Fantasy Grounds 5E db.xml character cycler OBS widget

[damned]

Since administration feels this would deserve its own thread, i am sure many people will be happy to discuss it if one is made. i will even chime in there as well with some things i was going to put here but will save for a thread dedicated to it.

also I will suggest to @rob2e and FGC about a video "why to live stream FG" for "All Thing Fantasy Grounds" talk show in the future.



i thought the player name was on mlesnews little examples, but character name works also. could limit it that way to "present" characters in case of absentee players also. Jeff couldnt make it to the meeting in the tavern because Susie wasnt able to make it to the game tonight to play him, so he jsut slept late in the inn and missed the meeting and the cards just dont have Jeff showing that night.

(names not related to any person(s) past, present, future, or imaginary.)



would be the setup template if no player name needed and only the social name will be on the output tables.



Think some of the popular youtubers say for a simple polished video it is 8 hours of recording and editing for a 30 minute video... i dont even want to know how much time the 9 slices video took you with that many scene transitions. mine are so bad because it is just a simple OBS record, crop and upload.

If you are happy to discuss both ends of the debate go for it - my interjection was mostly because i felt (rightly or wrongly) that the post was mostly negative without adding anything to the conversation. Happy to be wrong.

Dont use my videos as examples - Im terrible at it and still trying different methods to find something that works for me and for viewers.
But yes - it takes me far longer than Id like to do all the editing to keep something concise and usable.

[shadzar]

oh there probably will be negative, because streaming is a thing that i guess has to grow on you, or you are a person just sick of the crap on TV and have to seek other things not fueled by Hollywierd.

Reasons some people have streamed D&D that i have visited frequently...

1. promote a product, and interact live with the viewers. this could be a new RPG, new adventure, Fantasy Grounds, etc.

2. to promote their game because they lack players. be it roll20 or FG there is only a small pool to pull from for new players as most already have games that use those and other programs from their own forums. Twitch and YT live streaming gives you a chance to bring in new people to YOUR game or the game in general.

3. people are voyeurs.. if you stream it they will view. which can tie into the initial narcissistic thing where some people want to be watched/adored. (see Critical Role)

4. they just have nothing else better to do. streaming sites allow you to record your game in good quality FOREVER without having to have the space or other services for storage. either for review of the game to make sure you keep consistent rulings, or a player forgot something that happened, or just for a player that missed a game. could even be a player is somewhere they cant connect with any VTT but still can use a phone so can watch the game with minor delay and play via the streams chat. i have seen that at least twice. once a person wasnt home, and another time a person was without internet.

personally i have no interest in streaming, i upload or stream things relevant like KS has videos.. commercials basically for things since these OBS widgets need to show how they would work, how else would someone see it, a GIF?

this is obviously mostly RP related but can extend to other streaming, but i rarely partake of those sorts of streams where it isnt a conversation with either he streamer or the other viewers about something. i can just listen to something on TV for background noise and do something else if there is a need for background noise.

you have one streamer i follow that was doing the whole live video thing and caused stress to weaken his DM abilities because dealing with getting a stream ready. that changed and he became an audio podcast show to just share his groups "performances" with other people, since there are those people that wants to think they are some sort of TV or movie celebrity from streaming (again see Critical Role).

so i can see your reluctance, bidmaron, as well celestian's intrigue about streaming.

the most judgement i can pass on a live stream is if it interests me to watch and participate and enough of the ones i DO watch use FG, so if FG won't supply, and roll20 wont supply, and MAptool wont supply any sort of streaming aid for their VTTs, i can offer where i can to do so, and only FG is so easy to "backdoor" into the game information since it is jsut XML, it makes it easiest to get into the data to retrieve for output on a stream. roll20, the API exists, but isnt for external use, only for use within the roll20 table itself, and everything in MAptool is a JAR and FG can play poke and prod ZIP files for data all it wants to, but i aint got time for that, so i will go for the uncompressed data streams that are local to get the games data.

hopefully that doesn't change for FGU and it still saves the game as XML so this should be an evergreen widget.... once it finally works right and will show images of the characters correctly and not be relegated to text only character stats. cause i can never read names on the FG tokens on the map to see what any character is unless the combat tracker is showing, and most DMs dont show the combat trackers on stream when they stream the game.

any other questions about streaming, or any streamers wish to chime in with other reason to stream a game on FG, or in general, sure thats fine since there is so few places to discuss streaming on these forums.

then i will read while trying to get the widget fixed and not have to respond to every idea that comes up to test during the night while i cant sleep

oh one more thing i am reminded since damned does do videos as mentioned....

