My Feature Requests and Bugs I found - MapTool

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Amaroth
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My Feature Requests and Bugs I found - MapTool

Post by Amaroth »

Hi, I wanted to post some bugs I found and post some feedback/requests as well, but because of forum rules I went here to create this topic first. So, lets get to it. First of all, I'd like to thank you for this amazing tool. It is absolutely awesome thing and I love it, with my whole nerd being. Which is reason why I am here, to attempt to give some feedback and hopefully help you get it even better. So, lets get to things I think are bugs. In general, I am running 2 MapTool instances on one computer, with one as my DM screen and one on secondary monitor as player screen, and I'm on Win7 64bit, MapTool version 1.4.0.5. Rules I'm used to are Pathfinder and D&D 5e ones, which means that we might not agree on something, but more about that beneath bugs. I'm also new here, so my apologies for any bug reports or feature requests which have already been posted - I don't really have time to read though whole forum. The last thing I'd like to say is that I'm no native speaker, so I'd like to apologize for something not being clear or correct for grammar nazi eyes :D. Lets get to my notes now.:

1. Whenever I as a GM select any token which isn't within sight of players (obviously, with vision set to either day or night) and move it, players can see my token and whole path token is traveling. Turning off "Show Movement Distance" didn't help. So while players can't see NPCs behind a corner, they can see their movement. Yes, I can make a workaround and just copy NPC tokens to new places and delete originals. Anyway, couldn't paths be displayed only for tokens which are, at the start of their movement (or at the last "waypoint" created by spacebar), at least partially visible for players, while all other paths would be hidden from players?

2. Darkvision seems to not work at all, there are actually 3 issues I've got with it.:
- Darkvision should show darkness as a dim light. Its shown as a bright light in MapTool.
- Darkvision should show dim light as a bright light. It shows dim light as simply a dim light instead, which produces a very strange effect especially when joined by previous issue.
- Darkvision shows 60ft circle, even during day. Nothing more. It ignores both day and light sources, it just keeps showing only 60ft. During night, 60ft circle seems to be extended by like 2.5ft in directions towards light sources. But token with darkvision can't see anything outside his 60/62.5ft circle, even what is directly beneath a light source.
What Darkvision should really do is show bright light as a bright light and within 60ft dim light as a bright light, no light as a dim light (again within 60ft).

3. When I put some picture (especially large one) into map, move it to desired place and then move a camera, picture often moves. So I basically need to wait a second or two until picture gets... saved or whatever. Can this be dealt with by using some value like "these are coordinates camera was on when this object was placed, use them as a refference while "saving" it and don't use current ones"?

4. Lets say I've got thing A (especially hidden/object/background with free size and no snapping to grid). I've got thing B, which is in Arrange order going over thing A. I select A, move it to space occupied by B. When I stop holding mouse button, I immediately get selected B. Which means that if I move A beneath B, A is immediately deselected. This interferes with for example possibility to resize A after being moved beneath B. I'm also completely unable to select A now, as B is overlapping it, and the only way out of this mess is moving B aside (thus deconstructing already built parts of map...). First of all, stuff shouldn't be selected by releasing mouse button after moving something. And, if A is moved beneath B, I shouldn't be unable to move A out of there or resize it. Right now, when I attempt this, I get A deselected and B selected, as B is over A.

5. Grid coordinates overlap window with description of Object/Hidden thing when it clicked on in Token mode. That gets into way, can they be beneath that window, so they don't interfere with it?



Now some feature requests...:

1. Customizable vision (in Has Sight i Token's Config). Current system doesn't allow different, nonstandart ranges (for example darkvision 30ft). It also doesn't allow multiple vision types joined together (darkvision 60ft, blindsight 30ft). Blindsight is btw completely missing. And if darkvision and stuff like that are interpreted in different pen and paper games in different ways, some configuration options would come in handy (like does darkvision mean that you can see only within 60ft, or further and so on).

2. Customizable conditions. There are many conditions which are just missing in MapTool (especially 5e ones), and maybe someone wants to homebrew his own conditions. In general, I'd allow creating own, custom conditions.

