More problems with Targeting

[mattcolville]

In an encounter, my player has his target...targeted, and attacks using a power.

FG2 parses the attack, and has the proper target, but it does not say HIT or MISS.

When I, the GM, do it from the player's character sheet, it does show HIT or MISS. I can't figure out what I am doing that's he's not.

I run another instance of FG2, and log in as a player and grab his character.

Same problem. As the GM I can roll and it properly parses hit and miss, but when I do the same thing from the client as the player, it does not.

[templarghost]

Hello!
From what I know, toggling this kind of option on and off depends on the ruleset. 4E should, by default, parse and display HIT and MISS information, as long as both the player and his target are correctly linked through the Combat Tracker.
In d20_JPG you need to check your Combat settings and make use you have Player attack, damage and effect drops on. If you dont have them set to on players will be unable to make use of the automation features.
The 3.5 ruleset doesnt appear to feature this sort of automation yet, it will most likely implemented with the 2.8 update.
Do tell me if this has been of any help and best of luck!

[mattcolville]

Ok, I got it working. I think the problem was some option, "Player Effects" or user effects or something?

Lotta stuff in this product not labeled in a meaningful way. :D

[Griogre]

The "Target: Enable PC actions" allow's the DM to control if the players are allowed to drop damage, and effects directly on the monsters. Most groups following Xorn's tutorials should play with it On.

[Moon Wizard]

If anyone wants to volunteer to improve the manuals, I'm all ears. ;)

I just built the 4E manual last year, since there was nothing before that.

JPG

[mattcolville]

I don't think the manual is the issue, I think it's the UI design. Lots of problems with this software, starting with the fact that it doesn't follow standard Windows practices.

If I right-click, I get a context menu. That's good! If I hit Escape...it doesn't go away. That's bad! Right out of the gate you're subverting the user's expectations regarding how all Windows programs work.

I believe the specific problem I had was that even while everything else was working, the "HIT" and "MISS" results were not showing up. It knew who was targeting who, with what, and what the totals were. But it just didn't say "HIT" or "MISS."

I think that was fixed by turning on "Turn: Show Effects." That's not *super* self-explanatory. And I'm still not certain that's actually what happened. I saw another user with a different problem say "I just turned everything on and it worked."

[Fot5]

Perhaps you should write software that isn't problematic, mattcolville, since the problem isn't the manual. :)

[mattcolville]

Perhaps you should write software that isn't problematic, mattcolville, since the problem isn't the manual. :)

That's not the trick, the trick is getting people to pay $150 for it.

[Zeus]

Whilst I agree there are some elements of the UI within certain rulesets that are not readily intuitive to use, I think it can be easily resolved through some structured but integrated help from within the rulesets themselves.

As an example, most rulesets introduced a close window icon to windows (in the traditional top right corner) at some point last year that allowed for quicker closing of windows i.e. no need to right click and then select close window. What if we could expand these icons to include minimise window and Help. Minimise speaks for itself, for Help I was thinking when clicked on (simple label cycler control) the window displays help text (within a tooltip) for any control hovered over with the pointer within the window. Hopefully that makes sense.

I guess all we would need to do is establish some base templates to define the new icon controls as well as adding an onHover() method to all controls within our windows. The onHover method would have to check for the toggle state of the Help control so as to allow normal ruleset onHover functionality to work when the Help control is not set but I think its doable. Ruleset developers could then add the help notes within simple <help> tags to the windowclasses.

The benefit of course is for new users its simpler to reference help information whilst your in FGII itself.

[gmkieran]

As a note to this, our group updated to 2.7.4 last night. Initially, my targeting functioned normally, but about half way through the first combat my rolls stopped showing the Hit or Miss indicator. I made no changes to what options were turned on. Other players continued to show the H and M indicators. Mine never went back to showing H or M.

We also had sporadic issues with the targeting both in the CT and on the map. One or the other would work, sometimes, but never both. Attack dice dropped on the map would work, but the damage dice wouldn't unless dropped on the CT or vice versa. Also, additional (bonus) damage dice dragged from a hotkey dropped on either the CT or the map didn't work, ever.

Probably un-related, but about the same time Hit and Miss stopped working I also stopped being able to access my additional hotkey sets by holding CTRL or SHIFT. That functionality came back after about half an hour (nothing I did to TRY to make it come back worked - after I gave up trying, it just came back).

[mattcolville]

Oh don't tell me that. I don't want to think the software I shelled out for is that buggy.

[Moon Wizard]

gmkieran,

I've only heard of a similar drop not working issue from one person in my group, but I haven't been able to reproduce in my dev environment. One item to note is that the combat tracker "must" be open for drop targeting to work. The combat tracker contains the links that map the combatant data to the map token data.

