MapTool 1.3b19 Progress

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

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trevor
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Post by trevor »

The only concern with that is the amount of overhead and maintainence the GM has to go through in order to set up these special substance based layouts. Do you really want to spend the time drawing 8+ layers of vbl for each of the special kinds of substances ?
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RPMiller
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Post by RPMiller »

It actually won't be that involved. There won't be that many characters with N-Ray vision or with detects. I was just putting forth a number that would reflect a maximum.

Also, that substance layer is going to be a minor thing found within the map. I doubt someone is going to build their super villain base completely out of lead for example.

Note, the "Special VBL Substance" is going to be something rare, not common, 9/10 times. So the vast majority of the map will be normal VBL which the Super will be able to just look right through.
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Hawke
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Post by Hawke »

RPMiller wrote:is if there was a set of say 8 additional VBLs
:shock:

Can't wait for the light stuff! I think I'll have to update my cool mini-wargame for night combat. Maybe use flares or something to light up particular areas... maybe you could have a nightvision operative, too... ::thinks::

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Skyryder
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Post by Skyryder »

Hawke wrote: maybe you could have a nightvision operative, too... ::thinks::
"Nightvision...Darkvision...what's the difference?" One of the players in our campaign, just back from duty in Iraq, feels they're one in the same. Caused quite a time consuming argument during one gaming session. (Hence, the quote.)

Looking forward to testing B19
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Hawke
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Post by Hawke »

Oh yeah, I wasn't suggesting a different vision type just applying what's available to it.

What was the conclusion?

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trevor
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Post by trevor »

Update

Well, I think I've got most of the major bugs fixed (although Expose Last path is still broken).

Play testing with it though, I'm not super happy with the performance.

It's roughly play test-able though, in it's most basic form.

I could do a build for you guys, or keep profiling it some more to make it faster. Opinions ?
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Hawke
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Post by Hawke »

If you continue profiling when would you estimate a build?

When you say poor performance do you mean nearly untestable or nearly unplayable?

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trevor
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Post by trevor »

Hawke wrote: When you say poor performance do you mean nearly untestable or nearly unplayable?
It's slow when you have a ton of vbl. Slower than I like it. Which in this case means after moving a token, on my machine, it takes about 2-3 seconds to update the visible area. Me no likey.

But it's totally testable. Dorpond found one more odd bug that I'll work out then I'll make a build.
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dorpond
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Post by dorpond »

Here is a quick Preview of light/vision in action. Nothing fancy - just showing you how you can see the firepits as they come into vision (los).

It is funny because MT actually makes sense now. We were so used to using Vision for Light that it actually feels really cool behind the wheel now. :)

http://rptools.net/dorpond/demos/LightP ... eview.html

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trevor
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Post by trevor »

Couple keys to pull from the video:

* It's too slow. However, this map has a VBL outline around all the cavern walls using the poly line tool, which creates 2x more points than it needs, so it's a bit of a heavy weight to start with

* The campfires were visible and the surrounding lit area even though your own light doesn't reach that far.
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dLANbandit
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Post by dLANbandit »

in the video, when the user switches light sources, I don't see a menu item for vision type. That confuses me. I'm obviously missing something.

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RPMiller
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Post by RPMiller »

Ouch... Yea that is painfully slow. The light is working great though!
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Hawke
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Post by Hawke »

Looks cool! Can't wait to see what the community comes up with as far as uses go. How do you assign the light to the campfires?

I definitely see how slow it is... do you have a gameplan for taking care of it or still doing some more testing to figure out what exactly is going on?

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trevor
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Post by trevor »

dLANbandit wrote:in the video, when the user switches light sources, I don't see a menu item for vision type. That confuses me. I'm obviously missing something.
Vision types are in the next build or two, this is just the initial introduction of the overall system.
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trevor
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Post by trevor »

Hawke wrote:do you have a gameplan for taking care of it
Yup :)

Historical note: the original VBL was veeeery slow as well. Took a couple builds to make it usable.
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