My review of Maptool

Talk about whatever topic you'd like, RPG related or not. (But please discuss things related to our software in the Tools section, below.)

Moderators: dorpond, trevor, Azhrei

pspinler
Kobold
Posts: 5
Joined: Mon Nov 05, 2012 1:31 pm

My review of Maptool

Post by pspinler »

For whomever cares, or not, I've just written a review on my attempts to use Maptool in my face to face campaign, here:

http://pspinler.blogspot.com/2012/11/iv ... s-for.html

Summary, lots of promise, haven't been able to get it to work yet. UI issues have been particularly frustrating.

Thanks, and sorry,
-- Pat

User avatar
aliasmask
RPTools Team
Posts: 9024
Joined: Tue Nov 10, 2009 6:11 pm
Location: Bay Area

Re: My review of Maptool

Post by aliasmask »

The two biggest issues I see now are the java 7 incompatibility and the disabling of UPnP which forces people to set up port forwarding on their router. These were both fixed in b88, but unfortunately 2 bigger problems were created making it unusable.

pspinler
Kobold
Posts: 5
Joined: Mon Nov 05, 2012 1:31 pm

Re: My review of Maptool

Post by pspinler »

I definitely noted the java 7 failure, but I'm still running b87. Should I be looking at b88? What're the other issues you mention?

Apologies if the answers are out there, but I've only skimmed the forums so far.

Thanks,
-- Pat

User avatar
Jagged
Great Wyrm
Posts: 1306
Joined: Mon Sep 15, 2008 9:27 am
Location: Bristol, UK

Re: My review of Maptool

Post by Jagged »

I thought that was fair, except that you've given up in frustration! ;) If there is anything we can do to help you try again, let us know.

I am surprised you had problems with the maps reveals. I've been using Maptool for some time now and I've only had a problem twice. One of which was down to my own error with the Vision Blocking Layer.

User avatar
jfrazierjr
Deity
Posts: 5176
Joined: Tue Sep 11, 2007 7:31 pm

Re: My review of Maptool

Post by jfrazierjr »

Please don't take offense as I will try to deconstruct your comments in an honest way.
pspinler wrote:The user interface is, at best, clunky and non-friendly:
Consistently, operations that should be obvious in the UI are non-obvious.
Your on a Mac right? I will give you that there are plenty of things that are bad in the UI(but some of them are not the ones you complain about). However, on the flip side, I will always prefer function over form. What's the point of a program being intuitive and pretty if it does not work(or is limited)? As you yourself said, it's the most feature rich of the products out there. As a side note, one of the reasons why it's so ugly is that Sun went 10 years without updating it's UI layer in Java, so we are(were) stuck with the limitations of what java itself could do. That has changed with the recent JavaFX 2.2 release and once 1.3 is final, the team will begin working on 1.4 where we have much more control over "pretifying" the user interface.

pspinler wrote:Scrolling the map is right click drag, instead of left click drag on any open map area.
Well, just because google maps got it wrong is no reason to ding us...besides, there are a number of reasons why you CAN'T do left click to drag, specifically because how would you tell the difference between a "select this thing under the mouse" vs "I want to pan/drag the map itself now"? Remember, Google does not have selectable items on it's map which can also be dragged(well.. I guess technically it does now with the little stick man street view thingy..).
pspinler wrote:There are no visual controls to scroll (e.g. the google maps rosette)
Ok... fair point...
pspinler wrote:To reverse the sense of an operation, hold down the shift key. For example, drawing a vision blocking rect with shift held down removes vision blocking from an area. Hold the shift key, click a token and drag to change it's facing. Things like this should be a separate control.
I would disagree again, Adding separate controls creates visual clutter. However, my guess is that this is going to change in the next version anyway since touch pads don't have an easy way to handle key modifiers along with "mouse" movements...

pspinler wrote:The UI is inconsistent. For example, clicking a token to select it doesn't always work on the first click.
Not quite sure what you mean here.
pspinler wrote:When moving tokens, enabling snap to grid has the effect of visually displacing the token destination from the apparent token position, and tokens can end up somewhere different than expected.
Again, not quite sure what you mean here.
pspinler wrote:With large vision blocking areas set, players can easily accidentally lose their token in an area where they can't see it to click on it again.
Possible, but I don't think it's that likely to happen unless you have a very tight "corridor" which the players tokens have to "squeeze" through in which case, this is a likely scenario.

