#X-Wing system discussion
low gazelle
I'm gonna make a thread just to keep things tidy.
I definitely wouldn't mind help improving the sheets. I'm happy with the basic overall layout, but I've done nothing at all regarding making the style actually look decent. I was more focused on making something basic and functional than spending a ton of time getting the colors/styling of the sheet working exactly how I might prefer. I'm very much a backend dev at heart, so CSS stuff like that is always an adventure
@austere lark Should probably ping to make sure you're actually in the thread too, lol
austere lark
Hey.
So first off, great start. I've just been trying to go over a bunch of the code so I can have a better understanding of how the system is currently running. I mentioned that I have only played SW Xwing few years ago as well as a few other very similar ww-1 and ww-2 aircraft games. But I find the idea of bringing wargames to Foundry an interesting idea that's been at the back of my mind for a while now, and I just wanted to see how you handled similar ideas such as tying more wargames specific elements such as Phases into the current Foundry system which was very much designed around handling things from a more DnD RPG way of things.
While I might not be an expert on X-Wing, I'm just going to go over some of my first impression feedback as someone who has been using and devolving systems for Foundry
Interesting idea of having two sheets, and edit one that defaults after firs making a new ship actor, and then switching over to a game play mode one.
I guess my first bits of feed back was maybe if you could make it more explicit that their are two sheets modes, either in the header, or near the top, if you could have it in bold lettering that this is EDIT MODE because after I closed a sheet and then tried to open and edit it again, I was a little confused as to why the UI suddenly was very different.
In the Edit mode, when assigning upgrades, having something such as a trash can icon on either the far right or left hand side, just so that it's clear to the user that they can in fact remove them via clicking on them.
I don't think it's necessary for Upgrades and Manoeuvres to both require their own tabs on the play sheet. I know it's been a while been a while since I've played but I don't remember ever seeing a ship with that many upgrades, and being able to quickly see both information without having to fiddle around could just be a little nicer for the user experiencer. Similarly I don't know just how necessary it is on the edit sheet for the Assign Manoeuvres to require it's own window. You can have multiple Assign Manoeuvres windows opened at once from different sheets, and the headers for them do not indicate which character sheet they are in reference to. The fewer new windows being opened the less likely someone is going to make a mistake.
While the official cards don't have much text on them, I know some times it can be useful especially for new users. Great solution I always try and do is using tooltips (title in HTML)
For instance within the #each action_choices <spans... just including a line such as title="{{action}}" so that new users can just mouse over the images to get a quick text info of what each of the icons means. Of course you would probably want to use a localize to parse the keys into something a bit more reader friendly for people.
The to add evade and focus to a token, you need to click on icons in one div, that then creates icons in another div, then to remove these newly created icons you need to click in the new icon. Perhaps consider condensing just having to left click to add, right click to remove the same initial icon, and instead of creating new icons for counters, you could just have a number tick up right next to the original icon.
To again circle a bit back to how Foundry is set up more for 5e / RPGs, one of the things that I have considered editing when I was prototyping some ideas for making wargame systems, was changing how the Token Disposition works. Currently it's set up with the assumption that You're either you are:
A player control token, so you're part of "The Party" get a green outline
Or you're a DM controlled Token that is:
Friendly to the part -> Light Blue Outline
Neutral to the Party -> Yellow Outline
Hostile to the Party -> Red Outline
So I set up a way to overwrite disposition and created a more User Focused Disposition
So that it the Token Disposition value to based on user ID, and the outline color is based on user color.
Not a big thing, but it can make reading who controls what units easier, especially when more than two players are involved.
low gazelle
Lots of fair points. I do want to integrate a chunk of that stuff into what I'm doing, it just didn't make it into 0.1.0.
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Edit mode definitely could be better telegraphed. It was intentional that it only defaults to edit mode the very first time it opens, because 99% of the time you just need to set the stats that once and then leave it in the gameplay mode for the rest of time. I definitely see, in retrospect, how that undocumented feature would be super confusing the first time you run into it though, that's for sure. I might need some explanation blurb or something to talk about the system features like that and such.
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Updating the upgrade section of the edit mode is definitely on my to-do list. I wanted to have trash cans and better styling, but also CSS hates me and the way I did it didn't involve figuring out how to right-justify delete icons at that moment, lol.
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The tabs on the right of the actor sheet are mostly for upgrades and effects to have their own tab. But I needed the ship's maneuver's to show up somewhere, so that was a good spot to drop it in because it was just another tab. It could probably be rearranged somehow, but the upgrades can stack up; a K-Wing, for example, could have as many as 10 upgrades (each with description text) to display.
3b. The reason why the maneuver assignment on the Edit sheet is a pop-out is because that's the same Application I'm using for rendering the maneuver selection dialog for the combat tracker and for executing boost maneuvers and so on. It might change in the future, but for now it made sense to do one "make a grid of maneuvers" Application and use that for various things.
- Tooltips, alt text, and various other things is definitely something that needs to happen, it just wasn't something that got done on the first pass of stuff for getting minimum functionality working.
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Incrementing/decrementing evade/focus tokens like that isn't a bad idea, but I also need a spot to put stress tokens, ion tokens, and whatever else might show up. It seems like it makes sense to have all of the tokens in one spot like that, with the actions in a distinct spot. Not sure if that's the ideal way to do it, but it was intentional to split the actions from the tokens there (because not all tokens have actions and not all actions have tokens).
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Changing token disposition based on player owner is definitely something I would like to do, absolutely. I would need to figure out how the heck to do it, but it would definitely be good for a wargame-type situation like this, as opposed to a party-vs-NPCs situation. I definitely want to stick that on my to-do list.
Like I said, great feedback. A chunk of it is stuff that I do want to do that didn't make it into the first pass and some of the other stuff is things I hadn't really considered yet.
Also, I've been learning JS as I went, so there are definitely things that I've learned that I'll circle back to apply later, that's for sure.
For now, my immediate plans for 0.2.0 is working on upgrades past the bare basics. Specifically, reworking the sheets for them, getting AEs working on them, and making the AEs propagate to the actors so that upgrades can properly effect at least the actors stats and such (figuring out how to make them implement "change the rules for this unit in this way" stuff is going to be its own adventure)
austere lark
I suppose I should have included that I am aware that is is 0.1.0 build, and I totally understand that everything is not perfect, I fully expected their to be rough edges that will be worked on in the days to come, and that you probably have some plans to do half of what I mentioned already just that it takes time.
low gazelle
Yeah, I understand. I definitely still appreciate the feedback. Even if it's stuff I already plan to do, it's nice to know what stuff is jumping out at others to know what to prioritize
austere lark
For overriding how Disposition works, the quick and dirty methods I've been using for overordering core features is to just use https://github.com/ruipin/fvtt-lib-wrapper
I'll see if I have my code for it still, or if it was on my laptop drive that I reformatted.