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Improvement Ideas
I have to apologize for not taking a better look at things earlier. My calendar and the days in it have been pretty full lately.
However, I have been getting a few queries lately from users of our Jörðgarð campaign who want to import and use the Jörðgarð maps in Skwyre. That's no problem, seeing that they're available as JPGs and Skwyre works with JPGs. The planned ability to change grid sizes will be necessary for this to work well, of course.
There is a desire among these Jörðgarð GMs - a desire that I share - not to use the kind of tokens supplied with Skwyre but rather to use symbols from the FM8 symbol library as tokens instead.
In principle, that's not a problem either, because the symbols are PNGs. However, without some added abilities, using symbols doesn't work well right now, as illustrated in the sample above. As we can see, the PC symbols face away from the orcs that they are encountering. Thus, we need:
1) The ability to rotate these objects.
We also can see that the head of PC #1 is too small in comparison to the heads of the orcs, and the head of PC #2 is too big in comparison to the heads of the orcs. Thus, we also need:
2) The ability to resize the symbols on screen.
Without that, one would have to make a modified version of each symbol separately. That would require an amount of work and time that's unacceptable.
Of course, Skwyre would really begin to sing if we could embed FM8 into it and then move, rotate and resize all objects on all of our FM8 native format (FMP) maps. From our side of the coin, everything's ready. One already can download all of the original Jörðgarð maps in native FMP format.
Comments
I agree, this is one of the show stoppers for me. I am playing with putting a campaign into Skyre and I keep hitting small road blocks that is making me hold off getting the others in my group, into testing it
Hi guys, mini rotation & resizing will be in the final release. Its partially in there now, but I'm still trying to work out the best way to handle that on touch screens.
There will be integration with FM9. At the very least you'll be able to open a map in FM, and from there update the view in Skwyre (like could be done w/ ScreenMonkey). It will also automatically scale to match the map's grid.
Not sure about using the map symbols as mini's directly from an FM map. But that may be possible if FM had some means of marking which symbols should be considered movable minis, and which are just part of the background image.
Hi, Ed!
"From: Ed_NBOS
Not sure about using the map symbols as mini's directly from an FM map. But that may be possible if FM had some means of marking which symbols should be considered movable minis, and which are just part of the background image."
I may be missing a point, but that seems to me to be a non-issue. One would want all objects to be potentially moveable, not just PCs and NPCs. A PC or an NPC, for instance, might want to move a barrier, a treasure chest or other object to a new location, which would have significant strategic significance.
One can do this now, if one inserts the object (symbols) on Skwyre level rather than FM8 level. The FM9 integration doesn't need to deal with this issue, as far as I can see. The GM can decide himself what is and isn't moveable in deciding which layers can and can't be selected.
Hi, Ed!
_From: Ed_NBOS
Not sure about using the map symbols as mini's directly from an FM map. But that may be possible if FM had some means of marking which symbols should be considered movable minis, and which are just part of the background image.__
I may be missing a point, but that seems to me to be a non-issue. One would want all objects to be moveable, not just PCs and NPCs. A PC or an NPC, for instance, might want to move a barrier, a treasure chest or other object to a new location, which would have significant strategic significance.
One can do this now, if one inserts the object (symbols) on Skwyre level rather than FM8 level. The FM9 integration doesn't need to deal with this issue, as far as I can see. The GM can decide himself what is and isn't moveable in deciding which layers can and can't be selected.
Great application and I hope it continues being developed. I did an initial install and the first two things I noticed that made me question using it were:
* Grid is fixed, so if you have an imported map from another source..you cannot scale the grid to fit properly, you will have to adjust the maps instead. Not huge deal but creates more work for me.
* Dice rolling isn't 3d like other apps..and though purely a for show feature, I feel its critical to a table top gaming experience..and makes me sad not seeing dice rolling
Im trying to fire up a starfinder campaign and was looking into astrosynthesis and connecting it to other apps and saw this...would be cool if there was some integration of the two!!
Keep up the awesome app, its not roll20 yet but it dosnt have too be either..perhaps this can be an easier/simplier way of doing things..as I find roll20 rather over complicated for its own good.
Hello!
I just discovered this project/tool searching for a autonomous-player helper and this looks and tastes great!
As this thread is about improvement requests, I would go with my own wishes:
* "FoW" (Fog Of War): may the map be hidden to the players but where the token where moved arround... This would allow them to discover step by step (or room to room) the environment...
* Shadow Cast: in the continuity of the FoW feature, the tokens may be associated with a light source (a radius) which allows to relveal the map (FoW) and to cast shadows on the map to automatically hide the opponent tokens lurking in the maze...
I propose this because I'm a heavy user of MapTools which proposes this kind of features me and my players are fond of!
I was dreaming of a MapTool running on a portable device to place in the center of the table for my player to move by themselves their tokens, but MapTools does not provide such "tablet" support...
And Skwyre makes me dream as a GameMaster 2.0
Warm regards!
A few ideas:
On scaling of figures - that probably should be on a separate screen. Have a ruler on one side of a figure and then you can scale it accordingly. Also, have something that is already scaled to the map shown (like a tree, cow, horse, human, etc...)
FoW is great. But if you are going to have that then you will probably need two ways to show areas: 1)Cone shaped light, and 2)Circular shaped light.
Walls. Can there be some way to designate walls so players can't just go skipping around on the map? To me - this is a hard one as some walls look the same as floors.
Ceilings. This is a tough one. You would need a separate window to show ceilings. I know - not everyone in the world does ceilings and for the most part there is nothing much to see. But it might be nice to have.
Orthogonal view. Similar to ceilings but gives a nice view.
Other than that - this looks really nice.
Keep up the great work!