FGU Teaser Trailer - Dynamic drawing with LOS built in

[ddavison]

This was shared on the Twitch stream this afternoon, on our YouTube channel, Facebook, Twitter and on the FGU thread. I'm including it here for those that may not have spotted it in any of those locations.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoxEyNzFoio

[Athlonis]

this is awesome. keep up the good work!

[Nick]

All good, but i start to drive crazy and cut off every Connection to the hole fg sites and forum. I want buy the fgu,of course. But i feel fooled from fg. So many years they talk about. Show us features, they we cant use. They tell us no date when it comes out. I cant see it any more. Maybe its better to change from fg to roll20.

[RoleforFun]

Teasers! Not cool guys! (I jest). All these awesome features certainly get us excited but makes the lack of a timeline even more unbearable! Have mercy on us. :-)

[RoleforFun]

All good, but i start to drive crazy and cut off every Connection to the hole fg sites and forum. I want buy the fgu,of course. But i feel fooled from fg. So many years they talk about. Show us features, they we cant use. They tell us no date when it comes out. I cant see it any more. Maybe its better to change from fg to roll20.

I understand your frustration, but I doubt threatening is the best way to go about getting satisfaction. FG is still obviously superior to Roll20 in many ways. If fancy gimmicks like LoS and Dynamic Lighting are so crucial to you, then perhaps Roll20 is a better platform for you at the moment. You would be losing out on all sorts of integration, community fraternity, and content that Roll20 doesn't offer; so the choice is yours. No need to broadcast it to get attention or make a negative statement wrought by your lack of patience. Nobody is forcing you to use FG, and the devs have continuously advised that users should plan on using FG as it currently exists for the foreseeable future; there's no duplicity there for you to get your feelings hurt over. I hope you stay with the community and I get to play a game with you sometime!

[JohnD]

All good, but i start to drive crazy and cut off every Connection to the hole fg sites and forum. I want buy the fgu,of course. But i feel fooled from fg. So many years they talk about. Show us features, they we cant use. They tell us no date when it comes out. I cant see it any more. Maybe its better to change from fg to roll20.

Maybe. Let us know how it works out for you.

[EternalOne]

Well, if I may add my two cents, I come from Roll20 and recently switched to FG. I believe FG to be vastly superior to Roll20 although Roll20 has many bells and whistles such as LoS, integrated audio, visual effects and so on.

But as for the rest, I think FG dominates what it does because I think the devs worry about quality vs quantity.

When it comes to DMing, Roll20 is a pain and you are constantly dealing with the web mechanics on which it is built. This is mainly in the macros which are a pain to write if you add some complexity to them.

Performance is also an issue. I ran STK on Roll20 and I literally had to create a curated game in which I had to copy over new content and delete old content because the whole campaign bogged down performances. The chrome tab running STK would quite often hit 1.4+ GB of RAM usage and things would go wonky. Especially for some of my players with lower end laptop.

In FG, everything runs smoothly, even for the lower end laptops.

The only thing I will say is better in Roll20 is the sharing mechanics. You can share stuff directly to a character instead of a player, which makes some preparations easier. The status of shared handouts is also easier to read in Roll20, a quick glance and you know who has access to the handout. FG is a bit less straightforward in that regard. Here's me hoping to be corrected! :)

So, Roll20 is nice and all, but FG is indeed the better option IMHO.

Cheers!

[Trenloe]

@EternalOne Thanks for the feedback on Roll20 and they you're enjoying FG more from a GM standpoint.


The only thing I will say is better in Roll20 is the sharing mechanics. You can share stuff directly to a character instead of a player, which makes some preparations easier. The status of shared handouts is also easier to read in Roll20, a quick glance and you know who has access to the handout. FG is a bit less straightforward in that regard.
Can you expand on on thing you mention here - what do you want to share directly with a character rather than a player? Is it an image/handout, is it an item, or something else?

[EternalOne]

@EternalOne Thanks for the feedback on Roll20 and they you're enjoying FG more from a GM standpoint.


Can you expand on on thing you mention here - what do you want to share directly with a character rather than a player? Is it an image/handout, is it an item, or something else?

Sure! I'll give you an example of what I mean.

23394

In this example, you can see by the color dots next to the handout which players have access to it. Although in this example this is a handout, it could easily be an item, NPC or whatever is in the journal. Where as in FG, I only see the public icon or shared icon over which I have to hover in order to see who has access to it.

But I double checked, and I was wrong about sharing to directly to the character, I can only share to the player and not a specific character. But, I can still share things to a player even if he is not logged in, which I can't do in FG unless I make it public.

All in all, it's still just a minor gripe and in no way a deal breaker. :)

[JohnD]

You can most certainly share with individual players. Drag the link to just that player's character portrait.

[Trenloe]

But, I can still share things to a player even if he is not logged in, which I can't do in FG unless I make it public.
I was wondering what you were referring to as you seemed to differentiate player and character: "You can share stuff directly to a character instead of a player" I was unsure what you meant by that - assuming character is a PC (player character).

The main thing here is that players and PCs are essentially different things - to allow players to control multiple PC, other players control a PC if a player is missing for that session, etc..

Character data persists in the FG database, and you can add "things" to a character even if the owning player is not logged in - "things" in this case being character related stuff - items, spells, weapons, etc.. Whereas the concept of a player is (mostly) only relevant when that player is logged in - with the exception of getting access to previously shared data - either individually when previously logged in or public when logged in or not.

