Release Fantasy Grounds Unity now...

[Bidmaron]

And its very easy to have submenus as one or more of the eight choices.

The problem is that if you are writing extensions, it is a pain in the arse to try to figure out how to do submenus because you may not know the context of the menu you are adding to. Sure, if you are starting from scratch at the top to produce a menu, it is easy to do submenus, but I have not found a graceful way to examine an existing radial menu and figure out how to make a submenu that makes contextual sense (e.g. if there are 8 options, and you want to add a 9th, which of the 8 do you peel off to the new submenu to make room for your submenu option [which can basically only have an ellipsis graphic with hover text of "Additional options..." or some such]). Not to mention patching the original response code to handle the option that had to be moved to a submenu...

[shadzar]

It is that 'antique' look that helps reinforce the fantasy aspect, IMO.

So does a horse and cart, but you won't see me going amish and getting rid of my car anytime soon for some unneeded flavor in my life. things for daily use, need to work better than antiquated technology and design.

the UI can still be a jumble of windows, but better management with a better core coding environment that is Unity. ability to lock windows to a location or size, and better window controls than say the map trying to fight to zoom or scroll or figure out which MS-DOS method of keyboard combinations to use ti navigate it.

a point and click system and UI should only need the pointing and clicking, not a 3-finger salute added to it.

even keybinding your own commands would be a big improvement. 20 years ago was Windows98, there has a lot been changed in the way software looks and works since then, and to gain new users of the mdoern era, you have to update to a more NOW and intuitive design in some way. otherwise the only customers of your product will be the existing ones, with no hope for growth.


work smarter, not harder.
Keep It Simple Stupid
Garbage in, Garbage Out

[Bidmaron]

Growth has been steady and good, shadzar. SW has the statistics to prove it, so your argument is on its face, specious. Again, there needs to be some improvements, and the need for a middle click IS very frustrating. The appearance is not something that needs improvement, IMO. We can disagree and obviously do, but don't force your view on me.

[Kelrugem]

I agree with you, Bidmaron My players and me really like the actual UI, for us it was more intuitive than Roll20's and my first thought (when i saw FG) was how good it looks Yes, there may be some people who likes something like this Modern UIs never really fitted my taste at the moment, especially when I want to play D&D or whatever I would not say that modern UIs are necessarily better, first of all they are only "different", with a different skin and order. And what is intuitive or not depends often on the user and to what he/she is used to.

But I also disagree with the typical sentence "A UI which is not self-explaining is not a UI", it always depends also on the user and in my experience simple UIs get complicated when using more complex usabilities (clicking through thousands of thousands of drop-down menus) while a more complicated UI provides more speed in such situations when a user has learned to use it. I am someone who likes to learn new UIs, especially when this "initial energy" (I've used for learning it) is somehow persistent such that this "energy" helps me later to be faster in using this programme, while I have to start always near the bottom of "energy" in simple build programmes. (sorry I am a physicist, so I hope this picture somehow explains what I mean )

Thanks for the discussion Concluding it, I guess it also depends strongly on the taste of the people, some like this, some like that, and it is nothing wrong with either of that When someone disagrees with some UI then this doesn't necessarily mean that this UI is better or worse than another UI (for this one would need deeper discussions and arguments about the UI and not about the tastes of people)

PS: This reminds me a bit about the discussions if one should use Word or LaTeX to write one owns works

[Oberoten]

I agree with you, Bidmaron My players and me really like the actual UI, for us it was more intuitive than Roll20's and my first thought (when i saw FG) was how good it looks Yes, there may be some people who likes something like this Modern UIs never really fitted my taste at the moment, especially when I want to play D&D or whatever I would not say that modern UIs are necessarily better, first of all they are only "different", with a different skin and order. And what is intuitive or not depends often on the user and to what he/she is used to.

