Some suggestions from trying the demo

[richvalle]

Found what I was thinking of!

5) I'd love to see more functionality with the "draw" command. Currently we can do a single-width black line. Would it be so difficult to add varyiny widths, colors, and perhaps the ability to draw certain shapes (or straight lines)? Is this being talked about for upcoming patches?

6) I draw. I make a mistake. I want to erase what I've drawn, but not lose all my scrawled notes and what-not. I can't do it. If I erase, I have to erase *everything* on the map. That seems...craptastic. Is there a way to erase (e.g., an eraser) mistakes without wiping out the whole drawing layer in one fell swoop?

There are two main reasons for the current implementation. First, a thin black line is easy to synchronize. One player can draw over a portion of the picture, and another draw an overlapping line in the mean time, and everyone will see the same thing no matter what order the clients get the data sent over the net. The same applies if a player comes late to a session with a drawing already created. Second, having more complex drawing operations available would mean a lot more complex user interface.

I agree that more drawing options would be nice, so we'll keep your ideas in mind.

[Cantstanzya]

I've done a fair amount of online dnd, and from my personal experience you absolutely *have* to have control over chat text colors, if only for the character names. It becomes much much easier to parse incoming text streams when you can see who is talking without having to read anything.

You don't *have* to have control over the text colors. FG is just different than what you are used to. Like I said, you should give it a chance before just saying it should be the way you are accustomed to seeing it. Honestly when I first started using FG I also thought the text should be the color of the characters dice, but now that I have been using FG for awhile it has grown on me and I like what they have done with the colors. It is all just personal preference, but give it a chance.

[Lazarous]

I've done a fair amount of online dnd, and from my personal experience you absolutely *have* to have control over chat text colors, if only for the character names. It becomes much much easier to parse incoming text streams when you can see who is talking without having to read anything.

You don't *have* to have control over the text colors. FG is just different than what you are used to. Like I said, you should give it a chance before just saying it should be the way you are accustomed to seeing it. Honestly when I first started using FG I also thought the text should be the color of the characters dice, but now that I have been using FG for awhile it has grown on me and I like what they have done with the colors. It is all just personal preference, but give it a chance.

As i tried to convey by saying i've already played a fair amount of online dnd, i have used clients that don't allow you to change the colors of names or text, and there is a huge difference between those and clients that do let you change colors of text and names, especially in a narration and talking-heavy game. Further, coloring text is ridiculously trivial, even simple irc clients let you do things like that.

[Cantstanzya]

Hmmm, I guess the developers should just make this the same way everything else is, after all that is the best way right? I get the point, you've played your share of online D&D and what has worked best for you is when you can change the textcolor of the different player. But my point is that you haven't really given this a chance in a campaign setting. It is my experience that the way the textcolor works in FG works fine.
Yes, coloring text is trivial, but if they were to go off of your suggestion of using the players dice color as their text color that wouldn't work either. You have players changing their dice color 3 or 4 times a session because their rolls are lousy, just like the way they would change to a different dice around a real table. Fantasy Grounds isn't an IRC program it is a tabletop emulator. The look and feel they are trying to go for is what you would get during a real P&P session, and I'm sure you know people change what dice they use depending on what they feel is lucky. If you re-read my first reply you would see that I have suggested that a small icon (portrait of the character) preceed their name so, like you said, you could glance at who was talking without having to read it. You see one thing that the text coloring does now is it allows you to see when someone does an action, which is something I always read, or is talking out of character, which is something I mostly ignore.
Again, I think you should give it a chance or at least listen to some of the people that has used FG for awhile before you say it should be this way or that way. Keep in mind, if everyone did everything the same way there would never be any improvements.

[richvalle]

Well, as long as you are looking for input from other people...

Text color to me is... non-existent. I don't even notice it. I read everything that shows up on the screen and am more interested in the name that shows up next to the text then the color. At some level I know that the different colored text means different chat types but I just don't pay attention to it.

Also...

There are 3 folks on Adventuresomedreams.com that are color blind. There have been some requests to have map changes made because they could not read the text on the map. Ummm... not sure what that has to do with this but since we are talking about colors I thought I'd throw that in.

So... Text color is important to Lazarous, non-important to me, Catstanzya likes it the way it is and we have at least 3 folks who might not even notice a change. Which way do the devs go with this one?

I'm not sure it is worth the effort to make it totaly optional. Well, that could be because it does not mater to me and Lazarous has a different opinion. There are definatly other things that should be done first I think. Maybe later down the road they can change things so there is an option to have the text stay the default way or let it be the color of the dice that should make most people happy. I think that would be a non-trival task though.

rv

rv

[msd]

Text color to me is... non-existent. I don't even notice it. I read everything that shows up on the screen and am more interested in the name that shows up next to the text then the color. At some level I know that the different colored text means different chat types but I just don't pay attention to it.

Totally agree that, IMHO (accent on the *my* and *humble*), it is a non-issue.

Assuming for the moment that it was an issue, I still find it difficult to believe that it should be anything other than low priority. I think there are far more important things to attack first.

[Lazarous]

Shrug. Each person has different features that are required for them to purchase any product. I posted here to both convey my requirements and find out if they were being looked at by the developers - that both improved drawing tools and a customizable chat interface are not high on the priority list gives me the info i needed.

[msd]

that both improved drawing tools and a customizable chat interface are not high on the priority list gives me the info i needed.

It shouldn't...I'm not a developer.