Brief Review of ARDB vs FELDB

Having started a V:TES collection again, I wanted to look into suitable software to record my inventory and to allow me to tinker with building different decks.

When I was last playing the game the best software around for this was the Elder Library Deck Builder. It seems that over time the updates for this software have now waned and ceased though, but I take this opportunity for my long overdue thanks to David Anderson-Dávila for providing this software in the past.

These days there seems to be two main replacements.

Anarch Revolt Deck Builder (ARDB).
Fragment of Elder Library Deck Builder (FELDB).

There are also several online utilities available as well but for my own purposes I preferred some locally installed software. A much more detailed review of all the available Deck Building software and utilities at extrala's "Vampire: the Eternal Struggle" Blog which is an excellent site for all sorts of reasons.

My own brief assessment below isn't intended as a replacement to this article, but rather simply details my own brief experience and thoughts on these two applications as follows:

Anarch Revolt Deck Builder

Abbreviation: ARDB
Version:      3.1.1
Site:         http://ardb.googlecode.com
Authors:      Francois Gombault, Graham Smith 
              and Rob Woodruff

I stumbled across the ARDB first and eagerly downloaded the latest version of Anarch Revolt Deck Builder: 3.1.1

The fact that images were available for the cards was encouraging but the auto-updater for the card images seemed to just hang the software and the links I found to the divshare site to manually download the images seems to no longer be valid, so I was sadly unable to add the card images for this one.

Once downloaded and installed, I began with adding some of my new 'Lords of the Night' pre-constructed decks as a test of the deck builder and also briefly tested the inventory utilities.

I liked quite a lot of the features with this software, but unfortunately I also found that the program would often fail to respond after starting up.

I also found that once I added and saved any inventory entries to a file, trying to re-open that file through the Inventory menu would cause the program to crash. This issue was repeatable and was also found to be the case with version 3.1.0 (which I tried in case 3.1.1 was still in beta) and for me the ability to be able save and restore inventory is a key factor.

If anyone happens to know why this error occurs, adding a comment to let me know would really be appreciated.

Meanwhile I left a bug report on the relevant Google code site it is distributed from. It's a shame really, as I quite like a lot of the features of this application.

Fragment of Elder Library Deck Builder

Abbreviation: FELDB/(F)ELDB
Version:      2.5.2
Site:         http://www.csillagbolcselet.hu/feldb/
Authors:      Balázs Kunó Kiss

I found this software to be more stable than the ARDB and after some tinkering about also found it reasonably intuitive to use.

I initially found it a little unnerving that you can't 'Save' the inventory entries rather than hope that they are being saved as they are being added. That said, the entries do seem to save okay, and I am now accustomed to it.

One small issue with the deck builder that I encountered when saving to 'All format' was that it has a tendency to use the file name of the last deck saved. The new file name either has to be manually entered or you can first try saving the deck as a single file type, which then uses the correct deck name, and saving to the 'All format' file after this then uses the correct new deck name as well. Admittedly this is only a small issue but a potentially annoying one if you accidentally over-write all the previous deck export files with the new deck details as it tries to save to the old deck file names, so possibly one to watch out for.

I also seem to be encountering a slight issue with the images not showing up in the Library even though they show up fine in the Crypt. It seems that the right-side edge can't be dragged across to to the left to allow display of these Library images. Not really too much of an issue and a liveable one but slightly frustrating. Again, if anyone knows how to fix this, adding a comment to let me know would be really appreciated. :)

Conclusion:

Overall, on the basis of it being more stable, that it can both safely save and restore the inventory without crashing and that I can at least display some of the images, I prefer the Fragment of Elder Library Deck Builder.

It suits my own particular needs fairly well, although your own mileage may of course vary...

Finally, my sincere thanks go out to the authors of both applications for their time, efforts and contribution to the V:TES community.