3. Customizable condition icons. This would be a very useful thing, because some colored crosses and circles... they don't really tell me much, and have habit of overlapping each other (and in terribly looking fashion which just obscures Token and does little more). I'd much preffer some small icons which would be showing next to each other in probably bottom right corner of Token's occupied space (each one of them would be like... 1/5 of size of grid big, in pixels). Color of icons and small symbol on them (horizontal line for prone, skull for poisoned and so on) would indicate way, way better, what is actually "wrong" with that PC/NPC. Possibility to change those icons or create new ones as well as new conditions, like I said, would be really appreciated.

4. Tracking how long are conditions there (for how many turns, if Token in in Initiative), would be yet another useful feature, as tracking duration of effects can be tedious work to do.

5. When I have some objects in Background snapped to grid and decide to change them to actual Objects, a lot of them get scattered and move. Objects are apparently being snapped to grid in a different manner than Background stuff. I suppose there is a good reason for this (as long as it isn't just a bug), but please, can there be a checkbox in eithere Prefferences or Map settings which would enable user to say "I want to have everything snapped to grid in the same manner, to prevent this from happening"?

6. Shortcut for showing/hiding grid coordinates. They are clutter I don't like to have turned on all the time, but sometimes I need them as players want to navigate me to certain field on grid they want to move on. So I'm switching it on and off quite often and having to do that by going to menu is kind of meh.

7. Random generators. Those could be used for literally anything, be it NPC or environment. It could be a window where one would just select one of proposed lists (NPC bonds, NPC flaws, NPC appearance and so on - stuff which can be found all around 5e's DMG basically) and be able to just click for random selection out of that list. Possibility to create your own lists or customize existing ones would be very useful as well. Maybe even implementing this right into Tokens can be nice (create a token, click on it, click on "Roll random appearance - and I've got full random NPC in 5 seconds, written down and generated in my MapTool).


Now, just a question, I'm working on my own resource pack, when it gets done (or rather to decent size), who am I supposed to contact if I want to share this with you and post it to MapTool resources for download from application itself? [email protected]?



Thats (hopefully) all. Like I said, this is absolutely wonderfull tool, but it would use some polishing to become even greater. Cheers guys, thanks for making this happen and thanks for reading this wall of text of mine! :)

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wolph42
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Re: My Feature Requests and Bugs I found - MapTool

Post by wolph42 »

man, thats one hell of a first post... welcome to the forum.

BUGS
1. AFAIK: the bug has been reported. Note you can cut and paste instead of copy-paste-delete.
2. ? don't do much with light
3. what on earth do you mean with 'move a camera' ??
4. didn't know that. not really a bug, but quite an annoyance and should be looked into. Note that if you double click on B you get a pop-up allowing you to select A
5. not following you.

FEATS
1. again, not really experienced with this
2.that sounds like a Campaign feat NOT a maptool feat, that should not be part of this post, but directly aimed at the deverloper of the campaign.
3. I'm assuming you're talking about 'States' here. That IS possible, there are a couple of default states (like cross, circle ,etc) however you can create your own and add them as image, you can place them anywhere you like, you can grid them and make them transparent.
4. this can be done through macros and there are several version available: so again this is more of a campaign request than a maptool request. Note that its insanely difficult to implement such a thing agnostic in maptool as there are many many many many ways to differently time duration of effects. That said: the init tool is a bit limited and can use some love.
5. I agree. There IS a difference in snap between object and background and it IS good to have different 'snap options' but it IS insanely annoying that these are tied to the layers. This has been (thoroughly) discussed by the devs so its on the agenda (but can take a looooong time to actually make it)
6. IRC customizable key bindings is also somehting that has been discussed. Overall Im in favour to have as many menu option available as macro, that way you can create a short macro and bind that one.
7. again this is a campaign request NOT a maptool request. I can imagine that the line between maptool and campaign is not as clear (and obviously blurry sometimes, as the sizes has shown) but I find it vital that maptool gives as much agnostic support as possible but does NOT start to interfere with game settings.

resource pack...urgh I always forget, who manages that. IRC it was rptroll but don't shoot me if I get that wrong. Someone else probly knows.