pspinler wrote:If there's multiple 'player' tokens on the map, it's not always obvious which player token's vision is being used to reveal stuff on each player's map.
Not quite sure what you mean by that. This also depends somewhat on what options you selected when you first start the server(Individual View and/or Individual FOW, etc). As the GM, clicking on a token should show exactly what that token should be able to see in most cases.
pspinler wrote:Nor does there appear to be a way to select which player token is used for which connected player.
Each token has an Owner tab when you double click on the token and you can set the owner from there. OR if the player dropped the token themselves, they are automatically the owner. Of course, this also depends somewhat on what options you selected when you first start the server(Strict token ownerwhip, etc)

pspinler wrote:I've had problems with different java versions on linux
This is a mixed bag if your talking about Java 6 vs Java 7(if your talking about Sun java vs OpenJDK, then that's not MapTools fault that the OpenJDK's network protocols are rather crappy). In one sense, we, the developers should have done it right... on the other hand, Oracle changed in 1.7 something that broke what had been working for 10 years....
pspinler wrote:I've had problems with loading a large campaign map from network connected clients, on a lan.
Not totally sure what you mean here, but how is your network resource limitations a problem with MapTool? Or am I missing something? There is a means to upload the image files to a storage location and have players download from there instead of having to share your upload speed... It's called a repository.
pspinler wrote: The interactions between vision blocking and fog of war are weird. I have instances on my map where stuff which is completely covered by a vision blocking rect are shown as having been revealed to the player. Reapplying fog of war to these areas have no effect. Note that players can't see into the area.
Would have to see what you mean in some pictures, but the most likely case is that you have drawn the VBL incorrectly as happens sometimes.
I save all my Campaign Files to DropBox. Not only can I access a campaign file from pretty much any OS that will run Maptool(Win,OSX, linux), but each file is versioned, so if something goes crazy wild, I can always roll back to a previous version of the same file.

Get your Dropbox 2GB via my referral link, and as a bonus, I get an extra 250 MB of space. Even if you don't don't use my link, I still enthusiastically recommend Dropbox..

User avatar
CoveredInFish
Demigod
Posts: 3104
Joined: Mon Jun 29, 2009 10:37 am
Location: Germany
Contact:

Re: My review of Maptool

Post by CoveredInFish »

To summarize in my words what jfrazierjr already said in detail:

Some of your points are valid, but more points are problems you encountered because MT has a bit steep learning curve. These things can be handled better with a little more experience in MT. That itself _is_ a bad thing, but unavoidable with more complex software (try using Photoshop without experience and its horrible).

Oh .. and btw it annoys me that I cant drag google maps with right click. :-D

pspinler
Kobold
Posts: 5
Joined: Mon Nov 05, 2012 1:31 pm

Re: My review of Maptool

Post by pspinler »

jfrazierjr wrote:Please don't take offense as I will try to deconstruct your comments in an honest way.
Thanks for the feedback, I really appreciate it. I'm primarily just trying to find and use a neat tool. Hopefully this conversation can help.
jfrazierjr wrote:
pspinler wrote:The user interface is, at best, clunky and non-friendly:
Consistently, operations that should be obvious in the UI are non-obvious.
Your on a Mac right? I will give you that there are plenty of things that are bad in the UI(but some of them are not the ones you complain about). However, on the flip side, I will always prefer function over form. What's the point of a program being intuitive and pretty if it does not work(or is limited)?
The thing that got this comment is that I had tried Maptool 6+ months ago, left it due to some life conflicts, came back, and had to re-teach myself the interface.

While you have a point about functionality, I'd argue that extended functions aren't much use if I can't figure out how to use them.

Discoverability is key here -- I strongly advocate in my own work that things should be easy to find out how to do it, first, then second be amenable to acceleration in some form. For discoverability, consistency with the overall ecosystem has a advantage of it's own.
jfrazierjr wrote:
pspinler wrote:Scrolling the map is right click drag, instead of left click drag on any open map area.
there are a number of reasons why you CAN'T do left click to drag, specifically because how would you tell the difference between a "select this thing under the mouse" vs "I want to pan/drag the map itself now"?
I disagree - you tell by the presence or absence of something under the click, that is, the context. This is similar in operation to any drawing program. If there's something there, you operate on that (e.g. select it), if not, operate on the background (that is, the next layer down)
jfrazierjr wrote:
pspinler wrote:To reverse the sense of an operation, hold down the shift key. For example, drawing a vision blocking rect with shift held down removes vision blocking from an area. Hold the shift key, click a token and drag to change it's facing. Things like this should be a separate control.
I would disagree again, Adding separate controls creates visual clutter.
This obviously has to be balanced between clutter and usability, but I'd strongly argue that in a GUI program, there should be some visually discoverable method to do all operations. No operation should be 'hidden'.