I'm not sure on the other issues. I just heard about the hit/miss not appearing when this thread started about a week ago. It should work unless the targeting is not working.

Some questions that might help:
* Were you a player or GM?
* Did you have the combat tracker up the whole time?
* Can the GM drag the roll results onto the CT and get a hit/miss result?
* Can you confirm that you did not see these issues prior to v2.7.4 in your game?

Thanks,
JPG

[Moon Wizard]

mattcolville,

The original premise of FG (by the original developers) was to recreate the tabletop experience, not the Windows experience. This is why you may have some disconnect from what people have been trained by Windows to expect.

I agree with you that user expectation is an important factor, and I try to keep an eye on that when I add capabilities. I'm actually the one who implemented the close window button, since I was tired of using the right click menu to close windows. (2-clicks vs. 1-click for a common action)

That said, it's a difficult line to maintain a tabletop look-and-feel while also meeting user expectations across multiple operating systems. So, I do the best I can with the code I inherited, and I've been working hard to improve it.

If you have specific code that you are willing to share that can be added to the default rulesets to implement some of these user expectation capabilities, I would love to use it to improve the experience all around.

Thanks,
JPG

[Bidmaron]

Zeuss, I'd not like to see the whole windows minimize thing and all that. In fact, even the 'X' was a little bit of a regression away from the tabletop metaphor fg2 excels at reproducing. I agree there's a learning curve coming to fg2, but the windows-icons many have come to expect are not on our hard copies and tabletops. Once you know right-click brings up the circular menu, it isn't that much of a stretch to do the windows functions from there. It keeps our windows looking more tabletop-like not to have the scrolls or whatever skin the ruleset uses looking more tabletop-like.

Mattcolville, I don't see how you can feel ripped off. The program and rulesets have some issues, but they are by and large manageable, and I daresay you cannot find a more responsive support team than SW these days (under its new leadership). Hang in there, but if you're really that pissed, I bet SW could accommodate you as you switch back to Maptools or whatever your alternate poison would be. We're always glad to have new blood here, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who doesn't appreciate your tone as you insulted Xorne and his tutorials and then your unveiled insult regarding the trick is getting the $150.

You have been very active in your short time here, and we welcome that. But a little more civility would also be welcome, friend. May God bless you.

[gmkieran]

To answer your questions, Moon_wizard, I was connected as a player. I believe I may have first attempted dropping dice on a map icon with the CT closed. When that failed, I opened the CT and also had a failure, there. Yes, the GM and other players were able to drag to both the map and the CT and show hit/miss results while I was not. I did not experience this issue prior to 2.7.4 and none of our other players have mentioned anything similar; that's as close as I can get to a confirmation.

Given my answer to your second question and the fact that at least some of the functionality returned later in the game, I wonder if it was simply a disconnect produced by my attempting to use the functionality without the proper connections being available and FG caught up over the course of play?

[Moon Wizard]

I have an idea of how to do the drop targeting without the CT having to be open, but it requires a new FG library function and some ruleset code changes. Something I won't be able to slip in until v2.8 at the earliest.

Keep me in the loop on any other information.

Thanks,
JPG

[Shimrath]

Just this evening i had 2 players (of 6) that were unable to get their targeting to function. They'd select a target, roll to hit, and then the total result would display, but it wouldn't compare to the target's defense. They'd roll damage and the result would register, but it would not apply it to the target's wounds. They also had some trouble with the drag and drop method.

Above, you mentioned that the Combat Tracker has to be open for targeting to function. Does that mean that the GM has to have the main Combat Tracker open, or that ALL players must have their Combat Tracker open?

[mattcolville]

Just this evening i had 2 players (of 6) that were unable to get their targeting to function. They'd select a target, roll to hit, and then the total result would display, but it wouldn't compare to the target's defense. They'd roll damage and the result would register, but it would not apply it to the target's wounds. They also had some trouble with the drag and drop method.

Above, you mentioned that the Combat Tracker has to be open for targeting to function. Does that mean that the GM has to have the main Combat Tracker open, or that ALL players must have their Combat Tracker open?

Pretty sure the players don't need to CT open, but that would be super easy to test.

I solved the problem when I just turned all the option on in the options window. No idea which one solved it, but I've had no problems since.

Given that it's two players I suspect it's something their doing or not doing. Or maybe the way you're adding them? Dunno.

When you look at the CT, do *you* see their targets?

When they roll, does it say "PC attacks Monster" or whatever? I had the problem where it knew who was targeting who, it just wouldn't say "Hit!" or "Miss!" along with the sword icon.

[Moon Wizard]

It works best when both the GM and the player who is targeting have the CT open.

The GM side sets the links between the combat tracker and the tokens. The combat tracker for both GM and client controls how targeting works.

BTW, the targeting improvement I mentioned for v2.8 is moving forward nicely. It may only be available for 3.5E initially, but will quickly be migrated to 4E.

