July paused & next big step for MPMB (Patreon)

TL;DR: (Too Long; Didn't Read)

• There is no recurring charge for July.
• There is no new version yet, but one is in the works with the missing content.
• I want to overhaul most of the sheet’s (code) fundamentals, but it's going to take time. I'm even considering moving the sheet to another platform (e.g. web-based), but that would take even more time.
• I want to ask your input before making these far-reaching decisions. Expect a survey!
• If work starts on the overhaul, new feature development will come to a halt, but new content and bug fixes will still (again) continue.

It has probably not gone unnoticed, but you haven’t been charged for July 2022. This is because I paused my Patreon for a month. I decided to do this only on the 30st of June and planned to post about it on the 1st of July, but this did not happen until now because of several reasons (busy weekend, not getting the words right, procrastination). Please accept my apologies for any potential confusion.

Please be aware that even though my Patreon is paused, any new pledges will still be charged in full. This is how Patreon works and not something I can change. If you feel this is unfair, you can contact me for a refund.

I haven’t gotten to making the latest releases work with the sheet because I’m hitting some (mental) roadblocks and as such I figured it would be only fair not to keep charging you. On top of that, I have holiday plans for a couple of weeks in July / August, so there will be even less time to work on the sheets. As things stand now, it is very likely that August will be paused as well.

This doesn’t mean that I’m not still working on the sheets or that both July and August will see no progress, just that I am stopping Patreon from charging you as I feel that your support should go rewarded and I haven’t made good on that promise.

A new version is in the works, but it won’t have any new features. Just new content and bug fixes.

It seems that the poll was a good thing, as there were many differently opinionated comments on how something like this should be implemented. It is an understandably difficult and splitting decision not to adhere to what Wizards of the Coast does.

The votes clearly favour adding the new races as options next to the older versions, which is what I was expecting. You also overwhelmingly want the races added before the new feature, but this is something I have to admit I’m not really good at. Working on new features is much more fun than transcribing content and I haven’t been able to help myself stick to the priority that you voted for. This will change, I promise!

All your responses just made me enthusiastic for working on the new race pop-up selector and had me looking into making a one-size-fits-all solution for the rest of the sheet’s drop-down boxes, e.g. feats, magic items, backgrounds, etc.

This, however, is where the age of the code rears it ugly head. Pop-up dialogs in Adobe Acrobat are one of the most code-intensive parts of this project and making one that does something so different than the current framework has opened my eyes to how much needs to change for it to work properly.

Going forward, I will make sure to first add the missing content before working on features. I also still have a ton of unfilled Sorcerer and Soothsayer tier rewards to get to, so plenty of content to transcribe.

We are coming up on the 8th anniversary of D&D 5th edition this month (Lost Mines of Phandelver, 2014/07/15) and I have been reflecting on the mayor changes in my life since then and how my little hobby project to help my own group move from 3.5e to 5e has become something I had never envisioned. D&D has become more than just a hobby and I’m very grateful for this opportunity. The first version of MPMB’s Character Sheet was posted on reddit in November 2014 and has seen constant development (dare I say improvement?) every since.

Your continued support shows me that I must be doing something right with these automated character sheets and I would like to make them even better. I have a lot of ideas for improvements, like the race selection dialog and moving away from regular expressions to make custom additions easier, but implementing that has me stumbling on some roadblocks in the code. The improvements are constrained by time, mostly, but secondly by the basis of the sheet’s code, as well as the format the sheets are in (form-fillable PDFs).

Back in 2014, I was still very new to coding and this project was my first real dip into the deep. I have learned a lot since then, but the sheet still relies on a bunch of stuff I wrote/borrowed way back when I didn’t know any better. As a result, not everything works as well as it could or should, and changing this will require overhauling some fundamentals.

It has gotten to the point for me that adding content feels more like a chore and no longer brings the sense of accomplishment it used to. Perhaps it is the fact that I’m currently not playing any IRL games, so I’m not even using my own sheet, or the fact that I (still) go back and forth often on how to write things in the clearest way while using as little space as possible (i.e. being a perfectionist is hard work). But certainly, a big part is due to the fact that adding new content always brings me face-to-face with the limitations of my old code.

