Hover Notes: Discussion

[dorpond]

I have been talking with the other team members about the Hover Notes that was recently implemented.

I would like to discuss the positive and negatives to the way it is currently implemented.

These are some of my thoughts currently after an extensive test with them:

1. I think they are needed especially if we want a turn key solution where a GM can simply download a pre-made campaign file and use it. I can see notes all over the place; on doors, traps, objects on the map, room descriptions. I can see skill check data in there so the GM running it just has to read it and play. I see this allowing a GM to quickly interpret another persons work quickly.

2. I noticed though that when Notes are put on doors and other stamps scattered throughout the map, it can get very "noisy" for the GM. I noticed Hovers are popping up all over the place as I am doing my GM duities. This is very distracting not only because they are popping up all over the place but they are usually very large since it is showing the Player notes and the GM notes. Last nights test were showing that many of the Hovers were taking up almost half my maptool window (I usually size my window to around 800X600 when I play since I have many other apps open also).

3. I noticed that when there are tokens very close to stamps that have hover notes, It gets difficult to maneuver those tokens because the larger hover windows are covering the screen/token. In hover-congested areas manuevering is difficult now. THis seems to be more for the GM since the Notes are much larger becasue of many GM notes.

4. Becasue hovers work off of the shape of the object, rotatable doors really make the hover process difficult since the door stamp is twice the size as the door so that it will rotate on hinge. This won't be so big of an issue once we can specify anchor points.

Ideas to improve 2 and 3:
A. We can have a check box or a button in the Properties -> Notes area to Display the Hover. I think many hovers will be read once and then will not need to be read anymore by the players, especially when they leave the room or solve the puzzle. We could default all hovers ON by default but then when we are done with it, we go into Notes and disable the Hover it will not show anymore.

B. We can turn off automatic Hovers all together and have the mouse pointer change to an EYE (or similar icon) showing that there is a note there. When we click on the object when the eye is showing, the hover will appear. So basically hovers will appear only when clicked on. To be honest with you though, I think I would want some hovers to be automatic and others to be "eyes". I like the idea of having the ability to have both features availble to me. For example, when a player enters a cave, I might want an automatic hover at the entrance way but have "eyes" on the many statues that fill the room. That being said, maybe we can have an option in the Notes window that will allow us to specify if the Hover is Automatic or not. When it is automatic, the hover pops uo like it does now. When Automatic is turned off, the eye will appear and click is needed to see the hover.

Any thoughts? Of course you will have to play around with hovers first before you can get a better idea. To help out in the process, I will upload a campaign file that you can play with today to get a better idea. I am currently finishing it up.

[darkeness66]

I could see a definate "clutter" problem with notes that pop up whenever you cursor over them, even in hover mode. From a Dm standpoint the idea of having important notes pop up with out clicking could be handy, especially in cambat, but all-in-all I would rather deal with clicking to activate notes than an automatic pop-up.

Personally I like the idea of the little "eye" icon when cursoring over an item with notes attached. That way a player can choose to read the note or not and the clutter issue is dealt with nicely.

As far as a defualt setting, I would prefer it to be "off", so that as a Dm I could choose those few items I would want to be always on.

Another question that maybe I missed. Would these pop ups apply only to tokens or to other layers as well? and would you have to change tools?

[dorpond]

You can download a campaign file I made to test hovers out here:
http://forums.rptools.net/viewtopic.php?p=17047#17047

[Phergus]

The automatic popping up is annoying. Galneweinhaw had it right in his version with a checkbox that controlled whether or not the info popped up.

Not interested in having the players see any popup notes so the Player Notes must be controllable independently from the GM Notes.

I prefer having the popups floating by the target. (I don't put paragraphs of text into the notes.)

[darkeness66]

After checking out dorponds very cool map, I have to agree that the pop-ups can be annoying and a check box to turn them on or off is a must have. I also have to emphisize the need for the pop-up defualt to be set at off.

This feature is itself very cool and is a must have for map tools to be consideed a complete virtual table top platform, unfortunetly it justs makes too much clutter for many DM's to deal with unles it is used sparingly.

As mentioned earlier, I would prefer to see a tool with an eye or ? appear to indicate to the players (& Dm) that there are notes for them to read.

[mikey]

Like the dungeon and the pop up info screen is a must,

can they be assign like say
click box for autot pop-up for players
and click up for dms
but it needs to be optional!

here's an example
using Dorponds dungeon

the Dm has a note tohimself that pops up gives stats about statues and traps.
the players will not see this info untill a certain criterira is met
maybe a confirmed spot/search roll has been attained or a certain distance from the object like 10'(that determiation would be preset by Dm)


so here we go from the start players get past boulder.

a quick note pops up taht only the dm sees (this note was prewritten by Dm for this area) note:statue data and trap data have players roll secret spot need 18 to identify

okay using the macros dm makes the roll and gets his number

then the dm activates player viweable data via pull down menu click box

a. players see two statues and notices blah blah blah
b. chacter x notices small nothces about head height in the wall, blah blah blah

just some ideas

[darkeness66]

I prefer having the popups floating by the target. (I don't put paragraphs of text into the notes.)