5. when it takes more time to edit things, you still need to record them, and for his type of image tutorial you could stream it live and get live questions from any audience to help improve the tutorial in real time quicker than say edit a video, upload to youtube, post in a forum, wait for comments, go back edit the video.. you can work on the final product kinks before having to do all that extra editing.

6. and there is the talk show, people just discuss D&D and were doing it before that Chris Tito guy on the DnD stream was doing it. ask DM questions about how they would do something, ask players questions about how to interact with people in certain game related situations or whatever the topic of discussion is.. then the live stream just becomes a video format forums like these forums, where at least one person is talking with audio and has some imagery to look at like GeoQuester with Legends and Lore for better gaming and DMing, Rob2e with ATFG where the FGC crew offer tips tricks and other things to get people using FG more efficiently and exchange ideas that creates new extensions from people like Gwydion, celestian, and a few others i have seen around streams; then everyone else gets the use of those extensions that some random person on a live stream came up with an idea for.


Afterthought: i guess there is also the Fantasy Grounds Fridays show on Twitch that is also like a talk show too... completely forgot about that one.

[Bidmaron]

Thanks for the summary, shadzar. As I progress on the work I am doing I may pulse you again because it will help you in your quest I think.

[shadzar]

wasnt n a quest that i knew of, but if it helped explain one person's views of why people stream, than it was all good. i am sure many others have other reasons to stream and will debate those "negative elements" more with you. but i doubt the porn problem will present itself in MOST D&D streams unless "facecams" are placed in the wrong place...

"Hey streamer girl, your eyes are up here, not down there where the camera is pointing."

[mlesnews]

i thought the player name was on mlesnews little examples, but character name works also. could limit it that way to "present" characters in case of absentee players also. Jeff couldnt make it to the meeting in the tavern because Susie wasnt able to make it to the game tonight to play him, so he jsut slept late in the inn and missed the meeting and the cards just dont have Jeff showing that night.

(names not related to any person(s) past, present, future, or imaginary.)

What one would like to see or what works for one persons, varies depending one's certain point of view. I would say shadzar, stay true to what you want. I see mini cards for each player, which can be done via photoshop in part or in full, with OBS objects on top of images. Your widget is a single card that cycles a single player and their information.

Jumping ahead to other things mentioned later in the thread. I personally wanted to stream to perserve a record of playing, both for myself and my players. I can see streaming can easily take away from the main objective of playing the game not only for the dm but, more importantly from the players.

For me at least, even setting up four players, that may or may not be the same players week to week takes me a significant amount of time. Not only do I need to manually setup grabbing each portrait dimensions in individual OBS objects, then do the same with what spot they fall into in the discord channel, and finally match both the same person. If someone drops out of FG, Discord or both, it is going to show up in the live stream. The only thing I could possibly forsee is being able to parse some or most of that XML infomation (player spot position in FG, and whether or not displaying character name and stats is desired or not) in such a way as to streamlining that setup process.