For convenience, go ahead and make shift (or control, or whatever) work as an accelerator, that's great. However, that cannot be the only method to do something (E.g. scrolling), especially when it's not the norm for that platform.
jfrazierjr wrote:
pspinler wrote:The UI is inconsistent. For example, clicking a token to select it doesn't always work on the first click.
Not quite sure what you mean here.
See if I can get a screen capture and show you.
jfrazierjr wrote:
pspinler wrote:When moving tokens, enabling snap to grid has the effect of visually displacing the token destination from the apparent token position, and tokens can end up somewhere different than expected.
Again, not quite sure what you mean here.
Again, see if I can get a screen capture.
jfrazierjr wrote:
pspinler wrote:With large vision blocking areas set, players can easily accidentally lose their token in an area where they can't see it to click on it again.
Possible, but I don't think it's that likely to happen unless you have a very tight "corridor" which the players tokens have to "squeeze" through in which case, this is a likely scenario.
pspinler wrote:If there's multiple 'player' tokens on the map, it's not always obvious which player token's vision is being used to reveal stuff on each player's map.
Not quite sure what you mean by that. This also depends somewhat on what options you selected when you first start the server(Individual View and/or Individual FOW, etc). As the GM, clicking on a token should show exactly what that token should be able to see in most cases.
I'm actually uploading a screen capture displaying these two effects. Hope to post the URL by the end of this message.

Ok, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRYnEB6QueE

I'll do a few videos
jfrazierjr wrote:
pspinler wrote:Nor does there appear to be a way to select which player token is used for which connected player.
Each token has an Owner tab when you double click on the token and you can set the owner from there.
Thanks, I'll look at this.
jfrazierjr wrote:
pspinler wrote:I've had problems with different java versions on linux
This is a mixed bag if your talking about Java 6 vs Java 7(if your talking about Sun java vs OpenJDK, then that's not MapTools fault that the OpenJDK's network protocols are rather crappy). In one sense, we, the developers should have done it right... on the other hand, Oracle changed in 1.7 something that broke what had been working for 10 years....
Yeah, apologies, I recognize this isn't necessarily your fault. It is, however, an issue I have to work through with each of my players, and thus an additional burden to being able to advocate it's use in my group.
jfrazierjr wrote:
pspinler wrote:I've had problems with loading a large campaign map from network connected clients, on a lan.
Not totally sure what you mean here, but how is your network resource limitations a problem with MapTool? Or am I missing something? There is a means to upload the image files to a storage location and have players download from there instead of having to share your upload speed... It's called a repository.
All of us are on a lan, we're actually face to face. My campaign file is about 60MB. This should be a no-brainer. Yet, Maptool on a players laptop seems to throw an error on joining the game and loading maps about 25-30% of the time.

Again, I'll see if I can reproduce this and send a screen capture.
jfrazierjr wrote:
pspinler wrote: The interactions between vision blocking and fog of war are weird. I have instances on my map where stuff which is completely covered by a vision blocking rect are shown as having been revealed to the player. Reapplying fog of war to these areas have no effect. Note that players can't see into the area.
Would have to see what you mean in some pictures, but the most likely case is that you have drawn the VBL incorrectly as happens sometimes.
[/quote]

Again, I'll try to post a vid.

Let me repeat that I really appreciate your willingness to take the time to send that response. It was helpful. :-)

-- Pat

pspinler
Kobold
Posts: 5
Joined: Mon Nov 05, 2012 1:31 pm

Re: My review of Maptool

Post by pspinler »

Jagged wrote:
I thought that was fair, except that you've given up in frustration! ;) If there is anything we can do to help you try again, let us know.

