Thoughts on Frames and Tokens

[dorpond]

I have been making many tokens and frames but one thing I have noticed is that when I make tokens and post them, it is in a frame that I happen to like..

That doesn't mean you like the frame I decided to go with..

So that makes me wonder if we should modify the way Token Tool does its thing.

Idea: OK, Dorpond goes to make some more Tokens and he picks out his favorite frame. Now, he goes through his artwork and finds a cool Demon to put in the frame. He places the picture in Token Tool and aligns it to fit nicely. He goes to save the image and not only does it save the end result, it also cuts out the center image and saves that to file also.

We can then distribute the "innerts" of the token for the community, so they can use them with their favorite frame.

Would the community like something like this? Would you download the inside of a token or wouldn't you bother?

Thoughts?

[trevor]

It would be pretty slick to be able to change the overlay at runtime.

[Vry]

Sounds like a good idea. I'm sure most everyone has their own frames they prefer.

Could you crop out a full square of the images instead of just the circle that would be normally seen? This way people using square or hex frames could use them too.

[trevor]

I think TokenTool should still stay the same in its basic form because not everybody uses it with MapTool.

However, at some point I want to take TokenTool to the next level and where it can define things like size, properties, notes, default name, etc, etc (the whole .tkn format that has been discussed). This seems like something that would fit right in with that.

[dorpond]

Oh, I am not saying that this is an advanced function or that it creates an RPTOOLS exclusive output file with imbedded information.

All I am saying is that when it saves the Token.PNG file, it could also save another PNG or JPG perhaps of the picture inside it - cut to size.

What we would have in the saved folder then is:
DemonToken.PNG
DemonPicture.PNG

This way all the tokens can still be used with other programs AND we could post the inside picture so the users could download them to add their own frames with Token Tool.

[Mr.Ice]

Oh, I am not saying that this is an advanced function or that it creates an RPTOOLS exclusive output file with imbedded information.

Remember that Trevor originally said the .tkn file format was just going to be a zip file, so while it may have other stuff in it, it will also be pull-apartable by anyone. (and thus less exclusive).

I kinda like maybe saving the cropped part of the token -- perhaps the "square" crop of the token so that alignment is simpler. Would that make it easier to switch out frames in runtime?

[trevor]

Cutting out the square is exactly what I was thinking