How Fantasy Grounds Unity can be the top VTT even with WotC's new 3DVTT and DnDBeyond

[Nick Frost]

Ping on the map would be useful. For a player to indicate a location to the GM right now basically requires the DM to enable drawing for all players and have them doodle on it, and then erase the doodle when they're done. Doable, but, hm, slightly crude and could be imprecise depending on how good they are at digital doodling.

Players can draw temporary arrow pointers by holding both mouse buttons and dragging. They can also draw squares, circles and 90º angles with ctrl, alt and shift + click&drag. These temporary ponters are automatically deleted when a new one is drawn.
Players can also draw "regular" pointers with the right-click menu.

No need to "enable" anything, nor have any artistic talent.

[MentalChillness]

I also think this would be wasted dev time given smiteworks is not a gigantic studio with dozens of developers.

As I always do I’ll be honest with my view . If there’s dms that stress because their players need 24 hr access to their FGU sessions…do you and you players even understand the concept of fgu?

Why do players need 24/7 access to the fgu session?

I have players all over the USA and one in Canada. They need to make a character change for any reason they DM me on discord I get back to them to work out a time to open my FGU session to them. We all work. We don’t stress over it.

I feel the make things work on a mobile phone is more a “cool thing” than anything else. You don’t prioritize things just on “yeah but it be cool” in business if you don’t have the resources and there’s a list of true priorities to get through.

Then we should be clear that FGU is not operating on a cloud. A

Cloud services facilitate the flow of user data from front-end clients (e.g., users’ servers, tablets, desktops, laptops—anything on the users’ ends), through the internet, to the provider’s systems, and back. Cloud services promote the building of cloud-native applications and the flexibility of working in the cloud. Users can access cloud services with nothing more than a computer, operating system, and internet connectivity.

Based on that definition, if I have to run FGU for people to access my server, it's not a cloud at all. People should have access regardless if I'm on the server or not. This would make even your life easier, having to get DM requests from your players just to access your server.

I think an actual cloud idea is great. But it needs to be fully implemented for it to be considered a cloud service. I understand the costs behind this. I am willing to pay for my share for Smiteworks to host my games cloud so that my players can connect and go as they please.

Mobile access is a whole other topic that I think warrants attention because of the direction of tech in general. I don't know if FG can get a contract with DnD Beyond and WotC. But I would appreciate Smiteworks truly making use of cloud and mobile technologies, even if it's just small steps here and there.

Many of my players use DnD Beyond, but I'm fully invested in FG. So I have no way for them to easily cross platform their character sheets from DnD Beyond into FG. Something I think that should be considered in the future.

[damned]

Then we should be clear that FGU is not operating on a cloud. A

Based on that definition, if I have to run FGU for people to access my server, it's not a cloud at all.

It has been pointed out multiple times in this thread that the GMs computer is the server.

Roll20 is a cloud.
DnD Beyond is a cloud.
Foundry in its standard configuration (self hosted) is not a cloud. Foundry dont offer a cloud. They have some partners who offer Foundry as a service with your own product key but it is still not really cloud.

[MentalChillness]

It has been pointed out multiple times in this thread that the GMs computer is the server.

Roll20 is a cloud.
DnD Beyond is a cloud.
Foundry in its standard configuration (self hosted) is not a cloud. Foundry dont offer a cloud. They have some partners who offer Foundry as a service with your own product key but it is still not really cloud.

Absolutely!

But my issue is with this prompt:
notacloud.png

I think Smiteworks should remove this wording of Cloud. In the best of circumstances, imo, they actually implement a cloud system that people can access servers whether the GM is online or not.

In the worst case, this amounts to false advertising which is not something I want for my favorite VTT. Sure, there could be a loss in translation. But coming back to VTTs after a few year break, and after backing FGU, I had some high hopes for the progress that's been made since 2019. This got me excited, but when learning that it's not cloud based at all and there remains no access for mobile, I was disappointed. I want to see this company succeed as I have chosen it to my VTT of choice. I like the UI better/the possible automations, etc.

This cloud option in the menu will only do us a disservice unless it actually gets implemented at some point in the future, which I would love to see and utilize.

[damned]

The server has registered itself against a cloud broker (which is a cloud service) and you are connecting to the cloud server to connect to the game.
I dont see Fantasy Grounds as being advertised as a cloud service anywhere.

As has been suggested previously - before you even begin to look at coding support for a mobile I think you need to decide whether you can even display enough info on mobile for it to be useful. The most common complaint I see about FGU is people wanting access to more screen space.

[seycyrus]

You can play with: "[YOUR FG PATH]\FantasyGrounds.exe" -popupwindow -screen-width [NUMBER] -screen-height [NUMBER].

Can I get a wand now?

Thank you, you are truly a worker of the ancient magic!

[Egheal]

You can play with: "[YOUR FG PATH]\FantasyGrounds.exe" -popupwindow -screen-width [NUMBER] -screen-height [NUMBER].

Can I get a wand now?

...and you tell us this calmly, in a relaxed way. You don't know that we have been looking for this for months, don't you? Thanks a lot!