I am surprised you had problems with the maps reveals. I've been using Maptool for some time now and I've only had a problem twice. One of which was down to my own error with the Vision Blocking Layer.
I'm hoping that much of this ends up being my own errors. I mean, experience tells me that I always get everything right immediately, so it can't be my fault, right? :-) :-D

I'm going to make a series of screen captures and post 'em demoing the issues I'm having. If folks are kind enough to point out my various idiocies, I'd be right grateful. :-)

-- Pat

User avatar
jfrazierjr
Deity
Posts: 5176
Joined: Tue Sep 11, 2007 7:31 pm

Re: My review of Maptool

Post by jfrazierjr »

CoveredInFish wrote:Oh .. and btw it annoys me that I cant drag google maps with right click. :-D
heh... No joke... I curse for a few seconds every time I have to use Google Maps. :evil:
I save all my Campaign Files to DropBox. Not only can I access a campaign file from pretty much any OS that will run Maptool(Win,OSX, linux), but each file is versioned, so if something goes crazy wild, I can always roll back to a previous version of the same file.

Get your Dropbox 2GB via my referral link, and as a bonus, I get an extra 250 MB of space. Even if you don't don't use my link, I still enthusiastically recommend Dropbox..

User avatar
jfrazierjr
Deity
Posts: 5176
Joined: Tue Sep 11, 2007 7:31 pm

Re: My review of Maptool

Post by jfrazierjr »

pspinler wrote: This obviously has to be balanced between clutter and usability, but I'd strongly argue that in a GUI program, there should be some visually discoverable method to do all operations. No operation should be 'hidden'.
It's not hidden(as in invisible, it's just not visually "in your face" and (for the most part),it's consistent across all tools. When the tools are selected, the status bar contains the list of possible "alterations" possible for the selected tool. If I am not mistaken, the Video tutorials do cover this point.. but on the flip side, we DO need a real user guide for stuff like this(the basics) since some people just don't learn from Video(or can't/won't download/watch them). However, it is not a hidden combination, there is a visual reference on your screen... you just need to know where to look that first time and that we need to make more clear in some way.
I save all my Campaign Files to DropBox. Not only can I access a campaign file from pretty much any OS that will run Maptool(Win,OSX, linux), but each file is versioned, so if something goes crazy wild, I can always roll back to a previous version of the same file.

Get your Dropbox 2GB via my referral link, and as a bonus, I get an extra 250 MB of space. Even if you don't don't use my link, I still enthusiastically recommend Dropbox..

User avatar
jfrazierjr
Deity
Posts: 5176
Joined: Tue Sep 11, 2007 7:31 pm

Re: My review of Maptool

Post by jfrazierjr »

pspinler wrote:
jfrazierjr wrote:
pspinler wrote:With large vision blocking areas set, players can easily accidentally lose their token in an area where they can't see it to click on it again.
Possible, but I don't think it's that likely to happen unless you have a very tight "corridor" which the players tokens have to "squeeze" through in which case, this is a likely scenario.
pspinler wrote:If there's multiple 'player' tokens on the map, it's not always obvious which player token's vision is being used to reveal stuff on each player's map.
Not quite sure what you mean by that. This also depends somewhat on what options you selected when you first start the server(Individual View and/or Individual FOW, etc). As the GM, clicking on a token should show exactly what that token should be able to see in most cases.
I'm actually uploading a screen capture displaying these two effects. Hope to post the URL by the end of this message.

Ok, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRYnEB6QueE
Ok.. So this is just something you need to learn about MapTool. Vision opperates from the center of the token. If you put up some VBL, you will need to make sure that your VBL does not cross that center point of the grid. HOWEVER, I would also caution you against making assumptions on how the program works when you are the GM in Player View. To get a correct assumption, you MUST Start a server and have a second instance of MapTool running connected to the server as a player. If I recall correctly(and I may not be!!!), the scenario you show in your video with Fion around 33 seconds will not happen for a player. As the GM, however, you are more than able to do whatever you darn well please, including moving tokens into the "darkness". All I can suggest is be a bit more careful with your VBL placement if it is an issue or beat your players if it becomes a problem... In 1.4 we MIGHT get to movement blocking in which case you can put that down and that would keep the problem from happening, but until such time, you just have to deal with it manually(there is a "partial solution" via macro, but I would highly suggest you get the basics down before you go down that automation road!!!!)
I save all my Campaign Files to DropBox. Not only can I access a campaign file from pretty much any OS that will run Maptool(Win,OSX, linux), but each file is versioned, so if something goes crazy wild, I can always roll back to a previous version of the same file.

