Layers: One above tokens

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Layers: One above tokens

Post by dorpond »

It just occured to me that there isn't a stamp layer or a drawable layer that goes on top of a token layer.

I am not sure yet if that is something we would want but what brought it to mind was this city map that I was making. I have street lights and stuff that hang over the road - when people or cars go down the road, they all are on top of those objects - looks kind of funny actually as if the car was floating :)

Then that made me think of a map that Vry made long ago - it was an arena and there was a dragon that was partially under an overhang. We couldn't pull that type of scene off currently (well we could as a GM if we made our stuff stamps but the players couldn't).

I guess the question would be this then:
If we did have that layer, how would one control their token under the layer? How would they "see" it? Well Maybe we could make the token look semi-transparent or something when under that layer - we know it's there; we can click on it and move it, but it 'looks' under the layer.

It just came to mind and wanted to throw it out there to see what the community thought about the idea.

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Post by Kzintzi »

what about the possibility of having the layer semi transparent, or able to be turned transparent with a button or something similar - maybe even a GM option to force it non-transparent if he/she wished.

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Post by RPTroll »

Having fog or other special effects above the token layer would come in handy. In this case, it might even block vision.
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Full Bleed
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Re: Layers: One above tokens

Post by Full Bleed »

dorpond wrote:I guess the question would be this then:
If we did have that layer, how would one control their token under the layer? How would they "see" it? Well Maybe we could make the token look semi-transparent or something when under that layer - we know it's there; we can click on it and move it, but it 'looks' under the layer.

It just came to mind and wanted to throw it out there to see what the community thought about the idea.
I like the idea and it makes a lot of sense.

I suggest that we be able to set tokens to be "visible" (translucent) when under objects or to be "hidden" under objects (only visible to DM's.) That way the Over Layer would not just be aesthetic, but it could be used to hide things.

Kzintzi wrote:what about the possibility of having the layer semi transparent, or able to be turned transparent with a button or something similar - maybe even a GM option to force it non-transparent if he/she wished.
I'm guessing that if making the tool windows transparent would slow things down that having an entire layer with transparent objects on it would really slow things down.

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trevor
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Post by trevor »

The trick is knowing when to stop adding layers. Cause the Above Token layer works when your tokens are on the ground. But then you have airplanes, so should the lamp posts go above or below ?

It really begs arbitrary layers. But that can get complicated very fast, so this feature will require some discussion and design before it can be implemented.
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Full Bleed
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Post by Full Bleed »

Trevor, very true.

Maybe the answer isn't to hard code in a new layer but to ultimately be able to create layers on the fly and sort them accordingly.

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Post by torstan »

My tuppence worth would be to have layers like they are in Gimp. There you can create a layer, move it and set its transparency. It also allows you to merge layers together. This would be a flexible way of using layers, but comes at the expense of usability. I know many don't like Gimp because of the learnig curve. Therefore perhaps the way forward would be to have the default layers - background, object and token - hard coded in and then allow a reasonably sophisticated layer system for users whose needs go beyond those basic three layers.

If users have got to the stage where extra layers are useful, they'll probably be happy putting in a little time to learn how to use a more complicated system. How difficult would a layers dialogue with the above properties be to implement (I'm guessing the answer is very)?

If we were able to create a layer, re-order the layer, set its transparency and its visibility then there would be loads of uses. one I was thinking about at the moment was a woodland scene - currently my players are walking on top of the trees. With layers I'd have the tree trunks on a layer beneath the tokens and the tree tops on a semitransparent layer above. Obviously flying characters would then go above.

So there's my tuppence worth.

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trevor
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Post by trevor »

Full Bleed wrote: Maybe the answer isn't to hard code in a new layer but to ultimately be able to create layers on the fly and sort them accordingly.
That's technically pretty easy. There is some value though in knowing how a map is laid out regardless of who made it. I think if we figure out a way to improve the layer management we could get away with something like this. Right now it's a bit tricky knowing where your tokens and stamps will be layed out in relation to drawables and other tokens and stamps.
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Post by mosat »

I have another use which deserves consideration, I would like to see a drawable layer which is hidden from the players. This would be for GM notes which might include: hidden passage ways, secret doors, bonderies of non-visible effects such as no-magic zones, etc..

Of coarse if the eventual plan includes arbitrary layers the GM can create with a toggle for visiblity then this is moot. But if so consider that the visiblity toggle should include a way to make it invisble to players but still visible to the GM.

If you do hard code this layer I'd prefer to see it just under the player drawable layer.
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dLANbandit
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Post by dLANbandit »

I really like the idea of named standard layers in MT. That certainly will allow people to exchange maps and settings easier. For that reason I am kind of worried about the idea of creating layers and naming them on the fly.

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trevor
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Post by trevor »

mosat wrote:I would like to see a drawable layer which is hidden from the players.
Hmmm, interesting idea. It would be preeeeeetty easy to implement (like 10-15 lines of code).

How do the rest of you feel about this change ?
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torstan
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Post by torstan »

That would be excellent, definitely in favour of that.

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Post by Phergus »

That would solve the "text visible to players" problem brought up in a recent thread.

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Post by dLANbandit »

doesn't that cause a feature cascade to have a hidden and visible pair for every layer?

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trevor
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Post by trevor »

Phergus wrote:That would solve the "text visible to players" problem brought up in a recent thread.
Sort of, if you hand write it with the drawing tool.
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