Decent into Dallas Station: Session 1

[trevor]

Had another game run by snikle the other night. Good times !

We used the latest 1.3b11 for play.

I created a movie of the evening in case you'd like to see what it was like. Unfortunately most of the conversation was over voip so there isn't as much context on what was going on. There were quite a few times that seem "stalled" which was when we were discussing rules and explaining how things work.

It's in xvid format:

http://rptools.net/trevor/skirmish_081607.avi

Here we are getting things set up.
You can see:

- the cool portrait feature (and slick portraits)
- the updated statsheet layout
- an example of how to set up token macros.

Since we were all new to each other, and the tokens looked fairly similar, we used colored halos to help us remember who owned which tokens.

I'm the blue boxed ones



Here we are entering the station.
You can see the new hover notes layout, which showed up when the "i" button was clicked



Here we meet our first bug, it's hiding in the top right corner, lurking around the corner.

You can see:
- the super awesome portrait that pops up when you mouse over the token
- the use of fog in the room and the interaction with the Vision Blocking Layer
- the "Vent Above" labels (yellow circles) on the floor, those indicated that we could go up into the vent system, which snik had as a full separate map that we could explore.

We made quick work of that bug. Very neat.



Here is our final battle of the evening.

Two face huggers and a bug caught us by surprise.

The top hugger jumped onto the face of the leading soldier, but one of the team worked fast and stabbed it with his knife, which knocked it "shaken" (indicated by the red dot).

In this picture we had already killed the bug and shaken the two huggers.

We got some nice acid splash damage and a lot of fun.



Here are the notes I took, if you were in the game and see something I forgot, please add them (note, these are raw notes and may not make sense to anyone but me):

-vision on tokens, once place and fog on, then move token, clear fog for all players
-measuring on gridless not working
-Notes on stamps are da suck to get text into the chat
-movement limitation and turns so that you can partial move
-distance moved needs to be above the fog
-notes aren't sticking
-Handouts would be good
-perhaps switch gray'd out token when moving
-implement map pointer improvements: gestures
-Map switching is still slow
-need deck or something to handle SW initiative
-Need GM indicator that linked view is on
-need bbcode formatting shortcuts
-gridless pathing graphics suck
-need to improve the scaling of avatar images
-bug: sometimes portraits show up for non owned tokens, seems to be pretty inconsistent, weird
-text on stat sheet is bleeding off the graphic
-states are being drawn to bounds of original image, not resized one
-need macros to be associated with campaign ? Or just a library of macros
-feature request: inline roll variable that prompts for value
-add "Send Player Notes to Chat" on stamps, right click on stamps on pointer tool

[torstan]

It was great - don't usually get to wield a plasma rifle (lifelong D&D DM).

A couple of notes:
I wanted to whisper to RPMiller when he asked about some macro issue (it was the problem that macros hot keys don't work unless the macro window has focus) so I right-clicked on his name in the connection panel because I remembered some discussion about using this as a whisper short-cut. Obviously, no such option so it didn't turn up. But I did get the option to boot him! I think it might have been greyed out, but should this really appear at all for players ?

Also, snikle really wanted a mini initiative tracker in the bottom right, but I'll let him post a note about that.

So a short list would be:
1. Macro hot key's don't wok when macro window doesn't have focus.
2. Right-click whisper to player option would be nice
3. Players get a boot option when right-clicking on a player in the connections tab
4. Snikle wanted a small initiative list

Oh, and I didn't say, but the character sheet tool was fantastic. I would have struggled to learn the system and play if I hadn't had those lovely resizable moveable sheets up all the time. Good work.

[Hawke]

Oh man, that looks like a lot of fun! It's nice to see another type of game in action... I know my players will enjoy watching this. It gets me pretty excited to play some modern games, too... snikle did a great job putting it all together. The vent above stuff is really neat, too.

Good to see there are some known improvements to be made to gridless as well as movement limiting/turns/plotting.

Can't wait to join you guys again!

[trevor]

I wanted to whisper to RPMiller when he asked about some macro issue

You can whisper players with:

/w playename message

[torstan]

I'd forgotten about the short version of the command. I just remembered some talk of allowing a right-click on name short-cut for whisper and as I can never remember what has and hasn't been implemented I gave it a shot.

[snikle]

Also, snikle really wanted a mini initiative tracker in the bottom right, but I'll let him post a note about that.

Already sent my mock up of how I think it should work off to the powers that be, waiting for their approval before I post it.....a massive change to somethings are involved, so it could be a touchy subject.

[Full Bleed]

Also, snikle really wanted a mini initiative tracker in the bottom right, but I'll let him post a note about that.

And it would be great if it could be fed from Init Tool if it's running.

[Full Bleed]

-vision on tokens, once place and fog on, then move token, clear fog for all players
-measuring on gridless not working
-Notes on stamps are da suck to get text into the chat
-movement limitation and turns so that you can partial move
-distance moved needs to be above the fog
-notes aren't sticking
-Handouts would be good
-perhaps switch gray'd out token when moving
-implement map pointer improvements: gestures
-Map switching is still slow
-need deck or something to handle SW initiative
-Need GM indicator that linked view is on
-need bbcode formatting shortcuts
-gridless pathing graphics suck
-need to improve the scaling of avatar images
-bug: sometimes portraits show up for non owned tokens, seems to be pretty inconsistent, weird
-text on stat sheet is bleeding off the graphic
-states are being drawn to bounds of original image, not resized one
-need macros to be associated with campaign ? Or just a library of macros
-feature request: inline roll variable that prompts for value
-add "Send Player Notes to Chat" on stamps, right click on stamps on pointer tool

I agree completely.

Make it so!