But I also disagree with the typical sentence "A UI which is not self-explaining is not a UI", it always depends also on the user and in my experience simple UIs get complicated when using more complex usabilities (clicking through thousands of thousands of drop-down menus) while a more complicated UI provides more speed in such situations when a user has learned to use it. I am someone who likes to learn new UIs, especially when this "initial energy" (I've used for learning it) is somehow persistent such that this "energy" helps me later to be faster in using this programme, while I have to start always near the bottom of "energy" in simple build programmes. (sorry I am a physicist, so I hope this picture somehow explains what I mean )

Thanks for the discussion Concluding it, I guess it also depends strongly on the taste of the people, some like this, some like that, and it is nothing wrong with either of that When someone disagrees with some UI then this doesn't necessarily mean that this UI is better or worse than another UI (for this one would need deeper discussions and arguments about the UI and not about the tastes of people)

PS: This reminds me a bit about the discussions if one should use Word or LaTeX to write one owns works

.... He said LaTeX! GET HIM!!!

[Kelrugem]

.... He said LaTeX! GET HIM!!!

Then I should rather not say that I prefer LaTeX? oh, ooops... :P

[dragonheels]

It doesn't need a new UI, and no matter how many times you say it, there are many of us who disagree. Are there aspects that need improvement? Sure. But I (and others) like the fact that the UI is not like a normal, sterile Windows (or Mac) UI. We use it for fantasy roleplaying, and the different UI helps that suspension of disbelief. The skinning abilities could use some improvement so those who want to play a SCI-FI or modern game can do so easier,

I could not have said it better!

[StoryWeaver]

I am excited about the possibilities Unity brings. One being eventually that development effort is no longer split, so all rather than 1.5 currently can focus on improving on one platform.

While the current interface is something me and my players are getting more used to as we play more and it has a lot to offer once you start figuring it out. Overall though it is somewhat antiquated and a lot of things work counter-intuitively to modern standards.
Is that better or worse, that can be argued back and forth, I suppose you can get used to most things.
However I know it's made it very hard for some of my players to get to grasps with it, to the point of temporarily leaving a long standing group that previously played for months together on another web based platform prior. Out of frustration with the UI.

So I would agree to the comments before about retention vs gaining new customers. Even if SW and the use of FG are growing, which I am very pleased to know, one could always ask if it wouldn't grow faster with a more welcoming (in general for device users more comfortable with modern UIs), if it had a more modernized and streamlined interface?


We've figured out the network issues and solved those so that's a no issue for myself. Though again, it's taken some researching and effort to overcome that.


For myself, the one thing I would rate of highest importance would be a fully working 64-bit environment and a better memory architecture for players clients going forward. Running out of memory has been a frequent issue in my D&D 5e games with the current 32-bit version of FG. It's limiting for campaign running and creation and awkward to try to constantly keep an eye on it and work around it. Something which isn't usually an issue in this day and age. For less popular RPG systems with fever resources available this has not been such a problem.

As most of you DMs/GMs out there may have noticed, memory usage tends to be about 2-2.5x higher for players than the GM. So for D&D 5e, it doesn't take more than 2-4 books loaded sometimes to push past that 3 GB mark for players, at which point everything starts to act badly and crashes are frequent. It limits the players to not be able to keep the books provided loaded and is only going to get worse as more books get released by WotC.
I am aware of measures to limit memory usage, which I found out about partly due to the help of the great support at FG's discord channels (for which you have my thanks ), and forum digging. Even despite that it's a bit of wrestling with the system and it's been a lot of trial and error over the weeks to get things under control by limiting the players and the media richness provided to the group.

Having tried the 64-bit client things have gone well overall, clients are both running better and faster and players no longer feel constricted by having to worry about memory limitations.
If the program freezing bug of not being able to remove "shadow of war" sections on the maps could be fixed, we would probably all move over to use that exclusively instead.

This would be something which would make all of our lives easier until Unity comes out. Speaking for myself and the groups I run.

[LordEntrails]

For myself, the one thing I would rate of highest importance would be a fully working 64-bit environment and a better memory architecture for players clients going forward. Running out of memory has been a frequent issue in my D&D 5e games with the current 32-bit version of FG. It's limiting for campaign running and creation and awkward to try to constantly keep an eye on it and work around it. Something which isn't usually an issue in this day and age. For less popular RPG systems with fever resources available this has not been such a problem....

Note, 3.3.7 which is currently in the public beta test channel has significant changes to the player client image management. So the issues about players running out of process memory before the host should be resolved.

[StoryWeaver]

Note, 3.3.7 which is currently in the public beta test channel has significant changes to the player client image management. So the issues about players running out of process memory before the host should be resolved.

That is fantastic news, can't wait to try it out! Thank you for sharing LordEntrails.