Anybody need a quest map?

[StratosVX]

Looking over https://github.com/Anderas2/Heroscribe2 and it looks like it doesn't work yet. Looks like the plan is (was? No updates since 2019) to use Qt5. I'd have aimed for wx as I consider it phenomenally less complex, but HeroScribe uses a lot of eps files. It's a fair bet Qt has a library for working with those.

(Aaaand it does.)

You can produce SVG with wx, but if you want full/arbitrary SVG support, you're best off using Cairo, which has a direct wx interface.

I'd need to do some homework with the Java source before I could start working on this.

The plan was to use Qt5 and use vector graphics as much as possible. Heroscribe uses three files for every icon, which is too many files to keep track of so we wanted to reduce that and keeping everything in vector format means no loss in quality when scaling so the one image could be replicated at different sizes without issue. We had a list of improvements to make too, but I'm not sure where I put that file.

[iKarith]

The plan was to use Qt5 and use vector graphics as much as possible. Heroscribe uses three files for every icon, which is too many files to keep track of so we wanted to reduce that and keeping everything in vector format means no loss in quality when scaling so the one image could be replicated at different sizes without issue. We had a list of improvements to make too, but I'm not sure where I put that file.

Color me interested in the project.

I understand HeroScribe 1 originally had a Python (2, probably) version without a GUI. It might be worthwhile to recreate that in Python 3, since that allows you to get the core functions of what the new HeroScribe will DO down pat before you start coding the UI to control it. But it's not what I'd do, if I'm honest.

What I'd do first (because I don't know how to do it off the top of my head, and I immediately see that it's a desirable feature to save me a LOT of work) would be to grab a single color, single path SVG icon and determine how to draw it in any color, ideally by styling its element id. If that can be done without MASSIVE headaches.

Half an hour researching mid-post: I conceptually know how using rsvg now: rsvg_handle_set_stylesheet will apply an external stylesheet string to an existing rsvg_handle object. Well okay then, and its designed to be able to connect to cairo which can render to a raster surface (and wx frame), PDF, etc. Neat. Libraries needed is insane, but both rsvg and cairo are Gnome projects so that's no shocker. Similar deal with Qt5, except all those libs are built out of the same mammoth source tree. They tell me many small DSOs allow the OS to reclaim memory when any part of the monster framework becomes unused. We sandbox apps more and more now, no shared memory even for libc, their argument is invalid.

Okay, so that greatly reduces the number of vector resources needed and the complexity for managing them. It also suggests something of the UI for doing it that's different from classic HeroScribe and raises the notion that old Quests if saved will no longer be compatible with the old version. Import a translator that understands old format quests with all the lookup tables for for old-to-new mapping.

(Speaking of color…am I the only one who basically assigns Gauntlet colors in my head to the heroes? Red barbarian, Green elf, Yellow dwarf, and Blue wizard? Also, aren't those basically Mario colors?

From there I'd get a canvas up, just a set of grid squares, and I'd get it zooming in/out/normal and panning when the window was smaller than the canvas, throw a bunch of icon objects into it, and make sure I could pick up and move pieces. The important bit of a device independent UI managed. Right sidebar… object list. Let me drag to reorder these to change draw order. It's not very relevant that there be a draw order yet, but … yeah. And maybe if I click one of these on the right, it selects the icon?

Show/hide object list sidebar.

Left sidebar … Object lists. Can boards be objects? I've got a reason for asking that, but I'll come back to it.

Having boards (which has kinda been the point of a HQ Quest BOARD maker) creates the problem of minis outside of a board, but other than for the sake of where to put them on the grid I've been drawing in this mental exercise, I hadn't actually confined anything to a "valid play area" yet. Nor had I considered what happens if you stack icons. All I've considered up to this point is snap to grid space, and maybe we're about to want snap to half-grid space?

Object properties … "Board objects" have an origin position that isn't the upper left of the board SVG. Boards have a position in the canvas that might snap to the origin to the top left of a square, but I was thinking that you should be able to add more than one for crazy adventures like The Dark Company or find a secret door in a corridor that leads into some AHQ tiles or anything else we add support for. HeroScribe had several options for boards.

This adds another object property: Scale. Classic HQ is 22mm, modern will be 25mm, AHQ was 22mm (I think someone said?) to match HQ. WHQ was 25mm because it was better. D&D board games, Chessex and most other grid mats are 25mm, the 28x22 extended HQ board is usually 25 or 30mm, etc.

I don't have solutions for this yet, but I have it in mind. My gut reaction is I don't want to deal with this. But if you want to use OG HQ furniture in a very larger scale dungeon with 30mm squares, there's a question of where do you want to put it and how much space does it actually take. Might be good to actually include a grid size property and allow people to create an alias at a different scale. (I might not even add that to the UI, just something you can do by editing metadata) so that there are both 22 and 25mm HQ sets available, and someone who's made their own could add a 30mm if they want to. Make it possible to add 30mm if you've got a massive sized 3D board.

