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Manage Tiles - bug or feature request?

Discussion in 'Feature Requests' started by mercury00, Oct 27, 2012.

  1. mercury00

    mercury00 New Member

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    I'm not sure if this is a bug or a feature request.

    In the Draw Tools, the Manage Tiles - which I use for adding things like Ships, Wagons, Magic Carpets, and such as illustrated in the new version of d20 - we can paint tiles and make them sticky (In fact other than the list of tiles, the Manage Tiles is just like Paint Tiles, so... why have both?). Well Cool. One little very annoying problem: If I use the Manage Tiles to paint, say, a Wagon, and now I want to use that Wagon tile as a sticky thing that I move around with players on them, I of course use the Manage Tiles tool to select and move the tile.

    The Manage Tiles mode, though, doesn't know I just want to select tiles and move them. It always thinks I'm trying to paint something (even though there's a seperate Tile Painter...?). So, whenever I use the Manage Tiles mode, there's always the very very large red square indicating where I'm about to paint a tile I don't want to paint. I'm always about to drop another large ship or wagon onto the game board. I'm always a click away from obliterating the background image or whatever I'm looking at.

    The FOW has a show/hide mode, a manipulate mode, an edit mode, and a paint mode. But the Manage Tiles just has the one mode - paint, and maybe select and move too if you want. It sounds simpler, hey, just one mode, but from a UI perspective, it's more complicated, because I'm trying to do something in a way that doesn't fit what I'm trying to do. Like having a single slot in my door for both my mail, and my arm when I want to unlock the door. Seems simple because there's just the one thing, but actually, it gets pretty weird trying to shove my arm though that slot every day to open my door. Anyway, if the Game Tools has FOW with modes for when you want to select and 'use' something, and a mode for manipulating and a mode for editing, maybe the Manage Tiles tool can not be where tiles are painted (maybe the Paint Tiles tool?), but managed, moved, manipulated, etc. That's my thinking, anyway, hope that it's helpful.
     
  2. edwardcd

    edwardcd Administrator
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    You noticed there were two places where you can place tiles.

    Tile Painter is a 1x1 grid painting of the image selected. You can not move nor re-size this painted tile. This is similar to the Color Painter just using graphic files instead of colors.

    The Manage Tiles you can place, move, resize, rotate, toggle visibility, toggle creature sticky-ness. Thus, if you are wanting to use a graphic to represent a Wagon or Ship, use Manage Tiles to place and manipulate the tile.

    Regarding your comparison to fog and manipulate tile features... We're actually reviewing each function of d20Pro to make the use consistent and easy to use. This is one of those cases where in the past we focused on one aspect to upgrade and enhance without also focusing on another function that should act in a similar manner.
     
  3. mercury00

    mercury00 New Member

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    Aha, Ive never used the tile painter for much because i draw all my maps in dundjinni. I'm mostly just confused because the manage tiles tool always thinks I'm trying to add a tile, and its difficult to convince it i don't need a 20x20 'cursor' to select a single tile with (thus wondering if this is a bug). Maybe having a 1x1 'cursor' on manage tiles, and instead of 'painting' large red blocks, just drag and drop from the tile 'library'. Or something.
     
  4. edwardcd

    edwardcd Administrator
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    The selection defaults to what it thinks the size of the tile/image you have selected (from the manage tiles window) as the "cursor" size, so you have an idea of the size and placement of the tile. You can always chose a different image (one that is smaller) or change the dpi to change the "cursor" size.

    In the future, I'd like to see this tool work in a similar fashion as the creature tool, drag-drop images/tiles from a library/tree of images onto the map then manipulate the size, rotation, layering, visibility, "stickyness", exact location, and etc.

    I primarily use Manage Tiles to show hidden rooms (change visibility of an overlay image hiding the hidden door/room); or, to add vehicles and stickyness so all the creatures on the vehicle moves with the vehicle; or, to combine multiple maps onto a single larger map area - single load maps are great for one-shot adventures (up to 5 battle/investigation maps on one screen makes the game really quick to move from one to another).
     

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