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metatheurgist
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Re: My Feature Requests and Bugs I found - MapTool

Post by metatheurgist »

1. Pretty sure strict token ownership fixes that. I've never seen it in our games

2. Not a bug. Maptool does 3rd edition light. It doesn't do 5th edition light. It'd be nice if MT was flexible enough to do both but that's a feature request not a bug

4. Right-click -> Move to back. This is just a Z order issue, again not a bug

Amaroth
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Re: My Feature Requests and Bugs I found - MapTool

Post by Amaroth »

@metatheurgist: Even with 3rd edition lighting - when there is a darkness around you, and you have darkvision, you are supposed to see to 60ft. Fine. But when there are light sources around you (or further away, in front of you), don't tell me that you are not supposed to see what is going there as well :D. That wouldn't make any sense. Take a look at attached screenshot, I'd say that in any edition of D&D character is supposed to see what is going on around that campfire. Btw, that character can see what is going on around that campfire with normal sight, but not with darkvision. In this case, darkvision actually becomes a hindrance as it actually prevents you from seeing stuff around light sources, and thus its not really an advantage.


@wolph42: By moving a camera (sorry, I'm 3D guy, I'm used to these kind of terms) I mean simply changing zoom or moving around a map.

Grid numbering, take a look at attached screenshot.

Yes, I can create conditions (or states, whatever you want to call them) as separated images and place them on characters. The problem is that I'll have to move them with characters as well, as they would be just laid on character, not really attached to it. Yet another thing is, that they would have to be tokens in order to overlap characters, which adds clutter to list of tokens on a map. Its a solution though, just not an ideal one.

Thanks for pointing me towards macros btw, I haven't explored them really yet, will definitely take a look at them when I get a chance.
Attachments
Character with darkvision can't see what is around light source.
Character with darkvision can't see what is around light source.
NoName1.png (423.42 KiB) Viewed 1482 times
Grid numbers overlapping description box.
Grid numbers overlapping description box.
NoName.png (94.35 KiB) Viewed 1482 times

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wolph42
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Re: My Feature Requests and Bugs I found - MapTool

Post by wolph42 »

Grid: indeed a bit sloppy looking, maybe the devs will pick this up (not a bug though)

Camera: a, clear. Point was you were talking about 'a' camera, which implied multiple, which was confusing to me. Im guessing you were referring to player/gm screens and thus two cameras.

Moving: picture while changing camera... never encountered that one before. Not sure this is known.

States (conditions): I'm fairly certain we have a communication issue. Either I don't understand what you're talking about, vice versa, or both. I'm NOT talking about a 'transparent token' that you move together with the 'actual token'. I'm talking about the campaign property: state, where you can create custom-grid-states that you can apply to the 'actual token' and are part of the 'actual token'.

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metatheurgist
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Re: My Feature Requests and Bugs I found - MapTool

Post by metatheurgist »

Amaroth wrote:@metatheurgist: Even with 3rd edition lighting - when there is a darkness around you, and you have darkvision, you are supposed to see to 60ft. Fine. But when there are light sources around you (or further away, in front of you), don't tell me that you are not supposed to see what is going there as well :D. That wouldn't make any sense. Take a look at attached screenshot, I'd say that in any edition of D&D character is supposed to see what is going on around that campfire. Btw, that character can see what is going on around that campfire with normal sight, but not with darkvision. In this case, darkvision actually becomes a hindrance as it actually prevents you from seeing stuff around light sources, and thus its not really an advantage.
Still not a bug. MT is not D&D Online, it's system agnostic. It's not required to be able to replicate any editions of D&D light & vision. It has a very functional light and vision system which could use some improvements like multiple vision types on the same token, but that's still a feature request.

taustinoc
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Re: My Feature Requests and Bugs I found - MapTool

Post by taustinoc »

I believe #3 (of the bugs) is that if you drop a large picture on the map, then move it immediately to position it, it will move back to where you dropped it. I noticed it very early on, and every version since does it.

It's an annoyance, but not (for me) a major problem. You just have to wait a few seconds. (The delay seems to be longer, the bigger the image is.)

