Interconnectivity between the tools?

[wolph42]

Could someone please explain to me what exactly the interconnectivity is between the RPTools ?

To be a bit more specific combined with what I think I know, the tools are:
1. Maptool
2. Tokentool
3. Initiativetool
4. Charactertool
5. Dicetool

Tokentool is completely standalone. It can produce token images (with nothing embedded, like stats and macros), these 'images' can be used/imported into Maptool

As for the rest, only questions:
ie.
-can you produce a character in no. 4 and import it no 3 or 1?
-can you create groups in 3 and import those in 1 or vice versa?
or are all the tools entirely independent?

[Rumble]

I think you can create a token in Character Tool, and then drag it into MapTool. You can't interconnect InitTool and MapTool, but you might be able to connect CharTool and InitTool.

DiceTool stands alone, too.

[wolph42]

I think you can create a token in Character Tool, and then drag it into MapTool.

how does that work with the properties? I mean if you have a campaign with basic properties
Strength
Dexterity
Charisma
etc.

And you have a Token with (*entering creativity mode*)
Power
Flexibility
Comeliness
etc.

and is there any documentation about the Inittool itself and the possible Init-Char tool connectivity?

[Rumble]

I only use MapTool and TokenTool, so I don't have detailed answers. I recall that Jay had worked on CharTool to allow people to configure it for specific property sets in MapTool, but frankly, I didn't understand the explanation of how one did it.

As far as creation of tokens - remember, if you drag a token into a campaign in MapTool, while the token keeps any properties it was created with, only the properties that are configured in the campaign will be visible when you double click on a token.

[neofax]

You can use CT with MT and IT. If you use 4E as your RPG, the token uses TK's framework at the moment (soon to add Veggie's). You then just drag and drop the token onto MT or IT. IT cannot be used inside MT, but concurrently with MT. It is more a DM's tool to track init and conditions and such. So you could set up each encounter beforehand and then as the encounter happens run thru the init adding conditions, removing/adding hp and such.

[jay]

• CT creates RPTok files that can be loaded into IT & MT. CT & IT have one property system and MT has another. CT & IT will attempt to map the properties between the two if it can.
• The RPTok files created by MT when you save a token can be read by CT and imported into IT. CT & IT will attempt to read the MT properties and convert them here too.
• You can drag a combatant or group in IT and drop it on MT and all of the tokens will transfer. This does the conversion on the fly. You can't drag tokens from MT back to IT yet.

The RPTok file support between the two handle name, properties, notes, token image, portrait image, and macros. Only properties that are mapped between the two apps are converted. Other data is not changed.

[wolph42]

THAT is very helpfull info, thank you very much, this will leave me with quite some time to test and tinker (Which likely will lead to more questions...)
For one thing I have never seen the 'save' option in the token menu of MT....now that you mention it...

Some last (slightly off-topic) questions:
1. others in my group run DD 3.5 and 4.0 I myself however run WFRP and W40K (Dark Heresy).
MT is easily adjustable for all systems, CT however seems rather 'limited' (to DD) is there some documentation on how to extend CT with other systems, or does this imply delving into Java?

2. is there any documentation/tutorial on IT? I get the basics, its also very usefull to know that I can use drag n drop, but the more advanced stuff eludes me.

[jay]

1. It is possible to create game settings files that configure both CT & IT tool. However, I've not gotten around to writing an editor yet so it can be difficult to create your own. The files are pretty much just XML, with some Macro like code and JavaScript thrown in. See the Adopters threads in the Character Tool forum for details.

2. There used to be some documentation, but that got dropped when we created the new site. I need to write some new docs for the tool, but that is something else I haven't gotten around to. I'll see if I can find it or get Trevor to find it.

[wolph42]

Thanks!

1. I'll have a look into it, though I have no (very little) experience with xml and Java is something I did 10 years ago... so I guess I'm gonna wait for the editor ;-D

2. I would be most grateful for some more info, though this could also be done in a video tutorial, but I guess I need to post that in another thread.

[Hawke]

Figured this would be a good place to mention that the drag&drop between TokenTool and MapTool isn't working as i'd expect for dragging portraits onto existing tokens. In addition, image drag & drop from Chrome (and FireFox last I tried - dunno about IE) works fine into TokenTool but not into MapTool. Seems to work okay from the local filesystem.

[jay]

I took a look at the D&D of images from Firefox, and what I found is very odd. For some reason, Firefox transfers the image as a bmp even though that isn't what it loaded. It does this if you transfer the image directly or if you read it from a file. BMP's don't have transparency so it breaks all of the round tokens. I was able to work around this by making the transfer handler read URL's first. Very odd, Is this the problem you were seeing? You should probably post a bug in the Map Tool -> Bug Reports forum.

[Hawke]

You should probably post a bug in the Map Tool -> Bug Reports forum.

If someone doesn't get to it before I do, I'll definitely go do some research with IE/Chrome/FF and see how drag&drop stuff works. Any chance you took a look at the TT->MT drags?

[jay]

I dragged the token in TT to the MT portrait and it worked fine. But I made a fix to work around the Firefox problem so maybe that is the problem there too? Could you describe what you are seeing when you drag a token from TT to MT?

[Hawke]

I'll get a full report to you when I get home tonight - exactly what I'm dragging, to where, and what happens. Thanks for looking into it!

[Hawke]

Okay, if I try to drag the token image (upper right in TT) into MapTool onto a Map or into a portrait, nothing happens. Using b59 for MT and b28 for TT. If it's working on your end, I bet your ff fix probably fixed that, too.