Breaking Extensions so much

[rhagelstrom]

I'm sure all the standardization is great in the long term. I can see how it makes building new stuff or rulesets faster, however, that is the last compliment this post is going to give.

We seem to be going backwards as far as standardization across rulesets with regards to the latest 5E update. It used to be that we could, for the most part, write a xml definition for something and it would work with 5E, PF1E, SF, perhaps PF2. Case in point lets take items for example, a fairly universal thing that shouldn't deviate much if any across rulesets. In the past one could write a single xml definition and it would work and you could support multiple rulesets. Now with the latest 5E update, and a bit before this https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...l=1#post723007 there needs to be an exception that 5E is different for some reason. That is not standardized. Furthermore, what was broken in the Aug update, see previous post, was once again broken a few weeks later with the 5E update https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...l=1#post726339 These sorts of changes should be made all at once and save everyone the pain of all this churn. Additionally, with the new 5E changes, the underlying scripts don't function correctly, such as bag collapsing of the items for 5E, but they do for all the other rulesets, PF, SF, PF2. Again, we are talking items and bags, there isn't any significant difference across the rulests for things like this warrant them being special cased. I suspect some/all of this is due to the giant Legacy/2024 box at the bottom of all these record sheets, which is completely unnecessary because it could have just been a toggle at the top like itemID. This would have also saved valuable screen real estate which I think for most people would have been preferable and potentially some of the breakage of extensions, in the case of ExtraPlaner Containers ext it for sure would have made it immune to the update.

Then we have the changes just to be changes with this latest 5E update. As SR pointed out, why change the anchor name, as you have to know this is going to break stuff, and for what benefit? Its a name, and changing it still is a name. Let's move on to renaming RaceManager and the associated lua file to SpeciesManager. Yes, the string for Race changed to Species, that is fine that is a string definition. Call it whatever you want, spagettimonster for all I care or whatever is in vogue, but there is no reason to change RaceManager to SpeciesManger as none of that is user facing. If you want to scrub Race to Species for whatever internal discussion that is fine too, but then we still have SubRace and not SubSpecies so there is no benefit in renaming this stuff and the only thing it accomplishes is breaking things.

Do I want any of the above to be addressed? No because that would again break things. This is the bed we lie in now it seems.

The way things are going we won't have to worry about breaking extensions because there won't be any devs left to build extensions as it isn't worth the effort. We have bmos who is tired of the updates https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...l=1#post724693, Celestian, who threw in the towel on Advance Effects https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...l=1#post710452 , Silent Ruin who is upset but he is always upset and I don't think I have to link that, Mad Nomad who is on the cups of hanging it up https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...l=1#post726366 , and Me&Unique who has apparently left and before he left, I had a private discussion with him being unhappy about the direction of things after building Kingdoms and Warfare and then being put in the situation of having to change things. I'm sure there are a number more but haven't said anything.

It probably is true that most people don't run extensions, but a lot of the core user base does. The ext devs are providing thousands of people hours of free labor and passive income, if they are sold on the forge, to improve the product but they are getting scared off. It wouldn't be long before the core users start re-evaluating their options as the VTT market is much more competitive than it was 4 yrs ago. The core users are your champions of the platform and do a lot to help other users.

A number of these extensions wouldn't even need to be built/supported if they were in FG in the first place. Collapsing bags down (ExtraPlaner Containers) isn't an exotic concept. Players having pets (Friend Zone), isn't an exotic concept. Letting people know how their scores are adjusted because of effects (Character Sheet Effects Display) isnt an exotic concept, Defining an area of effect (Aura Effects) isn't an exotic concept. Attaching effects to items (Advanced Effects) is not an exotic concept.

We also have the issue of people doing an update and a number of these errors are from exts that are not updated. The problem being is some of these extensions on the forge are abandoned and as far as I can tell will never be updated. The only way to get some of the updates is out of band via the forums or hunting down githubs. Some of these extensions have been known abandoned for months (Me & Unique), Kit n Kaboodle. Why are these still up on the forge? They either should be taken down, per the crafter agreement, or found a different maintainer. A lot of these can be forked and reposted to the forge if need be. There is no leadership from SW on what is going on with these abandoned exts, how to move them to someone else, or what the path forward is. People are going to continue to post errors for these things as long as they are up, because I got it off the forge I expect it to actually run.

Don't update also works for the short term and I do recommend that after each quarterly update and any significant ruleset update. However, don't update doesn't work long term like some other platforms because the software update is tied to the store update so the only way you can get stuff that you buy on the store is to update. So one can't tell someone to just not update in perpetuity to stay in a known good state.

[MrDDT]

As a user mostly only here reading this makes me worried about using extensions. I see how much they improve my games and it’s a huge question if SW is not really supporting extension makers and making it harder for them then it’s greatly going to cut into them staying around.

[LordEntrails]

FYI, Abandoned extensions can not just be given to some other developer to take over. SmiteWorks has to follow Intellectual Property laws. And most community devs do not specify a license for their extensions. Therefore, the law says they retain all rights to the code. Therefore it would be illegal for someone to take over the code.

I've tried before to get the community devs to just post their licenses. With the hope that many could/would use something like one of the MIT or CC licenses that would allow collaboration. But I got zero takers. And to my knowledge, Rob2E is the only one who planned the handoff of his work. Simple put, most community devs don't care enough about what happens when/if they leave the community to spend any time or effort accommodating it.

[SilentRuin]

FYI, Abandoned extensions can not just be given to some other developer to take over. SmiteWorks has to follow Intellectual Property laws. And most community devs do not specify a license for their extensions. Therefore, the law says they retain all rights to the code. Therefore it would be illegal for someone to take over the code.

I've tried before to get the community devs to just post their licenses. With the hope that many could/would use something like one of the MIT or CC licenses that would allow collaboration. But I got zero takers. And to my knowledge, Rob2E is the only one who planned the handoff of his work. Simple put, most community devs don't care enough about what happens when/if they leave the community to spend any time or effort accommodating it.

Expand your knowledge.

All my extension code has license at top.
Multiple places I’ve told people they could look at my code to figure out how to do stuff or solve it like that.
Grim press controls forge delivery of my stuff and has written permission to take over fully if I vaporize.


Probably other devs who do this I suspect.

Be wary of lumping us all into the same pot!