New Birthright manager tool

[Vicente]

Hi,

for the last months I have been working on a tool to manage games of Birthright, similar in spirit to the old Birmail. The tool is nearly ready for release (at least for a first version) and I am searching for some people who would like to try it and give me their opinions and suggestions before launching it to the wild.

I am searching for the following:

- 3/4 people at most, I want a small group first.
- People who have GM'd a PbeM. I have never run a BR game with more than 5 people, and this tool is aimed to help in PbeM or games with tens of players, so I think someone with that previous experience can give me great feedback.
- That have some free time next week to try it seriously and if possible that use gtalk (so we can chat, it is way faster than email).
- Tool is Windows only.

The tool comes with a Windows installer that should just be double click and done (although I suppose there will be some problems in the installer I have yet to find), and I have written some basic documentation on how to use it.

My idea is to have some feedback this coming week, and if possible fix the issues during the weekend (unless there is an overwhelming quantity of them or something fundamentally broken), and finally release it to the community the following week.

So, anyone interested? Regards!

Vicente

[Vicente]

I wonder, 29 views and no answer... It is because this is not interesting, or because I asked for too much? (I hope it´s the second :p)

[Sorontar]

I'm afraid, I can read and respond but don't have the time to play.

Sorontar

[Vicente]

A pity :(

One clarification though, the tool is a private tool: you install it in your computer and you use it yourself, it´s not a test game or a tool used by several people at the same time over internet (that can be done too, but it´s not the objective of this test :) ).

I suppose I could have explained myself a little better too :p

[Arius Vistoon]

why not but like Sorontar, i 've not lot of time to play.

i can give you my feeling and feedback but you must to say me before about what :
what is your tool and the around of that..for example, if your tool is for only PC not for the web, you need'nt feedback about that but only about the friendly installer on a PC machine and so on. Another example, the setting, if you said me, it's only for Brech country and Vos contry, you need'nt i say you Anuire country is missing and so on. Another example in my mind is a tool for Birthright D20 or 4th of D&D (for me, 4th is not a D&D game...:mad:) or for 2nd edition or for Pathfinder or house rule etc...so i need'nt to say you my feedback about this is better on another edition or i can say something is missing etc...).

Oh, last think:
you said for feedback it's better by call... my english speaking/understanding not very good, so if it's to hardly for me to understand, don't worry if i prefere use writing chatroom

[Vicente]

Nice questions! Some answers:

- The tool can work as a PC tool or as a Web tool. It's the same interface, functionality,... But it's easier to test it as a PC tool, as you can just install it in your computer and play with it. For a web tool someone would need to deploy a web server, which is not cheap and quite time consuming.
- Setting and rules questions. The tool is a tool to manage and edit data related to a game of Birthright. Most rules of Birthright are neutral to editions, and the tool does not resolve turns (yet). One example: it doesn't matter if you are playing 2e, 3e, 4e to decide if the magic potential of plains is 5.
- With the same idea, the tool comes with some information about Anuire to test, but you could do Bretchur, Rjurik,... or Medieval Europe if you wished. The tool has provinces that form realms, their names are up to you.
- About gtalk, I was more thinking on chatting by text than chatting by voice. My spoken english is terrible :S But chatting by text we could talk a lot of things in half an hour, an by email those things usually take longer, or are harder to explain. Of course, email can work too, it was just a preference.

I hope it clears some doubts :) Regards!

[Arius Vistoon]

ok, you have your guy :p

[Vicente]

Write me to vicente dot cartas at gmail dot com and I will send you a link later (in 2-3 hours).

[Arius Vistoon]

yesterday, i send you my first feedback.
I hope i will be useful for you. Say me, if you need more thing/detail and so on

[Vicente]

I have just finished answering you, huge email :) There are 2-3 points I didn't understand, and a few things I will change based on your comments. Thanks a lot!

[Sinister]

I'll try it. I'm currently in a game with two kindgoms using epic words to track stuff but playing table top not e-mail.

[Vicente]

I've you send me an email to vicente DOT cartas AT gmail DOT com I'll give you the links to the download and the documentation. You can also wait till next week when I'll do the public release probably, as you prefer :)

Regards!

Vicente

[Magian]

I am not sure what I can offer but I'll give it a go and do my best. I am in school and working so I may not be prompt. Not sure if my email is on here.

[Vicente]

I have sent you an email with the information :) Thanks!

[Vicente]

Ok, I have enough people trying it for now :) If things go right next week it will be public. Thanks a lot!

[Magian]

I've installed it, so I'll try to give it a look over but with work and school my time is limited. Looks nice so far, very excited to check it out.

[Vicente]

Thanks a lot, really :) I'm working on adding more data to the default datasets. I'll try to finish some more docs during the evening too.

