Auras - 1: Range increments, and 2: Transparency

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bubblobill
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Auras - 1: Range increments, and 2: Transparency

Post by bubblobill »

I have been using auras on characters to show elements of facing; Front, Side, Rear, etc. This is used to determine how attacks against the character are resolved, and additionally, what actions/attacks the character can take against an opponent.

Here is an example that uses three auras.

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Influence Zone
----
Front: aura cone arc=180 7#00dd00
Rear: aura circle 7.5#222222
Side: aura cone arc=300 7.3#00bb00
Image2.png
Image2.png (19.31 KiB) Viewed 8340 times
My problem is that there are zones of influence that extend beyond this. Think of reach weapons.
So I have three more auras that get stacked with a larger range. I now have six auras.

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Long Front: aura cone arc=140 12.5#00e00e
Long Side: aura cone arc=270 12.5#00e0ee
Restriction Zone: aura circle 12.5#bb0000
Image4.png
Image4.png (11.08 KiB) Viewed 8340 times
Difficulties arise from the colours stacking. Not very pretty.
If I could have a transparent hole in the middle of the second set it would be better.

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Aura with hole: aura cone arc=140 7.5 12.5#00e00e
                     start radius-^    ^-finish radius
If I could also determine the start and end of an arc it would be better again.

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Aura partial arc: aura cone arc=90 arc=120 7.5 12.5#00e00e
                  start angle-^       ^-finish angle
This seems to build on the existing light definitions.
Is there any chance of seeing this in future releases?

Rev
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Lee
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Re: Auras - 1: Range increments, and 2: Transparency

Post by Lee »

The basic reply to this is that MapTool is on a feature freeze, and all requests here will be taken as suggestions for MT 1.4.

Fleshing out your idea, I think that:

1. Instead of transparency, your case can also be solved by a combination of opacity on the first set, and stacking order (of auras). While it utilizes 2 attributes instead just the 1 that would determine the transparent "donut hole", IMO, it would provide a more flexible scheme for other creative applications. Adding a 3rd factor for setting overall transparency/opacity, then control would be absolute. Whether some would see that as more fluff than substance, is a matter of opinion; though it would also determine whether or not an MT dev would take the trouble of implementing it.

2. When you say "determine", your intention is to rotate the aura according to a token's facing, is this correct? If not, then why would this be convenient for you? What are your current methods to workaround the lack of this feature you're requesting for?

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Bone White
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Re: Auras - 1: Range increments, and 2: Transparency

Post by Bone White »

On the back of this, for feature use I feel that there needs to be other parameters to be passed as an aura:

startRadius - The radius at which to start drawing the token in pixels, where 0 is the centre of the token.
offsetAngle - The angle at which the aura starts, where the tokenFacing is 0.

This would address all the op issues, and my own with using auras to show flanking angles.


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Bone White
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Re: Auras - 1: Range increments, and 2: Transparency

Post by Bone White »

wolph42 wrote:I think that offsetRadius is in that case more consistent.
An angle is a measurement in degrees, a radius is a measurement of length from the centre of a circle to the edge. When offsetting the "start" of the aura, we are not altering the radius, but the angle at which it begins.

An arc which covers 90 degrees (a right angle) which is offset by 90 degrees (clockwise) would begin at 45 degrees, and end at 135 degrees (if using cardinal points and the token is facing north, then the arc would cover NE to SE).

I don't have time right now to draw pictures to explain, but I would expect the function to include startRadius,endRadius,radiusColor,radiusTransparency,auraOffsetAngle and possibly even a texture to use as the colour...

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wolph42
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Re: Auras - 1: Range increments, and 2: Transparency

Post by wolph42 »

Bone White wrote:
wolph42 wrote:I think that offsetRadius is in that case more consistent.
An angle is a measurement in degrees, a radius is a measurement of length from the centre of a circle to the edge. When offsetting the "start" of the aura, we are not altering the radius, but the angle at which it begins.

An arc which covers 90 degrees (a right angle) which is offset by 90 degrees (clockwise) would begin at 45 degrees, and end at 135 degrees (if using cardinal points and the token is facing north, then the arc would cover NE to SE).

I don't have time right now to draw pictures to explain, but I would expect the function to include startRadius,endRadius,radiusColor,radiusTransparency,auraOffsetAngle and possibly even a texture to use as the colour...
I know that. I just meant that it's better to be consistent in the naming convention. And the there are two options either stat with 'start' or 'offset' and since 'startAngle' will be rather confusing IMO, I think it's better to use the words:
'offsetAngle' and 'offsetRadius'. As for the others I would say that
-radius
-color
-transparancy
Should do for the other function types, cause (let me return a lecture) a 'radius' is a length and a length does not have color nor a transparency.

