Coders and developers for Seasoned Christian RPG

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PureFun
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I hope you understood my point about investing the time in my last post.

Well, I did know what I want to accomplish and now I have taken the time to write it out. I have waited some time for a response. At the very least, correct me if I am fooling myself in thinking I have completing the task you asked of me.

I am trying to remain humble about this. I have read many of your other posts and they mostly seem to be rants where you vent your disappointments in others. I'll be honest, that made me hesitant to even post on this forum in the first place. No one has been harsh with me so far and I hope my tone is not misunderstood being read in text and not heard. If I have come across wrongly, please alert me and forgive me. Otherwise, please answer me when you have the time and energy, or let me know that you do not intend to so that I can move on and inquire elsewhere.
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ArcticFox
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Sorry for being slow to reply. I have an immensely complex task at work and it consumes most of my brain's processing cycles lately. I've been neglecting my hobbies and my new website as well.

Your information is interesting, but I'm still not 100% clear on whether you're talking about modifying the existing Roll20 features or creating something new from scratch that would operate alongside a Roll20 game.

If your plan is the former, then research would need to be done into what that would entail. For example, is it possible to obtain the Roll20 source code so that one could host their own instance? Does Roll20 have a mechanism for installing plugins? Those are questions that would need to be researched by all involved.

If your plan is the latter, that's far simpler.

In either case do you plan to make the resulting character sheets printable? That would also involve some 3rd party software libraries to allow for custom generation of formats like .pfd or .doc or whatever.

Side note: As you read my rants, imagine it being said with a smile in a joking manner. I'm a pretty grumpy guy, but I'm not that grumpy. 8)
"He who takes offense when no offense is intended is a fool, and he who takes offense when offense is intended is a greater fool."
—Brigham Young

"Don't take refuge in the false security of consensus."
—Christopher Hitchens
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PureFun
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Firstly. thank you for your soft answer toward my frustration. I hope you understand that there are lots of ways to read text and sometimes we read it with the tone that we either want, fear, expect, or even based upon our own mood at the moment.

So, in answer to your question of which I want. You are confused because I have not declared which. That is a question that you care about because you know what it involves. I, on the other hand, do not care about it because it is beyond my knowledge. I just want it to work. If it works within Roll20, then great. If it works in conjunction with Roll20, that is great, too. How is not important to me. Beggars cannot wisely be choosers. If someone desires to help me, but not quite the way I would prefer, that is still far better than no one helping me in exactly the way I prefer.

From a video conference I had with Nolan (one of the lead Roll20 people) I got the impression that Roll20 is intended to be either open source or close to it. They invite and encourage people to tweak and improve things for personal use. The idea is that once a tweak or feature is made, it will hopefully be shared with the community (if applicable to other games/players) to help make everyone's experience better. I kept asking him if money would help if I could raise some. He kept replying that money would not help to have them produce features for me. They don't cater to one game or another (although I am not sure how they are not catering to D&D to some degree with all the modules the release for it). He said that I needed to find someone who could code the features I wanted and maybe money could help me that way, if I needed to pay that person. He kept seeming like I should be able to find Roll20 community members who would want to do that.


That was your answer, the rest is just my own rant, so feel free to ignore it if you don't feel like reading it.

Please keep in mind that I am simply a designer. I know how to make games, tweak games, keep them fun and not just simply make a lame Sunday School substitute or a Christianized, subpar D&D clone. This I have done because it flows naturally from me. My wife commented just yesterday that it is interesting to her how for me it seems that making the game is even more fun that playing it. It is true. Playing and especially Hosting (DMing) is work, but creating and tweaking is pure bliss for me.

Now, one thing I am not is a business man. I am learning to be more of one, but I am not a driven person who can make anything happen through sheer force of will and determination.
Another thing I am not is a programmer/coder. As stated before, I just don't know this stuff.

So, if you are a coder and you know the best way to do something, then go for it. I receive it.

Ideally, Nolan may be right that I should be able to find someone in the Roll20 community to help, but my game has several things going against it. I am an unknown person. Worse, though, my game is Christian. There are plenty of people who want to play a Christian game, but they are afraid. Not so much afraid of peer opinions, but afraid they will connect themselves with it and it will suck. Predominantly Christian games either suck as a game, or aren't really Christian games at all. There a lot of reasons for that, but that would be a whole other posting topic, so I will let that statement stand on it's own.

So, I tried reaching out on Roll20's forums. I got a few "I would like to play your game" responses, but no offers to help with what I needed. So, I branched out to here. I really think that people won't offer to help until they can feel safe that the game doesn't suck. Nobody wants to commit themselves to help with something that turns out to be lame and then they either feel guilty for backing out or keep helping out of guilt/obligation and hating themselves for it. I understand that. My conundrum is that:
I can't convince people it doesn't suck until they have experienced it not sucking.
I can't get people to experience it not sucking in an online setting until I make it smooth enough to give a true picture while playing online.
I can't make it smooth enough without recruiting people to help make it smooth.
I can't recruit people to to help make it smooth without convincing them it doesn't suck so they feel safe helping.

I am pretty much just throwing out a hail mary hoping someone such as yourself will feel adventurous or inspired and break the cycle.
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ccgr
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Another site worth posting on would be http://talk.christiandevs.com they may have some coders there willing to help
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PureFun
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Thank you!

I have been looking, but could not find anything like this. I have registered and am waiting to be approved.
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PureFun
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Well, I am still waiting on an approval for my having registered for that site, but thanks for trying. I will update if they ever let me on.
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ccgr
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bummer. sorry :(
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ArcticFox
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PureFun wrote: Now, one thing I am not is a business man. I am learning to be more of one, but I am not a driven person who can make anything happen through sheer force of will and determination.
Another thing I am not is a programmer/coder. As stated before, I just don't know this stuff.

So, if you are a coder and you know the best way to do something, then go for it. I receive it.
Ok I think I get what you mean. I'm going to take a look at Roll20 and see how it works and what's involves in modding it. I'll then review your list of features and come back to you with the best way I think they can be achieved. Give me a couple of days to see what I can see.

Typically that's how it works in the business/software development world. You approach the developers with the features you want and roughly how you'd want it to look, then they get back to you with possible strategies for achieving it.
"He who takes offense when no offense is intended is a fool, and he who takes offense when offense is intended is a greater fool."
—Brigham Young

"Don't take refuge in the false security of consensus."
—Christopher Hitchens
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PureFun
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You may need a Pro Subscription to get access to all the features/options you need. I have no problem with buying one for you for a month in order for you to check it out. Let me know.

If you decide to do any work on it, I would buy you one for longer as needed.

By the way, there has been no response on the other forum to my registration, I will try to reach out to the admins via another route and give it a second go.
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ArcticFox
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I had a pro subscription on it before when I was running a D&D game with it on here. I apologize for being so slow in responding. I've been slammed at work with a massive redesign so that's been consuming most of my brain cycles.

That said, I'm interested in this, and if you still want to go ahead please send me a PM and I'll reply with my E-mail so we can communicate in more real time.
"He who takes offense when no offense is intended is a fool, and he who takes offense when offense is intended is a greater fool."
—Brigham Young

"Don't take refuge in the false security of consensus."
—Christopher Hitchens
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PureFun
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Will do.
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