[shadzar]

oh i dont stream, dont use FG, and dont play 5e, so this in no way is for me, it was asked about by a few people, then a few more and they suggested maybe the whole of FG users might like a crack at it, so i shared it here for feedback, and have got some good ideas to further it. just need to find the way to do it best, without going TOO FAR. like customization of a table can be anything, but how much am i personally willing to do to meet every overlay theme need?

but a couple variants and let people change colors as they want isn't too much to ask.

and using the most used idea for cards made from image slideshows in OBS. i just whipped up something that did it with javascript to pull live data from the saved game in FG so people have instant updates without having to photoshop. just restarts the source with the widget in it, and refresh it and it updates directly from the db.xml including the chosen character or token image (if i can get that part working again).


so the most common features, with the easiest and streamlined method is what i was going for. and now thanks to a few i have an idea to get the social media there as well.


while i am waiting on a new campaign save to try to fix the character images issue,i can o ahead and work on the other parts.

for note the loading time you see in some of the videos was due to the automatic resizing of the character images. those not included with FG were about 600*60 and sized down to match the others, so it is all automatic to remove the need to photoshop anything except the character images if you need to add tokens to a game. everything not the character image is text via fonts... any font you would be able to choose from Google Fonts even.

so it is basically the homogeneity of what the masses do want is what i am trying to make, since i have no use for this thing at all as i don't stream. :rofl:

[st4lk3r87]

oh i dont stream, dont use FG, and dont play 5e, so this in no way is for me, it was asked about by a few people, then a few more and they suggested maybe the whole of FG users might like a crack at it, so i shared it here for feedback, and have got some good ideas to further it. just need to find the way to do it best, without going TOO FAR. like customization of a table can be anything, but how much am i personally willing to do to meet every overlay theme need?

but a couple variants and let people change colors as they want isn't too much to ask.

and using the most used idea for cards made from image slideshows in OBS. i just whipped up something that did it with javascript to pull live data from the saved game in FG so people have instant updates without having to photoshop. just restarts the source with the widget in it, and refresh it and it updates directly from the db.xml including the chosen character or token image (if i can get that part working again).


so the most common features, with the easiest and streamlined method is what i was going for. and now thanks to a few i have an idea to get the social media there as well.


while i am waiting on a new campaign save to try to fix the character images issue,i can o ahead and work on the other parts.

for note the loading time you see in some of the videos was due to the automatic resizing of the character images. those not included with FG were about 600*60 and sized down to match the others, so it is all automatic to remove the need to photoshop anything except the character images if you need to add tokens to a game. everything not the character image is text via fonts... any font you would be able to choose from Google Fonts even.

so it is basically the homogeneity of what the masses do want is what i am trying to make, since i have no use for this thing at all as i don't stream. :rofl:

Can't you just share what you have and let the community do crazy stuff with it? I'm pretty sure lot of users will start to help each other

[Skillkoil]

If you wanted to periodically have a player show up in a corner. BL or TR with all their stats / info that would be cool. Then for their portraits just have a bar or 33/55 type HP display and have little icons for effects. Turn portrait horizontal for "unconscious" have a "?" for confused etc... Just some thoughts. I really like this for streaming with OBS. I think it is nice to have a running HP system for battle that people can keep track of.

[shadzar]

If you wanted to periodically have a player show up in a corner. BL or TR with all their stats / info that would be cool. Then for their portraits just have a bar or 33/55 type HP display and have little icons for effects. Turn portrait horizontal for "unconscious" have a "?" for confused etc... Just some thoughts. I really like this for streaming with OBS. I think it is nice to have a running HP system for battle that people can keep track of.

lots of streams try to have little status and effect icons, like the ones FG and roll20 use, but on stream they are either too small, or non-unifrom so every stream you would have to answer 30 times for each new viewer what each status icon means...

Tiny HP bars dont really show up well, even Streamlabs most people put the numbers on the bar for goal like donations, subs, etc because the bar doesnt really tel people anything. most requested has been split a HP bar, or the numbers.

bars can be added later once the numbers all work right.

due to lack of features in FG, i know some streams that turn the character token upside down to show unconscious, and that wouldn't be hard to do with this. when wounds >= HP flip the image. i will try that just as soon as i get the character images working again.

Can't you just share what you have and let the community do crazy stuff with it? I'm pretty sure lot of users will start to help each other

i could, but it doesnt work since the characters got borked with a recent update. awaiting a few files to try to get it back on track with updated characters and campaign as time allows, but currently a KS comes before this widget on the priority list

[st4lk3r87]

I have more questions. Do you inspect the DB.xml everytime? How do you force an update of the xml file?