MT Skirmish test with Savage Worlds

[trevor]

So, I got to use MT in a game for the first time tonight (I know, I know, shocker! But ordinarily I prefer to spend my free time coding).

Played some SavageWorlds with Snikle and crew, it was fun, we were all learning the new system.

I took a bunch of notes on things I'd like changed.

Man, you guys have been going too easy on me ! Sheesh ! Let's get this thing polished. Here's my list, some of which already have trackers, some don't, most are trivial:

Make a Quick Guide:

Include how to make Character and OOC macros
Include setting up token macros

I don't recall this ever being brought up before, but a reaaaally easy way to switch between OOC and your one or more toons is to create a macro for OOC, and one for each toon. In OOC, make the macro '/im' (just that easy), then for each toon '/im <tokenname>', and name the macro button the toon name. Then switching from OOC to a toon and back is trivially done by clicking on the macro button with their name. Easy ! I need to document that somewhere.

TODO:
- Add smilies auto insertion into chat (like IM clients do)
- when scrolling past long text, it jumps and it goes off the screen
- put thumbnail of token near the text entry window when impersonating speech
- need token ownsership on player connection list
- colorize whispers
- move impersonate text to the left, so easier to see when typing, perhaps put the token there too
- Player-Is-Typing indicators
- Need way to know what everyone is looking at
- make show-grid a per map config
- rolling is totally cluttered (is redundant) when using a single dice 1d6 => 6 => 6
- need to colorize player name in chat
- chat panel needs to be anti aliased
- fix macro bug not commiting when hit OK
- Get rid of the final red dot in a path when moving a token
- The grid really needs to blend with the map better
- make halo selection be a swatch, not text
- make delineation of player name and action more distinct
- Token property dialog needs to be disposed of on close
- Movement path needs to pause for a moment before disappearing

GOOD:
Token macros are da bomb. I put in a macro for each skill roll, which made combat much easier, just right click my token->Macro->Fighting and it rolls as that token. It was freaking sweet !

Here's a picture of our inaugural battle:



You can see that my macro buttons had one for each of my two toons, and one for ooc.

[Dracorat]

The scrolling problem - you should figure out the size of the client window vs the text size and instead of storing one entire string at a time in the scroll buffer break it up when its multiple lines to single lines (in memory).

That's my thought on that.

And its an awesome prog =)

[Michael Silverbane]

So, I got to use MT in a game for the first time tonight (I know, I know, shocker! But ordinarily I prefer to spend my free time coding).

Good lord, man! You're doing this whole thing for the love of gaming... And you don't even get to use it!? We've got to get you into more games!

Later
silver

[Full Bleed]

So, I got to use MT in a game for the first time tonight (I know, I know, shocker! But ordinarily I prefer to spend my free time coding).

Played some SavageWorlds with Snikle and crew, it was fun, we were all learning the new system.

I took a bunch of notes on things I'd like changed.

Man, you guys have been going too easy on me ! Sheesh ! Let's get this thing polished.

Heh, I haven't had my first game yet either... but I know I'm doing my darndest to make suggestions to move MT into a position I can commit so much time to sitting in front of. Choosing the VTT that we're going to commit to is a pretty big deal to me and my players... and considering that my core game started somewhere around '84 I think it's pretty clear to why we have high expectations.

At any rate, I'm very happy to see you getting in some play time. It's got to help you with development.

Include how to make Character and OOC macros
Include setting up token macros

I would like to see the Macro panel be a little cleaner too. That is, though I like that we can have 100 macros, I'd prefer if it only showed the ones we actually use.

TODO:
- Add smilies auto insertion into chat (like IM clients do)
- when scrolling past long text, it jumps and it goes off the screen
- put thumbnail of token near the text entry window when impersonating speech
- need token ownsership on player connection list
- colorize whispers
- move impersonate text to the left, so easier to see when typing, perhaps put the token there too
- Player-Is-Typing indicators

All will be nice tweaks.

- Need way to know what everyone is looking at

In what way do you mean?

As mentioned elsewhere, I hope it becomes very easy for a GM to see what players are seeing. I'd like it to be as simple as clicking on their token.

- make show-grid a per map config
- rolling is totally cluttered (is redundant) when using a single dice 1d6 => 6 => 6
- need to colorize player name in chat
- chat panel needs to be anti aliased
- fix macro bug not commiting when hit OK

Another nice batch of tweaks!

- Get rid of the final red dot in a path when moving a token

And we need waypoint support for non-snap-to-grid tokens. I haven't been a pest about this since I am patiently waiting to see how approved-move ends up looking.

- The grid really needs to blend with the map better

Perhaps this is one reason I'm so anti-grid and hate to see the grid/cells limiting development. The grid and cells just aren't as important in a program when you have good measurement tools. I know in Battlegrounds I usually put the grid at only 10-20% opacity... though I'd rather play with no grid in just about every case. Unfortunately, the movement/measurement tools of BRPG and MT are still not all that friendly to non-grid players.

- Movement path needs to pause for a moment before disappearing

Won't be as much an issue with approved move.

[trevor]

Good lord, man! You're doing this whole thing for the love of gaming

Actually, for the love of coding It's a little known fact that I'm actually not a gamer, the other rptools team members are, I just like to code.