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Full Bleed
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Re: My Feature Requests and Bugs I found - MapTool

Post by Full Bleed »

Amaroth wrote: 1. Customizable vision (in Has Sight i Token's Config). Current system doesn't allow different, nonstandart ranges (for example darkvision 30ft).
You can totally do this:

Code: Select all

Darkvision: circle r30
Read up on Vision and Sight here: http://lmwcs.com/rptools/wiki/Introduct ... and_Sights
It also doesn't allow multiple vision types joined together (darkvision 60ft, blindsight 30ft).
True. This has been requested before.
2. Customizable conditions. There are many conditions which are just missing in MapTool (especially 5e ones), and maybe someone wants to homebrew his own conditions. In general, I'd allow creating own, custom conditions.
You can create new "conditions".

Go to Edit>Campaign Properties>States
3. Customizable condition icons. This would be a very useful thing, because some colored crosses and circles... they don't really tell me much...
Go to Edit>Campaign Properties>States

You can do everything you've asked for.
4. Tracking how long are conditions there (for how many turns, if Token in in Initiative), would be yet another useful feature, as tracking duration of effects can be tedious work to do.
You will need to learn how to use macros for this sort of thing.
5. When I have some objects in Background snapped to grid and decide to change them to actual Objects, a lot of them get scattered and move. Objects are apparently being snapped to grid in a different manner than Background stuff. I suppose there is a good reason for this (as long as it isn't just a bug), but please, can there be a checkbox in eithere Prefferences or Map settings which would enable user to say "I want to have everything snapped to grid in the same manner, to prevent this from happening"?
Edit>Preferences

You can set Snap to Grd defaults for Tokens, Objects, and Background items.
6. Shortcut for showing/hiding grid coordinates. They are clutter I don't like to have turned on all the time, but sometimes I need them as players want to navigate me to certain field on grid they want to move on. So I'm switching it on and off quite often and having to do that by going to menu is kind of meh.
I never use this feature. The coordinates of your cursor is always displayed in the bottom right hand corner. No reason to toggle on the screen coordinates unless you want them on.
7. Random generators. Those could be used for literally anything, be it NPC or environment. It could be a window where one would just select one of proposed lists (NPC bonds, NPC flaws, NPC appearance and so on - stuff which can be found all around 5e's DMG basically) and be able to just click for random selection out of that list. Possibility to create your own lists or customize existing ones would be very useful as well. Maybe even implementing this right into Tokens can be nice (create a token, click on it, click on "Roll random appearance - and I've got full random NPC in 5 seconds, written down and generated in my MapTool).
You can do most of this with your own custom tables: Window>Tables

And you could build macros on the tokens to use them if just clicking on them isn't enough: http://lmwcs.com/rptools/wiki/Category:Table_Function
Like I said, this is absolutely wonderfull tool, but it would use some polishing to become even greater. Cheers guys, thanks for making this happen and thanks for reading this wall of text of mine! :)
Glad to see you enjoying it... but you are really just scratching the surface. Given your requests it's pretty clear that Maptool can do a LOT more than you think it can do! ;)
Maptool is the Millennium Falcon of VTT's -- "She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts."

Amaroth
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Re: My Feature Requests and Bugs I found - MapTool

Post by Amaroth »

Hi, thanks for your responses guys, some of them were really useful!

"Camera: a, clear. Point was you were talking about 'a' camera, which implied multiple, which was confusing to me. Im guessing you were referring to player/gm screens and thus two cameras." - Language barrier here, nothing more, my apologies, like I said, I am not a native speaker.



"Still not a bug. MT is not D&D Online, it's system agnostic. It's not required to be able to replicate any editions of D&D light & vision. It has a very functional light and vision system which could use some improvements like multiple vision types on the same token, but that's still a feature request." - Just think about it. There is a darkness, you have a darkvision 60ft, 70 ft in front of you is a light source. According to MapTool right now, you are not supposed to see what is around that fire, because its out of your darkvision circle. Even during day, you are, right now, able to see only 60ft circle around you and thats it. This would represent a blindsight very well on a creature without eyes (ooze?). We might have different terminology here, or this might really not be a case in different games, but I don't believe thats a case. Well, if you guys don't agree on this with me, fine by me, giving a character both darkvision and normal vision at the same time would solve this anyway, in case it was possible, and like you said by yourself, thats a feature already requested before.



