Is there a thread about proposed updates?

[azbo]

First let me say that Fantasy Grounds 2 is a great piece of software. It has allowed me to reconnect with a group of guys I grew up with who are now spread all over the country living in 4 different states and 3 different time zones.

While FG2 does crash now and then (we rarely have a 3 hour session without at least one player dropping offline due to a crash) overall it's still a very nice piece of software. I can deal with the occasional hiccup in the software but I am wondering about a few things in the design and where I can go to read about bug reports, updates, proposed changes.

I have a lot of design questions about choices that have been implemented, especially with regard to the map window:

First, scrolling in the map window is terrible. It's very difficult for a player to recenter his map and the zoom option doesn't seem to work at all. I did manage to stumble upon a very weird sequence to recenter (click the mouse wheel while hovering on the compass icon in the bottom right, then scroll by moving pointer in the direction you wish to travel then right click to lock. This is not a comfortable series of actions and I can only guess it works by accident). Perhaps making the compass two icons and allowing the wheel to move the maps would be a lot better. Hover and wheel with a click to lock would be miles beyond the current system. Even scroll bars would be a nice addition. How about a re sizable window? I have a 22" flat screen and if I set my resolution to maximum I get a lot of real estate but the guys in my campaign frequently complain about the amount of area available.

Copy and paste or "save". Sometimes the DM releases a letter or a note or something and the players take a look or even take possession of the item but there's no way for players to copy the text and thus every time they want to reread the text they have to ask the DM to reshare. Is there a way/plan to change this.

Local library: This one might be a pie in the sky dream but as a player it gets old typing the same things into the game onto different character sheets. Is there a way to add a local library type feature? It would be very nice if I only had to type in a power, ability, etc once and then I could save it and drag them into the game when I reused them. I know there are copyright issues to contend with but Microsoft isn't responsible if you retype a book in word. You could even make this difficult/impossible to export so people wouldn't be using your software to make something that infringes on copyrights for redistribution.

Some or all of this might be covered elsewhere I just couldn't find a logical place for it and I apologize in advance if I recreated another thread.

[Dachannien]

There are a few wishlist threads around here. I think this one (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8625) is the most recent.

On a side note, not allowing players to pick their own map center or zoom level is a design feature. It's a bit flawed because players can still scroll around, even though it snaps back when you let go of the widget, but the point is to restrict the ability of players to see portions of the map that the DM doesn't really want them looking at or focusing on.

As for resizable windows, you can modify the ruleset to increase the maximum possible size of an image window. They actually are already resizable, though, up to that maximum. It's been a while since I've had to resize a window, but I think it's hold ctrl and drag the window border.

Finally, for d20 3rd/3.5th edition players, FG2 comes equipped with a full spell list module, and those entries are draggable to the character sheet.

[Spyke]

Copy and paste or "save". Sometimes the DM releases a letter or a note or something and the players take a look or even take possession of the item but there's no way for players to copy the text and thus every time they want to reread the text they have to ask the DM to reshare. Is there a way/plan to change this.Try the following workaround. It's not a great solution, but might help occasionally.

Each player can create a Note and then Share it (using the right-click menu). The GM then copies the relevant text into the players' Notes and then chooses Update Shared Sheet for the sheets.

Spyke

[azbo]

thanks for those tips. I'm going to try and resize the map window next session. Making more work for the DM via the shared sheet method seems like a bad idea to me (or at least for my specific purpose) since my intent was to keep dm work load down not increase it.

I'm aware of the 3.5 drag and drop spells. The personal library would be so that you could build up your own personal db of drag and drop items (think 4e powers) without anyone distributing something the wizards has the copyrights on. In any event I can probably take a look at the 3.5 module and write the proper xml since I'm a web programmer and basically make my own library but my hope was that if there was a library building feature then when there's a new release or update to the module my group is using we wouldn't have to worry about incorporating my supplemental code repeatedly.

The map "feature" makes no sense. The game comes with masking so the DM can hide as much of the map as he sees fit. Since I already can scroll and can lock the map in any location I want if that truly was a "design feature" it's horribly implented and horrily conceived.

[Tenian]

I posted a spell parser over on FUM (https://fouruglymonsters.com), It's a bit rough and designed to work with JPGs 4e ruleset. I prattle on about my development on my 4e blog (https://dnd-4e.blogspot.com).

The program contains no WOTC data. It just combines several input files (which you have to generate yourself...samples are provided) and turns it into an XML file designed to work with FG2.

It is a little effort to get it up and running, but it's way less than typing all the data from the PHB/MM/DMG by hand.

If you get stuck, send me a message here, on FUM, or on my blog.