Overall though I would be much happier to be able to define these types on the fly instead of the need to predefine them. As currently I use the auras for weapon ranges and each weapon has three types of range, ending up in currently about 200 different types that I needed to define and with every new weapon that appears I need to add these...

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Bone White
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Re: Auras - 1: Range increments, and 2: Transparency

Post by Bone White »

wolph42 wrote:Should do for the other function types, cause (let me return a lecture) a 'radius' is a length and a length does not have color nor a transparency.
True. I need to stop posting just before bedtime :roll:

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Cherno
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Re: Auras - 1: Range increments, and 2: Transparency

Post by Cherno »

Any chance that you could make the aura macro available? I'd love to use these for my D&D game on all enemies that have damaging auras because I forget about them all the time :roll:
You circle auras look much nicer than the built-in light source auras :)

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jfrazierjr
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Re: Auras - 1: Range increments, and 2: Transparency

Post by jfrazierjr »

Cherno wrote:Any chance that you could make the aura macro available? I'd love to use these for my D&D game on all enemies that have damaging auras because I forget about them all the time :roll:
You circle auras look much nicer than the built-in light source auras :)
Not quite sure what you are talking about. I am fairly sure all of the OP's pictures show the standard Aura functionality by using MULTIPLE Aura's stacked. In general, this is a fairly bad idea because of all of the additional shapes which must be calculated, but this may be fine for him depending upon how much he relies on VBL, etc.

The real solution is that in 1.x, Aura's will NOT be lights but part of the template system which would be able to be moved, etc. At that point, you can then just use whatever image you want for a template(including Auras). This may or may not make it into 1.4, but won't be part of 1.3 in any event.
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Get your Dropbox 2GB via my referral link, and as a bonus, I get an extra 250 MB of space. Even if you don't don't use my link, I still enthusiastically recommend Dropbox..

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Cherno
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Re: Auras - 1: Range increments, and 2: Transparency

Post by Cherno »

jfrazierjr wrote:
Cherno wrote:Any chance that you could make the aura macro available? I'd love to use these for my D&D game on all enemies that have damaging auras because I forget about them all the time :roll:
You circle auras look much nicer than the built-in light source auras :)
Not quite sure what you are talking about. I am fairly sure all of the OP's pictures show the standard Aura functionality by using MULTIPLE Aura's stacked. In general, this is a fairly bad idea because of all of the additional shapes which must be calculated, but this may be fine for him depending upon how much he relies on VBL, etc.

The real solution is that in 1.x, Aura's will NOT be lights but part of the template system which would be able to be moved, etc. At that point, you can then just use whatever image you want for a template(including Auras). This may or may not make it into 1.4, but won't be part of 1.3 in any event.
I can't find any Auras that look the way they do in the OP, stacked or not. All I have are the Normal Auras that are just a colored line along the edges of the token's cell, and the light source auras which create an area of colored squares of varying transparency around the token in a 1-1-1 fashion, like a 5x5 field for a burst-2 aura :?:
I'm using 87b by the way.

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jfrazierjr
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Re: Auras - 1: Range increments, and 2: Transparency

Post by jfrazierjr »

Cherno wrote: I can't find any Auras that look the way they do in the OP, stacked or not. All I have are the Normal Auras that are just a colored line along the edges of the token's cell, and the light source auras which create an area of colored squares of varying transparency around the token in a 1-1-1 fashion, like a 5x5 field for a burst-2 aura :?:
Still not quite sure what you mean. You say "All I have".... is that indicative of the fact that you don't KNOW that you can add Aura's to the "default" list??? Or???? At this point, perhaps we should pretend I am a total idiot so I am not making any assumptions and can go by exactly what you say....
I save all my Campaign Files to DropBox. Not only can I access a campaign file from pretty much any OS that will run Maptool(Win,OSX, linux), but each file is versioned, so if something goes crazy wild, I can always roll back to a previous version of the same file.

Get your Dropbox 2GB via my referral link, and as a bonus, I get an extra 250 MB of space. Even if you don't don't use my link, I still enthusiastically recommend Dropbox..

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Cherno
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Re: Auras - 1: Range increments, and 2: Transparency

Post by Cherno »

Believe it or not but I actually did not know I could create auras :D

When I first started using MT this was one of the first things I tried but I could find no way to do it, I guess I searched in the wrong places, and because I didn't care for lights I didn't looks there :oops:

Now I know (theoretically) how to do it. Thanks for kinda pointing me in the right direction ;)

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bubblobill
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Re: Auras - 1: Range increments, and 2: Transparency

Post by bubblobill »

Soooo... playing with 1.5 I see we now have angle offset for conic auras. Who coded that and how do I harass them into coding "hole-in-the-middle"?
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Re: Auras - 1: Range increments, and 2: Transparency

Post by Phergus »

The same way you get any new features.

File an issue on GitHub.

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