Some feedback & ideas

[Draedrus]

Hi folks,

Recently with my Role Play gamers, we came into rolisteam in order to play our last session. We tried almost all the 1.6.1 stable version and here are our feedbacks & ideas:

The bad things (sadly, there are some bad points):

• The website, there is a link to a 2.0.0 API, while the current version is 1.6.1, the next one is 1.7.0 and the next again is 1.8.0. This is quite confusing
• During our play, rolisteam crashed several times, maybe 2 or 3 in some 6 hours. I do not know how we managed to crash it, is there a log file or something ?
• As a DM, I tried to show things to a distinct player, because the team was splitted (as usual for us). But I could not show him things without showing it to the others.
• Surprisingly (and not as much at all), there are no character sheet. This is maybe not a bad choice because there are plenty of Role Play Games
• We discovered how to modify things with right click about two hours after starting using it

The good things (because, there are many good things !)

• Your software is really easy to use and understand ! (despite the points said before)
• Map, image and chat management are well done, but I have suggestions below !
• Fog of War !
• Ambient music !
• resources sharing without preload !

So here are the points I think you SHOULD improve in my point of view (which are not THE point of view):

• You have set rights to access to chats... But... Why you did not the same with Maps and Images ? I think that this is not very difficult to do for you. Because you have to think that chat, maps and images are resources and you put the same system for the resources
• Always with the same aim (manage splitted players) is it difficult to put more Fog of War layers ? Or Fog of War to a group of players ?
• Why not stream the music as for the images ?
• Also, for the character sheets, maybe you can add PDF files to the resources shared ? With that, you can avoid the boring MultipleGameMechanicsCharacterSheetManagement.
• Add images to the map ? Like sprites ? This has not been a real problem for us, but you can gain some users more with that.

I think this is all for the moment. We have another play soon with another kind of style play (the last one was more political & intrigue.

Finally, I hope this will help you in further developments. I will update these lists with the next play sessions coming.

--
Draedrus

[renaud]

Hi,
Thanks for your interest in Rolisteam.

Let me try to answer all your questions.

Bad things
-True, I changed it. It was historical. When I start working on Rolisteam. I start rewriting completely the software. And this work was stored in the subversion as 2.0.0 branch. All releases were made with 1.0.0 branch. Now, rolisteam is maneged by git. 1.0.0 branch is master and 2.0.0 branch became unstable branch. I stop working on unstable but I start to merge some stuff from unstable to master.
Recently I start the branch vmap to work on vectorial map. It will be included in v1.8 I hope.
-I noticed crashes when the server is sending images (or maps) while the GM removed those images. But no there is no log file. You may run rolisteam in debugger. It should help a bit. I don't know what system do you have. Moreover, rolisteam seems fragile when small connections are used with to many pictures.
-True, it is not possible, I always want to implement a permission manager, I will write it some day but it is not high priority for the moment.
-In 2.0.0, I manage new kind of widget which is like spreadsheet calc to store all character sheet. I'm not sure a lot of people will take the time to fullfil the data into rolisteam.
-I will say, there is documentation (http://wiki.roilsteam.org) if you notice any leaks, I will be glad to correct the documentation and give you the answer. What do you want to change exactly ? In maps ? pictures ? sound ?

Good things
-Thanks!
-Images and Chat have received many improvement, it is time to work on maps.
-Thanks!
-Thanks!
-Thanks!


Features Requests !
-The technical difficulties are more in how to show the feature than how to limit access to some resources. I start refactoring code about shared media. I hope it will be possible to do it once and for all. But I have to think about how integrate this feature in rolisteam.
-I have different approach about it. The code about maps is 60% of the code source of rolisteam. I did not write it and it is really messy. So I start vectorial map support. My goal at the end will be to only show what it is in the character sight.
Character token will be camera on the map.
-The size of music are mostly bigger than images. In 1.7, rolisteam will be able to play remote file (hosted on http server, or streaming:rtsp…). The other reason is about legal issue. I'm not an expert but If rolisteam is able to stream music some copyright law may apply. Then rolisteam could be sue for that.
-In 2.0.0 (or unstable), I add the possibility to load and display pdf. It was working fine, of course this feature will require the permission management.
-Agreed. Plan to do it with vmap in v1.8.


I hope I answer all your questions.
Let me know if you have additional ones.

[Draedrus]

Hi Renaud,

First, I have to thank you about this complete answer. I am glad to see that you are very active on this project !

Then, I will answer below

Music sharing:
OK ! I was afraid of... So not surprised ! Don't worry so, it is okay with the actual choices you made.

Global shared permissions:
Maybe adding a menu item in the window ? So that you could put a contextual menu or file menu too in order to manage your shared resources like a classical "window" application.

I think it's all for the moment, we agreed last day to use again rolisteam for every session, even if we are in the same room. It adds very interesting things to a table top RPG.

In all the cases, your next steps sounds great ! I hope to see it soon !
Good luck

[Cleygan]

Hello,

Even if I'm french, i'll answer here.
I find the whole review as equal as my point of view.

I'll only make a comment about the Fog of War.
I think the actual Fog of War and the Player-View-Camera are both great !
BUt they do not intend the same thing.
Typically I would need both for my L5R campaign :
- One for the know parts à the Rokugan map.
- One for the warfare/dungeon/exploring needs.

A fog of war as used in 1.7 is a must have to reveal litlle by little the know map and reknowed location.
A fog of war set on Player-vision is a great improvment, indeeed. I'll expand this last.

Player view :
Many games use square based maps.
If we should be able to have a square based map, with all square a little dot at its center, all claims about line of ight should be avoided.
But, to speak true, it is not a must have in my point of view. Probably a final objective, no more.

Player view, bis :
If you do so, it should be fine to have 2 sight option : cone and full 360° sight.




As a final thought, it should be fine to have a Timer at disposal for the GM with all usal capabilities :
- from X to 0. Useful to urge the player to take a decision.
- From 0 to X. As above.
- "local time" = in game time. usefull to give In game date, hour.
- Weather, Day/night, visibility icons. SO USEFUL to answer the classic question when you make an ellipse

[Troumad]

Petites remarques sur l'utilisation de rcse
- il faudrait mettre une sécurité à "appliquer à toutes les lignes" : j'ai eu un raté et j'ai cliqué sur cette ligne à la place de "appliquer à la sélection". J'ai du revenir à la précédente sauvegarde.
- quand on sélectionne une ligne, il serait bien de mettre en surbrillance l'item correspondant sur la page.
- quand on sélectionne un item sur le dessin il serait bien de mettre en surbrillance la ligne correspondante dans le code
- il serait bien de pouvoir supprimer une ligne du code
- je pense qu'il serait bien de pouvoir monter où descendre des paquets de lignes (d'item).
- copier dynamiquement une chaine de caractères d'une case à l'autre avec =${nom} ou l'utiliser dans un concat

Small remarks on the use of rcse
- it would be necessary to put a security to "apply to all the lines": I had a failure and I clicked on this line instead of "to apply to the selection". I had to go back to the previous backup.
- when selecting a line, it would be nice to highlight the corresponding item on the page.
- when selecting an item on the drawing it would be nice to highlight the corresponding line in the code
- it would be nice to be able to delete a line of the code
- I think it would be nice to be able to go up where to drop packets of lines (item).
- Copy a string with =${nom} or use it in a concat