Is there a way to turn the cone templates so that they face a different way? or is it still a very early development and yet to be properly implemented?
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I was looking at the rectangle tool, and that doesn't use drag. What if we just did first click to place the origin, and second click to set range/direction. This works well for both the radius and cone templates. For the line templates we just need to have a separate mechanism for setting the range. Maybe a third click to set the range? This would keep them similar to each other and the other drawing tools. A description of each
radius: first click marks the center, second click sets the range in 5' increments
cone: first click marks the origin, second click sets one of the 8 directions and range in 5' increments
line: first click marks the origin, second click determines the path by defining the second vertex, third click defines the range.
I've been trying to figure out why I did it the way it is currently since it's been a long time. The original concept was to allow for better placement for the radius template. When you are trying to determine the exact location of a fireball, it is extremely useful to see the full template and then place it so that it affects the most enemies. This is only a big deal for the radius template, the others almost always have a fixed starting location starting at the vertices around the caster. Since these are normal drawables, we can still use the escape key to change our minds or undo/redo.
Comments?
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That sounds good... I remember now why I didn't originally use drag for the drawings... On laptops (especially ones with touch-pads) dragging is really hard.
OOC, why does the line template require 3 clicks, why not just 1st for start point and 2nd indicates path and range?
If all of the templates take 2 clicks, then we are completely consistent with the drawing tools and generically (across templates and drawing) we can allow Ctrl movement of the drawings. (as suggested by tcroft)
To restate, this would work for all drawings, including templates:
Click 1: start action
Move mouse: increase drawing size
Press Ctrl and move mouse: move drawing (i.e. recenter)
Mouse wheel: change zoom level
Rick click: pan map
Click 2: end action/apply
Thoughts?
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The reason I suggest a 3rd mouse click for the line is that it is frequently very long (lightening bolt), and trying to find the end can be a pain. This is especially true when you're trying to hit as many enemies as possible, close in but still have to track the entire line. However it is often true that you don't need the entire line since it stops when it hits something. We can always try it out and see if it is a problem.
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I like the way you have set up cones at the moment, I just didn't know how to make them face a different way. One thing that would make the templates more useful however, was if you could select them in much the same way you can select tokens, with a dotted line around the edge, that way when you place a few of them down, you can see at a glance whether an individual cone/area will affect a token. It would also give you the ability to move an area if it is incorrect placed, at the moment if you make a mistake you can undo it by removing by using the right click feature, however this will also remove any other templates that intersect it (unless I'm missing something).
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That's one of the design points we've been discussing lately: should templates be regular drawables,like rectangle and polygon, or a selectable object, like the tokens.
There are pros and cons of both styles. It would be great if we could take a middle road, but that road isn't clear at the moment.
So we've now got a vote to make it more token-like :) Keep playing with it and send further thoughts you might have.
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Right now the cone is like the rest of the drawing tools, the person who draw it can hit undo(ctrl-Z) to remove it.
I had not thought about making them work like tokens, probably because of the odd shapes. Would you want them editable as tokens as well? What I mean by editable is that you can change the range and direction as well as the location of the template.
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I'm a fan of a more object based approach, but that's gonna take a little more effort.
At some point we'll be adding drawable layers to the drawables. Perhaps that could be a way to keep the templates as drawables and prevent their manipulation from effecting drawables next to them. That is, templates could be put in their own layer (one per layer, perhaps?), and (potentially) moved and deleted independently of other drawables.
food for discussion.
-Trev
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Having them selectable would be useful for spells like meteor swarm (4x40' bursts), when I was playing around with it before it was kind of difficult to determine which squares where under which radius, if they were selectable and the boarder high-lighted you could see at a glance whether you were being hit by any particular effect. I'm not so sure about the ability to edit the effect/token, it would fall under the catagory of useful rather than essential, if it's easy to program great, but if its very difficult then it doesn't really matter.
