Beyond Stage 12 (Patreon)

aka, The Plan, part II.

More than a year ago, I gave you my twelve step plan for creating not just character sheets for Pathfinder Second Edition, but a whole new character sheets system, one that would be more flexible and capable for the future. Since then, with only a few niggles here and there, I've been following that plan. I'm currently on stage 11 of it.

As I get closer to the end of the process, I'm increasingly aware that the latter parts of it - particularly stage 12 and beyond - are a bit vague. That isn't a great surprise, any plan has to adapt as it meets the real world. I wrote the twelve steps knowing that I'd discover plenty of things along the way, and I built in opportunities to learn and change.

I feel like it's now time to clarify - for you all and for myself - what the rest of the plan is for getting this to release.

Before the release

Stage 11: Web form

Stage 10 hooked the library up to the dev website, but only in the most rudimentary fashion. There's a button labelled "Give me a rogue", which downloads a complete gnome Rogue character sheet for you. That's it. The stage I'm working on now is adding a proper form to the website, which will give users the ability to actually build their own character.

In the old process (Pathfinder 1e, Starfinder, D&D 3.5), that form was largely made by hand. Pathfinder 2e is more modular, so its character form should be more data driven than before. The library has information on the classes, ancestries and other options it supports; the library needs to boil that down to the relevant data, so the website can build the form based on it. The result will be something of a proof of concept, since it obviously won't have all the options available yet.

This stage also needs to make sure the code is fully integrated with the assets that the website has, but that aren't part of the library. This includes the full set of portraits and logos, so you can truly customise your sheet.

Perhaps the most challenging part of stage 11 will be the option to upload your own portrait. That's always been the least reliable part of the existing website, and I'm glad to take a different approach this time; but it does mean a bunch of client-side JavaScript work to accept dropped files and base64 encode them locally... It won't surprise me if this bit proves too challenging and I have to punt it down the road.

Stage 12: All the data

The job of stage 12 is adding in pages and data for all the classes, subclasses (bloodlines, domains, etc), ancestries and archetypes from the core book.

The word "all" may be deceptive, as there are a lot of things not covered in this step. The work in stage 12 gets me a basic version of all the classes and subclasses, but it doesn't include everything that goes into a character sheet. It won't include the map minis, NPCs, GM pages and all the other obscure options and extras that make these character sheets so great.

Stage 12 gets me a lot of the key pieces, but not necessarily a completed product.

Stage 13: Translation

This is a new stage that's all about translation. The result from stage 12 is a set of pages with all, or nearly all, of the words that will need translating, so at this point I should be able to put what I've got in front of the translators who've volunteered to help, and let them start work.

This first involves distinguishing the words that should be translated and the internal codes that shouldn't, even though both are in the same data file. I'll do this by marking up all the translatable strings with a code, and writing an exporter to find all the strings matching that code. Then I need to get that data into the translators website.

The old process I used for Pathfinder 1st Edition, Starfinder and D&D 3.5 extracted strings from Illustrator files into custom a CSV format for translation strings, since I didn't know any better at the time. The new process is all about doing things right and building a solid base for the future, so it'll be based on the industry standard PO format.

Translation takes time, of course, so don't expect any completed translations to appear at this stage. I just need to set the ball rolling.

Along with translation, font subsetting becomes an issue. Non-standard fonts need to get shipped along with the character sheet, and they all take up disk space. Different languages use different letters and symbols. For example, a Russian translation need to include the Cyrillic alphabet in its fonts, while the others don't. I'm not yet certain how that will work.

Alpha

This step is about testing the core functionality with a relatively small number of users - most likely limited to patrons, translators and anybody else in the inner circle. I'll be asking you to actually play with the sheets and give me as much real feedback as possible.

I expect this stage to throw up a lot of little things I need to fix, and possibly one or two big wrenches that make things complicated. There may even need to be more than one alpha, depending on how it goes.

Beta

After fixing issues found during the alpha, this step is about testing the functionality with a larger number of users - from Facebook, Discord, the Paizo forums and other places. Rather than bringing everyone in all at once, I'll probably do a phased roll-out to give me a chance to fix some of the issues before the next set of people are unleashed on it.

Again, I'll be after real world feedback at this stage. I want to find and fix problems.

Release Candidate

This step is about making absolutely sure that what I'm about to release is actually ready. A "release candidate" is something that a developer thinks is ready for release, but is wise enough to check first. This step will also be open to the general public.

Release

Finally, once all that testing is done, I'll release the new version to the live site.

At this point I expect to get 200 emails telling me about the same annoying thing that I'll swear used to work just fine but somehow isn't any more. It'll probably be related to uploaded pictures, it usually is.

After the release

In order to get the character sheets into people's hands as quickly as possible, I need to keep a strict control on what features are included from day one. Some things are inevitably going to be addressed after the release.

Short term

GM pages are high on the list, including NPCs, maps, timelines, notes pages etc. The ability to build a whole party of characters all at once is here as well.

One option that won't be making an appearance is the "Download all", because with the new modular way of building things that just doesn't make any sense.

I'd like to get some translations in place fairly soon after the release, but this depends on the work of the volunteers.

Medium term

One of my most requested features is for character sheets you can fill in on a computer. This sort of works with the new HTML version - you can type numbers into boxes - but it's not complete. I'd like to improve it by letting you save your character data for later, doing the calculations automatically, and including a nice interface for non-standard field types like proficiency.

Another feature that builds off that would be the ability to share your character with other people. That may need to be a premium feature.

Finally, I'd like to offer a feature to pick back up a character you've built recently, edit them, and download the character sheet again. For example, you started by building a monk, but five levels later you made it multiclass into Rogue. This too is likely to be a premium feature.

Long term

Over time, there should be some notable third-party content coming out for Pathfinder 2e. I'll put out a call to interested third parties, and a poll to see which of them people most care about.

I want to make sure other people can contribute to this project, whether they're programmers or just generally helpful. A guide and tools to support people would be a useful step in that direction.

After that, I may eventually start to look at other game systems. Naming no names for now, but one of them is larger than the others...

See also

• 12 Steps to Heaven (the plan, part I)
• Pathfinders do it in style (addendum)
• On software dependencies
• Data flow in dyslexic character sheets