Suggestions

[dorpond]

OK, I played with it a bit and these are my first thoughts:

1. I like the idea and have a need for it. DMGENIE is horrible in this area specifically when many people ready/delay and my players do that all the time. If this works well, I will use it all the time since I am using Flash Cards at the moment.

2. First thing I was looking for was a manual Initiative entry (My players like rolling their dice). First thing I tried was to double click on the character. Then I tried to right click in the character. I like double clicks and right clicks to get to properties and options. As for the manual initiative entry, it would be nice if we could do it in one screen vs. clicking on each character and going to another screen for each character. Basically, I would have a window pop up showing characters and their iniatives; the GM can then manually enter them all and click done - one window.

3. I play high level games - games where there are 5 or so conditions on each character that needs to be tracked. I see no way of doing this at the moment. I see where we can add timers but they are not attached to the character. Perhaps each timer condition could be inserted under (and indented) the character it pertains too? If this option is currently available, then it is too hard to find

4. When a timer expires, a little flag comes up. Not sure what it means or how to make it go away.

Can't wait to have a tool like this, especially if it eventually integrates into Maptools!

[dorpond]

How I would change the condition or timer option:

Right click on a character on the list. Pick Add Timer from the list. A window pops up where I can enter the name (Poisoned, Bulls Strength, ETC) and enter how many rounds.

Also, I would have an option to create a quicklist for every day conditions. For example, the Mage always does an extended Mage Armor on himself and the Monk that lasts for 14 hours. I would like to pull that from a quick list so I don't have to enter it every day. This could be good for other everyday items like torches, candles, lanterns, etc. This Quicklist would be maintained and modified by the GM and different for each character (if possible). This way the Barbarian could have a Rage timer, the Druid could have Shape Change timer, the Mage can have Mage Armor timer, etc.

[Steel Rat]

I couldn't open the file on my work PC. Says the only version supported is 1.0, and the required version is 1.5+...

[dorpond]

I couldn't open the file on my work PC. Says the only version supported is 1.0, and the required version is 1.5+...

I used the webstart version and it worked fine for me.

Can you create another thread on this so we can keep the focus of this one?

[dorpond]

A nice feature of DMGENIE is the ability to put 1H or 15M or 16R into the time field. The program would then convert it to rounds automatically.

Possible here or isn't the goal to track such large durations?

[Steel Rat]

A nice feature of DMGENIE is the ability to put 1H or 15M or 16R into the time field. The program would then convert it to rounds automatically.

Possible here or isn't the goal to track such large durations?

Only problem there is that you'd have to first specify how long a round or turn is. d20 is 6 seconds, most other sysems (that I've played) are less. So you'd need a field to hold the round duration.

[dorpond]

Ah yes, you are correct Steel. Perhaps an option screen then to specify time? (1 round = _ seconds)

[dorpond]

OK,

I played a bit more and found out my source of confusion.

The timers DO attach themselves to the characters but it puts them above them in the screen.

Can we show all set timers UNDER the character it is assigned to instead of above?
(I guess it is my IT frame of mind - this folder is subdirectory of that folder)

[jay]

OK, I played with it a bit and these are my first thoughts:

1. I like the idea and have a need for it. DMGENIE is horrible in this area specifically when many people ready/delay and my players do that all the time. If this works well, I will use it all the time since I am using Flash Cards at the moment.

We were doing the same thing in my group.

2. First thing I was looking for was a manual Initiative entry (My players like rolling their dice). First thing I tried was to double click on the character. Then I tried to right click in the character. I like double clicks and right clicks to get to properties and options. As for the manual initiative entry, it would be nice if we could do it in one screen vs. clikcing on each character and going to another screen for each character. Basically, I would have a window pop up with each character and their iniatives; the GM can then add what their final numbers are for all of them and click done - one window.

I agree about needing an easy way to enter the initiative, and I've been wondering what is the best way to do this. I was thinking about popping up a dialog when you start an encounter that would allow all of the initiatives to be set. You would type the initiative for a character and then hit tab to enter the iniative for the next character.

What would you want on the right click menu for a player? I really haven't looked into adding something like this, since there weren't a lot of options that were specific to the items in the encounter. Really there is just the item editor. I suppose I could add the wait state menu here too. Anything else?

Originally I was going to use double click as a way to place the creature in the default wait state. This doesn't work so well when you have a lot of different wait states to choose. I could easily make it open up the edit dialog as the default option, but I am open to suggestions for this.

