Future of MapTool?

[mfrizzell]

It's funny how two experiences can be so different. I found RPTools because I was looking for a dice roller. I didn't even know VTT's existed. I played around with dicetool for a session or two then started looking at Maptool.
I watched the videos, they were not hard to find even when I didn't know they existed. Started reading the furum posts for about a couple of weeks to see what was going on then just asked questions.
You can pretty much see what Maptool does just by reading the posts. With everyone asking questions and others answering you see what goes on pretty darn quick.
Yeah some documentation would have been great but with the forum so active and people so helpful it does not take long to get up to playing speed.
I hope your future with Maptool is far better.

[wolph42]

@Mfrizzle, I guess everyone will look at MT and the website and the community from his or her own perspective. The question is:

Do we want to 'lure in' as many users as possible?

And its a valid question, currently MT has a high learning curve and maybe you only want people here who 'take there time to investigate'.

I will assume however that we want as many users as possible as it will add to the overall community and gives it more critical mass to generate more developers for both the tool and its content. In which case its very very useful to look at Dan's comments cause he's one of the very very few users that actually come back after a first fail AND are willing to share their experience.

That said I had a look at the RPTools website. (Haven't been there for quite a while, that's a hint Azh, get b89 up ).
There's the welcome, which gives the basics, although I dont recall every reading it. Then there are THREE menus where you can 'get' the tools. At least, it looks like that... it turns out that 'tools' looks exactly like 'downloads' but it isn't, I would suggest to at least let it LOOK different!!.
I also noticed the 'tutorials' page, so its there including the vids if people can't find *that* then petty them.
What I *DO* miss however is some kind of *getting started* page as Dan did point out. Which should at least contain a bunch of links to the forum, like the java7 issue, network trouble shooting, the drop-ins and the frameworks. And of course a basic introduction of how to start things up.
I guess it will also be helpfull to explain how this community and its contributions work, cause indeed that not really clear, it took me quite a while until I figured out that there were all kinds of great drop-ins and frameworks... which is VERY important knowledge to lure people in. And a short explanation that all the tools and there info are in the first post are apparently also necessary.

@Dan: which brings me to my tool(s). You said it gave you the impression that you had to wade through 44 pages... I had a look (and obviously Im overly biased) but if you go there and you see the first post... its ALL there, so what on earth gave you the impression that you ALSO needed to read the rest??
Edit: ah yes you mentioned the wiki: basically, it's too cumbersome for me to put it there also, that and I fail to see the difference between a button 'how to implement' vs a link (to the wiki) 'how to implement'. Though I have to admit you're not the first that mentions this issue ("got the feeling that I have to wade through x pages of forum'). So hence my curiosity to where this stems from.

[aku]

On the Wiki vs forum post thought: Forum posts are generally long, and generally "not organized", at least, not to the degree that a wiki can be. The question then is, can a wiki be organized well enough that it's beneficial over a forum post, while not "cluttering" the wiki, especially searches. For instance, most major frame works include a Lib:token at this point, but you really dont want the discussions of every single frame work to come up, if someone searches for information on Lib:tokens

[username]

I'm a little worried that MapTool is falling in to disrepair and that no new development or progress is being made. The current compatibility issues and difficulty in setting up a server by a new user is at least a big turn off.

Any other opinions out there? And what is going on with current development?

Unfortunately stuff outside MapTool has kept me busy lately so I haven't been able to dedicate that much time to it.
Having said that I am getting back into the swing of things now so I can start dedicating more time on MapTool.

As far as I was concerned MT 1.3 was where it should of been pre breaking of the freeze for individual views and
fog of war -- what unmitigated disaster breaking the freeze turned out to be -- so I was planning to move right
on to the next version. But from it seems that there is a few problems with latest releases so if someone could catch
me up with the problems with java 7 and what is broken with build 88 then I will look at that before starting the next
version. I know the information is probably some where on the forums but given people sound like they know the
problems all to well I thought it might be worth asking first before scouring a couple of months of posts -- call me
lazy if you will...