[Vicente]

Well, version 1 of the tool is ready and I was hoping to have it released today, but there has been a technical issue outside my control :( My plan was to upload the tool to a website for everyone to download it, but my connection is so slow and so crappy that I get timeouts all the time and the upload fails :( I've opened a support ticked with the site and I hope it will be solved in 1 or 2 days.

Sorry :(

Vicente

[TheChamberlain]

Hola Vicente,

I'm an Englishman (& Birthright GM), who has recently moved to Northern Spain.... thankfully my Players who are all Brits are willing to travel here on a regular basis to still play in my campaign (A great compliment to me, either that or they love Rioja). I'd love to check out your tool, can we get in touch?

[Vicente]

Welcome to Spain! :) The north is lovely, great food and very nice people :)

About the tool, it has been already released publicly in:

http://brmanager.codeplex.com/

And you can find the documentation in:

http://brmanager.codeplex.com/documentation

It is recommended that you read the GM guide of the documentation :) If you have any issue, doubt, or problem let me know and I'll do my best to help.

Regards!

Vicente

[Sinister]

I'm trying to get this to work but it prompts me for a user name and password.

[Vicente]

This is explained in the GM documentation, in the Initial Administration part:

http://brmanager.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Initial%20Administration&referringTitle=Game%20Master%20Guide

The data you need is:

User: Administrator
Pass: changeme/123

With that, you will be able to log as an administrator which can perform the initial tool configuration. You will need to perform a few initial steps defined in that page (it takes 5 mins to do it). After that, you will be able to log as a Game Master and start adding data and working with the tool.

[Vicente]

After a long time, I have finished the basic documentation!

The GM Guide can be found at:

http://brmanager.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Game%20Master%20Guide&referringTitle=Documentation

And the Player Guide can be found at:

http://brmanager.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Player%20Guide&referringTitle=Documentation

Now I'll start working on version 2 which will add traits, automatic turns, economy, data validation,... I also have to fix a few things I have found while writing the guide and add a few extra things here and there (like more complex ley lines).

Any feedback on the tool it is very appreciated :)

[Baijiu]

This is actually a really cool tool but I'm a little dismayed that it doesn't come with any data. I'm new to Birthright so I was hoping that stuff like classes, blood abilities and skills would be there already but it's all stuff I have to fill out myself.

Is there pre-existing data out there that I can import easily?

Edit: Nevermind. I followed the instructions and found out how to import data. ^^

[Vicente]

Thanks for your kind words Baijiu!

I think the only information missing for a 2e Anuirean game are the realm spells (I'm not in my house so I can't check). I plan to add them, and also add other regions domains, provinces, and units little by little (data input is a huge and boring work).

I'm preparing a version 1.1 update, that should be up soon hopefully. It comes with a GM UI revamp, performance improvements, and it will have the options to import and export all game data (so users will be able to make backups, import their data into other computers,...).

I will also host this 1.1 version in a public website (I've already done some tests and it's working :)), so people can play with the tool more easily to gather feedback.

After that, my next big goal is adding some GM support (auto-collections and the like) and there will be a Player UI revamp, as LightSwitch is adding the possibility of using HTML5 for the web interface (instead of Silverlight), which is huge, as it means players can check their domains in any device :) GM UI will stay in Silverlight for a while as I my time is finite and I just did a huge rework on it.

Regards!

Vicente

[ptrayal]

Any updates on this tool?

[Vicente]

Sorry I did not get to your email yet! I'm in Spain visiting friends, family,... and things are a little crazy :)

About updates. I have finished fixing the GM side, adding much more complete import capabilities, and I'm half way of exporting all game data, so people can make backups and share things.

I have also fixed a few things on the Player side (just minor stuff). My idea is to finish the export and then release the 1.1 version on Codeplex. After that, I will upload the tool to the web and self-host it so it can be used in PbeM games more easily.

No clue about when this will be up. There's very little to do left to finish the 1.1 version, but these days in Spain I have nearly no free time.

Regards!

Vicente

[ptrayal]

Sorry I did not get to your email yet! I'm in Spain visiting friends, family,... and things are a little crazy :)

About updates. I have finished fixing the GM side, adding much more complete import capabilities, and I'm half way of exporting all game data, so people can make backups and share things.

I have also fixed a few things on the Player side (just minor stuff). My idea is to finish the export and then release the 1.1 version on Codeplex. After that, I will upload the tool to the web and self-host it so it can be used in PbeM games more easily.

No clue about when this will be up. There's very little to do left to finish the 1.1 version, but these days in Spain I have nearly no free time.

No worries. I'd definitely be willing to host and try it out for you.

[Vicente]

Mmm, that's an interesting proposal :) My testing host was going to be over Azure, and after testing there then I would search a host for it.

The manager is a LightSwitch application, so to host it you would need Windows Server, IIS, and SQL Server, and some knowledge about how to deploy it (if you have physical access to the machine, deploying it from Visual Studio is very very easy).

How does it sound?