Game 6 & 7 and Comments

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stefam
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Game 6 & 7 and Comments

Post by stefam »

Hi,

Well I'm back from travel and all kinds of other stuff, and I'll give you guys some more feedback on games 6 and 7... and some ideas.

All issues re-verified with today's latest build.

Issue: When client is connected, enforce map and turn on "link player view". Now, when I add a new map, it does not change the player view to the new map. Even worse, switching to other maps blanks the screen and shows only "Loading" forever.

Issue: If I have a tool selected other than the pointer (say the reveal fog of war tool), then drag a token from the info panel to the map, my tool selection should (I think) change to the pointer. I hope I explained this correctly. Just try it - select the circle draw tool, then drag a new token over to the map. Then, try and move the token or change its state - you'll draw a circle. Not a bug, per se, but you see what I mean.

Right clicking now selects tokens! Excellent!

Token Light is pretty cool - but is there a way to "leave it on" when a token is not selected??? That way, we get a feel for the light "spread" of the party and where everyone is in respect to the light sources.

All in all, these games went great. Slight issues with the projector being a different resolution than the lap-top, but still great! Most everyone has a laser-pointer now to help the DM position tokens.

Looking forward to additions to the tool, like Combat tracker and such. Have you given thought to connecting to an existing engine rather than building one? Perhaps linking to RPG Explorer or DM Genie would be cool. Maptool could send and receive info from these gaming engines and become a pretty cool front end.

Picture it: Orc 1 comes up in the initiative. RPGX or DM Genie has his condition set to "Protection from Good, 10' radius" and it shows as a blue radius on the map. You right click on on the orc, and the engine populates a drop-down with his attack options. You select "Longbow" then select target. The distance is sent to the engine and you are asked to roll a 20 and an 8 and enter the results (or select "auto roll"). A hit is recorded, showing 5 damage. The orc moves 20' (the maximum allowed based on his weight calculated by the engine).

The PC is next in initiative, and mousing over him shows he has only 6 HP left. He could right-click and hit "Repeat last action/attack", but instead he moves 30' and right click's attack - longsword. Hits and damage are entered and the orc's token turns grey. The DM right click's the orc and selects "Killed" and an animation of a pool of blood covers the orc and it vanishes.

Lots of work, but it would be really slick and do-able by leveraging an existing gaming engine. I'm sure the RPGX folks would be happy to share APIs.

-Just ideas,
Keep up the great work!

-Mike

PS: You can try out some of the primitive maps I'm using and some tokens here - in order to re-produce any bugs.
http://www.stefanini.us/Files/Maptool
It takes a village to raise a child, but it takes a Viking to raze a village.

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trevor
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Re: Game 6 & 7 and Comments

Post by trevor »

stefam wrote:Well I'm back from travel and all kinds of other stuff, and I'll give you guys some more feedback on games 6 and 7... and some ideas.
Welcome back, and thanks for the game feedback, we love to hear it !
stefam wrote:Issue: When client is connected, enforce map and turn on "link player view". Now, when I add a new map, it does not change the player view to the new map. Even worse, switching to other maps blanks the screen and shows only "Loading" forever.
I'll take a look and get it fixed.
stefam wrote:Issue: If I have a tool selected other than the pointer (say the reveal fog of war tool), then drag a token from the info panel to the map, my tool selection should (I think) change to the pointer. I hope I explained this correctly. Just try it - select the circle draw tool, then drag a new token over to the map. Then, try and move the token or change its state - you'll draw a circle. Not a bug, per se, but you see what I mean.
That seems reasonable to me, I'll make that adjustment
stefam wrote:Token Light is pretty cool - but is there a way to "leave it on" when a token is not selected??? That way, we get a feel for the light "spread" of the party and where everyone is in respect to the light sources.
Not at the moment, but something like that will show up soon. You'll be able to turn the light on and off
stefam wrote:Looking forward to additions to the tool, like Combat tracker and such. Have you given thought to connecting to an existing engine rather than building one? Perhaps linking to RPG Explorer or DM Genie would be cool. Maptool could send and receive info from these gaming engines and become a pretty cool front end.
That would be pretty sweet ! Version 2.0 will have a lot of focus on integration with other tools. There has been some discussion lately about some existing tools, the tricky part is figuring out runtime communication. As we start to look seriously at integration we'll investigate these other tools more closely.

As always, we love hearing about how your games go :)
Dreaming of a 1.3 release

Emryys
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Re: Game 6 & 7 and Comments

Post by Emryys »

trevor wrote:As we start to look seriously at integration we'll investigate these other tools more closely
My only concern with integration is losing possible genericness and loss of development of other tools/features.

The two apps mentioned are commercial products, so those who do not have them would miss out if they became necessary to the functioning of the package. They are also system specific.

Integration would be cool, and helpful to you guys, I just hope it wouldn't "pigeon-hole" RPTools...
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trevor
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Post by trevor »

Trust me, we are not planning to pidgeon hole rptools :)

We haven't figured out the integration piece yet, but presumably the tools will announce themselves as a local service with a well defined protocol that could then be integrated with from other tools. Any existing tools would then have to have a plugin written that knows how to provide and receive information updates.
Dreaming of a 1.3 release

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