This is an important day for me. Since 18 months now, I have been working on Commlink 6, initially alone, later with the help of my wife Anja for the PDF export and Robert as a data editor. Today I am releasing a version 1.0.0 and consider this to be a Beta test.
The motivation
When I initially started working on Genesis sometime in 2015, I was making a character generation software for a a german fantasy RPG that had just been released. Over the years, I added support for other RPGs and redesigned the user interface. I even started support for Shadowrun 5, but I wasn't aware of all the complexity and requirements of that game system and with Chummer5 being the go-to software, I abandoned it. When early in 2019 Pegasus asked if I would make another attempt with Shadowrun 6, I agreed. Taking lessons learned from SR5, I made the SR6 support even more versatile - and complex. Still, Shadowrun being a mess with rule details, exceeded my complexity expectations, which became obvious after the release of the rigger book in 2021.
I also did not expect being kept so busy with one RPG alone. The other RPGs supported in Genesis added just more of the same (more spells, more gear ...) and just very few rulebooks, so it usually meant adding new book content was just a matter of days. Enter: Shadowrun! 1-2 rule-heavy books every year, with unexpected variations or additions to existing rules and - what you don't recognize as a human - detail rules that don't really fit into the corset of existing datastructures. I found myself working exclusively for Shadowrun the whole time onwards.
The decision
Working on something and not being able to do it right, constantly made me think "If I just had designed it that way, that could work and would not require a problematic workaround now." After a while, I got so frustrated that I stopped working on Genesis and paused my Patreon for 2 months, just deciding if I wanted to continue with Genesis at all. I decided, I would not and start from the scratch. Shortly afterwards I received Double Clutch and my excitement took over and so went another 5 months just to bring DC into Genesis. But than I started with Commlink When I got hold of the Sixth World Companion PDF in January 2022, I made the decision not to support it in Genesis and focus on Commlink. Minor changes would still be made to Genesis, but all new things would go into Commlink. Genesis's sources are publicly available, it has a custom data mechanism, so I gave it into the hands of the community to continue support - which worked for additional data of 6WC or Hack & Slash.
The changes
But Commlink is not just about being able to better support upcoming Shadowrun books - it also has some new ideas:
- Provide a library
Providing some kind of look up mechanism for rule elements like spells, adept powers, qualities, echoes ... I think of it as some kind of meta-index. - Better adapt to all kinds of screen sizes
Genesis was developed with traditional desktop computer monitors in mind and tried not to be crowded. And while it worked on smaller laptop screens, it often caused problems there. Redesigning the user interface to better support screen sizes (from large desktop monitors down to smartphones) and be more responsive was a rather large task - Run on mobile devices
Since the early days of Genesis, users asked for a mobile version. The normal response would be to develop a web application, that could be used on desktop and mobile devices as well - problem is: I am an experienced desktop application developer with near to none experience in web development. Of course I could try to learn web development, but it would take ages to reach the experience I already have at classic application development. The solution came with new technology that would allow to run "convert" desktop applications in a way that they run on mobile devices. The same technology allows producing even faster desktop applications, so those "binary" versions can be produced for all desktop and mobile operating systems. (With iOS being most problematic, because Apple is really tight and complicated for such an approach.) - Metatype illustrations
When creating characters I like to have a visual of the metatype/-variant/.. I am playing. While illustrations for common metatypes exist, the more exotic are hard to come by and the art styles are very mixed. I decided I wanted to have illustrated metatypes in the same style and started to commission a Shadowrun artist with creating them - that effort has been paid by my Patreon supporters (and from my savings).
There are more ideas, but since they did not made it into the 1.0 release, I will talk about them once they show up in the software.
If you have ideas for new features, let me know at the feature request tracker.
State today
With regards to supported books, Commlink exceeds Genesis by supporting the Sixth World Companion and Hack & Slash, but it falls behind by not supporting custom creations (e.g.: custom spells, custom vehicles) or the books Power Plays, Slip Streams or Collapsing Now yet. See the full comparison here
Although Commlink has been available for Alpha testing since January 2023, it is only within the last 2 months that it has been tested more by the community. I think I got rid of all really critical errors (meaning those that lead to crashes or break Nuyen and Karma cost calcucation at chargen), but there are several lesser errors ("I should be able to select X", "Y should not be visible", "Button has no function", "Pool calculation is not correct", ...) still lingering. I need your help spotting those errors - you can report them here
Coming next
I expect to do a lot of bugfixing, while also adding features (like support more content) or improving existing features (like continue redesigning PDF export). There is also more complicated functionality missing (like online character storage) or custom data, which still requires a lot of work. I am mixing bugfixing, implementing feature requests from the tracker (see above) and my feature visions and decide each evening what I feel like doing - making it impossible to have a clear roadmap. I usually report to our Patreon supporters in more detail what is going on behind the scenes, but of course there should be new blog entries here every now and than.