|
Both books have some stragglers still undone. We've got most of the APG done but not all posted in easy to reach places on the site because it still needs some formatting and thinking about how to incorporate it best (merging into existing tables or separate tables sorts of questions)
For the GMG its a matter of ... we have the data in tabular format (ie, most of the random tables) but how best to present it... there had been some talk of presenting some nifty gadgets allowing random rolls but that hasn't developed as fast as I would have liked.. ultimately I'm probably going to go live with what I personally created vs. waiting for the other, ultimately better stuff. I guess I figure most users would prefer "decent now" vs. "super sweet I don't know when"
|
While I can see some usefulness, I see one major problem (to me anyways).
The formatting:
The monsters start mid-page and carry over to the next page in several places.
One of the things I have liked most about the pathfinder bestiary format is that each monster starts at the top of the page. That means if I want to photocopy a page for quick reference later, it's easy. If I want to hit print, it may eat up all my int like any other color pdf, but I still just have to print the one page (2 for dragons).
If I'm really dedicated, I could take the pages out of the hardcover, and just arrange them in alphabetical order, and have every bestiary monster, bestiary 2 monster, and AP monster in alphabetical order in a big binder.
The 1 monster/page is a big selling point to me.
Faster PDFs would be better, but I think it's more the PDF rendering programs at fault, rather than the actual files.
I have a decent enough CPU and a very good graphics card, and even utilising both through hardware acceleration, pages still take seconds to load.
Something, somewhere, ain't right.
|
|
I have a decent enough CPU and a very good graphics card, and even utilising both through hardware acceleration, pages still take seconds to load.
Acrobat is definitely bloatware. From what I hear from my linux friends, the freeware linux pdf viewers are much faster. I believe most of those also exist for windows. And if the one you want doesn't exist for windows, you can set your windows machine up so you can install linux apps anyways if you go get a few libraries (it's basically like getting .net for your computer, except for linux apps.)
I personally still just use acrobat though.. but it could be alot faster.
|
|
I run Ubuntu Linux, and the pdf readers in Linux don't speed up the rendering much. The images (or something) in the official pdfs make the pdfs essentially unusable in a game session (for me.) Searching in the core rulebook takes... minutes... to scan the entire book. Its almost instantaneous in the pdf's we created with no images.
Seems to be the background image that causes the problem on my machine.
Searching in the core rulebook takes... minutes... to scan the entire book. Its almost instantaneous in the pdf's we created with no images.
That's the same exact problem that I see too. The strange thing is, I have the PDF version of the 3.5 Spell Compendium and searches in that are nearly instantaneous. I can open it, do a search on "scatterspray" and less than a second later I'm reading the spell.
Conversely, even opening the spells chapter directly, it takes about 2-3 seconds for it to find each instance of "Stone Shape". If I open the single file version of the CRB, it takes 25 seconds...
...to find the first mention of it in the Artifice domain on page 42.
Old WotC PDF: 180 pages < 1 second
New Paizo PDF: 42 pages > 40 seconds
That's a difference of two orders of magnitude! The Spell Compendium PDF looks nice too. It's not some black and white affair with no graphics, but contains page borders and artwork. It's almost like the PDF readers are attempting to search for text inside of the graphics files or something.
As you say, it makes them basically unusable during live play.
I stopped using Adobe Readers for my PDF due to them being so slow on older PC. Foxit works better speed wise. I use Adobe on my newer PC as it is fine there.
I'd like to toss my vote in for this as well. Really, I'd love to just be able to print these PDFs and bring them to my table. Pathfinder has a lot of feats, class options, etc. spread out over books, and being able to print and then present them to my group in an organized fashion would be AWESOME.
That being said, I still love the layout and quality of the material, it would just be nice to have the variant as well.
Not a publishing expert but I wonder how much of the problem revolves around layers within the document. They are great for editing a document and for printing purposes so that the image on the screen matches the image on the page.
That being said there are too many high detail objects found in most of the pdfs.
I think it would be nice to have an option to either turn off some layers (background graphics and full color images are big processor hogs). Obviously though direct access to the component layers might not be something Paizo wants to provide but I think it would be possible to offer customers who purchase a copy of a pdf product the opportunity to download a high end version for desktop computers and a stripped down version for ebook readers.