azhrei_fje
First Post
Hey everyone. I wasn't sure what prefix to put on this so I used "Technology" since there wasn't a VTT entry.
I know many of the people here are also on the RPTools.net forum and they will already be familiar with this, but I wanted to announce here that MapTool 1.3 is just about "done". (Well, as done as software ever gets!
)
You can find more information on our main site at RPTools - Home and you can execute the Java-based apps directly from the web page by clicking on the "Launch" link in the toolbar and then choosing which app you want to run. Or if you prefer, you can grab the ZIP (Windows, Linux) or DMG (OSX) version. Both will run while you're offline so it doesn't really matter which one you use; the Launch method just requires that you run it once while you're connected to the 'net so that it can grab the necessary files.
There has been a lot of work done to MapTool in the last year or so by myself (Azhrei), JfrazierJR, Rumble, and about a dozen more users! (Those are their handles @ forum.RPTools.net) Some of the most recent changes:
1. Translations. MapTool is now available in English (the core language), French, Spanish, German, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Polish, and Russian. And translating it to another language isn't tough; contact me at the RPTools.net forum if you would like to be involved in translating it to yet another language.
2. Individual views and individual fog-of-war. Consider this: if you (the player) own multiple minis on the map, wouldn't it be cool if you could select on of them and see only that part of the map that is visible to that PC? This is great for wizards with familiars, druids or rangers with animal companions, and so on. It really helps the player prevent metagaming by clicking their mini and then thinking, "Hm, I can only see *this*..."
3. Minis visible only to the owners. This is excellent for invisible rogues -- the other players can't see your mini on the map! That really makes things interesting for the cleric that wants to try to heal you with a touch spell, eh?!
4. Faster campaign loading and saving. A lot of changes have been made in reading and writing the files. Some things we can't speed up (like how long it takes the Java library to decode a JPEG image) but we can work to get the files into memory quickly or write them out as fast as possible. And that's what we've done.
There are still some gotchas that we're working to correct. They tend to be "fringe cases", but any bug that doesn't have a simple work around is in our sights for squashing.
Anyway, I just wanted people to know that v1.3 of our VTT is winding down. We'll be starting v1.4 in the upcoming weeks and many of the features that users have been clamoring for are in the plan. But it's likely to be many months before we have a (publicly) usable version of 1.4 -- it'll have the same basic features but much of it will be redesigned.
(I've subscribed to this thread, but I'm unable to check my PMs very often so an email is probably best. Or visit forum.RPTools.net and get in touch with myself and other gamers there instead!)
I know many of the people here are also on the RPTools.net forum and they will already be familiar with this, but I wanted to announce here that MapTool 1.3 is just about "done". (Well, as done as software ever gets!
)You can find more information on our main site at RPTools - Home and you can execute the Java-based apps directly from the web page by clicking on the "Launch" link in the toolbar and then choosing which app you want to run. Or if you prefer, you can grab the ZIP (Windows, Linux) or DMG (OSX) version. Both will run while you're offline so it doesn't really matter which one you use; the Launch method just requires that you run it once while you're connected to the 'net so that it can grab the necessary files.
There has been a lot of work done to MapTool in the last year or so by myself (Azhrei), JfrazierJR, Rumble, and about a dozen more users! (Those are their handles @ forum.RPTools.net) Some of the most recent changes:
1. Translations. MapTool is now available in English (the core language), French, Spanish, German, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Polish, and Russian. And translating it to another language isn't tough; contact me at the RPTools.net forum if you would like to be involved in translating it to yet another language.
2. Individual views and individual fog-of-war. Consider this: if you (the player) own multiple minis on the map, wouldn't it be cool if you could select on of them and see only that part of the map that is visible to that PC? This is great for wizards with familiars, druids or rangers with animal companions, and so on. It really helps the player prevent metagaming by clicking their mini and then thinking, "Hm, I can only see *this*..."
3. Minis visible only to the owners. This is excellent for invisible rogues -- the other players can't see your mini on the map! That really makes things interesting for the cleric that wants to try to heal you with a touch spell, eh?!
4. Faster campaign loading and saving. A lot of changes have been made in reading and writing the files. Some things we can't speed up (like how long it takes the Java library to decode a JPEG image) but we can work to get the files into memory quickly or write them out as fast as possible. And that's what we've done.
There are still some gotchas that we're working to correct. They tend to be "fringe cases", but any bug that doesn't have a simple work around is in our sights for squashing.
Anyway, I just wanted people to know that v1.3 of our VTT is winding down. We'll be starting v1.4 in the upcoming weeks and many of the features that users have been clamoring for are in the plan. But it's likely to be many months before we have a (publicly) usable version of 1.4 -- it'll have the same basic features but much of it will be redesigned.
(I've subscribed to this thread, but I'm unable to check my PMs very often so an email is probably best. Or visit forum.RPTools.net and get in touch with myself and other gamers there instead!)
