New Anathema Character Management - Anathema Reincarnated

[Arian Dynas]

Okay so I gave it a whirl.

First impressions was that it's a LOT to take in all at once. A bit like the EX3 Manual it's a little intimidating from a first look.It actually does quite a lot for running a battle and that's actually really good, but its presented in such a way as to make tracking that information not really different from using a notepad or some such. I don't think the 'apply damage' mechanic is really useful for withering attacks until the utility is tracking dice pools and penalties (as that seems to be what you're working towards).

I did not encounter any glitches with using it, thought i didn't do much other than add two combatants and run a simple combat. I did notice that there are a lot of edge cases where withering damage works differently due to the attacks and actions taken that made manual control of the initiative tracks more simple than trying to use the inbuilt damage component.

I'm running an actual game tomorrow, so I'll muck about with it and come back with an appraisal of how easy it is to set up and track a full combat with multiple people.

Well, as we've said, this is a teaser more than anything else.

I recall comparing it to trying to call a bare car frame, body and engine powered by a set of bicycle pedals instead of a gas tank a "car" Functional? Yes. Workable? Yes. Better than what you had before? Yes. As powerful as it should be? Hell no.

[Mobius]

My take, as a significant contributor to the Anathema project: It's really good to see other initiatives, and I wish you guys luck. I think adopting the Anathema 'brand name' is in poor taste without having received prior authorization from Urs, though. That's not cool.

[Kenai]

My take, as a significant contributor to the Anathema project: It's really good to see other initiatives, and I wish you guys luck. I think adopting the Anathema 'brand name' is in poor taste without having received prior authorization from Urs, though. That's not cool.

I didn't realize that Anathema was Urs' brand. Not being snarky, just confused a bit. We're not trying to do anything bad, here. Also, if you have a good way of contacting him I'd appreciate the help. We tried, but he hasn't been around much.

[urskr]

Skimming past the thread, I picked up these major points:
a) You are doing something to help people manage their games using Kotlin and JavaFX and are aiming for desktop PCs.
b) You meant to ask me something about it but I never replied. This is due to me never seeing your message.
c) You want to call this beast 'Anathema Reincarnated'.
d) People are eager to help out.
e) You are writing this from scratch.
f) I never integrated your pull request on github.

Did I miss anything? What can I do for you people?

For what it's worth, rumors of my burnout are greatly exaggerated. Details don't matter here, but there is no secret to be kept under wraps. Send me a mail or IM if you want to know more.

[urskr]

I didn't realize that Anathema was Urs' brand. Not being snarky, just confused a bit. We're not trying to do anything bad, here. Also, if you have a good way of contacting him I'd appreciate the help. We tried, but he hasn't been around much.

There's a mail address on anathema.github.io which goes to my inbox, among others. Asking to get in touch over there is much more efficient than IMing me, for usually I am doing my very own interpretation of Cthulhu here.
Having read your message now, it is very respectful and touches upon all the right points. No worries.

That leaves us with me "blessing" things. I am torn.
On the one hand, you'll have something out much earlier than me. That's good for the community and that is what matters.
On the other hand, I have seen efforts like this before, and I would like to see more of your tool before I lend my name to anything. Skimming your code, you still have a lot of ground to cover.
Ultimately, though, I cannot keep you from calling your program any way you like, for "Anathema" is not my brand. It is an unusual greek word that some people put in a book about fictional superheroes which I picked up on, re-interpreted as an acronym and uppercased before I applied it to a programming project I happened to be involved in at the time.
However, people do associate it with the work that Sandra and myself have done between 2004 and 2012.**
Thus, I would appreciate if you kept on working for a while before appropriating the name.


** Here's to all the people who contributed, took over, gave back and worked with us! Sean, Curt, Martin, Eric, Rob! And to Scott, may he rest in peace! Anathema, represent!

[Kenai]

THUS SAYITH THE SUN

I feel as though god has come and laid down some holy writ.

In all seriousness, I'm going to be honest with you - the only reason that this is its own project is because I couldn't get a foothold in the existing Anathema code when I tried. I'd love to be able to finish the closest thing to an "official" app the community has, but I didn't understand the project well enough to make it happen. I also didn't consider myself significant enough to ask for the necessary tutelage, so my business partner and I (we are taking a break from our studio's debut game) decided to go it alone.

That being said, fair enough on wanting to see more of the project. In fact...

"What can I do for you people?"

I'll be sending you a message. If Anathema isn't as dead as I thought it to be, then it might get finished soon after all. Whatever it takes the serve the community!

