Slitherine

ethan wrote:If this is really a labor of love that is no longer commercially viable, release it onto the internet and go open source. That IMO is the future of something like this. Set-up a committee to oversee things and just make it free/donation-ware.

Right now, this is going to be something that Slitherine payed to develop that won't be played or purchased.

jdm wrote:We will accept a loyalty bonus at any time you care to send it:-)

We will accept a loyalty bonus at any time you care to send it:-)

david53 wrote:

ethan wrote:Its not been stated why was this not talked about at the begining of the Beta Test maybe because then the hundreds of people that worked this V2 out would'nt have wasted their time for a system they can't now use.

zoltan wrote:

david53 wrote:

ethan wrote:Its not been stated why was this not talked about at the begining of the Beta Test maybe because then the hundreds of people that worked this V2 out would'nt have wasted their time for a system they can't now use.

This is a good point. If Slitherine had said at the outset, or indeed part way through the Beta testing phase, that v2 would be released digital only, how many people would haved signed up/continued to test? Did Slitherine have a duty of care to disclose this? Or is ir beta testing the 'digital only' change through this open forum?

bahdahbum wrote:and if you do not have IPAD you may not play ?

jdm wrote:Hi All
Firstly I would just like to thank you all for the feedback and comments on the forum, we do listen and its entirely appropriate to comment here, it’s what the forum is for, but I have to say there is a significant amount of misinformation, assumptions, rumor and incorrect comments about our intentions and the various platforms that we have been working on to upgrade the Tabletop FOG experience. So I will try and explain

Firstly, we are committed to FOG Tabletop rules, if this were not our intention we would simply announce as Games Workshop have done that they no longer support ancient wargames rules and they will no longer sell these. It’s as easy as that.

It’s worth revisiting what causes all of this and why we feel change in the process is necessary. We have listened to the frequent and numerous suggestions for rules changes and upgrades, we are pretty experienced in Tabletop wargaming so this is no surprise to us. No Rule set has ever been tested to the level of FOG ancients, yet after 3+ years of playing there is now a vast treasure trove of further improvements that can be made. It’s the very nature of Tabletop gaming and we more than most understand this. The dilemma is therefore not how to kill off FOG, but how to support it and we are talking the economics of Tabletop not video games here, so we have to be realistic. In the last analysis and despite our love of Tabletop this is our business.

When we looked at how we might best support the rules going forwards it became apparent that the traditional paper book method works really well for an initial release and we are fully committed to this, as I think is demonstrated by the launch of our new Napoleonic rule set, but how to support these rules going forwards is the big challenge. No one else has managed to solve this issue and remember our motivation is not connected to selling miniatures. For us this is a standalone product, so the economics have to be realistic. Warehousing, Printing, distribution and retail all add cost and so far as traditional book publishing goes you don’t need me to comment on the transitions that are taking place there. It’s hard enough to find outlets to sell the original books these days and wargames rules depend on iterations to survive, so a second version of the same product is for some hard to understand or sell.

So when agonizing over how best to support our “baby” we looked at a number of platforms and please bear in mind that each platform (e.g. ipad) has to be paid for and coded from scratch and then supported going forwards. Now if we were dealing with “Call of Duty” the economics of multiple platforms makes sense but we are not, so choices have to be made and I have to say that the touch screen, scrolling and indexing capabilities of the ipad are really suited to supporting players during games. The ability to instantly find a topic is second to none and enhances the whole game playing experience, but at present you only have my word for that and I fully understand the jury is still out. We also decided to add PC and MAC to the list of supported platforms as just about everyone on the planet now has access to these. So when one considers the cost of an army and the years of reuse in both an army and a rules set, is a potential one of cost to enhance the hours spent gaming really such a negative factor?

So where are we now? At present we are waiting on Apple approval to launch the ipad, normally no more than a couple of weeks. PC and MAC should also be ready by that time and all will be released simultaneously; at least that is our current plan.

However, we have also listened to what you have said and we are now investigating as quickly as we can a method of providing access to a “paper” version as well. We are committed to finding a solution to this and there are various alternatives that we are looking into to assess cost and time scales. We will advise further on this when we have the various responses to hand, but it is likely this will follow the release of the original platforms.

So in the last analysis the success or otherwise of all this is not just dependent on us, it needs your continuing support, but we do recognize that if we can’t deliver a quality wargames experience in our very specialist niche area then you will not continue to support the Rules.

Best Wishes
JDM

bahdahbum wrote:and if you do not have IPAD you may not play ?

ValentinianVictor wrote:What will be the situation if people do not buy into the digital only product due to anticipation of a printable version, will the printable version actually appear under those circumstances?

jdm wrote:So in the last analysis the success or otherwise of all this is not just dependent on us, it needs your continuing support

Applets will work only when users are intenet connected or once downloaded in the Iphone (or else) the software always run ?

IainMcNeil wrote:The internet connection is only required when you are downloading an update. Once its on your device you do not need a connection.