Community

Just as an FYI, if you upgrade to Silverlight 5, the character builder WILL break. It will constantly give you errors that start "Something went wrong" and if you are very unlucky, it will delete your character if it encounters such an error while loading. The Monster Builder seems broken as well - the "edit power" button causes the whole app to go black.

Downgrading does work, and you should be able to go to www.silverlight.net/downloads and check under the heading "Silverlight 4 (Previous Version)" to get the SL4 update. But be aware, as Silverlight updates automatically. So if you computer is SL4 right now, unless you need SL5 to access a new app (or for development, like me) then try to avoid updating. You can turn off automatic updating by go to the Silverlight properties. (Right click any silverlight app and click "Silverlight")

If, by some chance anyone at Wizards is reading this, you can actually target silverlight apps for a specific silverlight framework. All I think it requires that the developer upgrade to SL5 and then recompile the app, setting the target framework in the project. Actual dev effort on it should be very small. Or at least that should be something that you can determine quickly.
 
On an related note, it's incredibly frustrating that these tools are in such poor shape. If they don't want to keep maintaining these tools, why don't they focus on creating a great API, and just become a service that people pay for? It seems like that benefits everyone. 
 
Ah well. Anyway, I just wanted to warn the other forum readers. Hopefully Wizards will fix these severe, crashing, data deleting bugs in the DDI tools before too long.
[Edit: Added some solutions discussed below.] 

Dec 15, 2011 -- 10:48AM, RedSiegfried wrote:

Dec 14, 2011 -- 5:29PM, apollyonbob wrote:

Just as an FYI, if you upgrade to Silverlight 5, the character builder WILL break. It will constantly give you errors that start "Something went wrong" and if you are very unlucky, it will delete your character if it encounters such an error while loading. The Monster Builder seems broken as well - the "edit power" button causes the whole app to go black.

I saw elsewhere in the forums that downgrading works. But be aware, as Silverlight updates automatically. So if you computer is SL4 right now, unless you need SL5 to access a new app (or for development, like me) then try to avoid updating.

If, by some chance anyone at Wizards is reading this, you can actually target silverlight apps for a specific silverlight framework. All I think it requires that the developer upgrade to SL5 and then recompile the app, setting the target framework in the project. Actual dev effort on it should be very small. Or at least that should be something that you can determine quickly.
 
On an related note, it's incredibly frustrating that these tools are in such poor shape. If they don't want to keep maintaining these tools, why don't they focus on creating a great API, and just become a service that people pay for? It seems like that benefits everyone. 
 
Ah well. Anyway, I just wanted to warn the other forum readers. Hopefully Wizards will fix these severe, crashing, data deleting bugs in the DDI tools before too long.

Thanks for the heads-up.  It's always a good idea not to immediately jump to the shiny new version of software as soon as it's released and instead just wait, do your research and make sure it's going to do what you want before upgrading.  I never allow any software to automatically update without getting my approval (except antivirus, and I've even been burned on that once).  It's just good common sense for any software.

I won't update to SL5 until I'm reasonably sure it won't wreak havoc with my CB; I have no need to update it for anything else right now.

Also, you may want to check the system requirements for browser/OS compatibility before choosing to update:

www.microsoft.com/getsilverlight/Get-Sta...

Yeah in order to develop for Silverlight 5, as I mentioned I was doing, you have to download Silverlight 5. The worst part though is that I can't ask anyone I know who uses the CB to test my RPG related app, because then it would break the CB for them. And I can't install it on my laptop where I would actually want to use it because then the CB won't work on my laptop.


I guess after I get done, I'll have to see how difficult it is to port to WP7.

Dec 15, 2011 -- 10:20PM, AntiDjinn wrote:

Yeah, just lost my 23rd level character to this exact issue. If the character builder is not compatible with Silverlight5, why does the program prompt users to install the new version when launching the builder? Or is it just Silverlight doing this? Why are we using this plug-in again? I know it is required, but surely something that works would be preferable. 

Basically it checks to see if your version is equal to or later than the version it needs. If it isn't, it sends you to download the latest version. This is pretty standard plugin behavior. After all, if you don't have the right version, the app won't work at all. There's ways to specifically find the version you need ... But I'm afraid I don't know them off the top of my head, so you'll have to google that one. You're probably looking for 4.0.9 something. I think that was the last 4 version, and I believe that's the one the site requires.

But this is why I cautioned to be aware of the fact that SL can automatically update. In fact, if you go into the Silverlight settings, there is an option to check whether or not it does automatically update. 

On a side note, the Silverlight plugin is not to blame here. Many sites use it to great effect. (Netflix, for instance, works great on my machine.) But no tool can sit unmaintained and continue to just work indefinitely - especially web tools. The web environment changes too frequently for that to be the case. Sadly, it looks as though either money or effort toward the DDI tools just isn't there. Considering the state of the economy and industry, I'm guessing it's the former more than the latter.

Dec 16, 2011 -- 2:27PM, AntiDjinn wrote:

Per WotC customer support: There is currently no fix for this issue; characters lost due to this error are not recoverable. 

Wow. 

Not surprised it's not recoverable, but they didn't even say that workaround was to downgrade to SL4? Like, they don't read the forums at all? Yikes.

Oh well, at least they responded. They didn't even ever get back to me XD     

Dec 16, 2011 -- 5:11PM, AntiDjinn wrote:

Downgrade to Silverlight4 how? It appears to have entered the witness protection program. I have been searching the net for a copy of the install for  4 and now have 6 copies of the SL5 install. It is all MS appears to offer, even though they have stated Mac support ended in 2010. I got a response from MS tech support, but the tech read my question and concluded that I am having trouble getting the SL5 install to proceed. I am not; I installed it and found it to be an utter steaming loaf that destroyed a data file I have been working with for a year and which I have no way to replace. I sent another e-mail stating that my only question about SL5 is how to go back to SL4. 

I will give it a week. If it isn't fixed I am just going to cancel my subscription; no way I am going to continue to pay for a character builder I can't use. 

Alright, I can't guarantee that this will work because I haven't tried it myself:

Uninstall Silverlight. You should be able to do this through Control Panel > Programs

Go to this link: go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=149156&v...

That specific download of Silverlight (it'll still just be called Silverlight.exe) should be the last v4 that was released. Then I suggest the very first time you load up the character builder, right click on the App, click "Silverlight", click "Updates" and check "Never check for updates" haha

You know the worst part? According to Microsoft this takes literally no development time at all to fix. Wizards can still target SL4, they just have to recompile their project and set it to target SL4, then redeploy. That's it. It would take 5 seconds + build time + deployment time. I mean, provided they have a hotfix branch of their source code. One would hope.

Anyway, hopefully that works. If it doesn't ... then yeah, you will probably not be the first person to cancel their sub over this.