[Ex3] - Combat Tracker (Alpha)

[Oramus]

Hello all!

Since I'm a dreadful geek and avid coder, I decided to try and put together an Exalted combat tracker/tool in my spare time, just to (hopefully) make things a little easier.

I've decided to publish my alpha version to Azure and would love to hear some feedback, either bugs or suggestions for future functionality. I'm aware it doesn't look great and has some little quirks; I've listed some known problems below, so you don't need to report them again:

- Styles are inconsistent and weird
- Editing an existing actor's Evasion/Parry doesn't work right (this is annoying as hell and, although I know what's wrong, I can't be bothered to fix it right now)
- Adding modifiers to Evasion/Parry is weird as hell from a workflow perspective
- Existing modifiers are unstyled


Anything else is fair game!

You can access the alpha here: http://www.scriptjitsu.ninja/combat.html

Happy holidays everyone!

[Oramus]

Alright now I've slept I realise I should have some sort of brief user guide, so yeah.

The green '+' in the top right of the roster allows you to add new participants to the scene. The stats you add here are a combination of initial/base stats, which can be edited later (bugs aside).

The number values for each participant can be changed to reflect how combat progresses; the difference here is that initiative is more of a number which simply changes, whereas Parry and Evasion can gain penalties or bonuses, but still have a base value. Clicking the values lets you change their base value or, in the case of the DVs, apply modifiers which can be later removed. I'm intending to allow you to specify a duration to these, and when a new round is started, durations are checked and any which are expired are set to disabled so they don't contribute to value changes.

[BlueWinds]

Kind of neat! One thing I'd really like is the ability to +/- values without opening a new dialogue - just a little +/- sign next to each number that lets me increment it right from the main page.

Also, a "reset to base stats" would be nice, something that discards all temporary modifiers for an ability - a character's turn comes up, I want to discard their onslaught penalty. Initiative could also have a base, same as the defenses, allowing me to - with a click - reset a character to base init. Might be unnecessary clutter, if I can already just click plus/minus a few times for the same effect.

I'm not a huge fan of Angular, but whatever works for you.

[The Unsung Hero]

Positives! I like the ability to manipulate each item individually! I didn't notice that at first and thought you had to edit the whole character each time, which was unappealing. But it's easier now. Also like that you're tracking both defenses.

Constructive feedback, a way to mark rounds/turns taken. At the moment, it reorders itself so highest initiative is on top, which is great for ordering. But it can get confusing mid-round when several people are changing position on the chart but not everyone has gone yet. Everyone goes once per round even if they move up on the initiative chart. Some way to mark that.

Perhaps the ability to insert a line that denotes the end of the round and when you mark someone's turn as done, they instead relocate below the line. And once everyone's turn is done, they all ordered correctly below that line for the new round.

Just throwing thoughts at the wall.

[Oramus]

Thanks for the comments guys!

I didn't get much time today but I did fix a big involving not being able to change DV values, and added a hover-state to emphasize their interactivity.

I'll spend some of tomorrow tidying up the UI, maybe making things a little more logical, and adding styling to the modifiers. If anyone is brave enough to test this for a session, that'd be great -- some "in-the-wild" feedback would be excellent.

[BlueWinds]

Alas, all my games are play-by-post. If you wanted to adding a hash on the end of the URL that restores the current state, I might be able to get my ST to give it a try, but otherwise I can only imagine what I would want if I did have a chat-based game. (for face-to-face, I always push for a no-electronics rule)

[Oramus]

I can almost certainly have it save state to local storage once it's in a bit better shape!