sab39's d39 grid software brainstorming / programming discussion

[Web.Metz]

Suggestion for long-term feature: segregation.
If a person could merge two maps somehow. Using the default cell color as a 'transparent' paste Map 2 into map 1, then adjusting its position until it lines up.

[Web.Metz]

Feature suggestion: Variable Wall Thickness
Each wall thickness means something different.
Thin walls are often windows, or thin inner walls that seperate rooms.
Medium walls are often walls, usually outer walls of buildings.
Thick walls are often doors, gates, and wall hangings (tapestry/paintings)

[sab39]

Diagonal walls up now on the test site.

I'm still far from anything like complete. I've been focused on getting the data structures right for supporting all the things that I want, encoding and decoding it from the URL query string, and the image drawing to match. No point in having a grid builder UI that's perfect if it needs to be rewritten a dozen times every time a new feature is added to what the grid can do.

I think it is time to move on to fleshing out the website and UI features a bit now though, otherwise the whole thing is a terribly theoretical exercise...

[sab39]

Yeah I just realized I can do walls and terrain much more elegantly and powerfully than I was doing and thus need to rewrite the whole wall and terrain code. That's the sort of thing that always happens and it's always horribly demoralizing.

[Web.Metz]

Yeah I just realized I can do walls and terrain much more elegantly and powerfully than I was doing and thus need to rewrite the whole wall and terrain code. That's the sort of thing that always happens and it's always horribly demoralizing.

Make sure you save backups. Just in case. I hate rewriting everything just to screw it up,

[sab39]

Testing...

T'Ning moves W, W, W, W, NW, N (30ft) to C3 T'Ning

Not really any closer to 'functional' - I'm still mostly futzing around with under-the-hood stuff. But I changed the way walls and terrain are represented to make it possible to have more interesting shapes, eg the grass in this map.

[Web.Metz]

Testing...

T'Ning moves W, W, W, W, NW, N (30ft) to C3 T'Ning

Not really any closer to 'functional' - I'm still mostly futzing around with under-the-hood stuff. But I changed the way walls and terrain are represented to make it possible to have more interesting shapes, eg the grass in this map.

Wow nice...and I am getting really close to needing he 'base' functionality of a large map with just vertical and horizontal walls.
EDIT: and medium+large unit movement/placement


Also, nice. Wall angles other than 45/90/135/180... degrees are nice, but often underutilized.

[sab39]

Sorry, I still really don't have much idea when basic functionality will be working, although I have the rest of today to continue futzing with it...

Testing bbcode... does this board support [bg=#008800]background colors[/bg]? Apparently not. Hmm. Makes it difficult to put a terrain types legend into the bbcode...

I found something that said this might work, but it doesn't either

[Web.Metz]

Sorry, I still really don't have much idea when basic functionality will be working, although I have the rest of today to continue futzing with it...

Testing bbcode... does this board support [bg=#008800]background colors[/bg]? Apparently not. Hmm. Makes it difficult to put a terrain types legend into the bbcode...

I found something that said this might work, but it doesn't either

Perhaps this would work.
g
g
Crap...font tags do not work anymore. I cannot Webdings/Wingdings the letter g to get a solid block anymore.

Hmmm...
¶
Ξ
•

Those are the only browser universal (or almost perfectly) characters that I can think of which are very solid when bolded.

[sab39]

No wonder T'Ning's running away... there are ZOMBIES coming out of the black hole!

T'Ning moves W, W, W, W, NW, N (30ft) to C3 Zombie moves W, NW, NW (20ft) to J11 Zombie moves N, NW, N (15ft) to M9 Zombie moves NE, N, N (15ft) to P10 T'Ning Zombie

Notice - three zombies, but only one listing for "zombie" among the players... handy for Mirror Image as well as zombie hordes. Also, both T'Ning and the three zombies are all moving at the same time...

[sab39]

Is this the sort of thing you were talking about with 4.0 rules support? (Since I'm not familiar with 4.0, I'm not sure that what I did with "shift" was correct...)

T'Ning moves W, W, W, W, NW, N (6 squares) to C3 Zombie moves W, NW, NW (3 squares) to J11 Zombie shifts N, NW, N (3 squares) to M9 Zombie moves NE, N, N (3 squares) to P10 T'Ning Zombie

[Web.Metz]

Yes. That is one fancy Zombie to have a shift 3. There must be a lich nearby shifting it.
The double diagonal rule does not apply in 4.0, just so you know.

In 4.0 there are the following types of normal movement:
moves
runs
shifts
teleports
jumps
burrows
flies
swims

In 4.0 there are the following types of forced movement:
falls
is slid
is pushed
is pulled
is teleported
is dragged

If it is possible to choose the keyword...that would be sweet. In 3.5e, many of those keywords are applicable as well.


Speaking of movement. You do not need to store altitude, but it would be nice if we could move units vertically (at least for distance calculation.
U
UN
UNW
UNE
UE
UW
US
USE
USW
D
DN
DNW
DNE
DE
DW
DS
DSE
DSW
Up and Down is represented as D and U.

If you do want to represent altitude...here is how 4.0 stores it.
(1) is ground level. 1 square from  base. Within 5 ft from the base elevation.
(2) is 2 square from  base. Within 6-10 ft from the base elevation.
(-1) is 1 square below base.

...and so on.

[sab39]

The double diagonal rule does not apply in 4.0, just so you know.

I got that already supported - look at the move distance calculations it did (particularly the first zombie)...

I only put in a boolean for "isShift" at the moment and I'm probably going to leave that alone for now, but the encoding I used uses a 0 in a place where no digit ought to be to represent that. So I could certainly use numbers 1-9 to represent other kinds of movement. But I'll leave that til I have at least a basic UI for moving around working...

[Web.Metz]

Lets see, in order to allow vertical movement you would need at least 2 groups of manual controls.

UNW	UN	UNE
UW	U	UE
USW	US	USE

DNW	DN	DNE
DW	D	DE
DSW	DS	DSE

might as well throw in the normal horizontal controls as well.

NW	N	NE
W		E
SW	S	SE

EDIT: I added a few more types of movement and separated forced and normal movement.

[sab39]

Thick walls and terrain perimeters. Also the ability to mark terrain as 'difficult' - this doesn't do anything yet, but later it'll allow for taking that into account in distance calculations and also putting red triangles there for you (since you did SO want your red triangles )

T'Ning moves W, W, W, W, NW, N (30ft) to D4 Zombie moves W, NW, NW (20ft) to K12 Zombie moves N, NW, N (15ft) to N10 Zombie moves NE, N, N (15ft) to Q11 T'Ning Zombie