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Most likely there would be a first step to make them re-selectable, then possibly later the ability to edit their details.
as a side note, would it be worthwhile to be able to assign a template to a token, so that when the token is selected the associated template(s) highlight as well ? What about being able to attach them so that when the token moves the template moves with them (think holding a torch or something)
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All good stuff :), being able to attach a template to a token would also be useful for spells that move with you such as Antilife shell, Antimagic Field or Magic Circle against <alignment>. It might also form the basis for showing threat ranges with melee weapons.
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I've just modified the workings of the radius/cone/line templates to all work with 2 mouse clicks. The first click sets an anchor vertext, which is the center of the radius template and the start of the cone and line templates. The second click sets range for all 3 templates and the direction of the cone and line templates. This makes the templates work like the rest of the drawing tools.
Please feel free to add any comments you have for the new behaviors. The template support is still in the implementation stages, so it is still subject to change and we will use your suggestions to do this.
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Is there a way to delete a template without affecting the ones you made after it? eg, cast grease, then cast web, then need to have grease expire, then later have web expire.
Being able to move templates is definitely a must. what party doesn't have a torch in a dark dungeon that you need to keep track of? This also means it would be good to have a different type of radius that would center on a square instead of an intersection(the torch my character is holding must be at the edge of his square? the circle of protection that is centered on someone is centered on the corner of his square?)
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Could you possibly make it so that a template could follow a token, and allow it to clear FoW (option) and maybe apply a state to all tokens in it's area automatically? This would be neat for torches and AoE spells, respectively.
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Making templates attachable to tokens is on the task list. The others are a possibility, but will most likely need to wait until after the 1.0 release. I'll put in trackers for them
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Is there a way to turn the cone templates so that they face a different way? or is it still a very early development and yet to be properly implemented?
The templates are very much in active development.
Particularly the mechanism to interact with them.
Look for updates over the next two weeks.
-Trev
The answer to both questions is yes :-) Press the control key and move the mouse to change direction.
Any input on how you would like to see this work?
As a point of reference, here is roughly what we're planning:
click to set initial point
drag to set radius, direction, etc
possibly making a keystroke (CTRL) allow moving template
The key is to leave the mouse wheel available for zooming.
We'd like to hear community feedback
I was looking at the rectangle tool, and that doesn't use drag. What if we just did first click to place the origin, and second click to set range/direction. This works well for both the radius and cone templates. For the line templates we just need to have a separate mechanism for setting the range. Maybe a third click to set the range? This would keep them similar to each other and the other drawing tools. A description of each
radius: first click marks the center, second click sets the range in 5' increments
cone: first click marks the origin, second click sets one of the 8 directions and range in 5' increments
line: first click marks the origin, second click determines the path by defining the second vertex, third click defines the range.
I've been trying to figure out why I did it the way it is currently since it's been a long time. The original concept was to allow for better placement for the radius template. When you are trying to determine the exact location of a fireball, it is extremely useful to see the full template and then place it so that it affects the most enemies. This is only a big deal for the radius template, the others almost always have a fixed starting location starting at the vertices around the caster. Since these are normal drawables, we can still use the escape key to change our minds or undo/redo.
Comments?
That sounds good... I remember now why I didn't originally use drag for the drawings... On laptops (especially ones with touch-pads) dragging is really hard.
OOC, why does the line template require 3 clicks, why not just 1st for start point and 2nd indicates path and range?
If all of the templates take 2 clicks, then we are completely consistent with the drawing tools and generically (across templates and drawing) we can allow Ctrl movement of the drawings. (as suggested by tcroft)
To restate, this would work for all drawings, including templates:
Click 1: start action
Move mouse: increase drawing size
Press Ctrl and move mouse: move drawing (i.e. recenter)
Mouse wheel: change zoom level
Rick click: pan map
Click 2: end action/apply
Thoughts?
The reason I suggest a 3rd mouse click for the line is that it is frequently very long (lightening bolt), and trying to find the end can be a pain. This is especially true when you're trying to hit as many enemies as possible, close in but still have to track the entire line. However it is often true that you don't need the entire line since it stops when it hits something. We can always try it out and see if it is a problem.
