Custom Dice?

[Trevor]

If I do graphics for dice, the result will also appear in the log.

With the graphics for the dice, I'm not sure how that should work exactly. If I have a 3D die land on the table, where should it land? How long should it stay there? Maybe it could leave the board when markings are erased?

[Jynks]

have it as a token.. you just drag it onto the table, place were ever you want it... right click to roll it, or drag select a few tokens and right click to roll, or have a roll button. Players can ever right click to remove them, or drag to remove after, or just pull them off the table for next time?

[innuendo]

Can I suggest a small change to the format?

/ra, /rb, /rc limits me to 3 custom dice before I need to skip /rd because /rd is taken.

Can we change it to /rd[alpha]? That way it's clear it's rolling (r) a dice (d) and then the alpha after that specifies what special, a through z, dice is used.

so roll the attack dice would be /rda and roll the 2nd customer dice is /rdb. Rolling 3 attack dice is /rda 3, etc.

Just a small change that I think might make it easier if you have more than 3 custom dice.

Thanks for looking into this change trevor.

[Trevor]

Can I suggest a small change to the format?

/ra, /rb, /rc limits me to 3 custom dice before I need to skip /rd because /rd is taken.

Can we change it to /rd[alpha]? That way it's clear it's rolling (r) a dice (d) and then the alpha after that specifies what special, a through z, dice is used.

so roll the attack dice would be /rda and roll the 2nd customer dice is /rdb. Rolling 3 attack dice is /rda 3, etc.

Just a small change that I think might make it easier if you have more than 3 custom dice.

Thanks for looking into this change trevor.

Well, I think a better solution would be to just use a different letter besides "r", or at least a different letter for the shortcut.

It's kind of hard to choose. A lot are already taken.
See: http://lackeyccg.com/tutoriallogcommands.html

[Trevor]

have it as a token.. you just drag it onto the table, place were ever you want it... right click to roll it, or drag select a few tokens and right click to roll, or have a roll button. Players can ever right click to remove them, or drag to remove after, or just pull them off the table for next time?

A token is an interesting idea, but I don't think it would be better than a proper function. I think tokens would get in the way, and they could interfere with real cards.

People will be able to do a log command or a button (canned or General), and also right click the table and use that menu, or use the General function menu above the table.

As far as graphics, which are really not needed at all, I think I'll just show a 3D animated die falling close to the center of the table (but on the side of the table of the person who rolled it), and it will stay there until drawing on the table is gone, although it's result will remain in the log indefinitely.

[innuendo]

/uniquedice[alpha] [roll count]
/udice[alpha] [roll count]
/ud[alpha] [roll count]

With alpha being the letter designation of the unique dice.  If you prefer /cd for custom dice that's fine, but unique dice sounds better in context I think.

Also, please let that animation be disable-able

[Jynks]

yea animation is not needed it was just a idea to be thrown out there... all that is needed, imo, is the ability for a plugin creator to make custom dice by assigning a different text value to a side of a face, so it appears in the log as "elder sign" instead of "6" or something. Then also you need to be able to roll in a single roll, a certain amount of mixed dice, custom and normal.

[Trevor]

yea animation is not needed it was just a idea to be thrown out there... all that is needed, imo, is the ability for a plugin creator to make custom dice by assigning a different text value to a side of a face, so it appears in the log as "elder sign" instead of "6" or something. Then also you need to be able to roll in a single roll, a certain amount of mixed dice, custom and normal.

Being able to roll a random set of mixed dice at a time will be a problem, from purely an interface point of view. Anything that could be done wouldn't be as good as just rolling them one kind of die at a time.

[Jynks]

well I disagree, rolling one dice at a time is a very different "feeling" to rolling a handful. In teh real world it also greatly affects the ods as the dice interact with each other.. now I know that don't happen in a computer roll, as each one is rolled by itself and then just displayed together. Still people "expect" to roll the dice together.. like in a board game were it says "roll 5x D6" you want to do just that not roll a D6 5 times. The fact that technically it is not different isn't the point, it is about the game experience.

