Battlegrounds Games

[Kazander]

Hi Heruca,

I’ve managed to get my first session going of GURPS using BRPG. Great job; it’s really great to see a VTT that supports GURPS expressly (as best as possible without copyright infringements), rather than as a poorly considered afterthought—or not at all.

My group all liked it, but there are a few things we can see that would help so far (that I haven’t seen already expressed elsewhere).

I’m not sure if these things are already fixed in 1.2, or planned in a future version, but I thought I’d express my thoughts anyway.

1. Dice Macros

a. Have a mechanism where specific dice within a dice roll are not added to the total. Reason: secondary rolls for table lookups, like Hit Location in GURPS, where under the new guidelines in Martial Arts a random hit to the Neck requires a second roll to determine if it hit a vein, artery, or the spine. You can go back and modify the macro to roll 1d afterwards, but it would be a real time saver to have the die already rolled as part of the macro. This could be as simple as adding a “Maximum result” option for the dice (set to 0 in this case) in addition to the “Minimum result” option. Then I could just have a ‘special’ die in the macro just for this purpose that does not affect the die total.

b. Not sure if this one is a bug or not, but when I make a macro to do a table lookup, the macro does not save *which* table I tell it to do the lookup on. It’s annoying to have to change that every time I use the macro.

c. If I have the Turn Sequencer up, and another player rolls the dice….the dice window does not come up, and I miss the result. This is not a good thing; can it be fixed? I know that I can go back and look at the Roll History, but this shouldn’t really be necessary, I don’t think. On a related note, it would be more convenient if the Roll History were directly accessible from the Dice Macro window (another button at the bottom). As it is, you either make a “fake roll” just to get to the Results window so you can then browse the History, or you access it through the “B” icon. 2-3 clicks when you could do it with 1, in a window that intuitively seems like it should be able to access the Roll History already.

d. Loading Dice Macros: I’m going to have a number of Dice Macros, especially table lookups, that will be used frequently. The “load macro” mechanism is a bit cumbersome in my opinion. It would be helpful if you could just go to the Dice Macro screen, and have a list of 15-20 buttons down the left side of the window directly linked to specific macros, or something similar. The less-frequently used ones you’d still have to Load though.

2. Figure placement

a. When I place a new figure, it does not place it where I tell it to (i.e. the hex where I clicked and selected “Place figure”. It defaults to some location near the top of the map. If you’re zoomed in, it can be hard to find this new figure, and it’s annoying to have to go looking for the figures everytime you place new ones. I tend to do this kind of thing on the fly, rather than ahead of time. (Although that’s mostly due to the size limitation of the maps).

b. Default Unit settings: it would be nice if BRPG kept some default new Unit Settings. For me, things like Base Type, Scale Adjustment, and Rotation Adjustment tend to be repeated over and over again. This is because my tokens tend to all come from the same source (DevinKnight’s tokens), and they tend to all need similar scaling and rotation to work. As for base type…..they’re mostly Hostile.

3. Health Status

At least 1 additional level of Health Status would be nice—“Serious”, perhaps with an orange halo. I tend to use Fair as HP/3 < current HP < Max HP, and Critical as anything <= -HP, where death rolls are required. Serious would be –HP < current HP <= HP/3, where movement is reduced, and/or unconsciousness rolls are required, but death is not imminent. Ideally there would be a another level of Health Status for that HP range between 0 and HP/3, but it doesn’t come as often and isn’t as important.

4. Enhanced Night Vision

Looks like you built this one for the D&D players out there, with only Low Light Vision and Dark Vision represented here. In my GURPS campaign we have many levels of Night Vision represented—all levels of the advantage from 1 to 9. If these graduated levels could be represented it would be great.


5. Map size limitations

Ugh. This one hurts me. My players are currently going through a large temple complex with multiple levels, and the 40x46 (hex grid) limitation requires that I scan and upload on the fly. It’d be much better if I could scan the whole thing and use it. It’s in excess of 130x140 (1 yd hexes).

That's "all" that came to mind with the first attempt!

Cheers.

[Omnidon]

[Quest]

[Kazander]

[demonsbane]

[heruca]

Excellent feedback, Kazander! I somehow missed this post yesterday.

Thanks for numbering each point. That makes it much easier to respond.

1a: Good idea, but why not just create a second macro for the table look-up?

1b: Sounds like a bug. Will investigate.

1c: Adding a button to the macro configuration panel to access the Roll History sounds like a good solution. Incoming dice rolls not appearing because the Turn Sequencer is open must be a bug, which I'll fix for the next release.

1d: How about I add a popup menu (on the Dice Macro window) that lists all your macros for quick and easy loading?

