Dragging and Dropping Between Init Tools

Discussion of initiative tool.

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RPTroll
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Dragging and Dropping Between Init Tools

Post by RPTroll »

I wrote:Would it be possible to save the current encounter to a group file? I looked around but couldn't find a way to do this. The reason I ask is that some values like hit points will change and I want to be able to save that off as is and work with other groups. The example would be an orc war party that ran away from one encounter but appears later in the adventure.

Another use for this would be to have several groups of different types of monster that you combine into one encounter to save off as a group called room37 that can be called up later when the players actually get to room 37.
OK, I was playing around with init tool and brought up two instance which also allowed me to bring up two instances of group tool. This comes in handy if you have two encounters going at once. I discovered you can drag groups from any instance of Group Tool into any instance of Init Tool which is handy if you have several group files you work from (which I do). As I was exploring I thought of several other options to save custom values on the encounter for later use.

1) Allow a drag and drop from one init tool instance to another. That way I take the creatures from room 37 and drag them to another version of init for later use. I then drag them back as needed.

2) Allow Load Encounter:Append in order to merge multiple encounter files. This way I can save the encounter of Room 37, bring it up in another init tool, edit, save then merge into another encounter later. I think this option gets tricky since you might have duplicate names.

3) Allow a drag and drop from init tool to group tool. You make a new group and drag the entries from init tool into it you want to save for later.

4) Or, as originally requested, allow an encounter to be saved off as a group. You lose all timings things but save the combatants.

Note, allowing multiselect in the list would help with the drag and drop operations if you could drag and drop from Init Tool. This appears only to work in group tool for now.

My 2 cents,
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Phergus
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Post by Phergus »

Very interesting. Being able to drag groups from one to the other could be quite useful.
Note, allowing multiselect in the list would help with the drag and drop operations if you could drag and drop from Init Tool. This appears only to work in group tool for now.
Wasn't there some reason why this couldn't/wouldn't/shouldn't be done?

My feeble memory is telling me that someone asked something similar before.

Otherwise all good suggestions IMO.

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jay
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Post by jay »

Dragging from init tool is a problem. First, I don't want to have multiple selects, since it would only be good for dragging and deleting items and it would complicate everything else. The bigger problem is figuring out what to drag. As I extend init tool to tie the timers to the creatures (think spell effects in D&D) it doesn't mean a whole lot to move a timer if you don't move all of the thing it effects as well. The same is true about moving a creature that has timers. Add in the request to allow editing custom values from the table and the drag becomes a pain, since then there are certain rows where you can only drag certain parts of it. All of this could be confusing to someone who is new to init tool.

The 'Append Encounter' and 'Save Encounter as Group' are things I can add. I've added a tracker for each of them. I will make the 'Append Encounter' read all of the items from an encounter and add them to the current encounter. All timers and creatures will be loaded with their existing initiative. New creatures/timers that have the same initiative as an existing creature will be placed above the existing items.

Saving the encounter as a group will only save the creatures, all timers are lost. Each creature will be saved as it's own creature in the group with a count of one. Initiative value and roll are lost, as well as all ordering of the creatures. All of the custom values will be copied over to the group. The group that is created will be copied to the group tool as a new group.

Are these requirements OK? Do we need a 'Append Group' function for GT as well? Anything else I'm missing?

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Post by RPTroll »

I think this fills the bill. I can drag one group from another group tool window into an existing group so a group append isn't required, although it might be more obvious to a new user.
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