After playing around with this feature some more I a have to agree. I think many players will miss a small pop-up in the bottem of the screen. If there are going to be pop-ups, they should be by the item that they relate too.

[galneweinhaw]

First off... .WOOOOOO!!!!!

Thanks a ton to the team for putting this in so close to the release!

Now, for some constructive cfeedback

Looking at dorpond's map, I actually don't mind all the notes everywhere, except for the door thing, which will be fixed as you say.

Really, I think all it needs is a few options, these are what I would recommend:

Location: 1. Bottom Corner, 2. Bubble next to and with pointer to stamp

I could see for those things with small notes, having them not directly at the mouse would be a pain and easy to miss them

For many of my notes, however, I copy and paste sections of the SRD into... making them huge, and having them come from the bottom of the screen is very nice.

Reveal: 1. On hover, 2. On Click

I LOVE the eye curser idea, definitely, for sure, must have!

An icon: on/off

On many of my non-mt maps, alot of the details are already in the map... and I have to put info stamps by them, or have one global info marker that describes everything in the room. However, when I add actual objects to the map, I can put the info right in the stamp. The problem now is, with a map full off stuff, I would have no idea to look for those one or to added objects. Thus, the obtion to have a little info marker in one of the corners of the stamp would be nice.




And finally.... dorpond, how can I get a copy of that Stair overlay =D

[Phergus]

And finally.... dorpond, how can I get a copy of that Stair overlay =D

That is from the Dundjinni forums.

It is probably one of the Stair links here:

http://forums.rptools.net/viewtopic.php?t=806

[torstan]

I have no problem with the location of the information, or the large number. I agree that an option to toggle visibility is a good thing that should definitely go in and equally, an eeye icon that can be clicked to pop up the information would be great.

My current issue is that only stamps seem to have pop-up information. Is this intentional? It would be great to have a read-out of a token's key stats (the ones in the properties tab) when a mouse hovered over them. It would be even better if each property could be set as visible/invisible in the token properties, so only critical information was displayed. Trevor - you mentioned the idea of a mini character sheet popping up in a mini window area (bottom left over the connections window perhaps?) This would be good for me as stats and notes are two different thigns, and if we read out all stats every time we hover over a token, things would get really cluttered really fast. However if there was a window that displayed the key stats of whatever token was displayed, and if this window were pinable and minimisable, then this would deal with that issue.

Just a few thoughts.

[dorpond]

And finally.... dorpond, how can I get a copy of that Stair overlay =D

Well I know I got the from Dundjinni because I have a "snagged" folder in my Dundjinni folder that basically means that I snagged them from the boards at Dundjinni.com.

So I know I got them there. I can't find them for the life of me over there though - I find very similar ones if I do a search for stair/stairs though so you might want to give that a shot. There is a lot of good stair overlays over there - some even better than the ones I used.

As a standard, users should put their user initials in the file name when they make their own art. The stairs I used didn't have any user initials so I am clueless to who even made them. *shrug*

[trevor]

My current issue is that only stamps seem to have pop-up information. Is this intentional?

Yes. It's because I have a different plan for tokens ...

It would be great to have a read-out of a token's key stats (the ones in the properties tab) when a mouse hovered over them. It would be even better if each property could be set as visible/invisible in the token properties, so only critical information was displayed. Trevor - you mentioned the idea of a mini character sheet popping up in a mini window area (bottom left over the connections window perhaps?)

This is the plan for tokens. You'll be able to specify which properties you want to show up.

[trevor]

Thanks for the feedback all.

I'm not a fan of the "option to make the hover visible" on a per-stamp basis. It sounds like people will be putting lots of notes on lots of things. That means a lot of clicking to make things visible, not to mention the pain the GM has in trying to keep track of which ones are visible or not "Oh, you can't see that one ? hold on .... click click click click ... Ok try now".

I like the mouse over pointer-change click to view idea. I can also see having a keystroke that highlights all "hot spots" on the screen.

While developing it, galneweinhaw and myself tried putting the popup in a variety of locations, and none of them seemed to be as good as the bottom left. There are two reasons for this: screen realistate, and removing clutter from your view. By putting it in the bottom left, you get a lot of horizontal space for the hover info, if it's located near the stamp itself, assuming it's smack in the middle of the screen, means you only have half a screen worth of popup room. Assuming you pop up the hover on top of the token, all the sudden your view gets covered with the popup, which I found to be very distracting.

With the change to make the hovers only pop up when the stamp is clicked I think makes the clutter issue of popping up next to the stamp less important, but you still have the screen sizing issue. If people really want it to pop up next to the stamp, we could easily put in galneweinhaw's option, it would take about 2 lines of code to switch between the corner and next to the stamp.

[torstan]

Ah. Um, keep up the good work then

You guys seem to have thought of everything already!

[trevor]

This is a great feature that I've been intending to include ever since 1.0. It'll really help third party module developers to build entire modules directly in the tool, and help GMs store useful information in a convenient location, and help players be more immersed in their environment.

Oh yeah, and takes us one step closer to Video Game like virtual tabletops Neat !