Judging from what I've seen in some of the videos, it does look like there are bars to show asset download % in Mote. That being said, the name of the actual asset being downloaded should be hidden to players. It would be quite a spoiler if they were to see "Black Dragon King" downloading when they aren't supposed to know about it yet. Allowing a GM to see where assets might be bottle-necking would be nice though.Bone White wrote:One more question, in using MapTool, it has been a constant frustration for players who get stuck in a loop whilst loading, but no one has any indication of this. Will the host/GMs be able to view how much of the map/campaign each connected client has downloaded? This would allow for easier diagnosis of connection problems.
If players could individually stop a particular asset from downloading and delete a partial and/or restart an asset for those times when they get "hung up" I do see that as a very good feature. Seeing that a larger asset is still downloading would also alleviate some fear that the program has stopped working (i.e. the common "I'm stuck on asset 124 of 125 and it won't finish loading!") Though not exactly a sexy Kickstarter feature, it does tackle a long standing and common bump-in-the-road for many new users. The problem is almost always:
1) It's a big asset and they didn't wait long enough to finish the download.
2) Their asset cache is corrupt and they need to delete it and redo the connection/download (probably often happens when they bail out of #1 above before an asset is finished downloading the first time).
3) They are using memory settings that are too low for that campaign and MT *is* getting hung up.
Being able to see if something is going on during the asset transfers would probably remove problem #1. Being able to restart/delete an asset dynamically during download would probably address #2. And getting an actual warning about low memory during asset transfers would deal with #3.
Again, good ideas for a more useable and friendly program, but probably not all that Kickstarter exciting. Delivering a more useable MT might open the door for a future Phase 2 Kickstarter though.