GM Roster Utility

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CW

#15
You have almost the full collection! I have an 80 ally shadow priest, a Horde 80 shadow priest, an 80 death-knight I never played after getting  him leveled, a 70 Pally, and a lvl 12 fire mage I never really warmed to. Of them all, melting faces with my shadow priest was by far the best. The only drawback with my shadow priest was that he was way.. too squishy for the 3v3 arenas, so I missed out on the very top-tier goodies. Still, Themender could hold his own in a fight and I regularly finished near the top of the heap when we won in the Battlefields.

Which char. was your favorite to play? Did you get heavy into raids? I did for a short while, but I found that I didn't care for the sort of questing schedule you had to keep up in order to participate. Nope. I would much rather join my mates in The Tram Pirates guild to raid the Ally tram and try to hold it for as long as possible against all comers. We sometimes all dressed in pirate garb, complete with bird pets, took it over, and held it. Arr..!! Thar be some fun!!

I even found a glitch in the game which allowed us to sneek into the Ally city without going through either the front or the back gate. You had to levitate/climb up a certain mountain to reach an area where only the wire-frame of the game existed, then drop through a pond which caused you to fall through the game and into the Mage Tower inside the Ally city. (They have fixed that glitch now.) We almost got busted by a GM once, when one of our party got hung up in the rafters where the bug dropped us. Fortunately, the rest of us had logged, just before the GM showed up, and our buddy wouldn't tell the GM who it was that showed him how to use the exploit. Wheew! From then on we did it the hard way.  -Storming the front gate, making a dash for the tram, and then summoning the rest of the party in. :good:

-CW

fuzzy70

Hunter was def my favourite char to play, also def one of the hardest to master. Managing key bindings for traps, pets & also attacking with the character took a lot longer to master than my other chars. Only classes that made pvp harder against my Hunter was rogues & druids lol, the rest used to crumble easy enough.

Raiding was an on/off experience until a regular solid group could be found & even then not something that tickled my fancy so to speak.

One thing I can say is I was seriously a profession whore lol. Every profession maxed out, even getting the rare or quest recipes was a major thing for me & had to be done.

Lee

Sent from my HTC Wildfire using Tapatalk 2

"Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?"
- "These go to eleven."

This Is Spinal Tap (1984)

CW

#17
So you didn't have a Druid? Yeah, I hated elite hunters and their pets. They suck for any sort of priest.

fuzzy70

It appears we are going off topic again lol

Lee

Sent from my HTC Wildfire using Tapatalk 2

"Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?"
- "These go to eleven."

This Is Spinal Tap (1984)

CW

Ah yeah, but this is our thread so WTH. LOL

fuzzy70

True ;).

Have a lvl 50 something druid, only started it up a week before I stopped playing due to my change in circumstances.

With regard to the main topic of the GM program I may have got a bit carried away with what exactly is required. Just because English is my native language doesn't mean I'm very good with it lol.

I have a better idea of what's required now (after reading it 50 times to make sure) so I will make a simple graphical mock up of what I think the goal is, that way you can confirm that I am on the same track as you. I always do a graphical mock up of anything that requires the presentation of a lot of data as it helps me see what's required.

I think I was getting mixed up with your requirements & a program I wrote a long time ago.

Lee

Sent from my HTC Wildfire using Tapatalk 2

"Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?"
- "These go to eleven."

This Is Spinal Tap (1984)

CW

#21
That is a great idea. I have a set of working tabs, so with a little creative photo-shopping I can do a graphical mock-up too. (Not that I can actually achieve what I can dream in photo-shop. But it is a target to aim for.) And don't worry about throwing ideas out there. I'm find it stimulating and you are already causing me to improve on my vision. I look forward to seeing your ideas, sharing my own, and fusing the best of both worlds within the scope of what I can actually code. If you are interested enough to do some coding, maybe we can share that part too. No pressure though. No obligations. Consider it an invite.

But if you are interested, and once we hammer out a draft vision, I could focus on the tab and roster framework in the near term, get that into a stand-alone modular state, and then turn you loose with it to take it in whatever feature direction you choose while I focus on another feature. Programing by committee! What could go wrong? lol
Worst case, we wind up with two roster programs covering two visions and there would be nothing wrong with that. Anyway. Let me know what you are game for. I'm flexible. And weather you choose to be a suggestion person or a hands-on coder, this is a project I'm excited to do. 

-CW

"Of COURSE the laundry is clean. The cat is sleeping on it, isn't she?"

fuzzy70

Seems you now have a partner in crime lol.

Am pretty sure that between us we can hammer out a good & viable result. Anything that is beyond either of us or problems that we have trouble resolving one of the many skilled coders in the forum will surely point out the errors of our ways :).

Oddly enough I tend to write  more of tool/app style programs than games. No idea why but I think it changed during the 16/32bit era when computers allowed a more diverse spectrum of what could be created/programmed.

Not saying that old micros where game only or that game writing now is a bad thing, but my direction & focus changed.

Lee

Sent from my HTC Wildfire using Tapatalk 2

"Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?"
- "These go to eleven."

This Is Spinal Tap (1984)

CW

Sounds good.  =D
I'll begin work on my graphic mockup tomorrow. (DDgui can wait for Monday to be explored.)

Cheers!
-CW

fuzzy70

#24
I will make a start after I get home & have some sleep lol. I have a few ideas with regards to the mockup.