IMO, having custom dice, being able to roll multipul dice, being able to mix dice types and custom types are all must have.

Example roll: "/rm 1xd6, 2xd12, 1xAttack, 2xBlock"
Roll macro output - "5,8,7,hit,deflect,block"

[innuendo]

At that point jynx you need to just use a custom canned message, which you already can do.

The only difference is it wont be plugin level. Which is something we've discussed with trevor before (macro functions in the plugin definition) but hasn't been done.

[Jynks]

At that point jynx you need to just use a custom canned message, which you already can do.

The only difference is it wont be plugin level. Which is something we've discussed with trevor before (macro functions in the plugin definition) but hasn't been done.

how can you do this? Would you explain?

[Trevor]

well I disagree, rolling one dice at a time is a very different "feeling" to rolling a handful. In teh real world it also greatly affects the ods as the dice interact with each other.. now I know that don't happen in a computer roll, as each one is rolled by itself and then just displayed together. Still people "expect" to roll the dice together.. like in a board game were it says "roll 5x D6" you want to do just that not roll a D6 5 times. The fact that technically it is not different isn't the point, it is about the game experience.

IMO, having custom dice, being able to roll multipul dice, being able to mix dice types and custom types are all must have.

Example roll: "/rm 1xd6, 2xd12, 1xAttack, 2xBlock"
Roll macro output - "5,8,7,hit,deflect,block"

Would you seriously expect people to type /rm 1xd6, 2xd12, 1xAttack, 2xBlock (or something similar) every time they roll a handful of dice? Or if they are putting things into a canned message button, would you seriously expect them to make a different canned button for every permutation they would likely roll?

That's what I'm talking about when I say, from an interface point of view, it's simpler to just roll all one kind of dice at a time, and then do that for each kind of dice.

When I look at /rm 1xd6, 2xd12, 1xAttack, 2xBlock it looks far too complicated for people to use regularly. It would be even more frustration when a single typo renders the whole thing invalid if you were typing it.

The closest thing I can think of to having a bunch of different dice rolled at once is something like this: Have a window pop up (and stay up until closed). This dice window will let you add kinds of dice to roll, and for each kind, also a quantity. At the bottom of the window it would have a "Roll These Dice" button. This window could even have a save/restore slots so you can load frequent configurations. This, I think, is the best method to do what Jynks seems to want to do, but I still don't think it's worth the complexity. Even if it was easy for me to implement, I think it would be one more thing to confuse people.

Right now, there is a menu for "Roll X Dice", and you can add one of those for each kind of special dice. So you could Roll X 6-sided dice, then roll X Special dice. That seems as intuitive as possible. I'm not convinced that there is a better solution than that.

[Trevor]

At that point jynx you need to just use a custom canned message, which you already can do.

The only difference is it wont be plugin level. Which is something we've discussed with trevor before (macro functions in the plugin definition) but hasn't been done.

You can include them in the plugin, but that still uses the canned button system. The plugin maker can define a set of default canned messages.

[innuendo]

Yeah trevor, I meant it wasn't defined as a specific function like the roll unique dice function would be.

But yes.

[Jynks]

no, lol... that was just some text so you could see what I was talking about. Using text input for rolling dice will never work.. I mean it works fine for rolling 1 die or multipul die of the same type.. but when you mix dice the command gets clunky... what about a game were you have to roll 20 mixed die at a time or something.

What I was thinking is pretty much exactly what you just said, a popup of some kind with the dice and a spinner to select the quantity. Maybe even with some buttons you can right click once you set it up so you can store "dice macros" the way you can store canned messages. mabey you could call the dice macros with /dm 1 or something as in "/dice macro 1"


"Right now, there is a menu for "Roll X Dice", and you can add one of those for each kind of special dice. So you could Roll X 6-sided dice, then roll X Special dice. That seems as intuitive as possible. I'm not convinced that there is a better solution than that."

what do you mean? I do not know of this function?