Suggestion - Vision "penetration"
Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2007 12:21 pm
Greetings!
I've been tinkering around for most of the week, waiting for my ISP to unlock the port so I could properly set the server up and give it a heavier test with friends.. So far, I haven't really encountered any heavy bugs, and any little ones were already covered for the most part. (Beyond being unable to set the line thickness of the topography freehand or polygon tools, and that it draws a little to the left of the line.)
While I was looking up things on vision distances for characters, I thought about the use of Maptool with an overland map. That's sort of a given usage, one would think, then it occured to me, what about a campaign where the PC's are exploring, with no maps to tell them where they are going? Vision would be definitely useful there, except a small flaw.. while a very few things will totally block thier vision on a large scale, most will just hamper it.
The thought in this case was setting up topography 'blocks' with vision properties, along the lines of, 'This connected freehand block over here is forest, and reduces visibility to 30% range'. So when vision hits an edge of it, the remaining distance that would have been shown is reduced to 30% of the original value, letting a player only peek a bit in.
This would allow for all sorts of tricks for an overland map, not to mention some for normal dungeon uses. Heavily damaged wall that allows a 5-10% vision, a thorny bush that's hiding monsters on the other side, but only allows 25% vision range.
Now, I'm not going to kid myself and think that it's possible without likely a whole recoding of the vision and topography stuff, so I don't expect it to happen.. but it was a neat enough thought that I had to mention it.
Thanks again for making such a nifty tool, I've been having fun working with it so far. .. Admittedly, it's trial by fire.. err.. gaming group hasn't quite happened yet here, but still. ^_^
- Addendum - As I sit here, fiddling with the topography tool, something else that goes on my suggestion list, something in theory much much more doable.. A bigger variety of shape-tools. At the very least, an ellipse tool. Also, ponder making the colors of the line tools changable, and allow for a changing of the opacity on the shape tools, since a big bright solid block is not always easy to line up with fine details. Thanks!
- Shirra Whitefur
.. If I draw one more pillar outline by hand, I may scream. Who needs that many bloody pillars?
I've been tinkering around for most of the week, waiting for my ISP to unlock the port so I could properly set the server up and give it a heavier test with friends.. So far, I haven't really encountered any heavy bugs, and any little ones were already covered for the most part. (Beyond being unable to set the line thickness of the topography freehand or polygon tools, and that it draws a little to the left of the line.)
While I was looking up things on vision distances for characters, I thought about the use of Maptool with an overland map. That's sort of a given usage, one would think, then it occured to me, what about a campaign where the PC's are exploring, with no maps to tell them where they are going? Vision would be definitely useful there, except a small flaw.. while a very few things will totally block thier vision on a large scale, most will just hamper it.
The thought in this case was setting up topography 'blocks' with vision properties, along the lines of, 'This connected freehand block over here is forest, and reduces visibility to 30% range'. So when vision hits an edge of it, the remaining distance that would have been shown is reduced to 30% of the original value, letting a player only peek a bit in.
This would allow for all sorts of tricks for an overland map, not to mention some for normal dungeon uses. Heavily damaged wall that allows a 5-10% vision, a thorny bush that's hiding monsters on the other side, but only allows 25% vision range.
Now, I'm not going to kid myself and think that it's possible without likely a whole recoding of the vision and topography stuff, so I don't expect it to happen.. but it was a neat enough thought that I had to mention it.
Thanks again for making such a nifty tool, I've been having fun working with it so far. .. Admittedly, it's trial by fire.. err.. gaming group hasn't quite happened yet here, but still. ^_^
- Addendum - As I sit here, fiddling with the topography tool, something else that goes on my suggestion list, something in theory much much more doable.. A bigger variety of shape-tools. At the very least, an ellipse tool. Also, ponder making the colors of the line tools changable, and allow for a changing of the opacity on the shape tools, since a big bright solid block is not always easy to line up with fine details. Thanks!
- Shirra Whitefur
.. If I draw one more pillar outline by hand, I may scream. Who needs that many bloody pillars?