Active /id question

[Nielle]

Hello.

I`m mastering a game.
I have encountered a problem. when I have to switch id for chat often, I sometimes can`t understand which of 5-6 ids is now active. Active id is marked with bold font, but with high resolution it sometimes hard to find it. Is it possible to make active id more obvious, like mark it with green or red color, or something like that?

Thanks

[Snowcat]

Hello.

I`m mastering a game.
I have encountered a problem. when i have to switch id for chat often, i sometimes can`t understand which of 5-6 ids is now active. Active id is marked with bold font, but with high resolution it sometimes hard to find it. Is it possible to make active id more obvious, like mark it with green or red color, or something like that?

Thanks

I have to agree with Nielle, it is indeed quite difficult sometimes to track which NPC ID is active at the moment. So marking the active one more clearly would be really appreciated.

[VenomousFiligree]

Along with this, I find that having the line of IDs always bottom left means on larger resolutions the IDs are a fair distance away from the chat input window.

[Sorontar]

Drop down box next to the chat interface possibly for all ID's (or in place or the CHAT graphic)?

Would that help or be possible?

[tdewitt274]

Or changing te color to something like Red with White font color?

[Sorcerer]

with respect to the original premise of this post - changing the colour of the current GM identity
that is relatively easy to do, although it does mean making a couple of minor alterations to your ruleset.

You don't actually mention which ruleset(s) you are talking about, so the examples below are based on D20_JPG.
other rulesets likely use a similar system/layout for this.

before changing anything backup the files that I mention below!!

in your ruleset\scripts folder you will find the identitylist_entry.lua file

if you open it and scroll down you will find the setCurrent function

function setCurrent(state)
if state then
if gmidentity then
namewidget.setFont("chatbolditalicfont");
else
namewidget.setFont("narratorfont");
end
else
if gmidentity then
namewidget.setFont("chatitalicfont");
else
namewidget.setFont("chatfont");
end
end
end

you can see that if the current identity is the GM identity FG sets the font to chatbolditalicfont
if the current identity is another creature/npc the it sets the font to narratorfont

these fonts are defined in the file bmpfonts.xml which is in the root directory of this ruleset (with the other xml files) (if you are using 4E then the file name is graphics_fonts.xml)

<font name="narratorfont">
<fgffile name="fonts/regularbold.fgf" />
<color value="#000000" />
</font>

you can see that narratorfont uses the fg font regularbold.fgf and sets the colour to black (#000000 in hex notation)

you can change this colour to anything you like, but it is likely that lots of other functions also access this template and you would therefore change those colours too.

so the best thing to do is to create a new font template

copy the original and paste it back into the bmpfonts.xml file, it doesn't matter where, just below the original will be fine.
then change the name to whatever you like - no spaces and remember that these things are case sensitive.

something like gmidfont. Then set the colour. again you can use whatever you like -the example below uses #FF0000 for red
you also mentioned green which would be #00FF00

<font name="gmidfont">
<fgffile name="fonts/regularbolditalic.fgf" />
<color value="#FF0000" />
</font>

save and close the file.

go back to the original identitylist_entry.lua file. There change the font name in the setcurrent function to match the new template you have created.

function setCurrent(state)
if state then
if gmidentity then
namewidget.setFont("chatbolditalicfont");
else
namewidget.setFont("gmidfont");
end
else
if gmidentity then
namewidget.setFont("chatitalicfont");
else
namewidget.setFont("chatfont");
end
end
end


changing only the narratorfont will change the active id to red unless the active ID is the GM when all id's will appear black.
if you want the GM ID also to appear red when active change the chatbolditalicfont entry to gmidfont
as well i.e.

function setCurrent(state)
if state then
if gmidentity then
namewidget.setFont("gmidfont");
else
namewidget.setFont("gmidfont");
end
else
if gmidentity then
namewidget.setFont("chatitalicfont");
else
namewidget.setFont("chatfont");
end
end
end

obviously changing both fonts makes the first 'else' statement redundant and we could rewrite the function to make it simpler

but its not necessary for you to get this to work and so you can safely leave it in.


save close and you should be good to go

start up FG and see if it has worked...