very busy time for me, to which I have not had much time to work on the site. I do intend on having party management released by Gamerhole Con which I will announce more on as it gets closer to completion.

A special thanks to those who has used TDCC and have given feedback. And thanks to those advocating for its offical indoctrine.

There are several great applications out there available to the TD community and I want to say thank you to those who made them. As any developer will tell you the amount effort that goes into any of these apps is immense, it's only the support of the community that keeps any of these things alive. So whatever flavor of character creator, token organizer or token database you prefer be sure to give your to support without it they would cease to exist.