Get your Dropbox 2GB via my referral link, and as a bonus, I get an extra 250 MB of space. Even if you don't don't use my link, I still enthusiastically recommend Dropbox..

User avatar
jfrazierjr
Deity
Posts: 5176
Joined: Tue Sep 11, 2007 7:31 pm

Re: My review of Maptool

Post by jfrazierjr »

pspinler wrote:
jfrazierjr wrote:
pspinler wrote:Scrolling the map is right click drag, instead of left click drag on any open map area.
there are a number of reasons why you CAN'T do left click to drag, specifically because how would you tell the difference between a "select this thing under the mouse" vs "I want to pan/drag the map itself now"?
I disagree - you tell by the presence or absence of something under the click, that is, the context. This is similar in operation to any drawing program. If there's something there, you operate on that (e.g. select it), if not, operate on the background (that is, the next layer down)
Well.. right or wrong, the chances of it changing are fairly slim... Don't worry... we will assimilate you post-haste...
I save all my Campaign Files to DropBox. Not only can I access a campaign file from pretty much any OS that will run Maptool(Win,OSX, linux), but each file is versioned, so if something goes crazy wild, I can always roll back to a previous version of the same file.

Get your Dropbox 2GB via my referral link, and as a bonus, I get an extra 250 MB of space. Even if you don't don't use my link, I still enthusiastically recommend Dropbox..

User avatar
aliasmask
RPTools Team
Posts: 9024
Joined: Tue Nov 10, 2009 6:11 pm
Location: Bay Area

Re: My review of Maptool

Post by aliasmask »

I almost always create my VBL on the grid (hold ctrl key). Also avoid re-drawing over the same line segments. It's okay if they cross, but sometime if 2 vbl shapes share end points and a line segment there is a chance of bad vbl happening.

I talk more about applying VBL with caves here for efficiency and style: http://forums.rptools.net/viewtopic.php ... 7l#p225029

pspinler
Kobold
Posts: 5
Joined: Mon Nov 05, 2012 1:31 pm

Re: My review of Maptool

Post by pspinler »

I did just figure out one of my vision issues, and it was a user error. I had made a mistake on which character(s) had light sources.

-- Pat

User avatar
Azhrei
Site Admin
Posts: 12086
Joined: Mon Jun 12, 2006 1:20 pm
Location: Tampa, FL

Re: My review of Maptool

Post by Azhrei »

pspinler wrote:I disagree - you tell by the presence or absence of something under the click, that is, the context. This is similar in operation to any drawing program. If there's something there, you operate on that (e.g. select it), if not, operate on the background (that is, the next layer down)
Nope, doesn't work. If you press and hold the mouse over an empty space, we can pan the map. If you press and hold the mouse over a token, we move the token. But then how do you select multiple tokens using a rubber-banded rectangle? You can't.

It's not that we (current developers/users) necessarily like the way it works, but it is what it is. At least for now.

I agree that the mouse combinations may not match whatever system platform you're on; part of that is the result of Java trying to be "cross platform". In the original Java releases there was no way to portably tell whether a mouse had one button, two buttons, or more, and there was no way to portably write code that used anything other than the first button! Fortunately we've come a long way since then, but "perfect" it isn't... :D

In any case, the keystrokes that activate various features have been localized, which means the English properties file can be edited and the accelerators changed at your whim. I have high hopes that a UI of such mappings (of keystrokes to functionality) will make it into v1.4. This will help significantly because people will be able to open a dialog where they can see/change the mappings and then browse through them looking to see what features are available. And if they don't like them, they can change them.

However, the mouse handling code is currently locked in place. There are way too many places within the code where mouse buttons are not handled by using a generic mapping so they can't currently be changed. This is another item on my wish list. Once this is done users will be able to customize how they provide input to MT in any manner they wish. Take that, GoogleMaps!! ;)

(The last paragraph would also make it easier to port to a touch surface when used in combination with the touch drivers providing a "gesture recognizing" function that can generate simulated keystrokes.)

Thank you for posting your review, btw. If you look around the forum you'll find a lot of other people have posted reviews as well. We take your comments and feedback very seriously. Those of us who hack on MT are also users of the software so believe me when I say, "We feel your pain." We do.

Post Reply

Return to “General Discussion”