MT 1.3b16 Development Update

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

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trevor
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MT 1.3b16 Development Update

Post by trevor »

This is going to be a short build, to get things working smooth from b15.

I do have some bad news though. I have to change the model structure again to support the new sizing mechanism. Fortunately campaigns saved in b15 could potentially be updated by updating the stored XML. I probably won't write that converter since we're on a mad march to get 1.3 stabilized, but if someone else wanted to do it, that'd be very welcome.
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Post by Frozen-Solid »

How many manual changes would we have to make? or is that unknown yet? Are you going to at least give us a list of things to fix in the save file, even if there's no automatic convertor?

Edit: I got b15 working today through the RPtools.net connection tab. All the changes since b10 are absolutely amazing. The only thing I miss is that I can't seem to find out how to manually draw things by hand on the new drawing functions. The circle/cone/line aoe drawing functions are awesome though and really handy.

I also noticed that if I set an NPCs field of vision, then the player window goes completely black, even if the fog of war has been removed in spots. It seems to work okay if the NPCs don't have a field of vision set though, and PC field of vision works awesomely as far as I can tell.
Last edited by Frozen-Solid on Sat Sep 22, 2007 5:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by Hawke »

If there's a major need it shouldn't be hard to write a converter. We'll see how it all goes!

Any other hints as to which bugs fixes are making it into this build?

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Post by trevor »

Frozen-Solid wrote:How many manual changes would we have to make? or is that unknown yet?
The changes are still in progress, but essentially it's removing the width and height and size properties and replacing it with a GUID (baGUID in the xml files) to a TokenFootprint.
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Post by trevor »

Frozen-Solid wrote: I also noticed that if I set an NPCs field of vision, then the player window goes completely black
If I understand what you are describing correctly, this is expected behavior. Only player vision will affect the fog. I should probably make it so that if you are the GM then a NPC vision shows.
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Post by Frozen-Solid »

trevor wrote:
Frozen-Solid wrote: I also noticed that if I set an NPCs field of vision, then the player window goes completely black
If I understand what you are describing correctly, this is expected behavior. Only player vision will affect the fog. I should probably make it so that if you are the GM then a NPC vision shows.
Okay basically what I did was opened up a map, took off some fog of war, and put an NPC on the playing field. When I set that NPC's vision I could see it as the GM just fine. But what happened was that the entire screen was completely black for players, as if the fog was never removed. They couldn't see the map at all.

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Post by trevor »

Frozen-Solid wrote: Okay basically what I did was opened up a map, took off some fog of war, and put an NPC on the playing field. When I set that NPC's vision I could see it as the GM just fine. But what happened was that the entire screen was completely black for players, as if the fog was never removed. They couldn't see the map at all.
K, let me try that.
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Post by Frozen-Solid »

trevor wrote:K, let me try that.
I just played arounda bit more. When the NPC field of vision is enabled, and no Player field of vision is enabled, the entire screen is covered in fog of war. Players can't see anything. So as long as a player has a field of vision it's fine.

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Post by Azhrei »

This is the way it should be. Just because an NPC can see the area doesn't mean a PC should be able to. :)

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Post by Frozen-Solid »

No. I have an area of the map uncovered for players. I remove a big square of the fog of war, and put an NPC on the field. As soon as I set it's vision, the entire screen turns black for players, despite a section of the fog of war being removed.

In otherwords, if I'm trying to setup a map complete with NPCs before a game, I set all of their field of vision, and I don't have my players tokens added before I do all of that, they can't see even the area that I cleared for them to start their tokens in. I have to wait until they add their tokens and have a vision set for the player tokens, before I can set the vision of any NPC.

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Post by Phergus »

Frozen-Solid wrote:No. I have an area of the map uncovered for players. I remove a big square of the fog of war, and put an NPC on the field. As soon as I set it's vision, the entire screen turns black for players, despite a section of the fog of war being removed.
Umm. It is behaving correctly.

NPC = NON-Player Character. Having an NPC with vision does nothing for the players. So in the player view you get is black.

Drop a Player token in that area and give it vision and you will get what you are looking for.

Generally speaking you don't put vision on NPCs.

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Post by Frozen-Solid »

Phergus wrote: NPC = NON-Player Character. Having an NPC with vision does nothing for the players. So in the player view you get is black.
I know what an NPC is, and it doesn't do anything for players, but it should be there for the GMs. The problem is that NPC vision being enabled for the GM to see, causes the entire map to turn black for the players unless there are already PC tokens in play with vision.

When you manually cut away some fog of war that should be revealed to the players. It should be somewhat grayed out, but still visible, even if it's not visible to the PC tokens. It's like IC knowledge of the terrain, but inability to actually SEE what's there. The NPC should be hidden behind the transparent gray "soft" fog but players still should be able to see the terrain from the removed black fog of war.

Right now, if you use the fog drawing tools to remove fog, and have vision enabled on players, the player vision is completely visible, the place that the fog is removed is grayed out, but still somewhat transparent, and the fog area is black. Without player vision it should just be that shadowy illumination/grayed out semi-transparent. Not pure black. That's basically saying the players know the room, but the characters can't see anything. This happens in a Darkness spell for instance, where you'd have to remove the PC vision but still have the grayed out terrain there.

In some dugeons NPC vision DOES make a difference if they also don't have dark vision or ways to see the party coming. Good players should be able to exploit weak NPC vision if they strategize right too, so it does come in handy.

Okay examples:

GM View:
Image

Bad Player View:
Image

What the player SHOULD see:
Image

Player view with vision:
Image
Last edited by Frozen-Solid on Sun Sep 23, 2007 3:25 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by Hawke »

So it seems like it does this, NPC vision is turned on, enabling the vision system as a whole. The vision system then probably blacks everything out and then checks to see what the PCs can see and square everything up at that point. Since no PC has vision it doesn't square it all up?

Once vision is enabled (even for an NPC) the FOW should function just the same.

Curious.

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Post by Frozen-Solid »

Sorry just added the player view with vision enabled image (I forgot about that one). The vision system is blacking EVERYTHING out if the NPC has vision on, but the players don't, rather than graying the stuff where fog of war is removed.

FOW isn't functioning the same depending on PC/NPC vision being enabled. It functions differently if only NPC vision is enabled, as you can see in the image.

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Post by Hawke »

Thanks for the images - it really helps make the point.

While I think initially I - like others - wasn't quite understanding exactly what was happening and when it was happening, I definitely see how it's a bug now. :oops:

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