MapTool 1.2b9 progress and State of the Tool musings

Progress reports and musings from the developers on the current gaming tools.

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trevor
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MapTool 1.2b9 progress and State of the Tool musings

Post by trevor »

I noticed this morning that I haven't posted a developer's note in a while. I think that's because the releases have been so frequent that there hasn't been any question what I'm working on.

There's a build planned for this friday/sat (probably sat, late), but thought I'd do a brain dump on the progress.

We're on the cusp of some very evolutionary and revolutionary steps: We've introducing a more formal token properties system that will eventually be compatible with character sheets (Think CharacterTool and 3eprofiler integration), it already has basic InitiativeTool integration; Massive maps, and I mean massive. We've got multiple drawing layers so you can draw your maps and then draw things on top of it like AOE templates, and be able to erase the templates and temp stuff without erasing the map. Vision is constantly improving, and is completely unique to the VT world (sans things like NWN). We've also had more contributed patches.

Properties:
I've got the basic framework built into MT. It's not much to look at yet, but in introduced a restructuring of the token dialog that will support much better character sheet like properties. I'm planning to flesh this out a bit more before the build on Sat, and then get your feedback for enhancements for 1.2b10. I'm also going to introduce a CCG-like concept where you assign a picture/portrait for your token, whatever image you want, and your property definition will indicate a couple properties to put on the CCG card. Then when you hover over a token it'll show you the CCG card in the lower left of the map. When you select a token it'll show up and stick until the token is unselected, if more than one token is selected, more CCGs show up. The card would have things like health, max movement, elevation, status, whatever.

Massive Maps:
I spent a lot of hours this week working on optimizing the drawable rendering. It never occured to me that drawing would become so interesting and would be used for map creation. What a trip ! But the implementation wasn't geared to that kind of usage. I'm now on my third complete rewrite of the drawable renderer. This past one kicked my butt, it took longer to get the implementation working than the vision did :P But I think I got it, and it's freaking sweet. Dorpond's massive ocean/forest/cave map done only with drawables pans and renders as if it was a regular bounded map (scaling tends to be a tad slow, but still not too bad). Of course, with any optimization, fine tuning will inherently follow, so I'll need you guys to help me find the kinks. But the implementation makes it so that you can literally make a map that could fill a world, using just drawables. I'm planning on optimizing the stamp rendering during 1.3 that will make them a bit faster too.

Vision:
Nobody else does this (sans the 3d engine based VTs like NWN). We're unique and the trail blazer. I think other VTs will start looking at introducing it into theirs before long, but we've already got it working. There's some obvious implementation and rulesystem complexities that need ironing out, but it's already very useful, and has an amazing amount of potential.

Patches:
We've had 4 people contribute patches over the last 2 builds. That's great because we get more features in quickly. A special thanks to galneweinhaw who is a machine ! He keeps me looking for more trackers for him to work on. I love the campaign MRU list, and he's added a "Campaign Preview" to both the MRU List (as a tooltip), and the load campaign dialog. Neat, neat stuff.

I'm gonna have to change my sig soon, it's no longer "will be glorious" but "is glorious" :)
Dreaming of a 1.3 release

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Post by Phergus »

Wow! Great stuff coming up!

The CCG idea sounds like it will turn out to be a killer feature.

Gaming with MapTools is glorious indeed!

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Post by dLANbandit »

Just to add to this, Lucas and I are sitting back waiting on this token properties thing to hit the build, so we can start our chat modifications mentioned in other threads.

Identities/token owners/ token properties are closely related. And Identities is closely related to many of the chat features that have been requested.

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Post by mosat »

Wow, I hadn't checked the site much in the last couple of weeks and now I find I'm like 3 releases behind. Not only that but you already incorporated many of the suggestions I made, very cool.

I'm really impressed, love the direction you'er moving. Can't wait to play with 1.2b9.
~ Eddy Anthony (MoSaT)
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~ Outputsheet Tamarin & Mac build guru

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Post by trevor »

In fact, b9 has more of your thoughts on the color panel
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Post by mosat »

Cool. I'm still feeling like the eraser needs to be in the toolbar.

When you open an existing file in b9 which layer will existing drawings be on? They should probably go on the bottom background layer.
~ Eddy Anthony (MoSaT)
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Post by trevor »

mosat wrote: When you open an existing file in b9 which layer will existing drawings be on? They should probably go on the bottom background layer.
Actually, they are ending up on the top layer. The reason for that is because only the GM can draw on the two new layers, players can only draw on the token layer. Because of this, for backward compatibility, I figure its safer to put the drawables where the players can access them instead of where they can't. That way nothing has really changed, except that stamps will now render under it, which kinda sucks. The price of progress I suppose.
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Post by trevor »

mosat wrote:I hadn't checked the site much in the last couple of weeks and now I find I'm like 3 releases behind.
That'll learn you to disappear for a couple weeks !
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Post by Phergus »

trevor wrote:That way nothing has really changed, except that stamps will now render under it, which kinda sucks.
Hmm. That could be a problem if I'm reading everything correctly. Or maybe this only applies to old maps.

My concern was that I wouldn't be able to draw out a dungeon (or whatever) with the drawing tools and then place furniture/terrain objects (stamps) on top of the drawn area.

The more I think of it though you must just mean for old maps that the existing drawings will be on the topmost layer.

I hope. :)

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Post by trevor »

Phergus wrote: The more I think of it though you must just mean for old maps that the existing drawings will be on the topmost layer.
This is correct. Since there is no concept of layers pre 1.2b9 I have to make a judgement call where to put them. I opted for the regular drawing layer (although I could change it if someone makes a strong case).

Here is the new layer order, from bottom to top:

*background drawables
background stamps
<grid>
*object drawables
object stamps
*token drawables
tokens
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Post by mosat »

trevor wrote:
mosat wrote: When you open an existing file in b9 which layer will existing drawings be on? They should probably go on the bottom background layer.
Actually, they are ending up on the top layer.
Is there any way to copy drawings from one layer to another?

I'm just thinking about the maps I've already made that will now be in the top/player drawable layer when I'd actually like them to be on the bottom.

Well, as you say, thats the price of progress. It's not like we've had lot's of time to create lots of maps with the crazy short development time of the last few betas :-)
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~ Outputsheet Tamarin & Mac build guru

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Post by trevor »

The case _could_ be made the the bottom layer is most appropriate because for anything the should be player accessible the GM can erase and redraw on the player layer ?
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Post by Dalna »

Even though I don't use textures much, those who made alot of maps with textures are going to be better off with it being the bottom layer. I doubt many premade campaigns will have player erasable areas anyways yet. And you still would want to put some stamps over the background for things like doors and all, so if you could, please make it be the bottom layer.

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Post by Phergus »

trevor wrote:Here is the new layer order, from bottom to top:

*background drawables
background stamps
<grid>
*object drawables
object stamps
*token drawables
tokens
Excellent!

Here is a wierd thought. What if a stamp had its own drawable mini-layer?

Say you have a room. In that room you have placed 4 stamps for tables. The players decide to sacrifice a handy elf and paint a pentagram on the table with elf blood. But then they decide to reposition the table! If the drawing was attached to the table it would be no problemo.

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Post by Phergus »

trevor wrote:The case _could_ be made the the bottom layer is most appropriate because for anything the should be player accessible the GM can erase and redraw on the player layer ?
If you did this my existing campaigns would be usable.

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