Path to Release (and Known Bugs)

[Colin]

Some features are still being created, and are slated for work during the open beta as we work towards the initial release of Baldr. This thread will serve to answer questions about in development items, as well as answer questions about plans (as far as the publicly-releasable plans).

 

In Development

• Game Ads Forum
• Creation of a system (and plug-in) to allow ad posts beyond just checking “advertising” on a game forum.
• GM-changeable Game Privacy Setting
  • Currently switching between game privacy settings (Public, open, closed, private, and read-only) is at an admin level. Please submit a support ticket for the moment if you need the game setting changed.
• Private Text/posts
• Language blocks (replacement to language tags)
• Horizontal line button in editor (to replace <hr> needing to be added via source mode) Added to editor!
• MW Dark & Light Themes
• New post notification on games in My Games box.
• Additional fonts added to font options in editor.

 

Guides In Progress

• New user guide
• Dice Tower formatting

 

Known Bugs

See Trello Tracker link for the full list, and make reports of bugs (or make feature requests) on Site Feedback.

 

Trello Public Dev Board (1300 EDT, 17JUN2022)

Link to the Baldr Public Dev List

 

FAQ

Should we move games over here? Will we lose those games when the site switches to initial release?

It's a group's call whether to move their games over at present. Some are, some aren't. That said, when initial release happens the open beta site will just become the production site. No data migration or loss will be occurring for initial release.

 

Is there a guide to converting content from the original site to Baldr?

Yes there is, written by Bwatford and added into the New User Guide!

 

 

 

[Grudge]

I guess this is the first question (which makes me feel weird 😛 ) but for how long will old MW be active after this goes "live"?

 

[Colin]

@Grudge We won't even be starting to contemplate that timeline until Baldr is either equal or superior (really focused on superior with several items like the Dice Tower) to the current production site in its abilities. It will not be an overnight, short notice changeover, however, so don't worry that it'll be abrupt!

[Cirlot]

A corollary to Grudge's question: unless I'm mistaken at present there is no cross-compatibility with oMW (old Myth Weavers.  Is there a formal acronym yet?  Given the extent we're going to be talking about the differences there might need to be one 😬).  Namely old games and old posts can't be translated over.  I think that includes all games, not just archived ones, so any active game in oMW could not be ported over automatically to Baldur.  Is this understanding correct? 

 

If my understanding is correct, will there be any guides or assistance planned or provided to help GM's convert active games to the new site?  I caught some cross-talk on the discord suggesting possible exported, read only archives (.pdfs or something similar) of old games, but having a template or walkthrough of "okay, it's Baldur-Day; GM's - here's your checklist.  Take your active games and do the following: you setup the game site on Baldur first, re-invite the players, then export the old threads and here's how to make them accessible to the players, etc." could make the transition easier to take.

[Colin]

Of course! We're not going to hit the switch over point with no advance guidance/plan details for GMs and players.

[Grudge]

3 hours ago, Colin said:

@Grudge We won't even be starting to contemplate that timeline until Baldr is either equal or superior (really focused on superior with several items like the Dice Tower) to the current production site in its abilities. It will not be an overnight, short notice changeover, however, so don't worry that it'll be abrupt!

Thanks for the prompt answer. I must admit that the possibility of "turning off" old site just to consolidate all users in one place was one of my worries. Because this will, at the best case scenario, divide user base for a while. Portion feeling out our "new home" and portion hanging to "old reliable". Assurance that old MW will be available at least until Baldr is equally polished is welcome. By the way I'm not a idealist, change might be scary, but my guess is that code in old MW is held by duct tape, old chewed gum and occasional blood sacrifice to Loftcraftian entities. So I have no doubt this will be better option once all kinks are ironed out.

[Rudra]

hi, i'm criminally late , having started checking about baldr today, i apologize if this is written elsewhere but i havent been able to find it:

when will the switch happen, roughly?  i'm not asking for exact date, just an idea, months/year/years?

If it's something thats going to happen this year i'd start informing my players/gms (who may be like me and slept until now😅) if it's longer then i'll probably finish the games and wont need to copy threads/characters.

 

And thanks, for everything you do.

Edited May 1, 2022 by Rudra (see edit history)

[Malkavian Grin]

I loathe change in all forms when it means I have to change my processes (from my suspected autism), so I'll be honest, I'm very leery of this new forum style. 

 

I'm coming here to ask if / how we access our user cp like on the main site? I.E. where's the page where I see all of MY stuff? Follow-up question, did any of our games port over to this site, or will I have to create a new game forum to test out how that functions?

 

Lastly, is there an option to turn off the circle profile pics? I find it rather annoying, but I am most likely, once again, in the minority on that one.

[Powderhorn]

50 minutes ago, Rudra said:

hi, i'm criminally late , having started checking about baldr today, i apologize if this is written elsewhere but i havent been able to find it:

when will the switch happen, roughly?  i'm not asking for exact date, just an idea, months/year/years?

If it's something thats going to happen this year i'd start informing my players/gms (who may be like me and slept until now😅) if it's longer then i'll probably finish the games and wont need to copy threads/characters.

 

And thanks, for everything you do.

