MapTool 1.3b19 Progress

Progress reports and musings from the developers on the current gaming tools.

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Hawke
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Post by Hawke »

trevor wrote: using the poly line tool, which creates 2x more points than it needs, so it's a bit of a heavy weight to start with
Sorry, I'm mister questions today... but what exactly does that mean? Just thinking about how I can apply it to my own map building to enhance performance.

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trevor
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Post by trevor »

Hawke wrote:
trevor wrote: using the poly line tool, which creates 2x more points than it needs, so it's a bit of a heavy weight to start with
Sorry, I'm mister questions today... but what exactly does that mean? Just thinking about how I can apply it to my own map building to enhance performance.
The method I use to joint the line segments causes 4 points to be created instead of 2, which causes 2x more points to be calculated. You can see this by creating a poly line vbl with at least one joint, then zoom waaaay in, you can see an divit in the elbow of the outside of the joint.
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Post by Phergus »

Another problem the video highlights is the disappearing token problem.

When you move your token to an area that is partially obscured it disappears under the partial fog until you do an expose making it difficult to position correctly.

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trevor
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Post by trevor »

Phergus wrote: When you move your token to an area that is partially obscured it disappears under the partial fog until you do an expose making it difficult to position correctly.
Which is true. However, we need to define what the correct behavior is. One of the fore runner suggestions is to allow expose-as-you-go, but only on a keystroke of some sort
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Post by Phergus »

I would think that for previously revealed but partially obscured areas that the token should be moved over the top of the fog instead of under it.

Still leaves the issue of moving into unrevealed areas which pretty much requires expose-as-you-go functionality.

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trevor
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Post by trevor »

Phergus wrote:I would think that for previously revealed but partially obscured areas that the token should be moved over the top of the fog instead of under it.
Now that I think about it, I thought it was doing that before. Hmmm. Easy enough to fix.
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Post by Phergus »

I couldn't remember if that had ever been done or just been talked about. :?

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Post by Hawke »

I know this definitely would decrease performance and might be a huge pain to implement, but what about an option to have the lighting system edges work with a slight gradient rather than a hard line. Maybe even it could be defineable. I never really thought of the hard line being an issue before, but I think it would definitely make light sources in the distance a little cooler.

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Post by trevor »

It would definitely make it look cooler. I haven't figured out a good way to do that yet. If anyone has a way to do it in Java I'd love to hear it
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Post by RPTroll »

I would love the ability to have shadowy figures automatically so that you define a light source and then a shadow distance (or even a fall off of light). I could simulate this now if I only had multiple images per token <squeak>.
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trevor
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Post by trevor »

That reminds me:

* Shadowy light radius is calculated for the d20 light sources, but just aren't drawn differently yet.
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Post by trevor »

UPDATE:

I did some quick testing, and found that doing something slightly, just slightly different, gave DRASTIC speed increases.

Divide. And. Conquer: Not just for CS students !

Now I'm happy with the speed :) And I still have ideas to make it even faster !
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Post by torstan »

I'm not normally given to this but... woot!

I'm glad it is going well. The screencast is looking good. Definitely looking forward to having a play with this build.

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Post by Hawke »

trevor wrote:It would definitely make it look cooler. I haven't figured out a good way to do that yet. If anyone has a way to do it in Java I'd love to hear it
I haven't checked the source so I don't know much about what we're using for MapTool, but anything beyond swing libraries that I should be aware of? I'm gonna try and ask some associates for ideas or help - just trying to get the background that might help with some ideas.

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trevor
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Post by trevor »

Hawke wrote:
trevor wrote:It would definitely make it look cooler. I haven't figured out a good way to do that yet. If anyone has a way to do it in Java I'd love to hear it
I haven't checked the source so I don't know much about what we're using for MapTool, but anything beyond swing libraries that I should be aware of? I'm gonna try and ask some associates for ideas or help - just trying to get the background that might help with some ideas.
Right now it's pure Java2D.

For 2.0 we might look at using jogl or java3d to render our 2d world, which would make the gradients much easier.
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