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October 15th, 2019, 04:23 #101
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A nice feature would be... While mapping, if you select all the points of a line (et al.), and click on a different visibility type, it would be nice if FGU switched that line (et al.) from the original type to the new type, facilitating tweaking of existing maps quickly, easily, less redo, and less error-prone.
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October 15th, 2019, 14:55 #102
Thanks Guoccamole for your suggestions. See my responses below.
My understanding from Carl is that the method used to handle these in the visibility engine requires that terrain be a closed polygon. Once you know that it needs to be a polygon, I find it to be very intuitive. The "closing" line is continually redrawn as you add additional points and when you reach the 2nd to last point on the line, it takes its final appearance. For something like a complex cliff, you need to determine how far along the cliff edge is visible from the ground and also how far back from the cliff edge people can be before they can see the ground on the other side. I tend to think that a 5' buffer is appropriate in most cases. This 100% needs to be a closed polygon to make sense for stuff like that.
I'm generally a fan of keyboard shortcuts wherever possible and multiple ways to interact with a program (mouse, keyboard, mouse+keyboard). We will see what John and Carl think about this and if we can come up with some that make sense and don't negatively impact other areas. One of the challenges is that we don't currently have the concept of a window with focus. If we set it to T for terrain mode, but you were trying to type in chat, then every time you typed the letter T in chat it would change. That leads to options such as CTR+T or ALT+T, but then we need to review against all other shortcuts to avoid clashes. We will review and report back at a later date.
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October 15th, 2019, 15:03 #103
I had submitted some thoughts in a similar vein to Carl and John for consideration a while back to handle things such as teleports. This is when we were designing the secret door functionality. In some cases, there are maps where you go up the stairs on one map and then you essentially teleport over to a 2nd map on a new floor. For now, we have opted to stick with a simple implementation of the secret doors that works much like current doors and then we will handle jumps by having the GM Shift+drag the tokens to the destination.
I plan to revisit the idea of triggers in the future since I think they open up a lot of new functionality. The UI for defining these would need to be pretty involved to allow for all the different types of flexibility. It's too much scope creep for the current phase of development.
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October 15th, 2019, 15:19 #104
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Doug, Thank you for rapid, thoughtful replies. I have a few observations based on your information.
Hmmm... the editor allows me to make ‘broken’ terrain (edges, instead of polygons). Also, the first segment is meaningless then (just a line)?
I would suggest preventing any creation which is not polygon then, and I would suggest shading the interior since apparently that means something? Up to now, I thought terrain worked like a permeable wall. I did not know it had extra meaning. Interesting.
I see what you’re saying. Challenging. The reason for my simple characters request is that I am having trouble getting FGU to recognize input at all from windows device, so I’d prefer to keep the input super-simple rather than even more complicated. Getting the device buttons to work in FGU would be a boon... to avoid having one hand on the keyboard (by necessity) while using a pen with buttons that FGU won’t recognize... for whatever reason. However, I see your point about the windowing input ambiguity.
Thank you for the insights. More to chew on.
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October 15th, 2019, 15:35 #105
I'm not sure it does allow a broken terrain. If you draw a jagged line with four points and end on the fiftyh point a line is drawn from that point back to the first. Depending on how the line is drawn this might not be immediately noticeable. As Doug says to draw an irregular shaped terrain use the line shape to trace the contour and then place points back to the first. So for a contour of a hill I'd draw the points along the contour and then point back to the first point to close up the polygon. When LOS is turned on the players will be able to see the leading edge of the polygon but not be able to see what is beyond until they enter the polygon. THis emulates the player climbing thee hill and seeing over the ridge at the top at what lies beyond.
For stairs I either use the square tool or just the line tool to draw a square or rectangle across the width of the stairs. As long as the sides line up with the wall line then you get no leakage and the terrain is blocked until a token ventures up the stairs.If there is something that you would like to see in Fantasy Grounds that isn't currently part of the software or if there is something you think would improve a ruleset then add your idea here https://www.fantasygrounds.com/featu...rerequests.php
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October 15th, 2019, 15:41 #106
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IMO...
I understand the scope creep issue, which is why I suggested the simplistic yet pragmatic door ‘fix’.
FYI, the mapping issue I raise is different than teleport. In this case, the map is 1) visually leaking information (about areas undiscovered), and 2) the PC tokens are already in location (really “in locations” since there are two locations colocated on the map; no dragging required). Hence the visibility toggle to reveal additional information about the existing map, i.e., bridge/tunnel above and/or tunnel below.
Also, my suggestion is beneficial to map conversion... which is happening now presumably by the thousands of maps. I believe mapmaking should be a priority as its a huge undertaking, and giving map converters the tools they need to deal with simple yet frequent (enough) map features would be important... rather than having to redo maps later for ‘simple stuff’.
In other words, I suggested the door trigger + map layer reveal since it’s not much of a technical challenge (trigger would be DM interaction on existing ‘secret door’ mechanism) and because I believe it would help get SmiteWorks over the hump on map conversion now, rather than have lots of loose ends (on maps which are close but not quite right). I realize the maps have worked ‘as-is’ up to now, but the new tools should afford us advantages. This trigger+reveal would be one such example, and a good trial for (simple) triggers helping with maps.
I don’t know if map conversion outweighs scope creep in this instance, but I think the map conversion effort is a rather huge undertaking not to be taken lightly. So perhaps that perspective could weigh in favor of helping with map conversion despite a ‘minor’ (?) scope creep.
Whether this feature is scheduled now or later, I’d suggest prioritizing this feature according to map support rather than ‘teleport’.
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October 15th, 2019, 15:50 #107
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TY for illustrating how you make terrain work with your examples.
You could be correct about the lack of ‘broken’ lines. Perhaps my ‘broken’ terrain is lines which double-back on themselves?
Before replying what works and what doesn’t, I’m going to have to experiment to see what’s happening with the way I’ve been doing it... treating the terrain like a wall at, e.g., the edge of a cliff or the banister of a stairway. I am particularly interested in what’s happening inside any terrain polygon. I did not realize that space was special.
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October 15th, 2019, 16:55 #108
Here is an example of how you might do the Dragon Hatchery map.
Terrain.jpg
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October 15th, 2019, 17:10 #109
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Questions. Apologies if these are stupid questions, but I don’t seem to be having much luck (skill?) for now.
1) What is the trick to get a player FGU to connect to a GM FGU (locally, lobby, whatever)?
2) If FGU player is not yet available, then what is the trick to checking LOS in GM FGU?
Thanks.
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October 15th, 2019, 17:19 #110
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