 

I'm not one of the devs, but I would intuit that we're looking at least a year, as it took about that long to go from closed to open beta.  There is a lot more to do to get there, however there has also been a lot more crunch.  If I had to guesstimate, I'd say it works out about the same.  Take that with a heavy, heavy tablespoon of salt.

 

14 minutes ago, Malkavian Grin said:

I loathe change in all forms when it means I have to change my processes (from my suspected autism), so I'll be honest, I'm very leery of this new forum style. 

 

I'm coming here to ask if / how we access our user cp like on the main site? I.E. where's the page where I see all of MY stuff? Follow-up question, did any of our games port over to this site, or will I have to create a new game forum to test out how that functions?

 

Lastly, is there an option to turn off the circle profile pics? I find it rather annoying, but I am most likely, once again, in the minority on that one.

 

Hey, change is hard!  Good question on the UserCP.  I'll punt on that, because I'm not sure what that looks like on the back-end (if it's just a toggle, or if it needs to be built, or something else entirely).

 

Games did not automatically port over.  If you want to do some testing, I'd suggest the equivalent of a one-shot.  They typically take about 3 - 6 months in Play-by-Post anyway.

 

Re: Profile pictures - I don't immediately know if that's possible right now.  I don't see a setting for it anywhere.  Going to have to punt there too.

[Colin]

7 hours ago, Grudge said:

By the way I'm not a idealist, change might be scary, but my guess is that code in old MW is held by duct tape, old chewed gum and occasional blood sacrifice to Loftcraftian entities. So I have no doubt this will be better option once all kinks are ironed out.

Custom code in the original site was hacked into the core code of VB by a couple script kiddies and then modified/added to live for the first few years. Bubblegum and duct tape sounds more stable. 😛 

 

As a general statement for folks:
 

A new site was really not the first choice, it’s worth noting. We spent a year and a half working to decouple the games system, dice roller, and sheets into their own modules from the forum code. Three attempts were made to upgrade the production site to a more stable structure, and the site crashed repeatedly in different ways with every attempt. While the now-professional programmers keep solid notes now, they didn’t in the early days and have kicked themselves about it ever since. The dev team has been doing nothing but maintaining the site in their little free time for a decade, primarily due to the site's stability. If folks have wondered why there's such a backlog of sheets requested, it's because keeping the site from fragging itself takes up so much time.
 

The choice came down to keeping Myth Weavers on its circa 2000s version of vBulletin, barely stable and impossible for us to add new features to (so many shelved projects), or moving to something that would let us grow capabilities. Change can be a downright pain in the ass, we know. Staff and the closed beta testers had to start from square one on here too, learning how things worked or don’t work. But the trade off is a site that won’t get twitchy over there being 800 games running, and is built to accept custom plug-ins (how the Dice Tower, fieldset/ooc/spoiler fields, and other items were made). The dev team has been downright salivating at times when they think about some of the past projects that are now feasible to expand the site’s offerings. 
 

Keep in mind as well, this beta is not going to be a short run thing and then everyone gets forced over! There will be layout testing, changes/fixes to themes, feature additions and debugging for a while. Until Baldr is hammered into a form that meets and exceeds the current site’s capabilities (and the new user guide is in-depth and complete!), we will not be planning out the transition. For reference, Baldr has been a project since September 2020, and we just got to open beta with what we consider minimum-required capabilities for such. 

[Cirlot]

Not sure if this should be here or possibly elsewhere - do we know what's going to happen to our old private messages?  Are they portable to the new iteration of the site or will they need to be backed up as well?  I'm criminally lazy at clearing my PM inbox . . . but I also know I have PM's in there from old friends who've gone elsewhere or are no longer around that I want to keep.  I know there's an export to .txt function for PM's on oMW already so there's a solution in hand, but I don't want to start The Great Archiving if there's a chance there are other plans in place.

[Colin]

@Cirlot Those may be getting a PDF export as well, but that’s @Eric’s bailiwick to answer.

 

In other news, posts per page has been adjusted from 25 to 10. This should help resolve having to scroll on mobile for half an hour to reach the bottom of a long-post game thread. 😉

[spyrosbaldr]

1 hour ago, Colin said:

In other news, posts per page has been adjusted from 25 to 10. This should help resolve having to scroll on mobile for half an hour to reach the bottom of a long-post game thread. 😉

Is this something users will end up having control over, like with the old site?  I may be in the minority, but I prefer having 30 posts to a page 😆

[Colin]

20 minutes ago, spyrosbaldr said:

Is this something users will end up having control over, like with the old site?

 

Right now that’s uncertain. Maybe in the future, but at least for the open beta we’re going to be more focused on things like expanding the Dice Tower beyond what the original die roller could do, getting the game ad system in place, etc.

[Colin]

An update: Last night the account converter (built in system, limited customization in how it runs) was run to convert the newer site accounts over to Baldr. This also reset all of our post counts to the Baldr posts only count, and messed with activity feeds a bit.

 

Post counts will be fixed in the database when we get to the point of the change over between sites, so don’t worry on that, and the activity feeds rebuild themselves with new activity. This will stop being an issue once we start the site transition (part of the yet-unscheduled Baldr initial release), because the beginning of the transition will lock out registration on the original site and open it here.