5E Character Create Playlist
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  1. #21
    Quote Originally Posted by The High Druid View Post
    This is a good example of people liking different things - I much prefer the icons used in the wotc theme to the "cool images" used in v5
    I dont have that WotC theme in mind and dont know if that tokens are cool or not; in fact, the right panel is the thing I like less from VtM, I prefer much more the ones from SWADE. But I like a lot the VtM aesthetics: frames, images, decals; as you said, people liking different styles.

  2. #22
    Quote Originally Posted by Zacchaeus View Post
    A background and/or a decal will have been created as an extension - you won't find it in your campaign. So check your extensions folder and copy the file for your background or decal into the extensions folder in Unity and make sure you select it in the campaign start screen. Absolutely no telling if it will work in Unity.
    Cool, that did the trick. Thank you.

  3. #23
    It's true that a lot of the visual specifics are determined by theme and ruleset, but there are other ways that the FGC and FGU user experience is objectively weird by modern standards:

    • The dice color picker WORKS in a weird way, it doesn't just have weird art, The Smiteworks team knows this which is why they used a more standard color picker in the map-editor. Now there are two different widgets for color picking in FGU and they work very differently. This isn't ruleset or theme driven.
    • There are a couple of common models for pan and zoom in image windows, and FGC/FGU doesn't use any of them. Also not ruleset or theme driven.
    • The process for adding/removing items from lists is also unique, weird, and is not in any way "better" than more standard approaches. This is also a widget behavior that is not ruleset or theme driven.


    These are things that various existing users may like or not like, but the experts that design UI's across the industry have spoken with more or less one voice... and they're saying something very different from what the FGC/FGU widget toolkit does. Also, a common refrain from non-users is that FGC/FGU have difficult to navigate UI's. Even if there are current users that like these behaviors, their numbers are dwarfed by the number of non-users that don't like the behaviors. Fixing this stuff is hard, and I don't fault Smiteworks for not tackling it during the FGU transition, which is already at the very limit of what the company has the manpower to achieve in a big bang... but making the UI more approachable to new users and massively reducing the number of times someone struggles to accomplish a basic task like resizing a window, picking a color, or adding an item to a list is a big deal and they're all issues in the widget toolkit, not in the rulesets (though it might take ruleset changes to improve them without breaking existing layouts).

  4. #24
    Quote Originally Posted by pollux View Post
    These are things that various existing users may like or not like, but the experts that design UI's across the industry have spoken with more or less one voice... and they're saying something very different from what the FGC/FGU widget toolkit does. Also, a common refrain from non-users is that FGC/FGU have difficult to navigate UI's. Even if there are current users that like these behaviors, their numbers are dwarfed by the number of non-users that don't like the behaviors.
    This. The response from all the new players to FG is how awkward the UI is compared to other software, complex or not. Sure, you may get used to it but is still sufficiently jarring every time. Now I have the problem of my players wanting to use DNDBeyond instead for all things character which disqualifies much of the automation stuff in FG. Ah well.

  5. #25
    Quote Originally Posted by niknas View Post
    This. The response from all the new players to FG is how awkward the UI is compared to other software, complex or not. Sure, you may get used to it but is still sufficiently jarring every time. Now I have the problem of my players wanting to use DNDBeyond instead for all things character which disqualifies much of the automation stuff in FG. Ah well.
    I'm about as ardent a supporter Fantasy Grounds as you can get, but anyone who says the UI is anything other than unconventional and unintuitive is kidding themselves. Without fail, every player I introduce to the platform can't figure out how to type in a text box or change a stat value. That's... bad.

    It's unnecessarily strange, and it is definitely the biggest part of the learning curve to using the platform. I truly do not understand the devotion of the old guard users to this aspect of the program. I get that changing it would be a lot of work, and probably isn't worth it in the short term but to say it isn't an issue is puzzling to me.

  6. #26
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    the reason many people prefer the current method is because it works.
    the easiest thing in the world to say is - it should be different
    very few people even propose how a single part of the interface should be - they s=just say they dont like how it is
    RPGs are incredibly complex. they have so many rules, exceptions to rules and exceptions to exceptions.
    how to present an interface that is intuitive to use that can handle that is... not trivial.

    in almost every case there is a good reason why something is done the way it is.
    if you would like to see change - be specific. be very specific. and also think about how changing the UI for one thing can make the UI more complex if the rest of the UI does things differently.

  7. #27
    Quote Originally Posted by damned View Post
    very few people even propose how a single part of the interface should be
    1. Windows should move only when you grab them by the title bar, not when you grab their body. The issue here isn't whether you or I enjoy grabbing the body vs the title bar. The issue is that it's not possible to provide a consistent body-grabbing experience because widgets in the body need to provide left-click behaviors of their own. Users get confused about which parts of the body they can click to move and which parts have a different behavior. If you click the wrong part, you might now know what you did or how to undo it or even if it needs to be undone. For example I frequently move map windows while trying to grab things in the map. Limiting the grabby/move area to the title-bar ensures there's no clash with whatever left-click behaviors the child-widgets have.
    2. The dice color picker should look like the map tools color picker. No modern widget toolkit takes an approach like this for their color picker.
    3. Adding and removing items from lists should not be a modal activity. There should be a +/- widget like on OSX, or selection toggles and action buttons like gmail, or it should be right-click driven. Again, no modern widget toolkit takes an approach similar to what FG does.
    4. Fields on character sheets should gain a context-sensitive right-click menu. If the field is editable, that's an option in the right-click list. If there are a variety of click, double-click, drag, modifier click/drag functions for the field, they're duplicated here as menu items that are easily discoverable... so if you don't know how to interact with a field you can always right-click on it to learn more about what it can do.
    5. Eliminate rotary menus. Replace them with "normal" right-click menus with textual entry names or text+icons. The rotary menus have no textual description until you mouse-over each item, which makes it very slow to explore them. They also artificially limit the number simultaneously visible menu items, leading to multi-level rotary menus... which further increases the effort required to explore them and to remember how to navigate them. They require more mouse movement and more complex (circular vs linear) mouse movement to navigate than "normal" right-click menus. No modern widget toolkit outside the video games industry uses rotary menus in mouse-driven applications because they are more difficult to navigate. The reason the video-game industry DOES sometimes use them is because they work really well for joystick/controller driven experiences... but FGC/FGU doesn't support that.