My feeling is that patches are available for many problems but the only one being able to produce seems Azhrei. The critical "drop token" bug was fixed quite fast, but it takes ages for a new version to get out. If someone else is able to produce a new version that would be great. (As pointed out before, this is not blaming Azhrei. It is to the whole community, including myself, that is not able to take some load off of him.)

One important patch is found here: http://forums.rptools.net/viewtopic.php ... 8&start=60. The most important patch is here: http://forums.rptools.net/viewtopic.php ... h&start=60 on page 5. Some others are strewn about. Maybe we should have a list of problems and a patch list to go with it?

[Jagged]

I will assume however that we want as many users as possible as it will add to the overall community and gives it more critical mass to generate more developers for both the tool and its content.

That would be my vote. Do I get a vote?

In which case its very very useful to look at Dan's comments cause he's one of the very very few users that actually come back after a first fail AND are willing to share their experience.

Maptool has a very steep learning curve. If I hadn't invested the time to learn the tool my group would not be using it. Incidentally my group consists of 3 computer scientists, 2 engineers and 1 lawyer. Not sure what that says but it says something.

It took me a considerable amount of time to work out how to use Maptool. Probably because I made the mistake of loading some frameworks as one of the first things I did. Big mistake. That's why I always recommend newbies use the tool as a Whiteboard first, before taking the dive into frameworks.

Its also coincidental that this thread is right next to two threads asking how to do the basics. Which reminds me, Port forwarding is probably the biggest turn off to potential users.

On the positive side the forum is very friendly. No one took the Michael when I asked how you got the various tools to work together.

[Toby]

Wolph, I've downloaded and installed your tools. Now to use them!

About the forums as a manual: I guess its my expectations. I expect a forum to be a place you discuss things, not a place to look up answers. You ask questions and get them answered in a Forum, you can even look up others' questions and answers, but its not a place that I go to look for a user manual. So when I saw your lead post, you knew that I didn't need to read beyond it, but I didn't.

The support group around this program is one of the best things about it, without dedicated, friendly, helpful people on this forum MapTool would be nothing.

Thanks to everyone for their help and support.

Dan

[wolph42]

Wolph, I've downloaded and installed your tools. Now to use them!

About the forums as a manual: I guess its my expectations. I expect a forum to be a place you discuss things, not a place to look up answers. You ask questions and get them answered in a Forum, you can even look up others' questions and answers, but its not a place that I go to look for a user manual. So when I saw your lead post, you knew that I didn't need to read beyond it, but I didn't.

The support group around this program is one of the best things about it, without dedicated, friendly, helpful people on this forum MapTool would be nothing.

Thanks to everyone for their help and support.

Dan

Well let me know how it goes. As for your expectations, I think thats clear and also something I personally can't really change much about. Its how this ENTIRE community works, there are a lot of FW and drop-ins and they all work along this principle. Someone (rptroll ?) should thus write some introduction or 'getting started' on the home page where this is explained. Its just the way we do things around here

[dorpond]

Good topic.

To be honest, I really miss Trevor and my time with him working on Maptool, but there is no need for me to be crying over spilled milk at this point. What needs to happen now is for someone to step up to the plate and replace the fire that Trevor brought to the table.

Me, I am like the community; we are the oxygen that can very eagerly fuel the fire of a super motivated developer(s). We just need to get someone in there who is fired up and eager to run with Maptool!

I am glad to see that Craig has stepped up to the plate while Azhrei is preoccupied; I do know that Trevor thought very highly of Craig and Azhrei, as individuals who are very capable of taking Maptool to great places - we had long conversations about it, trust me.

I know in my case, I will start burning again when I start seeing progress and excitement again. When someone steps up, I'll be there again, like I was with Trevor.
(not that anyone really cares anyway )

As far as a Final MT, we REALLY need to make 1.3 done - period. Make a final we are all proud to be showing off. Then if there is enough interest, let's move onto 2.0 or 1.4. With that said, I am again happy to hear that Craig is stepping up to the plate. When he digs in, we will need testers to verify, so let's do this together gang!

[Benz72]

Try this experiment, go to RPTools.net and look at what is actually there, not on another site, not on the forums or in the wiki. There is no documentation, there is no help section, the FAQ doesn't even include the most obvious question "How do I use this stuff?!" There are three different headings that allow you to download the tool, are they all the same? Maybe, there is no indication of what I actually need to use the program.