Lee

Edit: I will Target my initial mockup to be 800x600 & see how I get on. Main reasons are a lot of devices can handle that res (think tablets/netbooks) & I find it is always easier to move up resolution if it works out to small than it is to work the other way round & try to decrease it.
Sent from my HTC Wildfire using Tapatalk 2
"Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?"
- "These go to eleven."

This Is Spinal Tap (1984)

CW

#25
That sounds good. I'll need to adjust the size and layout of my tabs and frames. Right now I'm working at the screen size of my laptop, which is 1366X768, which allows for eight tabs (with up to 13 letters for the team name) and two frames. (The screen is divided in half.)

Scaling up rather than scaling down makes a lot of sense, and a tablet is easier than a laptop to use for a GM. So perhaps one frame and a series of tabs across the top is the way to go. I'm not sure how many tabs that will allow us, but we will need to use fewer tabs, fewer letters in team names, or both. That isn't a big issue. And because the program is still so young, I can easily modify down to an 800/600 rez.

Let's each do our mockups and decide where to go from there. Take your time. I'm busy Sunday with a social group, so you can expect my mock-up early next week. If I have the time I may even make the 800/600 modification before then.

Talk to you soon!
-CW

Edit: I just tried the tab framework at the lower resolution and it scaled without a hitch. Have a look! (Screenshot_1)
(Note that the "Add Tab" tabs, though shown here, will vanish when the maximum allowed number of tab have been added.)
I'm thinking we can code this thing to run on any of three screen resolutions, 800/600, 1366/768 and for the home gamer with a large screen, 1766/992. Plus the PAL equivalents for Europe. (Do European screens still have more scan lines than US screens? That used to be the case in the days of Amiga.)
All we need to do is set the number of allowable tabs and roster items on display to match the user-chosen resolution. We may want to code our popup windews and menus to fit the smallest resolution for ease of coding though.

fuzzy70

#26
Just a quickie, is there a reason you split the screen into 2 parts. Only asking as am about to start my mockup & wondered if there was something I missed lol.

Lee

Edit: With regards to European screens, PC's etc have always been the same worldwide only TV's are different with broadcast signals & consoles (non HD of course as thats a set standard).
"Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?"
- "These go to eleven."

This Is Spinal Tap (1984)

CW

#27
The idea was to separate the layout into two screens, one for each of two currently interacting teams. It seemed more intuitive to me to let the Game Master be able to choose an attacking unit from one roster frame, and a target unit from the other roster frame. But on a small screen, there may not be room for two rosters on display. The pop-up window for any given unit will be moveable anyway, and a GM may even want to select two units from the same team, for healing/repair purposes, perhaps.

So picture this, an NPC mage, (which is miniature #23 on the game table) wants to cast a fireball on one of the thee archers in team Blood Raiders (say, miniature figure #9 on the game table). So the GM goes to the team 'NPC' tab (which happens to be on the right side of the screen) clicks on it, causing the roster to load in the right side frame, he locates the unit #23 on the roster (also identified as type "mage"), clicks on it, and its unit window pops up on the right side of the screen over the right frame. Now the GM clicks on the "Blood Raiders" tab, if it isn't already active, (that tab is on the left side of the screen), which loads the Blood Raiders roster into the left frame. He selects the target archer's roster entry from the left side roster (unit #9), clicks on it, and the archer's full stat window opens on the left side of the screen.

Now the GM has two windows, side by side, one for each unit. Looking at the text notes for the NPC mage, the GM sees he has a base hit chance of 30% at that range, looking at the archers dexterity, the GM calculates a final hit chance of 25%. He rolls the dice, CRITICAL! The mage does 27 points of damage to the life of the archer unit! The GM then clicks on the archer's life bar and reduces it by 27 points, killing the archer. (The health stat of the archer now stands at -6) The archer's roster entry is now grey. The GM can either remove the dead archer from the roster, or leave the entry there in case of resurrection at some future time. The GM topples the archer figure (#9) on the game board. The game goes on!

To call up two units from the same team, you would click on one unit, move the window over to uncover the team roster, then click on the next unit.

That is what I had in mind. If we go with one roster window, it will mean more flipping back and forth between pages for the GM, which could be a distraction from the game. But if the small screen format doesn't allow for two roster windows, we may not have much choice. I just don't want the utility to get in the way of the game. Our focus as programers, naturally, is on the utility. But the GM's focus needs to stay on the game, and the utility should be as fluid and intuitive and as transparent to the real game as is possible.

What do you think?
-CW

PS: Ok, I'm heading to the library now. I'll check back in later. -Cheers!

fuzzy70

Makes perfect sense to me  =D

Perhaps I shouldn't have read your last post so soon after waking up lol. BTW I have to mention that I live in my own time-zone that is separate from everyone elses. I may be up & awake for anything from 12hrs to 72hrs thanks to a wonderful sleeping disorder & when I am on one of the long awake stints obviously concentration sometimes is difficult so please bear with me.

You are 100% correct in that ease of use for the GM is the main priority & is something that I'm trying to incorporate into the UI mockup, it may cause some extra programming to implement but nothing that cannot be solved. One of my initial ideas def won't work with a 2 frame layout but other ideas are trickling in  =D.

Lee
"Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?"
- "These go to eleven."

This Is Spinal Tap (1984)

fuzzy70

#29
Very rough quick draft to see if I am going along the right lines lol. Obviously got to do the character details page but had a day of interruptions but will be on it  =D

Lee

p.s time for a food break  :D
"Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?"
- "These go to eleven."

This Is Spinal Tap (1984)