I will be the first to admit that I have spent my time poorly this last few months. New content was waiting to be implemented, but I have been busy thinking of how things should work and new possibilities, instead of getting stuff ready for you to use with the sheet as it stands now. I have also fallen prey to the procrastination-monster and rolled poorly on initiative, resulting in many unrelated projects. The good news is that I finally picked back up the DM mantle and am working on getting my pre-COVID game up and running again, moving it from IRL to online as we no longer live close by.

Working on the sheets, all my scrap paper has been used for sketches, lists, and random assortments of ideas. There are some half-finished Adobe Illustrator files, Adobe InDesign files, and many more trial PDFs and JavaScript files than I would like to admit. I want to put this energy and creativity to good use, but that is not as easy as it sounds…

I have been daydreaming about all the things I would do differently if I would start this project again. The frustration with the way it is now, has come to a breaking point and I want to make the big leap of doing something about it.

Working within the Adobe Acrobat framework and revisiting the legacy code has made me realise that a lot more would be possible if I would switch to a more modern format, like a website, even though that would probably require starting from scratch and require me to learn a bunch of new stuff.

I would love to make the ideal character sheet experience that I have in my head come to life, but I’m stuck with the uncertainty if that is something others would also get excited about and be willing to support.

Thus, the first big decision is whether to continue this project as a JavaScript-augmented-PDF, or switch to a web-app that allows for things like mobile-support. The former will be much quicker as I have much more experience with it. The latter would require starting from scratch with almost all of the code, thus taking a lot more time, but would open up a ton of new possibilities.

Before I make a decision on if/how to address redoing the fundamentals of the sheets, and even before I start rewriting huge chunk of code, I really need to know what all of you value in a character sheet. I want to understand what is important to you, so that I can make something that you would want to (continue to) use. When I know that, I can better plan on how to update the sheets and if it is even necessary to overhaul the code as much.

I am working on a survey to help me understand your wants and needs for a character sheet, but a good survey is hard and takes time to write up. I hope to have it ready for you later this week.

In the meantime, you are welcome to leave a comment with why you use my character sheets, what you most (dis)like about it, and what you would like to see for its future development.

Below are some examples of ideas that I have been working on. Most are just that, ideas, and not all might see implementation. This list is here to show you what direction I would like to take the character sheet in.

• Change drop-down fields to buttons that open pop-up dialogs with choices
  This would enable things like (better) searching the list and seeing what something does before adding it to the sheet
  
• Merge feats and magic items into a single entry type and expend this with all other optional features such as boons, supernatural gifts, blessings, charms, etc.
  
• What ‘type’ something is would then be listed in each entry on the sheet (e.g. where it now says “Feat” or “Magic Item” would become amendable)
  
• Overhaul the hit points section to include conditions, exhaustion
  
• Add space for AC without armour/shield
  
• Add a separate space for Warlock spell slots (i.e. not part of the regular spell slots)
  
• Add a page for summons (with auto-calculation functionality for the summons from TCoE)
  
• Automate the wild shape pages to work like the companion page
  
• Make it possible to format the text in multiline fields (e.g. make stuff bold)
  
• Automatic overflow of text in the class feature section to another page
  This is a hard one to implement in a PDF and would basically rely on counting the number of lines a class features take up, something that will have to be hard-coded and thus not idiot-proof
  
• More optional parts of page designs (e.g. switch out some magic items for more attack line)

Don't worry, the sheets aren't going anywhere!

Regardless of the decision to overhaul the sheet, to recreate it on another platform, or to do something else entirely, I fully intend to keep the sheet up to date with new content as it comes out. At least, until the overhaul (or whatever) is ready.

If another avenue is chosen, it will be the development of new features that will be put on halt. New content and bug fixes will continue.

Apologies for the wall of text, there is just a lot I want to share with you!