Hello,
I just spent the last few hours re-reading all the forum messages for InitTool to get a feel for its development. It has a tremendous amount of promise and a great pedigree (MapTools).
Now that scripting is being developed, I feel it will really take off. That said I have a few random thoughts and I will post a few topics to cover some thoughts I had as I re-read the posts.
In general, I am interested in getting a real feel for where InitTool is heading. It now has some scripting. It appears to now have properties for or can have added, nearly any stat you wish to track on your character. With that information, it is 'nearly' an electronic character sheet with 'dynamic play' abilities like say, "The Only Sheet", HeroForge or PCGEN.
It is however named, InitTool.
I guess my question here is, where do you eventually see this tool heading in the future?
Will it be a full blown combat tracker, like say DMGenie? Is it just going to be a round tracker (I doubt it, why have all the stats)? Will it replace my electronic character sheet?
What about the character data overlaps. Character stats for instance between InitTool, MapTool, TokenTool and the suggested CharacterTool and other apps like PCGen and other electronic character apps?
My point being, where will the input pipe be for getting character data into all these tools? Since InitTool has more stat tracking data internal than MapTool, is the idea to use InitTool to setup the groups and move them into MT? IT now has a copy of the D&D SRD for monsters. The idea of having to input the character/monsters data in BOTH IT and MT seems big waste of time.
To me, it seems that before these tools get too mature and set in their ways, some serious thought about the character data over lap should be very high up on the wish list. What about scripting and macros between the apps? I see scripts in IT now. Will scripting in MT use the same base?
These are great tools, but I am seriously worried about duplicated data input for character stats and fragmentation of features in these tools. Right now, from my limited viewing window, I see a big difference in how IT and MT add token/character data. For instance, how is IT going to get its data into MT. When I drag a token is it going to bring all the token data (Vars) over and then check to see it the system vars exist in MT and if they don't will it set it all up with out any user interaction? And what about an MT token (with no special vars) loaded into IT, will it inherit all the IT data? And what about the auto-calc features of IT when a token moves to MT. Will that all be lost in the MT display and readouts?
I'm sure your already talking about this issue, but if not I wanted to bring it up for discussion.
Now, back to IT being a combat tracker. I hope that is the direction your planning. I'd love to see the meat of a DMGenie like tool rolled into these tools, and allow the user to still sculpt it to the required game system.
I'd really love to see the DMGenie Conditions system worked into IT. I still love DMGenie, but it doesn't do other game systems, like Star Wars Saga and it looks like IT will.
I'd like to see the IT display have a bit more information like in DMG (HP, AC, Rnd, Notes, etc.). The card view is cool, but it should show more battle data in the characters list.
I am setting up a new Star Wars Saga group and hope to use both IT and MT and automate as much as possible. I am already having withdrawal pains from my D&D (DMGenie) game (where I use MT), but it will be fun to get it all set up in your suite of tools and push it to the limits.
Thanks for the great tools.
-David
Random thoughts on IT, MT and electronic helpers.
IT started as just an initiative tracker. But, calculating the initiative for all of the different games available is difficult. So as I added functionality to do this IT slowly became more of a character tracker. In 1.1 I decided to add scripting and update the properties so that they can be used as a character sheet. I put this in a separate library and created a character tool from it. IT and CT use all of the same data. The idea is that eventually they will be integrated into MT for a single tool.