--snip--

What I am hearing out of this is there needs to be a 'quick start guide' with a prominent button on the main page.

Start 1: Set up connection, move generic tokens on a plain background, roll dice with links to video, wiki etc.

Start 2: Load framework & play unmodified with links as above

Start 3: Macros, or custom tokens, or background drawing or whatever.. with links.

Does anyone have good video documentation on setting up with a group?

[Craig]

I have applied the two patches from username for the Java 7 paint component fix and the problem creating tokens after the first.
The bug fix that was applied because maps were not being rendered initially for the campaign was causing the "can't resize" issue.
I have commented out this code so resize now works, I need to look for a proper fix for the non rendering initially bug if it doesn't
take too long -- the rendering code can get pretty convoluted -- I want to move on the the next version and its a pretty innocuous
bug and I would rather concentrate on anything that stops maptool working with Java 7 first.

If you check the latest rplib and maptool projects out of svn you get these changes. I would appreciate it if someone is able to test
things and see if there are other bugs that need to be squished before putting out a new build -- especially the multiple token bug
as I was not able to reproduce that bug, I got other strange happenings which were probably for the same reason.

[username]

I have applied the two patches from username for the Java 7 paint component fix and the problem creating tokens after the first.
The bug fix that was applied because maps were not being rendered initially for the campaign was causing the "can't resize" issue.
I have commented out this code so resize now works, I need to look for a proper fix for the non rendering initially bug if it doesn't
take too long -- the rendering code can get pretty convoluted -- I want to move on the the next version and its a pretty innocuous
bug and I would rather concentrate on anything that stops maptool working with Java 7 first.

If you check the latest rplib and maptool projects out of svn you get these changes. I would appreciate it if someone is able to test
things and see if there are other bugs that need to be squished before putting out a new build -- especially the multiple token bug
as I was not able to reproduce that bug, I got other strange happenings which were probably for the same reason.

I know that this is asking for more again, but could we use a bug tracking system like Mantis/Jira. Have never set one up, but "multiple token" is rather ominous. I created a new patch for initial rendering someplace somewhere. Edit: forwarded patch through pm

[wolph42]

can someone give a step by step breakdown of how to replicate the 'duplicate token' issue? I know it there but you have to do certain steps to recreate it.

[aliasmask]

Speaking of duplicate token issue. I just ran across a bug in lib:players that may do this. Since token names are not case sensitive and my code is, it's possible to create a duplicate lib token if players use a variation of the same name. My solution is to filter the player name in the appropriate spots when dealing with the lib:player_playername tokens.

But, I can cause a duplicate token with a lib token by setting a property on the lib token during onCampaignLoad and the load map is on a different map than the lib token.

[Craig]

But, I can cause a duplicate token with a lib token by setting a property on the lib token during onCampaignLoad and the load map is on a different map than the lib token.

My answer is not going to be different from any other time this comes up (or when I first created the onCampaignLoad and posted the following before the release). You must not alter any token in onCampaignLoad, if you do so you do it at your own risk, there is a good chance that it will duplicate your token and it's not supported. This problem can not be fixed without quite a bit of synchronisation code being added -- which of course is not going to happen in 1.3 -- it falls into the same area as the other parts code that have bugs due to synchronisation such as the init panel and 2 people editing tokens at the same time, its a drastic code change to fix these things.

[Sol Invictus]

Regarding the discussion about making the rptools website more readable, I suggest just changing the headings "Tools" into "About the Tools" and "Launch" into "Web Launch".
And add (yet) another link to rptoolstutorials.net on rptools.net's "Home" page, in the "Welcome" section. Like putting in the end of that section sth like that:
"You can find video introductions and tutorials on http://www.rptoolstutorials.net, especially concerning MapTool."

I think that would be a quick and easy way to enhance accessibility a lot.

About the "getting started" guide (which I would provide had I the time to spare): Rather encourage people to start using MT first without any fancy drop-in resources and frameworks. That does make the learning curve way too steep and will frighten people off.
Add links to resources like those as the next step that can be accomplished after learning how useful the program is.