Dropbox

[Joose]

Anyone else use dropbox? Its just occured to me that setting up shared folders with the GM of your game would be an excellent way of making sure you both had the most up to date versions of your character sheet. I use it for a few things, its dead handy and pretty easy to use.

If you dont have it and want a go, prod me for an invite. That way we get more space for free!

[Dog Pants]

Deject uses it to send me his character sheet. I've never used it though. Is it colaborative? Or just storage space we can all use to look at each others' sheets?

[Joose]

Its just storage, really. For example:

I make a folder for my SLA characters, and share it with you. Whenever I put a new character in there, it would automagically be copied on to your computer when you next log in. If you make changes to it, those changes would get copied back to me, and so on.

Essentially, its a bit like having a network drive on the interwebs.

As far as I know, theres no limits* on the amount of shared folders and things, so you (as a GM) could have a seperate folder for each player or something like that.

You can share individual files, as in I copy stuff to my public folder and send you a link, and you download it like its web download, but doing it properly with dropbox accounts and shared folders and stuff would be better, as you wouldnt have to remember to send things to people, it would just be there.

*No no. No no, no no. No no, theres no limits.

[Dog Pants]

That could be useful. It prevents people losing their characters and keeps everything up to date. It's very hard as a GM keeping track of everything, and it's just too time consuming to keep up to date character sheets on everyone.

[Joose]

That could be useful. It prevents people losing their characters and keeps everything up to date. It's very hard as a GM keeping track of everything, and it's just too time consuming to keep up to date character sheets on everyone.

Exactly my thoughts. It would let GM's have an up to date sheet without having to track things themselves or badger the players to send them updates.

[Dog Pants]

In which case consider yourself prodded.

[Joose]

PM me an email address, and I shall wing you an invite

[deject]

Dropbox is nearly the best thing ever. It's seamless, easy, and so convenient. It's certainly made my life a hell of a lot easier.

[Dog Pants]

What's the best thing ever?

[HereComesPete]

Deject's mom!

[Dog Pants]

I'll need confirmation of that.

[Dog Pants]

Back to dropbox, it's worth having some form of coordination so that we know where things are and who has what. Like, for example, each GM holding the character sheets, or each player having a folder for all their sheets. Rather than a stack of folders with unintuitive names.

[Joose]

each GM holding the character sheets

It doesn't *quite* work like that. For example, now that I have shared my SLA character folder with you, we both have a copy of the character sheet in a folder in our dropbox folder. If I go offline, you can still see/edit it. Hell, if you go offline, you can still see/edit it. It just syncs up again when you then get back online.

Not sure what happens if you edit something whilst offline, and I edit the same file, also whilst offline. Anyone know?

I do agree that some sort of co-ordination would be a good idea though.

How about this:

Each GM makes a folder in their dropbox for their game. Then, within that folder, they make a folder for each player. They can then share the player folders with the appropriate players. That way, the GM's have everything for that game in one place, and the players have their stuff separate from everyone else's. Name the folders in the format game-GM-player, so my SLA folder for pants would be SLA-Pants-Joose. That work?

[Dog Pants]

Yeah, that's what I meant. Do we need so many levels? I was thinking more just a SLA folder hosted by me, a D&D for Grimmie, and we all stick our characters in there. I suppose it depends on if people care about everyone seeing their character.

[Joose]

Yeah, that's what I meant. Do we need so many levels? I was thinking more just a SLA folder hosted by me, a D&D for Grimmie, and we all stick our characters in there. I suppose it depends on if people care about everyone seeing their character.

Can do that, but like you say, some people might want to keep their characters to themselves.

[cheeseandham]

Not sure what happens if you edit something whilst offline, and I edit the same file, also whilst offline. Anyone know?

oh ok then....

[deject]

Not sure what happens if you edit something whilst offline, and I edit the same file, also whilst offline. Anyone know?

It makes a copy with the conflicting changes so you can take a look at it and decide what to do with them.

[Grimmie]

What if I'm already using Dropbox, I thought you could only assign one username/password to your dropbox softwares?

[FatherJack]

Not sure if this belongs in Hardware, since I use it for non-beardy stuff.

Novell's iFolder was the best file-sharey thing I've used, but they broke it horribly in version 3 and the v2 client won't run under 64-bit Windows. Also it needs its own server, but it was the best I've used both at speed, not downloading full copies of files only partially changed, dealing with duplicate files, unlimited storage, massive filestores and all the things the other ones do.

DropBox is good, I use it for a few critical files I like to be able to access from anywhere. The free version has a 2G limit, which matters because all files are uploaded to the server and saved there. It allows sharing, web-access and rudimentary LAN synchronisation.
- Central storage means everyone can get at the files even when everyone else is offline
- Files have to be uploaded before any other machine can get them (even ones on your own LAN)
- It uses a combination of web access and P2P to transfer files, but is rather slow
- The sharing is basic, only full access (including delete rights) are grantable, to email addresses, per folder
- If using the client, any corruption, data loss or deletion is replicated to everyone, though there are tools to recover deleted files
- The web interface lets you download whole folder as ZIP files
- It duplicates files it detects changes in, so should always be reinstalled pointing at an empty folder if you've recovered from backup

Windows LiveSync I also use, for syncing files between my workstations at home and in the office. There's no GB limit, but a limit of around 20,000 files per sync folder. Sharing is enabled, as it web-access.
- No central storage means another machine has to be online for anyone to access the files
- Files are available for all as soon as the index is uploaded to the server, and travel at full speed over a LAN
- It uses a P2P to transfer files, but is an okay speed
- The sharing is also basic, only full access grantable, to email addresses, per sync, not per folder as DropBox
- Same issues with client corruption are replication, less robust tools to recover deleted files
- The web interface still requires another P2P client to be active, and often still fails
- Same deal with duplicates/recovering from backup, it tags duplicates more obviously though

What if I'm already using Dropbox, I thought you could only assign one username/password to your dropbox softwares?

Why do you need another one? No one can see your shared folders unless you add their email address (except your public one) and whoever sets up the shared beardy area just needs to add the email address you used for your existing account into the share.

[deject]

What if I'm already using Dropbox, I thought you could only assign one username/password to your dropbox softwares?

You can share folders with other dropbox users, so they both sync a particular folder.