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Belizan
July 7th, 2005, 10:43
These are based on a montage of direct experience with the Demo, and the presumption that all the features missing from the demo but mentioned in the guide are in the release version...

Things I think are missing:
#1: Cut and Paste. I can not stress enough how fundamental this is to what is at its core a text communication and manipulation application.
#2: The ability to resize the chat window
#3: A Scroll indicator in the chat window. It only took once to accidentally scroll a little bit up in the chat window and then think it had frozen to make me hate not having some indicator of where I am vis a vis scroll position.
#4: Miniatures. If they are available I don't know how to get access to them. Tokens are nice and all, but I'd like to be able to use minis if possible. It took me a long time to realize there was no way to get (or unlock) miniature versions of the PC portraits onto the map.
#5: Disable draw on map mode. Once I gave someone permission, I couldn't take it away. Some indication of the state of individual players edit access rights would be nice too.
#6: Links between tokens on the map and either note/site/image objects or entries in the encounter tracker.
#7: Init formula auto rolling and sorting (and rerolling/setting) for the encounter tracker.
#8: By hand resorting/shuffle of encounter tracker list order.
#9: Turn toggling from the encounter tracker (equivalent to selecting turn toggle on a player's portrait, but also allowing for NPC turn indicators).
#10: Some command key-click combination to get a mod box (to hit, init, etc.) to auto-roll into the chat window (skipping the whole drag and drop aspect). Another command key click option to add the mod to the modifier stack (again, skipping the drag and drop).
#11: Map snap to grid functionality
#12: GM cone/rect/sphere/etc. ae marker. There is one for the PCs, but bizarrely, it did not seem to be available for the GM.
#13: Make names in the Encounter Tracker linked with their personality/character records. This one surprised me, after all, the entries are typically made in the first place by dragging a link reference into the tracker window.
#14: Link and tracking mechanism for PCs to track their henchmen, familiars and companions. I.e. Let the PCs have multiple sheets stacked under their character, and let the DM send sheets to various PCs.
#15: Send to chat command key click option for "Chat Box" text on story records (and chat box texts for personalities too).
#16: Faster/easier interface for whispering to players. Facility to whisper to multiple players simultaneously (potentially the ability to create "channels" and wire certain people into it. Both blind and public, where blind means each person on the channel is unaware of the other, whereas public they are aware the other is there, and possible a third type where it's omni-directional instead of just one to many).
#17: /die should support arbitrary die types. I can't tell you my surprise at /die 1d3+1 not working. I was even using a leopard whose sheet I had pulled up from the MM within the demo package itself. It was... almost funny.


Things I wish were added:
#1: Static text area, at the upper portion of the chat window, sized dynamically, where the DM could put or add short term static information (like the description of the current area, current acting player, or what have you). This would effectively be a floating text area, so chat text would scroll underneath it, leaving it "sticky" at the top of the chat window.
#2: Quality, Integrated Voice Support.
#3: Tabletop virtual folders and filing cabinets for gathering and collecting sub collections of events, personalities, etc. in a visually different location and more visually intuitive fashion then categories in the Story list.
#4: Preferences to allow you to switch the keyboard and command key short cuts for things. So /emote could be mapped to :, /action to & (or whatever), control shift changed to something more natural, like... straight up control, and let actions be control shift. Others could map /me, etc.
#5: Speech pattern filters ala OpenRPG's alias library speech filters.
#6: Squelch control. Sometimes it's nice to be able to actually prevent a player (or players) from sending text to the chat window.
#7: More or customizable "Mood" colorings. I had half and half hoped or expected that the "flame" icon was going to cause some shadow flickering at the edges of the screen/game window.
#8: Advanced Map building tools. Not like FM or CC, but more like DungeonForge.
#9: Scrollable images. For larger maps it would be nice if I could have the image size and the image window size be decoupled and then be allowed to scroll across the map, and allow the GM to control scrolling or allow the players free control to scroll their copies.
#10: By layer masking, introduction of Photoshop style layers for adding various levels of information. By which I mean that you could share layers independently.
#11: Per player demasking (for elve's spotting secret doors, for instance).

Bagpuss2
July 7th, 2005, 15:46
One thing I'ld like is some way to display the difference between a +0 modifier and a null entry.

IE: Someone might have an attack of +5/+0 thanks to negative modifiers. But there is no way to tell the difference between +5/+0 and +5 on the character sheet.

richvalle
July 7th, 2005, 16:46
omg. I had a very long responce and lost it all by going back after doing a preview.

sigh.

rv

richvalle
July 8th, 2005, 01:49
These are based on a montage of direct experience with the Demo, and the presumption that all the features missing from the demo but mentioned in the guide are in the release version...

Things I think are missing:

#1: Cut and Paste. I can not stress enough how fundamental this is to what is at its core a text communication and manipulation application.

Yes. though I've not done enough content entry to miss this much. For the Wizard's Amulet we used Word for Windows and then imported it in.



#2: The ability to resize the chat window

This has been brought up before. The offical responce is that it can not be done because of synching issues between the different systems if the chat windows are different sizes since that is where the dice roll as well.



#3: A Scroll indicator in the chat window. It only took once to accidentally scroll a little bit up in the chat window and then think it had frozen to make me hate not having some indicator of where I am vis a vis scroll position.

I think this is a demo thing. I have noticed a scroll bar in the chat window now. Though what WOULD be nice is for you to be able to scroll farther back. Right now it only seems to go back about a half page or so.



#4: Miniatures. If they are available I don't know how to get access to them. Tokens are nice and all, but I'd like to be able to use minis if possible. It took me a long time to realize there was no way to get (or unlock) miniature versions of the PC portraits onto the map.

Shrink the portrait image down to 50 pix's and put it into your token directory. That has become a bit of a standard (for us).



#6: Links between tokens on the map and either note/site/image objects or entries in the encounter tracker.
#7: Init formula auto rolling and sorting (and rerolling/setting) for the encounter tracker.
#8: By hand resorting/shuffle of encounter tracker list order.
#9: Turn toggling from the encounter tracker (equivalent to selecting turn toggle on a player's portrait, but also allowing for NPC turn indicators).

There has been a lot of requests for more functionality to the combat tracker. There is either improvments coming or something new and better to do the same thing (can't remember which).

Gotta go... I'll try to do the rest later.

rv