I have been playing RPG games for many years and recently found out about the virtual table tops which are really great. Since our group made an own RPG system which is running in Excel with complicated formulas to create a pretty realistic character the other virtual tabletops are not an option since they cannot be adapted as much as MapTool, so I started reading about MapTool and tested it and it seems pretty decent.
But there was one thing that I had to change really fast and that is the color of the client
It is pretty easy for a programmer to change the look and feel of MapTool and so I hope that one of the experienced MapTool programmers can integrate an option to choose between the standard look and feel and at least also this black one.
This is how my client looks now.
I am not sure if everything is perfect with the black color since I have been using MapTool for like 8 hours overall and therefore don't have much experience with it. What definitely should be changed is the chat Text color which while writing is white but once you confirm it is black.
What I changed is not much. I used the HiFiLookAndFeel from http://www.jtattoo.net. They offer these look and feels under the GNU license (If your are an open source developer you can use it under the terms and conditions of the GNU General Public License version 2.0 or later as published by the Free Software Foundation) so I guess we are fine to integrate the look and feel into MapTool.
I downloaded the 1.4 version from GitHub and did the following changes:
In the file "maptool\build.gradle" I added the following line after the other compile statements. This imports the JTattoo look and feels
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compile 'com.jtattoo:JTattoo:1.6.11'
In the file "maptool\maptool\src\main\java\net\rptools\maptool\client\MapTool.java" I changed the following code:
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String lafname;
if (MAC_OS_X) {
UIManager.setLookAndFeel(UIManager.getSystemLookAndFeelClassName());
menuBar = new AppMenuBar();
//lafname = "net.rptools.maptool.client.TinyLookAndFeelMac"; // white look and feel
lafname = "com.jtattoo.plaf.hifi.HiFiLookAndFeel"; // thats the black look and feel
UIManager.setLookAndFeel(lafname);
macOSXicon();
}
// If running on Windows based OS, CJK font is broken when using TinyLAF.
// else if (WINDOWS) {
// UIManager.setLookAndFeel("com.sun.java.swing.plaf.windows.WindowsLookAndFeel");
// menuBar = new AppMenuBar();
// }
else {
//lafname = "de.muntjak.tinylookandfeel.TinyLookAndFeel"; // <-- white look
//lafname = "javax.swing.plaf.metal.MetalLookAndFeel"; // <-- another possible mostly white Look and Feel
lafname = "com.jtattoo.plaf.hifi.HiFiLookAndFeel"; // thats the black look and feel
UIManager.setLookAndFeel(lafname);
menuBar = new AppMenuBar();
}
Since I had problems with building and creating a release version of the project I disabled some test code in the file
"maptool\maptool\src\test\java\net\rptools\maptool\client\AppUtilTest.java". That should not be done and I'm sure that won't be neccessary for the MapTool programmers. I just wanted to have a fast result.
I did only run it on my windows 8.1 machine and didn't test alot so far. My hopes are that maybe one day someone finds or creates an awesome look and feel which truely fits to fantasy RPGs. But that black one is a good start in my opinion since at least for me the white version makes it really hard to get into the mood of a thrilling atmosphere in certain situations. In my opinion the look of Fantasy Grounds is really decent
Best regards,
Jonathan