I'd make it possible to drop an icon on a space outside a board. (HeroScribe doesn't allow this and if you change boards, it won't let you if a piece would be outside the board.) I'd simply mark them with a /!\ icon and warn at save/export/load that the Quest has minis that are off the board.

Oh, show/hide for left sidebar.

What's next?

Quest notes. Heroscribe 1 doesn't seem to have the ability to edit those that I've discovered yet, but the sample quests have them. Should have that.

NO IDEA how you print that out as a PDF or whatever if you have like crazy multi-board monsters with quest notes, but hey.

Thinking out loud. Anything above that doesn't make sense is the result of multiple edits to a stream of consciousness.

[StratosVX]

There were various reasons for the overhaul.
1) Importing new assets is a huge hassle. Creating new icons for HS involves a process that uses outdated software that may or may not run. I think it was whitebeard and I that were trying to come up with a modern process that would be able to import new icons and his machine would run the process fine while mine would not. Anderas and I were hoping to make a process where you click "Import", then select the asset you want to import (let's say you're importing an icon of a goblin archer, so you'd select the file here), you would fill out a form that has information about the asset you are importing (its an icon, it falls under the monster class, its size is 1 square wide and 1 square high, etc.) then you'd click a button and the asset would be imported and ready to use. The software should take care of sizing, sorting, etc. based off of what you entered.
2) There is no quest maker. This is something we had planned to work on after the basics were recreated in Python.
3) There is no way to create new maps. As I have created a ton of maps for HS, I know how unintuitive it is and how long of a process it is. I was hoping to find a way to implement a way to make new maps and be able to do it in such a way that everyone can understand it.
4) HS has no way to change the colors of icons or squares. We wanted to be able to do this inside the software without needing to make a whole new icon just because you wanted one that had a different color. This goes back to trying to reduce the number of files that HS uses as well.

Those are the reasons I remember off the top of my head, but I don't remember all that we had talked about. I know I wanted to implement maps that use hexagons instead of being limited to maps that just use squares. This was so the software's use could be expanded to other games such as BattleMasters. However, I currently have no idea how I would do this. I believe we talked about implementing a card maker at some point as well, but that might have just been something I wanted to do.

I ended up having to stop because I am in school, plus I work. We started this around the summer months when my school schedule is lighter, but I ended up having water coming into my basement so I spent that summer fixing that. Instead of writing code, I was ripping out walls, sealing up the concrete, then having to reframe and refinish the affected room.

[whitebeard]

Quest notes. Heroscribe 1 doesn't seem to have the ability to edit those that I've discovered yet, but the sample quests have them. Should have that.

Okay, but it sounds like a lot of work that is best done with a proper template in LaTeX. I wrote some stuff to get the job done for DungeonsDark. I found I was constantly fiddling with sizes to keep everything on one page, so I never truly standardized the template. But I have a lot of functions that build the various components on the page.

Map PDF + XML --Python--> TeX file + HeroTeX ---PDFTeX--> PDF

[iKarith]

PDF versions of what I consider to be final unless someone wants something tweaked. (My lines might be too dark, but I don't care.)

A change I might make to these is that if I group the rooms, they could be toggled on and off with a simple display: none on the group. That effectively would give a new HeroScribe the option to use two SVGs to provide just about all of the options for playing HQ on HQ boards that HeroScribe 1 currently offers, presuming my thoughts about letting you just drop multiple boards into the space goes anywhere.

How to handle printing the "multiple boards" thing once again makes me somewhat annoyed that the US doesn't have common availability of A3/A4/A5 paper. It's possible to make something fit "universal" letter/A4 and tabload/A3 margins but the resulting margins look dumb on all three paper aspects. US paper sizes are stupid, and this coming from a guy who's almost as 'merican as this guy…



I mean, almost. Looks like I might want a jacket.

[Karlssonontheroof]

[

Thanks, I'll give it a shot. In the meantime…

hq_questmap_preview.png

Bolder lines throughout.

I still have the 26x22 version, but this is my preference anyway after seeing a group play a game on this. They'd modded their quests so all doors were double-wide and used this board. Players, be on your toes. You can't just use the Barbarian as a meat shield in those circumstances! But then, neither can Morcar protect the quest objective behind a line of cannon fodder."

What?
This is great!

If it wasn't for the extra large middle room I'd say this is perfect.

[iKarith]

[

Thanks, I'll give it a shot. In the meantime…

hq_questmap_preview.png

Bolder lines throughout.

I still have the 26x22 version, but this is my preference anyway after seeing a group play a game on this. They'd modded their quests so all doors were double-wide and used this board. Players, be on your toes. You can't just use the Barbarian as a meat shield in those circumstances! But then, neither can Morcar protect the quest objective behind a line of cannon fodder."

What?
This is great!

If it wasn't for the extra large middle room I'd say this is perfect.

You could keep the center room size, but you'll have to give up symmetry to do it. Or introduce a whole lot of complexity for what a half-space means to gameplay.