Drinking & Dragons

User:T3knomanser/BMat

From Drinking and Dragons

Okay, I've got a video demo up. My web host doesn't play exactly nice with Node.js, which is what I opted to implement the server-side in. Core functions are done, the server and clients are all tied together via WebSockets, which means latency is pretty good (although Firefox isn't so great, and I dread how it looks in IE). I'll figure out a different host later. The video gives an idea of how it behaves.

//I've only tested in Chrome, keep that in mind.

Very cool so far! --Randy (Talk) 18:59, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Most of the server side plumbing is done; the next step is to get it integrated with the client. And then to test the ever loving hell out of it. --t3knomanser 22:24, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Let me know how I can help with my designer skills. --Randy (Talk) 03:14, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
We'll talk about what you want to do. I'd really like to keep the UI very simple with minimal graphics, but there's one part where I can't do that- the figures. By hook or by crook, I'm going to need some top-down images, preferably SVG (I intend to make things scaleable eventually), but that's also a huge amount of effort. That's the biggest design challenge I can see. --t3knomanser 21:52, 12 June 2011 (UTC)
Design is best when it is invisible, so I agree with keeping it simple. The figure images will be interesting to work on. --Randy (Talk) 13:37, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
Yeah, if you feel more, "I want to just fiddle with the stylesheet a little," I completely understand. Something to think about though, if you make figures and do them in SVG, try and find spots where you can parameterize colors. That allows a lot of variety with less human effort. I'm even fine with making code to merge SVGs on the fly, so if you chunk out just a handful of figure modules and I combine them programmatically to get a large variety, that works too. --t3knomanser 16:11, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Jquery can provide a snap-to-grid feature for the Bmat. --Randy (Talk) 19:56, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm using that plugin, but I am not sure I want snap-to-grid. My goal is to emulate the actual experience of using a battle-mat as closely as possible. Actually, what would probably be good is to use a grid for snapping that's about 10 times smaller than the grid for display. You still get neat placement, but aren't constrained to grid squares.