[urskr]

Veneration, explanation, communication

I have been and still am fully willing to help you get going with our code. If I didn't make that clear enough earlier, then it was simply because your pull request gave me the impression that you are more than capable to deal with anything we have built.
That offer goes out to anyone, by the way: I will gladly help with understanding our architecture and design and review your pull requests. I won't teach Java or the basics of OO programming, though. Also, note that I'll be on vacation the next few weeks.

Kenai, I IMed both of you myself since I did not yet see the message you promised above.

[TheSly9]

So, I feel a bit nervous making this announcement, perhaps a bit presumptuous, but, I and a friend of mine (Kenai on these forums) have been working to finish Urskr's work on a version of Anathema for Third Edition Exalted.

We call it "Anathema Reincarnated" and it is currently well on it's way to its first, official version. Until then, we wanted to get people excited for the finished application, with this;

https://bitbucket.org/blakwurm/anath...ated/downloads

It's a link to our teaser for Anathema; a complete combat tracker! Do you sometimes have difficulty tracking your circle's essence, health, initiative and so on? Then, you can make use of this simple application! All it requires to run is Java 8 or newer. Simply download the file and run; you can currently save combatants, manage stats and healthtracks, and even run most of the combat calculations. It still requires some manual function; battlegroups don't automatically calculate the additional damage from being attacked decisively, for instance, but for the most part you can easily speed up combat with this function of our new app.

Although we aren't part of the Anathema team, we have the utmost respect for them and Urskr's work, and, given that his version of Anathema has been shelved for the time being, possibly forever, we hope that we can give back to the Exalted community as much as they and the game alike have given back to us.

More features are on the horizon, so check back regularly. We intend for Anathema Reincarnated to be a useful tool for STs and players alike.

Awesome! Thank you guys! Please lemme know if you need help testing out Anathema Reinc. So stoked

[Arian Dynas]

Skimming past the thread, I picked up these major points:
a) You are doing something to help people manage their games using Kotlin and JavaFX and are aiming for desktop PCs.
b) You meant to ask me something about it but I never replied. This is due to me never seeing your message.
c) You want to call this beast 'Anathema Reincarnated'.
d) People are eager to help out.
e) You are writing this from scratch.
f) I never integrated your pull request on github.

Did I miss anything? What can I do for you people?

For what it's worth, rumors of my burnout are greatly exaggerated. Details don't matter here, but there is no secret to be kept under wraps. Send me a mail or IM if you want to know more.

a). We also have ambitions of a mobile version in the future. As I recall when we spoke previously, so do you.
b). I am the one to blame here, lacking in a better method of contact you, as well as your absence and the lack of activity on the official Anathema site, I presumed the only way to reach you was via PM.
c). I also am the one who came up with the name, though Kenai approved it and put it in. And if ou mean beast in the sense that there is a number of features we intend to add, and indeed are close to doing so, then yes.
d). Well to be honest, people are eager to help you too Urs. Honestly that's why we're here too.
e). Correct. It's been moving very fast, actually.
f). correct.

Basically, if this means that Anathema and it's team are not as dead as we feared then we'd be pleased to join you and hope we can bring some good things to the whole; there's not really any point in splitting the fanbase over this.

[Amakawa Yuuto]

I'm not actually involved in either project (except being an Anathema user who once found one bug), but yeah, I'd suggest going with another name. I know Anathema is the "iconic" character management tool, but... well, this isn't Anathema, it's a new project that's just meant to do the same thing.

But then, when I try to come up with alternative names, I end up with "The [Scarlet/Immaculate] Manager", so...
(Oh, hey, "The Immaculate Manager" ends up as TIM...)

[Trax]

I like TIM.

[haren]

What would make it TIMTOM? The Immaculate Manager Trains Other Masters? Silly, but I like TIMTOM as a name. ^_^

[AtG]

Just want to pipe in with the observation that exposing a MySQL database directly to the internet is not the greatest of ideas.

[Arian Dynas]

Look folks, to be blunt, even if the name issue needs to be resolved and the two projects aren't combined, we aren't going with TIM.

[Ramaloke]

First off, good job, to both teams, as I use Anathema already (in its current state), and used it back in 2/2.5 E. So I am already a big fan, and I support both projects and appreciate your combined efforts.

Now if you efforts were truly combined, that would be freaking awesome.

If its not combined, why not call it "Second Breath", since that's what the exalted call their moment of exaltation (which is sort of when the character usually gets built)?