I like the way you have set up cones at the moment, I just didn't know how to make them face a different way. One thing that would make the templates more useful however, was if you could select them in much the same way you can select tokens, with a dotted line around the edge, that way when you place a few of them down, you can see at a glance whether an individual cone/area will affect a token. It would also give you the ability to move an area if it is incorrect placed, at the moment if you make a mistake you can undo it by removing by using the right click feature, however this will also remove any other templates that intersect it (unless I'm missing something).
That's one of the design points we've been discussing lately: should templates be regular drawables,like rectangle and polygon, or a selectable object, like the tokens.
There are pros and cons of both styles. It would be great if we could take a middle road, but that road isn't clear at the moment.
So we've now got a vote to make it more token-like :) Keep playing with it and send further thoughts you might have.
Right now the cone is like the rest of the drawing tools, the person who draw it can hit undo(ctrl-Z) to remove it.
I had not thought about making them work like tokens, probably because of the odd shapes. Would you want them editable as tokens as well? What I mean by editable is that you can change the range and direction as well as the location of the template.
I'm a fan of a more object based approach, but that's gonna take a little more effort.
At some point we'll be adding drawable layers to the drawables. Perhaps that could be a way to keep the templates as drawables and prevent their manipulation from effecting drawables next to them. That is, templates could be put in their own layer (one per layer, perhaps?), and (potentially) moved and deleted independently of other drawables.
food for discussion.
-Trev
Having them selectable would be useful for spells like meteor swarm (4x40' bursts), when I was playing around with it before it was kind of difficult to determine which squares where under which radius, if they were selectable and the boarder high-lighted you could see at a glance whether you were being hit by any particular effect. I'm not so sure about the ability to edit the effect/token, it would fall under the catagory of useful rather than essential, if it's easy to program great, but if its very difficult then it doesn't really matter.
Most likely there would be a first step to make them re-selectable, then possibly later the ability to edit their details.
as a side note, would it be worthwhile to be able to assign a template to a token, so that when the token is selected the associated template(s) highlight as well ? What about being able to attach them so that when the token moves the template moves with them (think holding a torch or something)
All good stuff :), being able to attach a template to a token would also be useful for spells that move with you such as Antilife shell, Antimagic Field or Magic Circle against <alignment>. It might also form the basis for showing threat ranges with melee weapons.
I've just modified the workings of the radius/cone/line templates to all work with 2 mouse clicks. The first click sets an anchor vertext, which is the center of the radius template and the start of the cone and line templates. The second click sets range for all 3 templates and the direction of the cone and line templates. This makes the templates work like the rest of the drawing tools.
Please feel free to add any comments you have for the new behaviors. The template support is still in the implementation stages, so it is still subject to change and we will use your suggestions to do this.
Thank god!! The templates are good now!! I really like the feature, but before now it was so confusing!! Thank yoU!!
This is now available in ALPHA build 64.
Is there a way to delete a template without affecting the ones you made after it? eg, cast grease, then cast web, then need to have grease expire, then later have web expire.
Being able to move templates is definitely a must. what party doesn't have a torch in a dark dungeon that you need to keep track of? This also means it would be good to have a different type of radius that would center on a square instead of an intersection(the torch my character is holding must be at the edge of his square? the circle of protection that is centered on someone is centered on the corner of his square?)
At the moment templates work just like the other drawing tools. According to an earlier post ( https://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=3431918 ) it is expected to change such that they will be selectable.
Thanks for the vote, it'll help move it higher in the priority list :)
Could you possibly make it so that a template could follow a token, and allow it to clear FoW (option) and maybe apply a state to all tokens in it's area automatically? This would be neat for torches and AoE spells, respectively.
Making templates attachable to tokens is on the task list. The others are a possibility, but will most likely need to wait until after the 1.0 release. I'll put in trackers for them