Feeback on Build 3

Discussion of initiative tool.

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Phergus
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Feeback on Build 3

Post by Phergus »

As I mentioned somewhere else, this build was a big improvement. It is at the I can use it for a game stage. The custom fields will help me a lot and as will the initiative changes.

Wishlist:

When adding combatants to either a Group or into the main Initiative window it should remember the last Creature Type used. Kind of annoying to always have to select Player each time when adding a group of PCs.

Move Up/Down need hotkeys. Shift-Up/Down or Ctrl-Up/Down would be fine.

Let the +/- keys add to or subtract from the Initative of the selected Item.

Need some way to just jump to the start of the next round skipping over any remaining items BUT properly incrementing/decrementing timers and such. A button, menu item and hotkey would all be good.

Would like a Reset Encounter menu item under Actions to reset it to the starting point.

Long term I would like to see the ability to define lists of Monsters such that if I want to add in 20 goblins then it gets the appropriate values from the list along with any custom fields.

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jay
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Post by jay »

Sorry it took me so long to get back to you, I missed this post. I read the forums from 2 different places and sometimes it doesn't mark them as new for me.
Phergus wrote: When adding combatants to either a Group or into the main Initiative window it should remember the last Creature Type used. Kind of annoying to always have to select Player each time when adding a group of PCs.

Move Up/Down need hotkeys. Shift-Up/Down or Ctrl-Up/Down would be fine.

Let the +/- keys add to or subtract from the Initative of the selected Item.

Need some way to just jump to the start of the next round skipping over any remaining items BUT properly incrementing/decrementing timers and such. A button, menu item and hotkey would all be good.

Would like a Reset Encounter menu item under Actions to reset it to the starting point.
All of these are good suggestions, I'll add a tracker.
Phergus wrote:Long term I would like to see the ability to define lists of Monsters such that if I want to add in 20 goblins then it gets the appropriate values from the list along with any custom fields.
Have you tried out the group support yet? It does what I think you are saying.

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Post by Phergus »

Jay wrote:
Phergus wrote:Long term I would like to see the ability to define lists of Monsters such that if I want to add in 20 goblins then it gets the appropriate values from the list along with any custom fields.
Have you tried out the group support yet? It does what I think you are saying.
Sorry. Badly worded.

I was talking about letting IT import lists of monster definitions from CSV or XML files. That way I can pick from a list of monsters in the Add Creature dialog and the relevant properties would be filled in with the defaults from the definition. Mostly just something to think about for the future.

It occurs to me that Creature Type is not a very accurate label as you don't really define creatures here but instead more broad categories. It's more of a Item type or Token type as most things will probably fall within just a few categories: PC, Monster/NPC (and possibly Hostile, Neutral, Friendly) and default.

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jay
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Post by jay »

Phergus wrote: Sorry. Badly worded.

I was talking about letting IT import lists of monster definitions from CSV or XML files. That way I can pick from a list of monsters in the Add Creature dialog and the relevant properties would be filled in with the defaults from the definition. Mostly just something to think about for the future.
Ah, that makes sense. It seems like it would be a good idea to be able to generate these lists from DMGenie or PCGen as well. I added a tracker for it.
Phergus wrote: It occurs to me that Creature Type is not a very accurate label as you don't really define creatures here but instead more broad categories. It's more of a Item type or Token type as most things will probably fall within just a few categories: PC, Monster/NPC (and possibly Hostile, Neutral, Friendly) and default.
You are right it doesn't describe what they are used for. Would changing it to 'Creature Catagory' be better?

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Post by Phergus »

Would changing it to 'Creature Catagory' be better?
Hmm. How about 'Combatant Category'?

Category is definitely better than Type in any case.

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jay
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Re: Feeback on Build 3

Post by jay »

Phergus wrote: Would like a Reset Encounter menu item under Actions to reset it to the starting point.
With this reset do you want the encounter reset to when the 'Start Encounter' button was pressed? That will remove all changes added since you hit the button last? Including other creatures and and spell timers?

Or do you just want the initiative order to be restored?

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Post by Phergus »

My original thought was to just to reset the rounds counter to zero without changing anything else.

The context was that for each encounter I would like to keep all of the PCs and their associated info from the previous encounter when starting a new one.

That way if in the previous encounter some spell had been cast on a player it would still be noted and if needed I could quickly adjust the remaining duration. This also relates to the request for tracking overall game time.

A confirmation dialog with a couple checkboxes would be handy. One for clearing all timers and another for clearing anything that isn't a "player".

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