Suggestion: Colored Pins

[Targas]

Not sure if this is the right place to ask for, but wouldn't it be nice to have colored pins on maps ?
E.g. instead of having red pins for everything, with this you could more easily distinguish between
encounter settings, room descriptions, items, etc.

[Nickademus]

Hmm...

[Trenloe]

Add it to the suggestion/wishlist: https://fg2app.idea.informer.com/

[viresanimi]

I've actually have had some of my friends suggest this. I just forgot to mention it here... definately worthy of the wish list!

[Nickademus]

The wish list is a graveyard for small ideas SW doesn't have the time to implement. I'll see what I can do.

Any detail suggestions would be appreciated.

[Trenloe]

The wish list is a graveyard for small ideas SW doesn't have the time to implement.
I disagree with that statement - there were items in the wish list that were implemented in FG 3.0 and I know that Moon Wizard looks at the list regularly when planning future features. Just because something on the wish list doesn't appear "tomorrow" doesn't mean that it won't in the future or that the wish list is a graveyard.

[Zeus]

The wish list is a graveyard for small ideas SW doesn't have the time to implement. I'll see what I can do.

Any detail suggestions would be appreciated.

I agree with Trenloe; this isn't a very fair assessment and far from the actual truth behind the development of FantasyGrounds, particularly when you consider how much NEW functionality as well as overall improvements have been made since the current owners took over from the original developers and owners. The codebase (C++) for Fantasy Grounds is what I would qualify as complex. JPG and Doug have wisely taken a sensible and staggered approach to the development of Fantasy Grounds. Focusing on blending improvements alongside the introduction of new functionality as well providing much wider support for community devs such as myself and Trenloe. This without, breaking the current software solution for an established user base and lets not forget maintaining the current pricing. Finally lets also not forget v3.0 has been in essence a free upgrade for existing v2.x users, to me that alone demonstrates how committed SW are to its customer base. v3.0 is simply hand and shoulders above previous versions of the software.

When I look back at what has been achieved, with to be frank, only a handful of resources over the last two years, I think SW should be praised for the commitment they have shown. I am pretty sure nothing would please the current owners/devs more than to be able to address all the requests quickly but we need to be practical and consider, available resources and time, the priorities of all new changes, wider impact and not to mention how practical the changes are. Given time, I for one and very confident that many of the good and well thought through ideas will get to be implemented.

[Nickademus]

You misread what I typed. I said 'small ideas' as in the ones that get very little votes.

The wishlist is great for big ideas and can guide the development of FG. But for small things that would take an hour or two, Smite Works (rightly so) can't justify doing them when those hours could be used to address bugs, issues, and ideas with many more votes. JPG has said so in more than one thread. This is simply business.

The alternative would be to get more votes for a small idea by lobbying. I doubt anyone wants people spamming the forums or their message boxes requesting votes. So this leaves these small ideas at the bottom of the list below the cutoff line for every update.

Trenloe,
I'm not an impatient person but I don't see where waiting will change SW's priorities.

Zeus,
Your response insinuates that my comment was an affront to the work Smite Works does. Quite the contrary. I have the highest respect for what they do with the manpower they have. This includes the community that supports them. If I didn't feel FG and the company that made it were quality, I wouldn't come to these forums, make modules, make extension, help new players learn the program, bug Dulux for new tutorials, or any of the things I do to try to improve the overall play experience.

That said, I will not pretend that the wishlist doesn't act as a filter for the 'good ideas' that democracy deems not important. I would rather do something myself that is small and neat but won't gain much support on the WL. I see this as a way to help Smite Works please the player base without bothering them to do more work. I'm almost offended that you would that my statement and perceive it as criticism of the very thing that I work hard on daily.

[Trenloe]

You misread what I typed. I said 'small ideas' as in the ones that get very little votes.

The wishlist is great for big ideas and can guide the development of FG. But for small things that would take an hour or two, Smite Works (rightly so) can't justify doing them when those hours could be used to address bugs, issues, and ideas with many more votes. JPG has said so in more than one thread.

I disagree, again. :) There are a number of "small" things from the wish list that were added to FG 3.0 - JPG has said in the past that he scans through all of the suggestions and if he thinks any of them have merit (it doesn't matter how many votes they have) and they can be implemented fairly easily in a future release, then he will try to do them in such a future release. This is definitely the case with the FG 3.0 release - there are a number of "small ideas" (as you put it) from the wishlist that have been added to FG 3.0.

The wishlist is not a graveyard for any idea - big or small... JPG asks people to put things on the wishlist as it is his main area to look for future development/improvement.

I'm not saying don't write an extension for an idea someone has - I'm just disagreeing with your "graveyard" statement! ;)

[Nickademus]

Then I stand corrected. That was not the purpose of the wishlist that was explained to me. Makes the votes less relevant, but I personally am very happy with that. Now if only I wasn't too lazy to sign up....

Looking through the code to see what I can do with this. Have some pin images made up (blue, green, orange, purple, yellow, white). My plan is to create radial menu options in addition to the Delete option to change the image to another color. First time dealing with the radial menu and images from an xml, so who knows how long it will take.

[Trenloe]

Looking through the code to see what I can do with this. Have some pin images made up (blue, green, orange, purple, yellow, white). My plan is to create radial menu options in addition to the Delete option to change the image to another color. First time dealing with the radial menu and images from an xml, so who knows how long it will take.
I'm not too sure how much you're going to be able to do with this - other than perhaps change the colour of all of the pins on one image. In \campaign\campaign_images.xml the shortcut icon is defined in the imagecontrol as: <shortcut icon="image_pin" hotspot="2,21" /> - there is only one icon definition for all shortcuts in each imagecontrol.