3. I play high level games - games where there are 5 or so conditions on each character that needs to be tracked. I see no way of doing this at the moment. I see where we can add timers but they are not attached to the character. Perhaps each timer condition could be inserted under (and indented) the character it pertains too? If this option is currently available, then it is too hard to find

There is currently no way to track multiple conditions per creature. I can see how this would be needed. We can't really do it in the character tool, which is where I originally thought it should go, since only the init tool keeps track of 'time'.

I thought that the timers would be good enough to do this, but you can't actually tie the timer to one or more creatures. Should I make the timers be tied to a creature, or should I just allow multiple alarms to be added to each creature, or do I need to do both?

Showing all of the conditions in the encounter table itself will get very messy. Especially when there are 5 per creature. What if I just made them show up in a tool tip that describes the creature? If the tool tip is enough, then what should I show in the line item when something expires? The last condition to expire?

4. When a timer expires, a little flag comes up. Not sure what it means or how to make it go away.

All it means is that the timer has expired. One of the view options lets you turn off the countdown value, so the flag is the only way to know it has expired in this case. If the timer item is no longer needed, just delete it. If it is an alarm on a creature, you should be able to set it's alarm value to 0. This isn't working so I'll open a tracker for it (when that is available).

Can't wait to have a tool like this, especially if it eventually integrates into Maptools!

Sweet!

I'll open trackers on init tool for these suggestions once source forge is configured to let me do this.

[jay]

A nice feature of DMGENIE is the ability to put 1H or 15M or 16R into the time field. The program would then convert it to rounds automatically.

Possible here or isn't the goal to track such large durations?

It is possible, but I didn't expect it to be used for such long intervals. Encounters in out games seldom last longer than 1 or 2 minutes, which is what the design is based on. If you were going to keep track things for hours, what other functionality would you need?

[jay]

A nice feature of DMGENIE is the ability to put 1H or 15M or 16R into the time field. The program would then convert it to rounds automatically.

Possible here or isn't the goal to track such large durations?

Only problem there is that you'd have to first specify how long a round or turn is. d20 is 6 seconds, most other sysems (that I've played) are less. So you'd need a field to hold the round duration.

I could make this another configuration option.

[trevor]

I'll open trackers on init tool for these suggestions once source forge is configured to let me do this.

This should be done now

[jay]

How I would change the condition or timer option:

Right click on a character on the list. Pick Add Timer from the list. A window pops up where I can enter the name (Poisoned, Bulls Strength, ETC) and enter how many rounds.

I was thinking the same thing.

Also, I would have an option to create a quicklist for every day conditions. For example, the Mage always does an extended Mage Armor on himself and the Monk that lasts for 14 hours. I would like to pull that from a quick list so I don't have to enter it every day. This could be good for other everyday items like torches, candles, lanterns, etc. This Quicklist would be maintained and modified by the GM and different for each character (if possible). This way the Barbarian could have a Rage timer, the Druid could have Shape Change timer, the Mage can have Mage Armor timer, etc.

This is also a good idea, probably make it part of the groups support since you would not want to enter it for every encounter. Eventually you would want things like this defined in the character tool and then made available to the init tool for use.

[jay]

OK,

I played a bit more and found out my source of confusion.

The timers DO attach themselves to the characters but it puts them above them in the screen.

Can we show all set timers UNDER the character it is assigned to instead of above?
(I guess it is my IT frame of mind - this folder is subdirectory of that folder)

Actually you were right the first time, the timers and creatures are totally separate. I think that tieing them together is a good idea, not sure about showing all of them in the encounter list. It seems like that could get very confusing.

[dorpond]

Actually you were right the first time, the timers and creatures are totally separate. I think that tieing them together is a good idea, not sure about showing all of them in the encounter list. It seems like that could get very confusing.

My play time was very short - I will give InitTool more time later. So in a nutshell, I am kinda confused with the current Timer configuration and how it works.

As far as being confusing, yeah I guess it would if there were a lot of them on the list but that can easily get simplified with a + (expand) and - (collapse) area right under the person on the list

Rangers Name
(indent) -Conditions (or Timers - name is unimportant atm)
(Indented) Bulls Strength 17r
(Indented) Mage Armor 12h 35m 3r
(Indented) Poisoned 2r
(Indented) Disease Incubation 23h 12m 16r
(Indented) Torch 45m 5r
Mages Name
(indent) -Conditions
(Indented) Mage Armor 12h 35m 2r
(Indented) Invisibility 2m 4r

(I indented when posting but it wouldn't show it indented so I added indents to show that it is indented like an Explorer type view)

When we don't want to see them, Collapse them:

Rangers Name
(indent) +Conditions
Mages Name
(indent) +Conditions

If the Ranger had a condition that expired, you could have it automatically expand his condition list only and flag the one expired, this way it is right in the GM's face (and we won't have to collapse them all either afterwards - just his)

Thoughts?