Cheers,
JPG

[Bidmaron]

A welcome switch that we 3.5 folks see something first. Thanks, MW for all the hard work.

[Shimrath]

When you look at the CT, do *you* see their targets?

When they roll, does it say "PC attacks Monster" or whatever?

I do see their targets, although i did notice a slight difference with the players that were having problems: their targets were displayed with a green box behind the token rather than the token only.

It was not making any mention of the target whatsoever, instead simply rolling the attack roll and displaying results.

[kurtyboh]

We ran into this issue the other night, which was fixed by players keeping their ct open. when pc's had a ct closed on their end it would not show hit miss
or roll direct damage... the players with the ct openned did show hit/miss and damage was properly distributed. I dont know if this is a recent change as i'm new to the dm'ing side. However, i know that as a player i rarely had the ct open and I believe it would show hits/misses and record damage properly but i could be mistaken and the dm was doing extra work to take care of that.

[Griogre]

Generally speaking, the DM must have his combat tracker open. The player must at least open and his combat tracker once after DM has opened his (the player can close it after opening it once though).

This is because really everything is run through the DM's tracker. However for somethings on the player side to initialize the player tracker must be opened so it can connect to the DM's tracker.

However, you might be right about something changing recently as some of my players seemed be having some problems lately.

[mattcolville]

I've got players on, like, *wildly* different monitor resolutions. Can the tracker be minimized and still function thus for players?

[Griogre]

Generally all the player has to do is open and close his tracker once - after the DM's tracker is open. Should the DM close his tracker then a lot of things don't update on the player trackers until the DM re-opens his.

[mattcolville]

Generally all the player has to do is open and close his tracker once - after the DM's tracker is open. Should the DM close his tracker then a lot of things don't update on the player trackers until the DM re-opens his.

Copy. I'm not 100% convinced that the tracker needs to be open, but only because I had several players all in and everything was working and I don't remember telling them to open the tracker. I'd just be surprised if they all did it independently. Easy enough to test next time!

If it is required, might make sense if you could share it to the players like an image. GM opens it, shares it, now everyone's all linked up and they can do what they want with their trackers.

[Moon Wizard]

As I mentioned, I am working on a way to do that with the next version. It requires expanding the API to add token event handlers independent of a token instance. Currently, you need a copy of the token instance in order to specify event handlers, and the token instance information is stored in the combat tracker.

You need to fire up the combat tracker, so it can initialize and add the event handlers to the tokens. The links should stay valid when the combat tracker is closed. However, when new combat tracker entries are added, the player combat tracker needs to be opened again to add event handlers the new tokens.

The API should be available in v2.8, and it will be added to 4E in v2.8.1.

Cheers,
JPG

[kurtyboh]

or the pc's can minimize their tracker, takes almost no room but still allows new instances.

[DNH]

Do I have this right?

The option "Target: Enable PC actions" has three settings - Off, Report and On.

Off = PCs cannot drag-and-drop dice onto map or CT Report = PCs can drag-and-drop dice onto map or CT and chat only reports the numerical result; the DM needs to check against the monster's defences and confirm a hit or a miss to the player On = PCs can drag-and-drop dice onto map or CT and chat also reports a hit/miss result; ie the DM does not need to refer to the monsters as FG2 does this for him
My preference for this is the Report option, as I do not want the level of automation that the On option provides. Report also allows me to fudge things when I need to (or want to).

However, it seems to me that third-party targetting is ONLY available when using the On option. Is that right?

Take Lance of Faith as an example. This allows the Cleric to grant a +2 power bonus to an ally's next attack against the target of the prayer. Do this in FG2 by targetting that ally and Shift-drag-and-dropping the effect line to the original target of the prayer (ie the NPC/monster). The ally will receive an appropriate effect (something like "ONCE; [TRGT: Monster]; ATK: 2") and FG2 will apply it appropriately (ie apply the bonus if the ally attacks that target and not if he or she doesn't).

But all that functionality only appears to be available IF we use the On option for "Target: Enable PC actions".

When you have it on Report, it simply reports the effect to the chat window and the DM then has to apply it. But that's no good because by then it has lost all the information it needs to work correctly. Try it and it applies the abovementioned effect to the original target of the prayer, rather than the ally.

Is there something I am missing here? Some setting or procedure I am neglecting that would allow this. If not, is it possible to implement this to allow for both (by which I mean *Report* the attack results AND enable third-party targetting effect drops)?

Thanks.

[Moon Wizard]

I actually just replied to another thread about a GM that wanted the option to hide roll results (i.e. compare AC, show vulnerable/resist, etc.), but wanted to allow effect application.

What I proposed in the other thread was to add an option between On and Report that would only report roll results to the GM for non-friendly targets.

Regards,
JPG