Stuff being shared with a player is more handouts, story entries, etc.. Stuff you would print out and give to players if you were in a face-to-face session. You can share with individual players (as long as they are controlling at least one PC) but, as you say, you can't share with individual players if that player is not logged in to your campaign.

Anyway, you appear to have the gist of things - I wanted to make sure you knew about the difference between players and PCs, and that you can add character related things to a PC even if the player is not logged in.

[EternalOne]

You can most certainly share with individual players. Drag the link to just that player's character portrait.

Well this is very cool. Does this work with the character portraits in the PC Selection window? If so, that would solve the problem of waiting for players to be logged in as well! I'm not at home presently so I can not try it out right now.

[Zacchaeus]

No, you can only share with players who have joined your game.

At least you can only share items to individuals once they have joined. You can select items for prehsare to all characters which means that the items will be downloaded to all players when they join.

[Trenloe]

There is a cludgy work around... Based off FG sharing records with the name of the player in the session - set on the Join Game screen.

You can start a second instance of FG on the same computer as the GM instance, "Join Game" with a server address of localhost and enter the Username of the player who you wish to share data with. When the player instance fully starts up, select one of the PCs that player own - which will then show the portrait on the GM desktop, allowing records to be shared with that player by the GM drag/dropping links to the portrait. Then, when the real player next logs in (their Player name is stored and so they should join with their previous name) they will see the records shared with that player name.

The GM can get the player name by looking at the Character Selection screen - they'll see "Owned by: XXXXX" where XXXXX is the player name.

[Targas]

Now we just need limited Line of Sight to reflect torch/lantern/beacon distances. Without it, I might as well just display the entire map to the player characters.

[Dracones]

All good, but i start to drive crazy and cut off every Connection to the hole fg sites and forum. I want buy the fgu,of course. But i feel fooled from fg. So many years they talk about. Show us features, they we cant use. They tell us no date when it comes out. I cant see it any more. Maybe its better to change from fg to roll20.

The problem for them is the backwards compatibility. There's a massive amount of current scripting, UI elements, windowing, etc for all the existing FG rulesets, extensions, addons, modules, etc. And that itself is probably a moving target, because dev work continues to happen on the existing platform and rulesets. Even when FGU is "done", expect a very long beta process. I'm betting that tracking down every little incompatibility players can find in obscure rulesets is going to take some time.

If you find roll20 today better than FG today(I don't for well supported systems like 5E and Savage Worlds), then you may be happier just making the switch and check back once FGU has been out for a little awhile.

I expect when it's out and stable, Unity as a tech platform is going to work much better for VTT than the browser(roll20) and we should be able to see some really interesting things out of it.

[Full Bleed]

This was shared on the Twitch stream this afternoon, on our YouTube channel, Facebook, Twitter and on the FGU thread. I'm including it here for those that may not have spotted it in any of those locations.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoxEyNzFoio
I love seeing this.

In days past alarmists worried that setting up vision blocking would be too time consuming, complicated, and antithetical to table-top gaming... And here we see how simple it can be with the right interface and tools.

Nice work.

[lostsanityreturned]

Yeah I used roll20 for years, it is a horrible experience for DMs that want to do more with the digital side of things. Fine if you just want to run with it as a dice rolling and combat mat and do everything else in as if you were in person.

FG is far better for what I want though. Far far better.

Dyanmic lighting / LoS is far from a gimmick though, it allows for all sorts of DM convenience and it is one of my most anticipated features (and the one thing I miss from roll20 other than it's vastly superior drawing tools)

[Nickademus]

Now we just need limited Line of Sight to reflect torch/lantern/beacon distances. Without it, I might as well just display the entire map to the player characters.

This is the point most people are missing. The demo is a nice thing to watch, but it has no relevance on any of the RPGs that I play as LoS is determined by more than just collision. I hesitate to ask more about FGU as I figure it will just sound ungrateful. In the end, I'll wait until the software is released and then see how many of the features that's extending the release date are actually relevant to running a 5e game using a 5e DLC adventure.

[RoleforFun]

This is the point most people are missing. The demo is a nice thing to watch, but it has no relevance on any of the RPGs that I play as LoS is determined by more than just collision. I hesitate to ask more about FGU as I figure it will just sound ungrateful. In the end, I'll wait until the software is released and then see how many of the features that's extending the release date are actually relevant to running a 5e game using a 5e DLC adventure.

That's a great point and I agree. Based on Roll20's ability to do such a thing with their individual token "light" settings, it seems plausible in at least some form of programming that it could be part of FGU or a future update. One could hope at least!

[Valyar]

Roll20 definitely nailed the dynamic lighting - Line of Sight, Dynamic Fog of War, Movement restriction, Bright/Dim light, Global Illumination.
I hope FGU gets those from launch, to finally punch roll20 in the face.

[Nylanfs]

There's already Movement restriction, just have to turn on GM Approval. Unless you mean something else.

[Valyar]

There's already Movement restriction, just have to turn on GM Approval. Unless you mean something else.

I haven't used the Movement restriction in FG, seems cumbersome for GM to approve all moves, but in Roll20 there is line of sight blocker that can also restrict the movement of a token. This prevents the players to move the tokens (tokens have sight, can emit light) into regions that are not yet "opened" by the gm or simply out of the pre-defined region.

[LordEntrails]

Given how conscientious SmiteWorks has been for the years I have known them, I have faith that the DLOS that they release with FGU will be superior to anything that exists today. They may make some trade-offs here or there and their solution may not be what some of us are used to or might prefer, but I'm confident the technical capabilities will be the best available.

It's fun to speculate, and important to voice ideas and opinions, but don't get stressed about it. :)