    None of that stuff has anything to do with the complexity of making RPG applications, it's all basic widget interactions that all UI's need to perform regardless of the problem domain... and FGC/FGU's RPG use-cases are not unique with respect to these basic interactions. FGC/FGU aren't just a singular VTT... they provide a lua engine, standard library, AND GRAPHICAL WIDGET TOOLKIT for creating many RPG applications... and although our use cases for those widgets are not unique, the approaches the FGC/FGU widget tookit take to common UI requirements are often very unique. That leads to user surprise and frustration that isn't about TTRPG's being complex.

    With the amount of time and thought the devs have put into creating these widgets, I don't think the problem is that they aren't aware of the ways in which they differ from industry standards, that they don't understand the value of complying with such standards, or don't have ideas about what improved compliance would look like. The problem is that messing with widgets breaks ruleset layouts. Some of these strange decisions go back to the very beginning of FGC, and as they built out new features they always found ways to build on top of those unusual behaviors rather than change them... but the result is not consistent with any external reference point and that makes it confusing to new users (or even casual repeat users). The good news is that for new functionality they're already leaning on the more conventional widgets that Unity provides... as shown by the map tools color picker and the map/los sidebar for images which are both wonderfully boring and unsurprising in terms of fundamental widget behaviors. Changing the existing behavior of frequently used FGC-era widgets like lists would be a lot of work, and I'm glad that Smiteworks didn't try to pile it on to the FGU transition. But I equally think the status quo causes new user pain on a daily basis and that it's a valuable investment to consider in the future. Possibly when FGC is retired it can become possible to add new Lua APIs that point to Unity widgets and begin the long process of porting rulesets over to use the new widgets.
    Last edited by pollux; March 29th, 2020 at 06:50.

  8. #28

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    As a new user I couldn't agree more with @pollux's thoughts on the issue. Having no basis for what it is I have watched hours of videos to get to a point where I understand how/why things happen in FG. As a user of a computer for the last 30 odd years I feel like everything I inherently want to try is wrong for the toolset in FGU. I understand that it has likely huge development ramifications, but I would hope that it will be something that might be worked on slowly after the major bugs are sorted out.

  9. #29
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    My replies are my opinions and thoughts and nothing more:

    Windows should move only...
    I agree, at least once a session I move a map instead of a token. Flip side considerations include: currently windows can be moved partially off screen and this could result in the toolbar not being available. That behaviour too would have to change. Does that result in reduced functionality? If you close an instance of FG that is spread over two+ screens on a smaller screen you could have same situation with Windows not being moveable. I imagine the moving on left click was done because of limited screen sizes and window sprawl necessitating more window moving but thats a guess.

    The dice color picker should...
    Used GU minimally but i see no reason not to use a common colour picker. Especially if they already have one...

    Adding and removing items from lists...
    What lists dont have +/- widgets? I see no downside to also having right click options to do the same.

    Fields on character sheets should...
    Non trivial change but that would be good.

    Eliminate rotary menus. Replace them...
    That is as much an Aesthetic decision as any other in terms of why they use the current system. The owners of FG dont want FG to look the same, they like that it has some character. There are few radial menus that need more than 6 options. Agree there are many poorly designed icons though they are better now than before.

    None of that stuff has anything to do with the complexity of making RPG applications....
    My comment wasnt about coding it was about how RPGs require complex interactions. Many are not either/or choices. Take STR in AD&D for example. Its done completely differently to the other 5 Attributes. AC can be made up of Armour and Dex and, well an infinite number of other things that can add to AC. But then you also have things like Bark Skin and Mage Armour and how they follow similar but different rules. How to manage those in a consistent way in a GUI? If you are going to make changes make sure the changes support things like that.
    Most rulesets are created by different programmers with different experience and different strengths and weaknesses and different visions for their product. This also leads to different UI implementations. And some of these have been developed over a span greater than 10 years which means they have many legacy decisions and legacy design inputs.
    If there were a bunch of pre-built standard widgets a lot of the differences would go away. And I dont think that this doesnt exist because of a lack of need but because that project has never gotten to the top of anyones priority lists. Small team, lots of things to do, gotta prioritise based on whatever their internal pressures/motives are.

  10. #30
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    I would like to see something like:

    When you minimise a Story entry it minimizes to (example) the f5 key. When you click the f5 key all minimised (not closed) stories will be in a pup up list.
    Same for Notes, monsters, encounters, images, spells, whatever

    For the most part, the longer Ive used FG the more I enjoy the interface.

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