Fantasy Grounds Unity Praise

[YamaShintaku]

Fantasy Grounds Unity is incredible! Considering there are hundreds of bug and issue posts now, and that number will only grow over the next few weeks and months, I thought I would kick off a different kind of post. A post to praise Doug and his comrades on an amazing project with tons of future potential! I know we're playtesting and looking for bugs, but I am also playtesting and sincerely finding myself in awe of a cool VTT gaming platform. Kudos to the whole Smiteworks team! And, kudos to the hundreds (and now thousands) of players who are troubleshooting and helping to improve the software. I know we're months away from a playable environment and I am patiently waiting with bated breath.

Things I like so far:

1. The look and feel has stayed very similar to Classic and therefore makes it easier to navigate. Even if I am unsure how to accomplish something, it is usually close enough and familiar enough that I can bang it out pretty quick.
2. LoS is simply AWESOME! I cannot wait to play test it with my group so they can drool over it too.
3. The map creation tools and tile thingies are so neat and I am only peeking at the tip of the iceberg at this stage. Such a robust system that makes me happy.
4. The Smiteworks team is small, yet their customer support is top-notched and I am impressed by the amount of time and effort they put into every person's comments/questions.
5. Dave (the digital DM) is regularly covering cool things about Unity with featured guests on the weekly Twitch show.
6. Perhaps best of all is this community of players. You all make me proud to be a part of this!

Feel free to pop in with comments about things you like so far, or simply pats on the back for the Smiteworks gang...

Cheers!

-Vaughn

[OldJarhead]

Wish I could join in the praise. I can't get it to run. Continually locks up and crashes. I have managed to get to the actual desk top once. Started loading some books and CRASH. I'm no tech savvy guy, in fact just a bull in a china shop when it comes to all the techno lingo I've been seeing on these post. Might as well be in greek or latin for me.

Hopefully in a few months they will put out a new post telling all of us not-so-techy folks that it's all fixed and we can now try it out. I'm good with classic for now.

[YamaShintaku]

Wish I could join in the praise. I can't get it to run. Continually locks up and crashes. I have managed to get to the actual desk top once. Started loading some books and CRASH. I'm no tech savvy guy, in fact just a bull in a china shop when it comes to all the techno lingo I've been seeing on these post. Might as well be in greek or latin for me.

Hopefully in a few months they will put out a new post telling all of us not-so-techy folks that it's all fixed and we can now try it out. I'm good with classic for now.

I am sorry to hear that. I'm sure with this community and the regular updates you'll be in there soon. I see the Updater is hard at work on a daily basis, so you should keep updating and keep your chin up, bro!

[notrealdan]

I really like the new assets function. I have tons of maps and tokens, and could never have them all loaded and searchable in FGC. It’ll be nice to have them all available to search for and use on-demand in the middle of a game without having to remember which module holds the particular thing I need.

[StoryWeaver]

Something I just found out through testing now!
You can actually create a "images" folder in the root of your "Data" folder, where you have "portraits" and "tokens" folders. And FGU will pick it up as an Assets folder under images!

This means that you can add all your battlemaps and map assets (that I can pull onto the maps directly from the Assets), that you use across all your my games, in one place accessible and viewable inside FGU under Assets. Usable directly to all of my games.

FGU is making so many new amazing things possible, keep discovering new things like this. Then you have the dynamic lighting, how easy it is to create, drawing on maps now looks good, spacing around the images.
The new map image handling in general is such an improvement over FGC. Then the F/X look great and a good taster of what's to come. And those are but a few of the improvements I've seen, scratching the surface.

Once it is all working and stable like SmiteWorks is working hard on, I don't think there will be any VTT out there that will hold a candle next to Fantasy Grounds when you look at the big picture of what it does and enables you to do! :D

ps. I loved FG before, but with FGU all those things I've been missing seem to be coming together and are going to turn me into an utter fanboy if I'm not careful. *laughs*.