2a: I believe this bug is already fixed in v1.2.

2b: Good idea. I'll probably add that the next time I overhaul the Preferences panel.

3: Noted. I'll see what I can do.

4: Yes, the default vision types that come with BRPG are very D&D-oriented, but they are just there as an example. You can define your own custom vision types however you want, within certain perameters (which are explained in the "Enhanced Night Vision Menu.txt" file, located in BRPG's Preferences folder).

5: This one hurts me, too. Unfortunately, Director only supports bitmaps up to about 4000 x 4000 pixels. There are possible workarounds (such as variable grid resolution, using multiple adjoining graphics to form larger maps, etc.), but they would require a pretty massive rewrite. Larger maps are one of the first things I want to get working right when/if I develop BRPG v2.

[Omnidon]

[Kazander]

1a: Hmmm. Your response makes me think we're not quite understanding each other. Not sure though. Anyway I'll give an example that I hope will make it more clear.

I've created a macro that does Hit Location, via a table lookup. What I would like is the ability to add a fourth (or fifth, etc) die, in a different color (which can already be done), that does not contribute to the die roll total (and thus doesn't affect the table lookup), but is referred to in the text of the table lookup.

For example, if the table lookup result is 10, this corresponds to a Torso hit. The fourth die turns up a 1, which the table text shows the players that this means the hit is actually to the Vitals. If the fourth die contributed to the Total, it would affect the table lookup. This way the hit location is completely resolved in a single roll. Of course, it would be nicer if a table could actually generate a secondary roll, and refer to a secondary table, but that's a lot more complicated....

1b: Okay.

1c: Okay!

1d: I don't think I'm understanding you correctly here; a popup menu on the dice macro window sounds to me like what you already have. "Popup" to me implies I click on something first to bring up the menu....which is basically the same thing you have.

2a: Awesome. I'm waiting for the official Windows Beta download release....so that it does include the dice macro fixes.

2b: Starting to sound repetitive here, but okay!

3: Thanks.

4: Quest pointed that out to me; I didn't realize any of that kind of thing was configurable. I also took a peek at the Labels menu; I'm thinking of reconfiguring it so that some of the less frequently used ones go into submenus. Not sure what I'm going to do here though. Glad this is configurable!

5: I understand. You can only do what the tools allow you to. I was curious at your choice of default grid resolution though. I think it's 61 pixels per square? Why such an odd number? Variable grid resolution would certainly help, at the expense of...well, resolution, of course.

Thanks for the response!

Demonsbane: I'm using BRPG to play online. My friends and I have gotten quite spread apart over the years, and we miss being able to do this sort of thing. Once a year just isn't the same. It's been difficult to find a VTT that supports hexmaps, has enough features to be useful, and is *reliable*. Had some experiences with VTTs that crash much too often.

In a perfect world the VTT would be game system aware, and know all the rules so all we'd have to do is point and click, but until SJ Games decides to support a GURPS online project, that's not going to happen.

[heruca]

1a: Ah! Now I get you. Sounds like you want sub-tables, for which a result is automatically generated, all within the same macro. That should be doable, but I'll have to think a bit about how best to implement this. The sub-table could be either embedded in the original table, or it could merely be a reference to another table (defined in its own text file).

1d: But it would be faster, I think, because all it takes is one click, a drag (to highlight the proper macro), and a release of the mouse button. As opposed to popping open a file selection dialog box, which you may need to scroll through to find the exact macro you want.

4. Yup, all four files in the Preferences folder are customizable in the same way.

5. 50 pixels per cell seemed a bit low, 75 was pretty but demanded too much bandwidth for image transfers. 60 seemed like a good trade-off, but I took it up to 61 when I realized that I needed an odd number to avoid everything being "off center by 1 pixel" when the snap-to-grid feature tried to center units in a cell.

[Kazander]

1a: Sounds good. I'll let you work on that then. (like I actually have a choice!)

1d: Okay; with the drag and drop going on, I can see it as an improvement. If the Dice Macro window had built-in scrollable window that automatically listed available macros, that would be a bit smoother experience yet, but I'm sure that requires more re-coding.

4: Thanks.

5: Ahh. Now I understand the reason for the odd number. Makes perfect sense.

Thanks for the link to "the history of BRPG"; interesting reading.

Here's hoping you can make a pitch to SJ someone in the future for their support.

[BTS1967]

I concur with Kazanders suggestions. Especially the die rolling and health status.



1a. Dice Macro - two seperate sets of dice

With Warhammer 40k RPG (and I believe Warhammer Fantasy) you have a similar situation where you roll a test to hit and then if successful roll a second. This occurs in combat & psychic checks. Right now we are doing seperate rolls but it would be nice to do these two in one single roll.