Which is why I rely on you all, the community, to help me know how to make it more useful

[Amaril]

Here's a few others I can think of:

• Drag a player name from the connections list onto a token for ownership.
• Edit existing visions from round to block to cone without have to create a new one and disable the old one
• Disabling unchecking vision should not require one to open the vision, uncheck "Enable," and close the vision properties.
• Since MapTool defaults to a grid situation, default vision should be blocked round rather than round.
• Allow text boxes to be moved and resized.
• Allow macros to handle keyboard shortcuts

I'm sure I'll have more. Right now I can't recall all of them.

[trevor]

The scrolling problem - you should figure out the size of the client window vs the text size and instead of storing one entire string at a time in the scroll buffer break it up when its multiple lines to single lines (in memory).

actually this is what it does, and that's probably what's causing the problem. In order to bypass the slowness in 1.1 I broke up each row and put it into a table.

The problem was that there was enough text such that trying to drag the scrollbar wasn't granular enough, and clicking on the arrows on the scrollbar would move by one table row, not one row of text, so lines that spanned the entire viewing space have their middle section get jumped.

[Dracorat]

That's the change I am proposing - figure out line width and break a single long block of text to shorter chunks.

It's simple enough in reality of a solution I'm probably insulting you just mentioning it like you couldn't figure that out yourself ><

[Hawke]

- make show-grid a per map config

This would be neat as long as it was changeable in-game still. Often times we'll enjoy no grid as we explore but will eventually require the grid to be turned on once combat gets pretty heavy.

- Movement path needs to pause for a moment before disappearing

That would be neat. Another option might be an option to "show last path" much like "show token names" that you could toggle on and off. Don't know how that'd look or how useful it might be... but again, GM approved moves is also anticipated!

Token macros are da bomb. I put in a macro for each skill roll, which made combat much easier, just right click my token->Macro->Fighting and it rolls as that token. It was freaking sweet !

Yeah, I really like them. Especially as a DM who might have to manage several creatures at once. It makes rolling nice when dealing with Goblin 1 through Goblin 10 without things getting confused. Once targeting is in, that will continue to be better (;)).

One suggestion with Macros... would it make sense to move the "Macros" to the top of the right click menu? It seems like 9/10 times you're right-clicking a token you'll either be using a macro or editing the properties. Seems like UI would dictate that those two be at the extremes of the menu to make them easier to click. I don't use facing that much, so maybe I'm underestimating how much that would affect face changes.

Glad you had fun! Too bad I couldn't make it!

[Amaril]

• Disabling unchecking vision should not require one to open the vision, uncheck "Enable," and close the vision properties.

Thinking about it more, instead of new vision, have edit vision, which brings up an interface where one can add, edit, or delete vision.

[dLANbandit]

I don't recall this ever being brought up before, but a reaaaally easy way to switch between OOC and your one or more toons is to create a macro for OOC, and one for each toon. In OOC, make the macro '/im' (just that easy), then for each toon '/im <tokenname>', and name the macro button the toon name. Then switching from OOC to a toon and back is trivially done by clicking on the macro button with their name. Easy ! I need to document that somewhere.

That was actually one of the reasons I suggested /im way back when we were 1st talking about it. So the DM could change what NPC they were talking as quickly and easily.

- need token ownsership on player connection list
- colorize whispers
- move impersonate text to the left, so easier to see when typing, perhaps put the token there too
- need to colorize player name in chat

These are a number of the chat problems I have been going on and on about, that need to be there for better player immersion.

All of these indications also need to be identical for each type. What I mean, is if Player A sets Wispers to purple, and PLayer B sets them to Green, when PLayer B talkes to Player A, Player A currently gets the whisper confused with his OOC that he set to green. So to fix that the clients need to only control display on their screen of each message type, NOT control what color is sent to other clients. Thus one of my reasons for saying chat messages need to be distributed without text settings at the client, but still allow the client to change their own display.

[Azhrei]

I did some research awhile back on radial (or "pie") menus in Java. There were a couple that were open source, but I never got to the point of implementing one of them.

I would love to see radial menus, though. This whole thing with rectangular menus reeks! (I would have used stronger terms, but there could be children reading these forums. )

And I would like to see some kind of autoscroll when the left mouse button is being used to drag. For example, if I left-drag a token, I'd like to see the map scroll when he token gets to the edge of the map.

After reading your description of token macros, I'm going to have to return to that topic and try them out. I played with them a bit but didn't see how they worked. They sound really cool, though! And when Javascript is implemented ... man!

[trevor]

Good ideas. Actually, maptool version .000001 had a radial menu that I hobbled together as a proof of concept. It didn't make the cut though. If someone wanted to draw a picture of what it would look like and how it would be organized to handle the many options, I'd be happy to revisit it.

I'm going to have to return to that topic and try them out.

This is what I did, in the "Key" column put "Fighting", then in the Action column put "Fighting [1d6] Wild [1d6]", then when I wanted my token Alfred to fight, I'd right click the token->Macros->Fighting and it would put this into the chat:

Alfred: Fighting <<1d6> 6 => 6>> Wild <<1d6> 3 => 3>>

Which ruled. Except that the => 3 was redundant. So look for cleaner rolls to show up.

[Amaril]

Something similar to menus in Atari's Temple of Elemental Evil wouldn't be bad.

[trevor]

Something similar to menus in Atari's Temple of Elemental Evil wouldn't be bad.

Perfect timing, I just bought that from amazon marketplace last week