[YamaShintaku]

I really like the new assets function. I have tons of maps and tokens, and could never have them all loaded and searchable in FGC. It’ll be nice to have them all available to search for and use on-demand in the middle of a game without having to remember which module holds the particular thing I need.

Agreed. It is pretty robust! Once I got used to moving around in Assets and such, it really opened my eyes to the potential.

[YamaShintaku]

Something I just found out through testing now!
You can actually create a "images" folder in the root of your "Data" folder, where you have "portraits" and "tokens" folders. And FGU will pick it up as an Assets folder under images!

This means that you can add all your battlemaps and map assets (that I can pull onto the maps directly from the Assets), that you use across all your my games, in one place accessible and viewable inside FGU under Assets. Usable directly to all of my games.

FGU is making so many new amazing things possible, keep discovering new things like this. Then you have the dynamic lighting, how easy it is to create, drawing on maps now looks good, spacing around the images.
The new map image handling in general is such an improvement over FGC. Then the F/X look great and a good taster of what's to come. And those are but a few of the improvements I've seen, scratching the surface.

Once it is all working and stable like SmiteWorks is working hard on, I don't think there will be any VTT out there that will hold a candle next to Fantasy Grounds when you look at the big picture of what it does and enables you to do! :D

ps. I loved FG before, but with FGU all those things I've been missing seem to be coming together and are going to turn me into an utter fanboy if I'm not careful. *laughs*.

That is a really cool find. I agree, I am finding new things each time and it only seems to make the platform better than the last time!

[YamaShintaku]

Looks like many bugs have been fixed. And, I see that my purchased items are now becoming available. Testing is going great and I'm really enjoying the platform!

[Dr0W]

Yea, one thing I've been playing with is the idea of using pre-built dungeon parts, like corridors, rooms, etc.

I don't think the ideal of building a map in FGU is great: Building wall by wall, floor by floor. There are other softwares that already do that really well. Now, having some pre-built rooms, with LOS pre-adjusted, sticking them together to create a dungeon, throwing some items on it... now that is great.

And we can do that already, but I still have to figure out a way to save LOS on maps I can import into other maps.

Wish I could share pictures to illustrate what I mean, but I don't think we can share those even here (can we?)

[Moon Wizard]

Yes, you can share any pictures of FGU on the forum.

JPG

[Dr0W]

Cool! So this is what I've been playing with:

29968

I've made each part of the dungeon using another software, and it's really easy to attach them together since the grid snaps, and I think in the future if we had packs of "dungeon tiles" being sold, it would be awesome.

I just can't figure a way to make those dungeon parts to come with the LOS. I know it's possible, since we have Asset modules doing that, but not sure if it's available to us yet.

[Henrique Oliveira Machado]

Cool! So this is what I've been playing with:

29968

I've made each part of the dungeon using another software, and it's really easy to attach them together since the grid snaps, and I think in the future if we had packs of "dungeon tiles" being sold, it would be awesome.

I just can't figure a way to make those dungeon parts to come with the LOS. I know it's possible, since we have Asset modules doing that, but not sure if it's available to us yet.

Good question. i want to know too

[Dr0W]

I know that you can save each LOS definition within each layer inside a Map, and they will move with that specific layer within the same map. But I wish I could save each layer as a different Asset, that I could use on other maps.

I've been playing with this idea for a while and came up with this idea:
29972

You're in a dungeon, you pull a lever and then... the room turns and now you have access to a different part of the dungeon.

I'm also playing with the idea of having the whole map in one layer, and a central inner layer with the treasure. And after they get the treasure, I reset their revealed map and tell them that now they have to flee the dungeon, and will have to remember how to get out. What they don't know is that... I rotated the outer layer 90, or 180 degrees. *Evil Laughter*

[YamaShintaku]

I know that you can save each LOS definition within each layer inside a Map, and they will move with that specific layer within the same map. But I wish I could save each layer as a different Asset, that I could use on other maps.

I've been playing with this idea for a while and came up with this idea:
29972

You're in a dungeon, you pull a lever and then... the room turns and now you have access to a different part of the dungeon.

