First-Person View Mode for 2024

[ddavison]

I'd put my penny's worth in for this being a per-user toggle as well.

I don't think I will like it as the GM, for example - I think I will want to have the complete overview as I do now.

But as a player I might want the greater immersion that it brings, and I might want it in some situations and not in others. NPC conversations at a party - brilliant, will bring an almost visual-novel like sensibility to those scenes and a big improvement on a flat map with a big grid and consequently big tokens as now. Being the barbarian stuck into an intense combat - great. Being more of an area control/buff/commander character - probably would favour the ability to have the 2D top-down overview especially in combat.

There's a human being brain processing power limit at work as well as Unity's rendering and I can see it being quite different for different use cases and configurations, too. Some of my players play via a laptop in a hotel room sometimes and for these people screen real estate is at a desperate premium - I just don't think they will have the real estate to make the 2.5D a pleasant experience. They need to be able to see where they are and navigate and target foes efficiently with as little on-screen information as possible, because pixels are precious. Whereas some of us are on multiple monitors and can devote a large number of pixels to appreciate the immersion, and the hell with efficient transmission of information.

If it is at all feasible to do from a performance point of view, I really think there are many reasons why one might want to allow this to be per-user; the only one I can really see as valid for it not to be is so the GM controls the view and synchronises when everyone switches. But there's a good reason why we don't lock all players viewport on the map to the GM's view, and I think this is just an extension of that. Each player is going to have different needs - and different preferences - for what they look at through the course of the game. So I don't see much sense in locking them into the 2.5D mode. Or, more to the point, locking them out of 2.5D mode if that's what they prefer because I as the GM want to be having the traditional top-down map view where I can see everything, including the hidden foes behind the doors and stuff that's in the darkness and so on.

Cheers, Hywel

This is very similar to our internal discussions and why we built it to be a per-user toggle in our first iteration. Some of the other ruleset level changes we are working on will also reduce the need for some other windows that players have typically needed to leave open in the past, such as the Combat Tracker.

[Valyar]

What is the performance impact of this new feature? I have harder and harder time to convince people to run Unity and performance is one of the reasons.

[Trenloe]

What is the performance impact of this new feature? I have harder and harder time to convince people to run Unity and performance is one of the reasons.

Refer to post #4.

[ddavison]

What is the performance impact of this new feature? I have harder and harder time to convince people to run Unity and performance is one of the reasons.

Addressed this in posts on the first page.

Typical recommendations apply, keep maps within recommended guidelines and draw LOS with as few segments as possible. Don't run 134 active extensions and 500+ modules like a user who sent in a support request over the weekend. Out of the box with FGU and provided content, we expect performance to be good. User-created content and community dev extensions are up to the user to manage and determine how they work within their system, and that of the players.

[rocketvaultgames]

This certainly seems interesting and I'm hoping I can find use cases for it.

I recommend robust options for this.

GM can have the feature show as an available option for GM only/GM and Players/None (to prevent accidental toggles when if no plans to be used)
GM toggle force player view to 2D (on/off) (per map basis) (and global basis??)
GM toggle force player view to 3D (on/off) (per map basis) (and global basis??)

Assuming not actually going full 3D models for everything.... it could be neat to have an elevation assigned to each layer of an image. This would allow "stacking" flat images and specifying the space between floors.

Maybe player view defaults to whatever elevation their token is on but view can be shifted up/down.

For example in the layers panel, each layer would have an elevation field.

Example based on 5' square grid:

(100) Ambient Light - Sunlight
(40) Rooftop
(37) Hanging Chandelier (lighting effect)
(30) 3rd Floor Map
(20) 2nd Floor Map
(10) 1st Floor Map
(00) Ground Floor Map
(-10) Basement Map


Maybe a toggle to "flip" a flat image in the 3D space (to create the ceiling that is the bottom of a floor)

[Tooting Dog]

Any videos of how this looks in a room or hallway? Do you see walls?

[johnecc]

Only videos so far are the ones in the first post. No terrain, ie walls etc, have been shown.

[Trenloe]

Any videos of how this looks in a room or hallway? Do you see walls?

Walls are a "perhaps" in the future. See the last paragraph of post #1.

[ddavison]

Currently walls are simply drawn on the floor. If a wall blocks your LOS, then you only see up to the wall on the floor. It will be black beyond that point.

[Mavrik6666]

As we are right at the beggining of '24 any peek at when in the year we will get this ?