MapTool 1.3 Development Build 10

[trevor]

The "Making up for lost time" build.

This primarily hits feedback from build 9. It also introduces token portraits. The graphics, positioning, and interaction are all up for debate, wanted to give you guys something to play with.

Build 10 (8/8/07)
* Text labels can now be dragged to new locations
* :[, ;] and :] no longer match smilies
* Make smiley insertion smarter
* Right click new map defaults to black background
* Increase the size of the color/texture select panel
* Fix bug: non snap-to-grid path rendering offset issue
* Make stack icon more intelligent
* Add token portraits

[Hawke]

* Make stack icon more intelligent
* Add token portraits

I'm announcing that I'll be slowly converting my game to top-down with these two features. The stack icon sort of ruins the coolness of the top-down when unneeded, so I'm so glad to be able to avoid it when not needed... and the portraits work like the charsheet, except they show up as a mouse-over pop up for tokens you don't own. Sweet stuff!

Only thing I can think of right now is a way to use the portrait/charsheet without dragging from another program. Basically, the ability to access the image explorer as a means for selecting these... but... for now it works great. (I had to comment on something!)

Eager for the build-a-night to continue forever!

[snikle]

Looks great! Christ dude, when do you sleep these days?!?!

* Text labels can now be dragged to new locations

How does this work, couldn't duplicate, course I am sleepy, so could jsut be me.

* Right click new map defaults to black background

YEAH!!!!!!

[trevor]

* Text labels can now be dragged to new locations

How does this work, couldn't duplicate, course I am sleepy, so could jsut be me.

You should be able to just left click-drag

[trevor]

Only thing I can think of right now is a way to use the portrait/charsheet without dragging from another program.

I've been thinking about that. How to let you do that. Perhaps I could put a "..." button next to the drop panel that brings up the image explorer ?

[dorpond]

I think what we really need for these character sheets is a way to snapshot them into the token in addition to the drag method. I know my players do not have the PDF->JPG converters that I have. What would be awesome is if they had a little snapshot button under the Portrait & Character Sheet boxes that allowed them to click it and draw a box around their opened PDF file (that is sized on screen the way they want it) and voila, it is inserted. My biggest issue is that my character sheets are 8.5X11 which are huge on screen so the snapshot ability would rock because then I could zoom my PDF's the size I want them and "click" take a perfect size snapshot of it - done. Easy.

I know you already made a very cool snapshot mini-app so I would imagine it would be silly easy for you to implement this. Can you do that for me Trevor? Anything to make this easy for my non-computer peeps. Soon they are going to be GMing so I need to make sure Maptool is 100% easy for them.

Another note: I am not sure if you tried to address it or not in this build but the token is still taking more space than its cell when moving:


I ran it through some quick testings and everything works great. I was afraid that the portrait was going to screw up hover notes but it seems intelligent enough -I won't really know until used during a gaming session though. For some reason though, I expected to see the protrait in the top left corner.

Another note worth mentioning:
Trevor, we NEED to make the NPC and STAMP label darker or make the text bolder because it is VERY hard to read the white text on the bluish-with-white-effects label. I have difficulties with it. If you want, send me the image file of that label and I will darken it a bit or even change the hue if needed. Something must be done!

[dLANbandit]

on a related token size/shape note.

Do 2X1 tokens still rotate wrong? Meaning they rotate, but their outline when selected looks unrotated, their state display looks unrotated, and their highlighted movement path looks wrong.

[dorpond]

* Text labels can now be dragged to new locations

How does this work, couldn't duplicate, course I am sleepy, so could jsut be me.

I can't get this to work either.

[trevor]

* Text labels can now be dragged to new locations

How does this work, couldn't duplicate, course I am sleepy, so could jsut be me.

I can't get this to work either.

Turns out you have to click-select the text first, then you can drag it. I'll update the usage to make it more intuitive

[trevor]

on a related token size/shape note.

Do 2X1 tokens still rotate wrong? Meaning they rotate, but their outline when selected looks unrotated, their state display looks unrotated, and their highlighted movement path looks wrong.

Yes, I need to put in a rotation point

[snikle]

What would be awesome is if they had a little snapshot button under the Portrait & Character Sheet boxes that allowed them to click it and draw a box around their opened PDF file (that is sized on screen the way they want it) and voila, it is inserted.

I agree, that would be a great thing to have.

Another note worth mentioning:
Trevor, we NEED to make the NPC and STAMP label darker or make the text bolder because it is VERY hard to read the white text on the bluish-with-white-effects label. I have difficulties with it. If you want, send me the image file of that label and I will darken it a bit or even change the hue if needed. Something must be done!

If I can locate the original file (seem to have misplaced it somewhere) I will darken it a bit and send it back to you trevor.

[dorpond]

Another note worth mentioning:
Trevor, we NEED to make the NPC and STAMP label darker or make the text bolder because it is VERY hard to read the white text on the bluish-with-white-effects label. I have difficulties with it. If you want, send me the image file of that label and I will darken it a bit or even change the hue if needed. Something must be done!

If I can locate the original file (seem to have misplaced it somewhere) I will darken it a bit and send it back to you trevor.

Just make sure it isn't too close to the black label that we use when things are "not visible to players". We need to make sure those black ones definately stick out more than the visible ones. Perhaps just bolding the letters would be all we need because as I look at the black ones, they are just as hard seeing the white text.

[snikle]

hehe, thats what trevor said too, maybe he should just bold the text.
Trevor, you want to try that route first?

[mccord42]

I love the new additions to the map tool.

I just ran into a small issue though. The pathing seems to have broken in the hex maps.



As you can see, the hex that the token is in and the hex that the path is in do not line up. In this demonstration I have dragged the token 3 hexes to the right and the path selected hex is down and to the right of where it should be.

[thelevitator]

Is the Character Sheet window .jpg only? I was wondering if it will ever be able to accept .htm files too. DM Genie's character sheets are in .htm format. In the meantime, what's the simplest way to convert .htm files to .jpg files?