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Unahim
June 24th, 2014, 04:04
I'm starting to experiment with effects to speed up my games a bit in the 5e module, but there's one thing I don't like about it: it absolutely floods the chat window. For instance, I've got a tiefling mage in the party. When using her racial ability that gives targets of one of her spells disadvantage on their saving throws, I've found it easiest to have her apply that as an effect that will fade on the target's next roll (which will be the saving throw). This makes the chat log look like this:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/89840924/lotsofeffects.png

It's pretty messy. Any way of hiding effects from the chat log completely? I think I'd prefer that to this at this point.

Moon Wizard
June 25th, 2014, 00:21
There's no mechanism right now to hide effect notifications. There is a "Show results to client" option that should probably be used here (that also affects attack/damage reporting), but it would only hide results from PCs. The GM would still get them all in this case.

This falls back to a long running concern I've had where the chat log is used as a combination of communication and action log. Some people really want to be able to see all the detail and be notified, while others don't.

Are you sure that you would want all effect notification turned off for PC and GM? Without the notification, a GM and players can lose track of effects adding/expiring, unless they are constantly monitoring their combat tracker.

Regards,
JPG

Zeus
June 25th, 2014, 23:08
This falls back to a long running concern I've had where the chat log is used as a combination of communication and action log. Some people really want to be able to see all the detail and be notified, while others don't.

Funny you mention that J, I was thinking the other day it would be nice if we could re-route combat reporting from the chat window to a new side panel attached to the CT window following a complaint from one of my users that he couldn't easily track the combat reporting messages in the chat window. As we have 6-8 players often in a session, it tends to get very busy.

Irondrake
June 26th, 2014, 13:40
Maybe add an additional chat tab for combat messages, ala MMO style? Combat related messages could be routed to that tab instead of the main chat? My group hasn't specified an interest one way or another but we don't use any sort of voice. It may be a welcome addition :)

Moon Wizard
June 27th, 2014, 00:30
Yeah, I thought about that as well. (separate tab/panel/window)

I need to think on this a bit, since I'm assuming people would want the full roll details (dice, mods, etc) within the "detail window" and just chat/story communication in the "chat window".

I'd basically be creating another type of control that acted just like the chat window visually, but without the linkage to the chat entry box. The current FG client has some built-in assumptions about a single chat window and single chat entry box, and they are linked together.

One of the concerns from a UI perspective (especially tabbed view) is the separate log spaces is at odds with the way some people like to play the game. If chat heavy game, people would have to bounce back and forth between chat/detail windows to see all the information, and also knowing when new entries appear in one or the other would be something that would have to be addressed. For people that like to see what they rolled, separating the rolls into a different window makes it less obvious what they rolled and makes them look in two places constantly.

Another concern is that you lose the interleaving of action/chat with rolls to know the order in which they happened. Not sure if this is even an issue in most games, but might be for chat heavy games.

My original thought was that the full roll details would be posted in the detail log, and only the summary of the roll posted in the chat log window. That way people could swap over to look at details. (i.e. Full roll and result details as current in detail window, but only single entry with results in main entry.) (And all effects addition/expiration would go in detail log.) While this addresses most of the items I mentioned above, it still doesn't provide the single view to what was rolled.

Maybe an option for GM/players to toggle whether die rolls and results, just results or nothing appear in chat window? Regardless, some back end work would need to be done.

In reality, probably something to be voted on in the wish list.

Regards,
JPG

Irondrake
June 27th, 2014, 00:37
I do like the idea of toggling full rolls and results, just results, or nothing. Yeah, it probably should be in the wish list.

Trenloe
June 27th, 2014, 01:17
One of the concerns from a UI perspective (especially tabbed view) is the separate log spaces is at odds with the way some people like to play the game. If chat heavy game, people would have to bounce back and forth between chat/detail windows to see all the information, and also knowing when new entries appear in one or the other would be something that would have to be addressed. For people that like to see what they rolled, separating the rolls into a different window makes it less obvious what they rolled and makes them look in two places constantly.
This is my concern also - especially from the GM side, knowing that there has been some "action" in another tab and if there is a lot of action going on having to scroll back to find the last point you checked and then tying actions in to when people "said" something in the chat window.

Some of the reasons why there is now a lot of info in the chat window is that it allows the players, but more importantly the GM to see what is going on: effects being added, attacks being made, damage being done, spells being cast, healing being done, etc., etc.. If this was spread across multiple tabs the GM might easily miss something important - it can be difficult enough in the single chat window which, ironically, was one of the problems that started this thread (I believe). If we get back to the screenshot in the OP - one way of reducing some of the extraneous details when effects are added to multiple targets down to a single line? When you have a bard inspiring courage each round you get half-a-dozen "effect expired for XXX" messages and then half-a-dozen effect added to XXXX in the combat tracker. If these could be distilled into "Effect expired for XXX, YYY, ZZZ" and "Effect added to "XXX, YYY, ZZZ" on a single line that might go a long way to reducing some of the "clutter" in the combat tracker.

I've added such an "idea" to the idea informer website: https://fg2app.idea.informer.com/proj/?ia=85669

Moon Wizard
June 27th, 2014, 02:01
The current action manager in CoreRPG splits off each effect as it is applied. (ie per target). Need to think if I can do this without changing ActionsManager script.

Still think option to move details over would be long term, but Trenloe's suggestion would help a bit.

JPG