Die rolling problem!

[Iceman]

The new 3.5e system is awesome and I think it will do wonders for its new users given its functionality and ease of use compared to older systems.

That said, I believe there is a die rolling problem that seems to go beyond 3.5e and into the 4e system as well, which has only become apparent since the upgrade. When we first started playing the new system under 3.5e a few of my players mentioned that they saw the die roll and it was 'x' (pick your favorite number other than twenty)

However the system reported and displayed the number 'y' after the rolled die faded away. ('y' is any number that is not 'x' and is not 20)

Of course I brushed this off and chalked it up to too much dope smoking by my players. And then I saw the same thing happen! I checked my prescription for medical marijuana and found that it had long been expired, so there was no way I had been smoking any at the time. Then in last nights 4e game, where I am a player and not a DM, another player said he saw an erroneous die roll as well.

So, even as I call various pharmacies to renew my needed prescription, I have to believe that there is an errant die rolling problem. To confirm, if you have seen this phenomena since the upgrade please post that confirmation here.

I think the devs may need to take a look at this, but for now we continue to use the number that is reported and ignore any phantom die rolls. And in case you were wondering why 'x' and 'y' could not be the number twenty above, it is because ALL my players CONTINUALLY claim that they rolled a twenty, even when they are rolling a six sided die.

[Casimir]

I've seen the same thing occur a couple times in two different games I'm involved in. I simply took the result displayed in the chat box, as that was what the players saw as well, but the dice itself displayed a different number.

As I recall, both times this happened with a 20 sided die. I'm not sure if it happens (at least it hasn't with me) with any other dice.

[joshuha]

Its because the die results are based off of the physics of the dice. Some of that physics is based off it bouncing off the chat area. However, because in 2.8 the chat area stretches a little depending on your screen size different people now have different chat area sizes so will see different physics than the rolling player. The rolling player *should* see the correct physics and die result most of the time, its just the other players that may see something different as far as the physics is concerned.

[Casimir]

Gotcha - as long as the displayed result in the chat window is the same for everyone, then that's fine. Just kind of odd the first few times you see it.

[Trenloe]

Its because the die results are based off of the physics of the dice. Some of that physics is based off it bouncing off the chat area. However, because in 2.8 the chat area stretches a little depending on your screen size different people now have different chat area sizes so will see different physics than the rolling player. The rolling player *should* see the correct physics and die result most of the time, its just the other players that may see something different as far as the physics is concerned.

That makes sense.

I can readily reproduce by making the player window higher than the GM window (and therefore the chat window longer). It doesn't happen every dice roll, but it can happen regularly - especially if the player releases the die towards the bottom of the chat window (so outside of the GM chat window).

Quite annoying really, as all the players and GM will look at the result of the die roll primarily... However, this generally only happens for manual die rolls - so rolls made from character sheets and shortcuts don't appear to be affected (that I can see in my testing).

[Moon Wizard]

When I implemented the stretchable chat windows, I deliberately tweaked the client code so that the default double-click behavior was most likely to display correctly. Manually thrown rolls are more likely to be affected to the different physical assumptions.

One of the items that I looked at in the past was to expand the rolling area to the entire FG desktop, but I didn't have a good solution for how to cancel a roll easily and the variety of window sizes for FG host vs. client causing different rolls (due to the physical boundaries) would happen more often and need to be addressed.

Cheers,
JPG

[dr_venture]

I think the real fix is at some point to just make the dice "work out" for everyone, no matter their chat window size... but I'm guessing that's not a simple fix, or moon would have done it.

Perhaps a simpler solution in the short term (if possible) would be to have a "dice compatibility" toggle in the chat panel radial menu that each participant can choose whether or not to use. When compatibility is "off", the chat panel works as it normally does now: it can be a size determined by the screen size or ruleset of that individual's computer. When compatibility is "on" that person's chat panel is resized automatically to match that of the person with the smallest chat window/screen size. That way you can choose between the importance of a large chat window or having the die roll graphics match up with everyone else. I'm sure there is some logic in there that needs to be worked out, like how does FG choose who to use as the master to match all other screens off of.