Should SW look into adding key extension features?

[Morenu]

Hey there,

With Bmos stepping away from managing his PFrpg extensions (Thanks for all the years Bmos, no hate), this opens up my biggest concern about extensions and FGU's core game rules. IMO several of the extensions are almost a requirement for quality of play. Is there a process for extension creators to work with SW to integrate an extension idea into the SW code for a game you consider core?

Curious on the thought process

[LordEntrails]

There have been some such "transfers". The most prevalent one I'm away of was the one from Jim Socks for table or template improvements.

To the question of should they? Well there are a lot of considerations and questions of such. Some of those are:
- IP, and fair compensation. Even if a developer wishes to gift, there can be concerns overcompensation. And code that is public domain is even harder to incorporate into commercial code. There are licenses that can avoid this, but most developers don't bother specifying what license they release their code with.
- Maintenance. Maintaining something you didn't write can be hard.
- Relevance to wider user population. If it's ruleset specific and for a minority ruleset, then it's ROI could be poor.
- User Support. Similar to maintenance and more capabilities are going to incur more support requests.
- Code complexity. Code bloat slows down feature development.
- Impact to future community developer friendliness
- User adoption/satisfaction. As you note, some users feel such extensions are critical.

[Nylanfs]

And bmos has all his extensions up on github and said he'll maintain those (and update the forge presumably) if somebody wanted to take them over the dev cycle

[Morenu]

@lordentails. Thx. Thats a good perspective and makes sense. I think its the only big drawback in the system is customers used to things working a certain way (with extensions) may get upset at a perceived loss of functionality. Thx.

And bmos has all his extensions up on github and said he'll maintain those (and update the forge presumably) if somebody wanted to take them over the dev cycle

Absolutely. I wasn’t commenting on how bmos is handling things. Their offer is extremely generous. Devs of free addons owe us nothing (and paid ones owe very little). SW benefits from the devs in each community being willing to help improve the end user experience for free or for very little compensation (again, not a complaint). The loss of Rob2e made me think on this and about how he handled things. Its a difficult thought process.

[LordEntrails]

Yes, perceived loss of functionality is a serious consideration.

[SilentRuin]

SW does not even know what extensions are out there or what they do. Until they do a deep dive into seeing what they do and why they were created I don't see them ever realizing what holes in functionality they are filling.

Plus, extension devs are bat shite crazy. You should see the code - trying to follow and keep them working would bury SW devs for all time.

EXTENSIONS = RISK

There is no winning in this. Except maybe for SW to STOP changing code known to be used by extensions unnecessarily for "simplifying" things by reeking havoc on renaming stuff.

But they would actually have to do what extension devs have to do and run searches on all the code. For example, if I change a function I have to search all of 5E/CoreRPG/and all my extensions and sometimes some other's extensions. The fact they NEVER do this themselves INSURES they cause problems they did not need to cause.

If they DID do this they might actually do a search on something they are going to rename and go "WOAH! To many extensions use that best play it safe and keep a legacy call or not change the name." Or at the very least come up with a doc showing the extensions exactly - verbatim - what they have to change to get things working again.

Honestly, my impression is we won't see this happen.

[Morenu]

Does SW have a goto person for devs to reach out to directly? Even by invite only for the heavier used ext. Devs? Say any Dev with x number of forge subscribers gets an invite to a discord place for coders to discuss directly with SW? And for paid extensions, i am not sure if the devs would prefer their ext. Be made obsolete or not.

Again this is just a mental exercise for me due to the unfortunate passing of rob2e and bmos stepping back. These are 2 of my top 5 or so devs or dev/groups for my fgu experience.

[Zacchaeus]

Smiteworks are very well aware of what extensions are out there and what they do. Many extensions have been included in the code in the past, usually those that do something fairly simple. They aren't going to add something like the behemoths that SilentRuin develops. Also you can't expect the code to stand still. If it did then there wouldn't be any new things in any ruleset ever again. And yes, SW do help extension authors - as do many people on the forums here.

[SilentRuin]

Smiteworks are very well aware of what extensions are out there and what they do. Many extensions have been included in the code in the past, usually those that do something fairly simple. They aren't going to add something like the behemoths that SilentRuin develops. Also you can't expect the code to stand still. If it did then there wouldn't be any new things in any ruleset ever again. And yes, SW do help extension authors - as do many people on the forums here.

If a response to what I said - I don't see the relevance.

SW does NOT track extension code or do searches to see the impact any renaming or rewriting they do will impact the extension community. Nor do they attempt to minimize that impact when they do these rewrites - they simply DO them.

I have to search all the code base I'm involved with to insure and changes I make are going to have minimal impact - SW should at a minimum be doing the same thing. Its not rocket science. Create a directory - put all the ruleset/extension directories with code under them via unzipped extension and add that directory to your search. Notepad++ is a simple editor I use to do this - just one directory for my searches which has all the rulesets and extension code I use so when I search on something I'm about to change I can immediately see the impact.

If you are implying in any way shape or form they do this... I absolutely don't believe you. As the constant shifting anchor points, argument rewrites, have given no indication at all they have taken into account the impacts. As doing a doc based on those search hits would allow them to inform the extension world what was going away and what to replace it with. Instead of making us spend hours first determining what changed, then how it effects us, then how to get things back to working the way they were.

[Zacchaeus]

Not a response to you but to the post above mine. In your response you said SW had no idea what extensions are out there and what they do. I said they do know what extensions are out there and what they do. That does not equate with them not changing code in case it breaks extensions. Changing the code is, as I said, necessary.