[Nickademus]

Hmm. I found that. Didn't understand what it was doing. Will think on it.

[Zeus]

Zeus,
Your response insinuates that my comment was an affront to the work Smite Works does. Quite the contrary. I have the highest respect for what they do with the manpower they have. This includes the community that supports them. If I didn't feel FG and the company that made it were quality, I wouldn't come to these forums, make modules, make extension, help new players learn the program, bug Dulux for new tutorials, or any of the things I do to try to improve the overall play experience.

That said, I will not pretend that the wishlist doesn't act as a filter for the 'good ideas' that democracy deems not important. I would rather do something myself that is small and neat but won't gain much support on the WL. I see this as a way to help Smite Works please the player base without bothering them to do more work. I'm almost offended that you would that my statement and perceive it as criticism of the very thing that I work hard on daily.

I meant no offence and in re-reading your post I now better understand your comments and what you were attempting to get across, please accept my apology if I did cause offence, it was not my intention. I sometimes become a little irritated at some of the comments made on these forums and I admit I let my better judgement slip in this case. I am usually not so judgmental in my views towards other opinions posted here however I do tend to stick up for the current devs as I've been privileged to have worked quite closely with them over the last few years and have been privy to some of the pain.

One thing I will say about this community; it never ceases to impress me. There has been a constant mix of contributions and some of the smaller improvements that are in FG v3.0 have been born from the ideas shared here collectively.

[Nickademus]

No apology need. I said 'almost offended' because I always leave room for miscommunication. This is the internet after all. I also tend to be direct and curt so the fault is usually partially mine for not being more verbose with my opinions. Guess that's why they call me the Black Mage.

I have to say, I was floored when I realized those two forum accounts were the only employees for Smite Works (assuming I wasn't incorrect about that observation as well). But as a realist I generally tend to the bottom line which has me dealing with the worse-case and negatives regularly. It probably shades my mannerisms and words a bit cynical. But despite how I sound or that I focus on the flaws and shortcomings of FG, I bought my Ultimate license within two days and have had no regrets (even if the Full license becomes the Ultimate).

I plan to help SW myself, though indirectly. For instance, here are the pins so JPG doesn't have to try to play artist. Blacky may want to optimize them though. *smirk*

[Mgrancey]

As a question are you wanting the pins to be changeable like categories for the different windows or are you looking for link of X type is red, link of Y is green, link of z is blue?

[damned]

i think there are many great posts above -
coloured pins fr different things:
red for encounters
black for traps
blue for story
etc

the internet is a wonderful place for getting misunderstood - and this place is largely bereft of the kind of trolls we dont want - so its great you are all back on the same page because you all do great work!

[Nickademus]

But, but, I didn't make a black...

[Nickademus]

Fine. Hmph.

[damned]

Look Nick - pretty pictures are one thing - weave your magic and make the stuff happen already.

[Targas]

Although I like the idea of changing pin colors depending on map color background, I've to admit using colors by category is certainly a more structured and consistent approach. Easily interpreted for everyone that in every adventure module the same color will point to the same category. Hoovering over one will display a quick tag anyway.

[viresanimi]

I would have to agree with Targas' point here.

[Nickademus]

Look Nick - pretty pictures are one thing - weave your magic and make the stuff happen already.

I wish it were that easy. This is dealing with parts of FG that I have not worked with yet. That means hours of looking through things to come to understand what most of you probably already know. And I have a game tonight, so I won't get to touch it. I have an idea of how I might pull it off though.

How about this, instead I'll weave my magic and make something else happen, a fix for a problem that I've been seeing in games...

[Zeus]

I don't believe the current API supports adding shortcuts programatically as the pin icon is set as part of the imagecontrol definition. There doesn't appear to be a way to define multiple pin types.

However, here's how you could possibly do it. Be warned, its not as elegant as petitioning for multi-pin support in the native FG client.

1.Create an extension which modifies the campaign/campaign_images.xml and adds/overrides the onDrop() handler in campaign/scripts/imagewindow.lua
2.Create a custom frameless buttoncontrol template which uses a pin graphic as its icon and add to the extension
3.In the script block for the custom button control: add two local string variables called wclass and record_name
4.In the script block for the custom button control: add four subroutines: getWClass(), setWClass(), getRecordName() and setRecordName() which return and set the variables wclass and record_name
5.In the script block for the custom button control: add/override the onClick handler to open a window (Interface.openWindow()) based upon class and record name contained in wclass and record_name variables
6.In the script block for the imagecontrol: add/override the onDrop handler, upon detection of shortcut drag data determine shortcut class and x,y drop position
7.Create an instance of the custom buttoncontrol we defined in step 2, set the colour pin icon based upon the class of shortcut data, set the buttoncontrols wclass and record_name (setWClass(), setRecordName()) using the shortcut class and recordname and add on top of the image control at position x, y

You can quite possibly also change the button control onClick handler to only function if Cntrl is held down as well as set the default visibility of the button control pins to false, finally have a routine in the image window script block that makes them all visible only if Cntrl is held down.

That could quite possibly mimic the existing functionality whilst giving you some coloured pins to work with.

[damned]

How about this, instead I'll weave my magic and make something else happen, a fix for a problem that I've been seeing in games...

I can live with that :)


owever, here's how you could possibly do it. Be warned, its not as elegant as petitioning for multi-pin support in the native FG client.

Perhaps we should all go and vote for it instead of making a task more difficult :)