Step 1) So the first test is a roll under a target number. If successful a hit is landed.

Step 2) If a hit is landed then the second will refer a lookup table to determine where the hit occurred.


We also have a situation where there are two sets of dice being rolled. The first set is the result and the second set is the control. If any dice in the first pool equal the result of the second something occurs. In this case we need both displayed as seperate results.

For both of the above situations, when you add a second set of dice it adds, subtracts, divides, or multiplies. There is no way to have just two sets of dice rolled without being summed together in some fashion.

I was thinking, would it be possible to include the ability to initiate a second macro if a specific result is generated? I could see this layout similar to the lookup table option but instead the die macro references another macro that is then initiated.

The reason I liked Kazander's original suggestion is that it has the potential to accelerate game play. Right now we get bogged down in macro die rolls that would be quicker with real dice. But with the right automation options BRPG has the potential to be much more quicker than the tabletop... that I see is one of the biggest potential efficiencies VTT's can bring to RPG game play.



3. Health

I have to also say, building upon Kazander's health status. It would be a nice feature to have this configurable. Where we can select the type of health status we want to use by color similar to the lists for vision, light, etc. But just having additional options would be a great start as making it configurable is a very low priority in my mind.

BTS

[heruca]

For Health Status, what additional colors would you like available?

Blue is reserved for the active figure, and white is reserved for the currenly selected figure. I'll definitely add orange, since that seems a natural midpoint between red and yellow. I'll also probably add black (which could indicate a dead or mortally wounded figure).

Are any other colors needed? Grey, perhaps? Or a yellowish-green?

The reason I ask is that I need to create the halo graphics, both square and hex-shaped, in every base size and color.

After v1.3 is released (which will add hit point tracking), I can see about automatically setting the halo color based on the percentage of remaining hit points for each figure.

[Omnidon]

[Kazander]

Hmmm. I'm thinking purple. Even though it's actually at the far end of the spectrum from red, it seems like a midway point between red and black. It should be distinctive enough to be obvious, whereas grey an yellowish-green may not be. I suppose the only way is to try and compare the finished results though. Purple might turn out to be very similar to blue, depending.

[heruca]

I'll be sure to post some samples for feedback before I commit to doing all the sets.

[ursus]

I'm looking forward to the extra colors. Having only 3 colors for health seemed to few for the way I'd want to indicate status.

Ready and waiting to submit feedback on the new colors.

[heruca]

OK, here are the color samples I came up with.

I don't think purple works, so I'll probably drop it.

Suggested Use:
Green: 100-76%
Yellow-Green: 75-51%
Yellow: 50-26%
Orange: 25-11%
Red: 10-1%
Dark Red: Zero Hit Points or Negative Hit Points
Black: Dead or Unconscious

Thoughts?

[oleingva]

Yeah, I think that seems quite logical. And, if we don't want to use that many, we can just ignore the ones we don't want, right?

[heruca]

[Kazander]

Hmmm. The purple doesn't work from the perspective of having high visual contrast, but that's highly dependent on the background map. A darker purple might help.

What bothers me more is that I'm fairly certain that if they were't side-by-side, I don't think I could distinguish between yellow and yellow-green. Possibly the same between red and dark red, although this isn't as obvious.

But, as oleingva states, we don't have to use them all. I'm having trouble thinking of uses for more than 8 of these myself, but you never know what might come up in play 3 months from now.

[heruca]

Well, if you go with the recommended percentages, on average, 50% of the figures will be marked green or yellow-green, so they'll both likely be on-screen at the same time, making the distinction more clear.

In any case, the distinction certainly isn't as critical near the top of the range, since you're relatively healthy.

[ursus]

I don't see any problem with purple. Looks just fine to me.

[Omnidon]

Personally I would prefer as much variety as possible. I could easily think of uses for dozens of colors. However, I'd much rather have you spend time on more important things, so those colors are fine for now.

[Balesir]

I really don't use these halos for 'condition' indication generally in the game I'm running now; since D&D has a spell that specifically gives the caster this information I regard it as generally non-public. I can see lots of uses for halos in general, though, if their visibility could be switched on or off for specific players. What a cool way to do Detect Magic (or Detect anything else, for that matter)! Or the spell I referred to above in D&D to let a caster monitor the condition of all allies.

Two suggestions, then:

1) A set of switches for each player to set halos 'on' or 'off' (default = on?)

2) A set of halos for general purposes, as well as those graded for 'condition' indication.

[heruca]

Rather than label the halos as "Health Status" in the contextual popup menu, would you all prefer a more generic term, like "Halos"? That would make them more suitable for other purposes.