Goblin-King
August 20th, 2005, 04:19
Sorry to keep the interested people here in the dark. As you might guess, our last minute preparations before heading to GenCon didn't really leave us much time to make posts about meaningful matters.
So far at the location here, we've been very busy educating people about the possibilities of online RPGs, and I'm pretty safe to say our guests have expressed reactions from interested to enlightened, and all in all we've had a great experience. I finally got a chance to make a quick post about what we've been planning.
1.05
This patch will focus on improving image controls and category controls (tabs) on the list scrolls.
The most interesting image changes will be the various zooming methods and image bookmarks. GMs will be able to put the image control into what we've been calling "minimap mode" that will scale the entire image to a size that will fit into the image frame, whatever size it's set to at that time. In that mode, you select a new location to zoom in on, providing a convenient method to move around on a larger map. There's also freeform zooming using the mouse wheel. We're still working on the rest of the details, looking for a way for people who don't like to use the wheel or don't have it on the mouse to do this stuff. We'll also use the zoom feature to make sure the image doesn't appear smaller than the actual frame, which will make using the entire thing a lot more pleasurable.
Image bookmarks are pins the GM can drop on any image, creating links to other sheets, much like the links on story pages currently. The pins will work as shortcut buttons the user presses with the mouse. This will allow the user to quickly navigate between maps in different scales, and also to link story pages to various locales on the campaign map itself.
A small but important feature will also be the eraser tool that you can use to erase areas in the drawing.
We'll make it possible to categorize information in modules into tabs that will be created when the module is imported. Tabs will most likely get tooltips that give better information about the contents. What this means is, you might create a campaign source module (e.g. "The land of the goblins") that has a tab for a certain purpose ("the herbalism of goblin land"). If you want to publish another module ("The definitive guide to herbs in goblin land"), you'll want the relevant content in both of them to land in the same tab, instead of hassling the user with several identical ones.
1.06
We've come to a point where we and the users would both like to see stuff in FG that could enable some advanced features, such as using dice pools as well as implementing some functions that require program logic like generators of various kinds.
To implement a mechanism for this, the 1.06 patch will focus primarily on just one thing: scripting and templating. We expect this new addition to help us keep the ruleset definition mechanisms generic by just expanding the built-in functions of the components.
[tech speak]
We're also going to be putting some effort into making sure this doesn't mean non-programmers will drop out of the content/ruleset development effort. We'll be using inheritance and templating as much as possible, which should result in another type of package users can access, namely libraries of modules and extensible components.
We'll be using Lua (https://www.lua.org).
[/tech speak]
We'll also review the default d20 ruleset to take advantage of this. Most of the benefits of this will be better access to a bit more automated features such as better tracking of effect durations by round, die rolls for a set of modifiers such as the attack rolls of a high level fighter, rolling 4 keeping the highest 3 and so on. It'll also be convenient for better ruleset specific math, e.g. for systems with diminishing skill rank effect on bonuses, spell points and so on.
More on this and other matters after we get home and get some sleep...
So far at the location here, we've been very busy educating people about the possibilities of online RPGs, and I'm pretty safe to say our guests have expressed reactions from interested to enlightened, and all in all we've had a great experience. I finally got a chance to make a quick post about what we've been planning.
1.05
This patch will focus on improving image controls and category controls (tabs) on the list scrolls.
The most interesting image changes will be the various zooming methods and image bookmarks. GMs will be able to put the image control into what we've been calling "minimap mode" that will scale the entire image to a size that will fit into the image frame, whatever size it's set to at that time. In that mode, you select a new location to zoom in on, providing a convenient method to move around on a larger map. There's also freeform zooming using the mouse wheel. We're still working on the rest of the details, looking for a way for people who don't like to use the wheel or don't have it on the mouse to do this stuff. We'll also use the zoom feature to make sure the image doesn't appear smaller than the actual frame, which will make using the entire thing a lot more pleasurable.
Image bookmarks are pins the GM can drop on any image, creating links to other sheets, much like the links on story pages currently. The pins will work as shortcut buttons the user presses with the mouse. This will allow the user to quickly navigate between maps in different scales, and also to link story pages to various locales on the campaign map itself.
A small but important feature will also be the eraser tool that you can use to erase areas in the drawing.
We'll make it possible to categorize information in modules into tabs that will be created when the module is imported. Tabs will most likely get tooltips that give better information about the contents. What this means is, you might create a campaign source module (e.g. "The land of the goblins") that has a tab for a certain purpose ("the herbalism of goblin land"). If you want to publish another module ("The definitive guide to herbs in goblin land"), you'll want the relevant content in both of them to land in the same tab, instead of hassling the user with several identical ones.
1.06
We've come to a point where we and the users would both like to see stuff in FG that could enable some advanced features, such as using dice pools as well as implementing some functions that require program logic like generators of various kinds.
To implement a mechanism for this, the 1.06 patch will focus primarily on just one thing: scripting and templating. We expect this new addition to help us keep the ruleset definition mechanisms generic by just expanding the built-in functions of the components.
[tech speak]
We're also going to be putting some effort into making sure this doesn't mean non-programmers will drop out of the content/ruleset development effort. We'll be using inheritance and templating as much as possible, which should result in another type of package users can access, namely libraries of modules and extensible components.
We'll be using Lua (https://www.lua.org).
[/tech speak]
We'll also review the default d20 ruleset to take advantage of this. Most of the benefits of this will be better access to a bit more automated features such as better tracking of effect durations by round, die rolls for a set of modifiers such as the attack rolls of a high level fighter, rolling 4 keeping the highest 3 and so on. It'll also be convenient for better ruleset specific math, e.g. for systems with diminishing skill rank effect on bonuses, spell points and so on.
More on this and other matters after we get home and get some sleep...