"I believe #3 (of the bugs) is that if you drop a large picture on the map, then move it immediately to position it, it will move back to where you dropped it. I noticed it very early on, and every version since does it." - Thats exactly the case. Thomas Chapman even shows this and speaks about this in one of his new video tutorials on YT.



"Edit>Preferences - You can set Snap to Grd defaults for Tokens, Objects, and Background items." - I know, but this only sets wheter Tokens/Objects/Background items should be, by default snapped to grid or not. My issue is that Objects are snapped to grid in a different manner than Background items. What often happens is that Object gets snapped with its upper left corner to middle of a field on grid, while the very same Background items gets moved, so its upper left corner is snapped actually to corner of a field on grid. This means that stuff snapped to grid can get moved by half of a field to northwest or to southeast when being changed from Object to Background or vice versa.

"Go to Edit>Campaign Properties>States" - I have completely missed this whole option in menu. Huge thanks for pointing that out, this really helped and solved my problem.

"I never use this feature. The coordinates of your cursor is always displayed in the bottom right hand corner. No reason to toggle on the screen coordinates unless you want them on." - Idd, yet another thing I have missed.

"Glad to see you enjoying it... but you are really just scratching the surface. Given your requests it's pretty clear that Maptool can do a LOT more than you think it can do! ;)" - Not that much more I suppose :P, I just missed that Edit>Campaign Properties>States window, for some reason. That helped me out a lot. About tables, the thing might be that the less user has to do and code by himself, the better in general. At least in my opinion. Feel free to disagree though, as a tool which isn't supposed to be bound to any specific type of pen&paper RP game I quite understand why you want to avoid implementing specific tables and stuff like that.

trrpt
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Re: My Feature Requests and Bugs I found - MapTool

Post by trrpt »

Amaroth wrote:There is a darkness, you have a darkvision 60ft, 70 ft in front of you is a light source. According to MapTool right now, you are not supposed to see what is around that fire, because its out of your darkvision circle. Even during day, you are, right now, able to see only 60ft circle around you and thats it.

This not what I am seeing in Maptool 1.4.0.5. For example, I place a dwarf that has Darkvision 70' away from a goblin that is holding a torch (don't ask why a goblin would be holding a torch; this is just an example).

Vision distance for the map is configured in Map/Edit Map/Vision Distance as 1000 feet. It could be lower, but MUST equal or exceed any distance that you want the players to be able to see.

I configured Darkvision in Edit/Campaign Properties/Sight as:

Darkvision: circle r60

I defined a light source in Edit/Campaign Properties/Light as:

Torch: circle 20

I then start a server with the following settings checked ON:

x Strict token ownership
x Players can reveal vision
x Auto Reveal On Movement
x Use Individual Views
x Use Individual FOW

The screen grab below shows what is visible when a player that owns the dwarf character connects to the server. Clearly, the dwarf can see beyond 60' where there is torch light to provide illumination.
Attachments
Darkvision and torch light
Darkvision and torch light
Capture2.JPG (63.76 KiB) Viewed 1442 times

trrpt
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Re: My Feature Requests and Bugs I found - MapTool

Post by trrpt »

Amaroth wrote:There is a darkness, you have a darkvision 60ft, 70 ft in front of you is a light source. According to MapTool right now, you are not supposed to see what is around that fire, because its out of your darkvision circle. Even during day, you are, right now, able to see only 60ft circle around you and thats it.
The problem is with the default definition of Darkvision, which is "Darkvision: circle distance=62.5 r60". This limits the character's vision to 62.5' whenever FOW is enabled, regardless of lighting conditions. I immediately changed this when I started using Maptool and forgot about the default. If you delete "distance=62.5" and simply define Darkvision in Edit/Campaign Properties/Sight as "Darkvision: circle r60", then you should get the behavior you were looking for.

Amaroth
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Re: My Feature Requests and Bugs I found - MapTool

Post by Amaroth »

Darkvision: circle r60 did the job, I have figured that out on my own already, but thanks for the effert put to your post, its appreciated :).

xavram
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Re: My Feature Requests and Bugs I found - MapTool

Post by xavram »

FYI, you can have "combined" vision types, like so...

Dark and Low: circle x2 r30

This doubles the light source radius (IE, low light vision) and creates an area of "personal" light (darkvision). Have used this and it works just fine.

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