Sheet Release Plan

Hello, I am very new to sheets, and I'm wondering if it is better to release a sheet incrementally (like first layout, then auto-calc, then sheet-workers, then other fancy things) or just be patient and wait until it is 100% finished?  If incrementally, what is the preferred state of fanciness to reach before uploading?  What is the best way to get feedback before publishing (in addition to testing with a small group of players)?  Is it considered crass to note the next planned update in the sheet itself? Thank you

This is just my opinion... I'd say that the first release should be at least useful/usable for the game. That doesn't necessarily mean roll buttons, but often does mean that. Autocalcs are easier to implement, so if you're wanting that functionality, I'd go that route and buy yourself some time to work on the sheet workers, because you can always swap out the auto-calc fields. As for announcing your next release functionality in the sheet—I wouldn't, but that's just me. Instead, I use the Customer Sheet wiki for the character sheet itself. If you wanted to put it in the sheet directly, though, I'd just do it in such a way that it can be hidden and not impact the game. As for getting feedback, I usually just create a game that's open to the public and share the URL in the forums and ask for people to provide feedback.

Oh, cool, I hadn't thought of the wiki/open game.  Thank you!

Personally I would say you can release a sheet the second you think the following two things are satisfied: 1. You believe people will use it. If it is worthy for one, it might be worthy for many 2. You have fixed the attribute naming convention and do not plan to rewrite most if your attributes invalidating everything people entered. 1. Should be self explanary. 2. When people start using your sheet, they unlikely want to enter all the characters and work AGAIN once they have done it once. If you announce: "Ok in this version you have to reenter the skills, because there was a major update", then people will get annoyed unless the update was worthy enough of invalidating their invested time. The main reason - beside i18n, but I could have started that if I really wanted to - why I personally don't have released my sheet altough I believe it would fit 1. is that I will likely violate 2. for quite some time. There are stil huge features planned, which do not only add a new section to the sheet but which will likely invalidate hundreds of attributes. I therefore suggest: If you feel your sheet satisfies 1 and 2, go ahead try to get it into as many hands as possible. The more feedback there is the better. Until then I supposes its better to test the sheet with a handful of willing people. Your sheet might have maybe only 1/10 of the features another sheet has, but if there is a single feature people are really longing for, maybe they are willing to switch just because of that. As for getting feedback, I usually just create a game that's open to the public and share the URL in the forums and ask for people to provide feedback. Thank you for that suggestion! Neat idea!

Wandler said: Personally I would say you can release a sheet the second you think the following two things are satisfied: 1. You believe people will use it. If it is worthy for one, it might be worthy for many 2. You have fixed the attribute naming convention and do not plan to rewrite most if your attributes invalidating everything people entered. 1. Should be self explanary. 2. When people start using your sheet, they unlikely want to enter all the characters and work AGAIN once they have done it once. If you announce: "Ok in this version you have to reenter the skills, because there was a major update", then people will get annoyed unless the update was worthy enough of invalidating their invested time. A pull request which is naively changing attribute names around on a pre-existing sheet is unlikely to get merged, precisely to avoid people having to rework characters. However, you can also include a sheet worker script to 'upgrade' the sheet, mapping old attributes to new ones. I'm speaking from experience on that one, with the Ex3 sheet. =)