The MektonHelper Frequently Asked Questions

1) When can we expect updates?

Short answer: When I feel like it.

Better answer: I tend to work on my projects in spurts, so if there’s been a recent update, chances are good that another is coming down the pipeline within two weeks or so. If I’ve made updates to the front page without mentioning work on MektonHelper, most likely I haven’t been working on it as much. At this point, the program meets the needs of the vast bulk of users, so incentive to work on it is lower. That being said, the project isn’t abandoned, and if you’re very curious drop me an email. I’ll tell you exactly where I am and how recently it’s been worked on. Also, major bugs(crashing, incorrect calculations, etc) will get addressed more quickly than new features. Keep in mind that I have several other major projects and a full time job, so updates are unpredictable for those reasons as well.

2) What feature set can we expect in the future?

I do mention planned features in the Features page, but for a more in-depth answer: I plan to have version 1.0 handle all the features in MTS minus some of the Stupid Mekton Tricks, and probably leaving off some very rare or complex uses. I do not, for example, plan to address Combiners in the 1.0 version.

The exact features added per version will depend on time and effort required, but I do have each release based upon a major feature. These are usually the features that take the most work to implement.

Version 0.7: Transformations

Version 0.8: Printing Support

Version 0.9: Scaling

3) Are you going to include descriptions of each feature in the popup help?

Frankly, no.

In some unusual cases, I might include some text blurbs, especially if there has been an errata addressing some issue which may change the expected results, but I won’t be putting in descriptions of what ‘Hypervelocity’ means or anything of the sort. For one thing, that’s an awful lot of typing on my end! Mostly, however, it is because most of the people who buy the Mekton Zeta Plus book buy it for the Mekton creation rules. This program is meant to supplement that, and putting in detailed descriptions and guidelines for building Mekton would instead eliminate the need to buy the book for a good many players. I don’t actually want that, since I like Mekton and I’d prefer if people bought the books.

If, at some point in the future, R. Talsorian stops selling the MZ+ book and shows no plans of putting it back into print, I may change my mind. Unless they do this to put out a new version.