I'm also playing with the idea of having the whole map in one layer, and a central inner layer with the treasure. And after they get the treasure, I reset their revealed map and tell them that now they have to flee the dungeon, and will have to remember how to get out. What they don't know is that... I rotated the outer layer 90, or 180 degrees. *Evil Laughter*

Fantastic idea! I'd love to see how you accomplish it. And, it seems worthy of a future update if it isn't already an option for us. Thanks for sharing!

[Ginjiruu]

One thing no-one has mentioned quite yet is the performance. OH MY GOD I had a campaign where I stitched all the maps of the doomvault together into 1 mega map and normal fantasy grounds would cry. But now I can load that 80 mb map like its nothing. And shadowing off areas takes only a second compared to FG classic taking like 5 min to update on larger maps.

the 64 bit improvement has def been the coolest part imo

[Dr0W]

One thing no-one has mentioned quite yet is the performance. OH MY GOD I had a campaign where I stitched all the maps of the doomvault together into 1 mega map and normal fantasy grounds would cry. But now I can load that 80 mb map like its nothing. And shadowing off areas takes only a second compared to FG classic taking like 5 min to update on larger maps.

the 64 bit improvement has def been the coolest part imo

Indeed.

We all know that it's using much more memory than it's supposed to be. We all know that some parts are slower than we want it to be (like resizing maps, opening some folders and windows for the first time), but hell yes.

Dealing with images in general, setting the grid and adjusting it to the square used to be so freaking slow and now it's pretty smooth.

And you put like two, three maps, side by side and it's still smooth. I'm impressed.

[Dr0W]

I have to praise FG Unity a bit more.
Until now I have been using FGU trying not to break it, but today I wanted to push it's limits on how large I can use a map on FGU without it crashing or becoming slow.
So I tried putting together the whole "One Million Dungeon" by Zatnikotel( https://www.deviantart.com/zatnikotel ). Which are 36 7000x7000px maps, put side by side to create one enormous dungeon that's 42.000x42.000px. Each map being a 50x50 map, wich each square being 140x140px (instead of the usual 50x50 I used on FGC).

My FGU didn't crash, didn't even slow down. I checked my ram, and it was using the same 3gb it was using before. I'm speechless.

I've got it on a unlisted video on youtube if you guys want to check this out.

https://youtu.be/aNBJJFvTshs

[Aridhro]

I admit this is fantastic!
But have you tested this in player view? Making large maps in FGC was doable, but sharing them with players caused the majority of problems.

[Dr0W]

I admit this is fantastic!
But have you tested this in player view? Making large maps in FGC was doable, but sharing them with players caused the majority of problems.

Not yet. I might do it locally, but I doubt I will do it online. It's over 600mb for those maps, even if it runs smoothly that's a lot to upload to 4+ players. I was just trying to push the limits. If 36 high-res maps can run smooth at once, 1~3 maps will run awesome, with no problems.

I'd have problems running just ONE of those maps, with that res, on FGC.

[Aridhro]

Not yet. I might do it locally, but I doubt I will do it online. It's over 600mb for those maps, even if it runs smoothly that's a lot to upload to 4+ players. I was just trying to push the limits. If 36 high-res maps can run smooth at once, 1~3 maps will run awesome, with no problems.

I'd have problems running just ONE of those maps, with that res, on FGC.

It would be nice to have a smooth experience with just one high res map. Now (FGC) every +1MB map already lags in game sessions. My local sharing tests (FGU) w/ a 3,8MB map were not great performance wise. Fingers crossed it works better on launch.

[ddavison]

Nice.

[Zwergenmauer]

That is a really cool find. I agree, I am finding new things each time and it only seems to make the platform better than the last time!

Ditto here. Each time I open up FGU, I find new things to love -- more things to love than be frustrated witht. And this is Playtesting, which means that the frustrating things can be listed and problem solved together. Hats off to SmiteWorks and the fellow Alpha/Beta testers here.