Actually, I'm just happy to see that once you get behind the wheel you concur with so many of the things I'd love to see done/addressed.

[snikle]

I looked at InitTool when I started designing it, and frankly I don't want all that in there. IT seems like a 600 pound gorilla and is way too complicated with all the creatures, all the stats and all that in there...least for my game. If it works with it, that is cool, but I don't need 95% of the stuff IT does, I just need a way to track who goes when and a way to show the players who's turn it is next.

[Full Bleed]

I looked at InitTool when I started designing it, and frankly I don't want all that in there. IT seems like a 600 pound gorilla and is way too complicated with all the creatures, all the stats and all that in there...least for my game. If it works with it, that is cool, but I don't need 95% of the stuff IT does, I just need a way to track who goes when and a way to show the players who's turn it is next.

Oh, I'm with you in that it should be a "mini init tracker"... I'd just like it to be able to display the basic order from Init Tool if Init Tool is running.

If it doesn't, I'd still like a Mni Init Tracker because all I *really* need is exactly what you describe above. I suggested that we have floating objects so that we could set up an on-screen "Combat Pad" type graphic for just that reason. (http://www.openmindgames.com/omg_products_cp_large.htm)

BUT, I would like to become more familiar with Init Tool and slowly begin to take advantage of some of its advanced features as situations came up. Having just that basic integration between the two tools would go a long way to encouraging me to have both applications running at the same time.

[snikle]

If it doesn't, I'd still like a Mni Init Tracker because all I *really* need is exactly what you describe above. I suggested that we have floating objects so that we could set up an on-screen "Combat Pad" type graphic for just that reason. (http://www.openmindgames.com/omg_products_cp_large.htm)

You have no idea how many times I have sent that graphic to trevor.

[jay]

Awhile back we decided that Init Tool should be set up by default to run D&D. So I added all of the properties for that game. But, Init Tool also has a simple settings file that has no properties other than the required ones of name, initiative modifier, initiative, player and a couple more. Everything else is configurable for the game you are playing and it can be simplified into a simple list of who goes next. I'll set you up a game settings file if you can tell me what you need.

[Hawke]

Awhile back we decided that Init Tool should be set up by default to run D&D. So I added all of the properties for that game. But, Init Tool also has a simple settings file that has no properties other than the required ones of name, initiative modifier, initiative, player and a couple more. Everything else is configurable for the game you are playing and it can be simplified into a simple list of who goes next. I'll set you up a game settings file if you can tell me what you need.

The key really I think isn't the D&D or not D&D... just integration at some level. While I personally love the D&D stuff, the biggest issue my group has is as much as I can put it all together in IT (or DM Genie or whatever) if I can't quickly and easily relay the same information to the players connected to MapTool it doesn't do as much good in online games as its potential.

So, I humbly see three possible solutions:

1) Enhance how MT and IT talk - Figure out how to allow information from IT to flow into MT - mostly turn order and when it is who's turn and when someone is done with their turn - that sort of thing.

2) Allow people to connect to IT as a server - redundant network code and the need to connect twice makes this less fun but potentially allows all the same information to be seen and shared within IT.

3) Integrate IT into MT - while at a glance this seems like the best bet, the complications it creates for those not interested and the difficulty of an outright merger cause complications

I don't know much about what's possible with java and how easy it'd be for MT to potentially pull information from IT w/o user interaction. I know you can drag and drop things right now, but I think what's best would be if the "Mini Initiative Tool" could automatically pull that from the GM who would be running the full version on his system. That'd definitely solve my needs. This definitely would be another UI element (like chat, token tree, player list) that could be moved/hidden/etc.

I do sort of sense some people's frustration with IT - though I would assure the devs that anything like that stems from the fact it's a great program and we really want to use it in a way that shares the information with our players, certainly not because IT isn't great or a distaste for d20. The flexibility of the developers by adding to their visions for these great tools through communication of our needs and wants is the paramount reason I feel the software they've built and the community we've all built will continue to thrive.

[snikle]

Here is a concept image of a way to do initiative in Maptool, not sure if this could be integrated or not, but the visual aspect of this would make tracking easy as pie.

[Full Bleed]

Here is a concept image of a way to do initiative in Maptool, not sure if this could be integrated or not, but the visual aspect of this would make tracking easy as pie.

Here is a concept image of a way to do initiative in Maptool, not sure if this could be integrated or not, but the visual aspect of this would make tracking easy as pie.

Man, that's very pretty...

But I'm not crazy about it.

First of all, I'd like to have the option to see the Init list all the time. The way that is set up I would be constantly opening and closing that drawer.

The second problem is that it takes up so much space. Looking at that, it doesn't seem like it would track that many players/npc's/enemies very comfortably.

3rd, it doesn't seem very conducive to manual resorting or rearranging. Seems like I'd be dragging tokens from nearly one side of the screen to the other to sort stuff.

All I personally need is a dockable window that has combat active tokens in it represented pretty much like they are in the token tree. Core functionality would be:

1) A round counter.
2) The ability to drag multiple tokens into the Init box at once.
3) A highlight on the active token.
4) The ability to quickly and easily move tokens up and down the list.


Optional: Give me a way to let players designate their inits with a die roll command (i.e. /roll init d20+2) and have the Init window sort the incoming numbers and I'd be even happier.

Lock player movement when it's not a players turn and allow players to end their own turns and we start getting into some decent, albeit, basic turn-control.

And, of course, if it could be considerably prettier than the token tree, all the better!


Now, keep in mind, I have no idea how the deck init system that's strongly featured in your design works. I don't know whether a smaller, two-character footprint like A-Heart (Ace of Hearts) would be sufficient representation. But I just can't see giving so much room to a combat tracker.