What non-standard VT features would interest you? [OLD]

[heruca]

Please add to this thread any features you would like incorporated into BRPG that are not normally found in a virtual tabletop program, and/or comment on whatever you see listed here.

Scan directly into BRPG: one-click TWAIN-compliant scanning and importing of a graphic (presumably to allow you to quickly freehand draw a map on a sheet of paper and quickly convert that into a BRPG map.

Adjust brightness, saturation and RGB levels of graphics on the fly (I'm sure Kepli would dig this )

Tree view of maps, figures, objects, visual aids, sound effects, etc. (OK, this IS a standard feature in many VTs, but I'm curious if people would want this in BRPG)

[Halebop]

In terms of visual FX: supporting animations would be cool. I watched a few videos at the Klooge website and while it's cool they support animations and can do things like aim and shoot fire from attacker to defender, the process was let down by an average looking GIF and some clunky animations sending the fire GIF from point A to B.

Otherwise I'm not really certain what is standard and what is not?

Playing to your strengths I think enhancements to the multimedia aspects and increasing the immersive nature of the game rather than say catering to specific rule sets. Adjusting graphics on the fly is useful and maybe you can have some preset filters like "winter", "summer", "day", "night" etc? If you can support animations including both visual and sound FX like "rain", "snow", "wind" etc would be cool too (I could see something like this being sold as an add-on perhaps?).

Aside from just sharing map and token visuals and rolling dice, I think Fog of War and other area of affect visuals are the single most important functions. Enhancements to these will always be well received. Because light shouldn't be able to pierce through walls I was thinking it would be nice if a GM could paint down mulple and independant solid black overlays (perhaps using something similar to the AoE overlays?). This way if a sealed room should not yet be revealed, the light source won't penetrate the the additional overlay until the GM is ready to remove it.

Anyhoo, I'm sure we've all had enough of me for now...

[heruca]

By "adjusting graphics colors on the fly", I was thinking more along the lines of "I've got a graphic of a red chair, but I need a green one. I'll just change the color right in BRPG".

The FoW features you describe are what's already planned.

I was playing around with GIFs yesterday. The BRPG game engine already supports the format, and they animate nicely. However, the quality of most animated GIFs I could find to download is really pretty lousy. And there basically aren't ANY to be found that show top-down views of stuff, which we'd need. So while in theory this would be a very neat feature to have, in practice it would completely depend on the BRPG user community creating useful, high-quality animated GIFs. Can that be expected to happen? Do 3-D animation programs even export to GIF?

[Kepli]

Yep ... changing the RGB of an object would be awesome. Gives you a great number of extra varieties of objects.

[siege]

If you're thinking of image editing... the ability to rotate and flip graphics, scale, etc... might be nice. No need to go too nuts, but a sort of mini graphic editor could attract some attention.

Also, I know you've got a "send sound" function, but a "background music" feature might be fun too. Loop an MP3 or midi, change it for different worlds/levels/rooms.

[heruca]

Horizontal and vertical flipping would be an easy thing to add, and it hadn't occurred to me, but in hindsight is an obviously useful feature. Rotation and rescaling are already in the core image functions.

As for setting up background music, you do it the same way as sending normal sound effects, except you click a "Loop" checkbox before hitting Send. The track will play continuously until you decide to switch it off. By the way, you'll be able to choose the volume level of each sound, and multiple simultaneous sound channels are supported.

[Halebop]

Horizontal and vertical flipping would be an easy thing to add, and it hadn't occurred to me, but in hindsight is an obviously useful feature...

...As for setting up background music, you do it the same way as sending normal sound effects, except you click a "Loop" checkbox before hitting Send. The track will play continuously until you decide to switch it off. By the way, you'll be able to choose the volume level of each sound, and multiple simultaneous sound channels are supported.

This just gets better and better...

(2nd the need for an ovation emote)

[siege]

As for setting up background music, you do it the same way as sending normal sound effects, except you click a "Loop" checkbox before hitting Send.

Groovy.
Out of curiosity, which audio formats are supported?

[Kepli]

This just gets better and better...

(2nd the need for an ovation emote)

Or a "I am not worthy" icon

[heruca]

Audio formats supported:
Definitely WAV and AIFF, probably mp3, and possibly other formats, too (mp2, mov, au, ogg, swa).

[Halebop]

Wow! Lots of options.

[Halebop]

...on reflection as an "additional" style feature I don't really think scripting sounds and images to queue is a "must have" but it would be nice to integrate some sort of intuitive "game plan" so I could be reminded to queue up a soundtrack, image etc with a particular map or encounter - perhaps include them as clickable links on some sort of customisable menu? (Hmmm, then I could include DM notes, encounter descriptions etc as well...)

[heruca]

Halebop, I'm going to have to ask you to please stop describing BRPG v2 features. It's rude to preempt the official announcement.

(the above should be read in a mock-chastising tone, in case it's not obvious)

[Halebop]

My "consulting" invoice is in the post.

[SolSec]

Audio formats supported:
Definitely WAV and AIFF, probably mp3, and possibly other formats, too (mp2, mov, au, ogg, swa).

IMHO, the sound formats supported should at least be WAV and MP3.

If you look at 95% of websites out there that have "Free Sound Effects" or "Free Sound Clips" ..... they all use either WAV or MP3.

WAV support is ok, but WAV sounds tend to be large files. MP3 quality is just as good, but the file sizes tend to be 10 times smaller.

AIFF is nice... but I understand that AIFF is really used mostly by the Macintosh world, and generally unheard of in the PC world. Then again, I take it you plan on strongly supporting the Mac side... so that makes sense too.