Player Edition Content, Sync Required?

[rob]

Originally Posted by DWeiers

So if possible please give us the option to display player view not only in fullscreen and on another Display, but also in a separate Window (which is something i allready suggested somewhere on another thread – I think, it was in the features request section).

If I'm understanding you correctly, I think this is already possible, although the window has to be full-screen in size. Here are the steps that I think will achieve what you want...

1. Enter Player View
2. Shown the Player View Window via the button in the upper right region.
3. Use <alt+tab> to switch to Realm Works while leaving the Player View Window open and visible.
4. Click the button just to the right of the "Show/hide Player View" toggle that moves the Player View Window to behind all other windows.
5. Tell Skype to share a window and select the Player View Window that is now behind everything else.
6. Control what is shown within the Player View Window normally. It all gets shared over Skype, but it's behind everything else, so it's not competing with Roll20 for display control.

The only limitations of this approach are:

a. You have to run it in full-screen mode (which could be the smaller of your two monitors).
b. The Player View Window has to remain visible at all times, so it will be visible behind any other windows shown on the same display (but you could maximize the Roll20 window on top of it and never see it bleed through).

Please confirm whether this provides a workable solution for you, as I'm sure there are others who could leverage this if so.

[rob]

If the above approach doesn't work, here's a link to an inexpensive tool that sounds like it might do the trick...
http://www.ishadow.com/vdm/?doing_wp...94354248046875

[DWeiers]

Hi rob,
thank you for your (as always) quick response.

I just tried it out and it indeed looks promising. I don't know why i didn't figure it out myself (maybe it's because it all runs in a virtual machine on my mac, which of course makes it all one step more complex than for most others). Just right know i have no one online in Skype to test it out, but as soon as there is someone i'll give it a try and will report back here how things worked out.
That link of yours is actually a website i was reading already, but it looks like thats not exactly whats needed. If i got it right then the application they offer can divide your screen in several virtual displays. While it should work with that, you will loose quite a lot of screen real estate.
I think the solution with the window is better, because you can just move the window to the back (behind all other windows) and use your full screen size for something else.
After all you (as the GM) are not interested in what is displayed in the player view windows, because you already manage it via RW (and do not need to see it twice).

Ill test this out and report back here how it works out.

Thanks a lot so far
best regards
Daniel

[DWeiers]

Had some test-runs with your solution rob.

Well it works, kind off. You actually can select the player view window and share it via Skype, but for some reason my Skype on windows doesn't stick with the assigned window (meaning, its switching windows as soon as i give focus to another window, thus rendering it useless).
If i use Skype for mac to share the player-view-window (which is from my virtual windows machine) then it sticks to the assigned player view window, but i have to give focus to the player view in order to update what the players see (otherwise it stays the same the whole time until i shortly switch to the player view window which results in an instant refresh on the players side).

So the technique you describe is actually working, but the result is still far from being perfect (at least in my setting). Of course one has to keep in mind that this is not the exact user-scenario which player view was made for in the first place. Additionally there might be some issues on my side, because everything here is running in a VM (which complicates things even more) and on an old version of windows (XP SP3).

For me personally it's still too "ugly" in terms of player-experience and usage. So for the time i'll stay with what I'm using right now:
i.e. RW as a powerful GMs backend solution and Storytelling support and roll20 as the presentation tool for the players. And, of course, RW-Player-Edition as another enhanced Informationbase for my players (if I get them to adopt it, some of them are not too tech-savvy).
But since everyone has different needs, ideas and goals I definitely recommend to just give it a try. Its not hard to set up (it's exactly the way rob described), and maybe it's working good enough for others (especially on less complicated configurations than mine where it might run better).

Hope this helps
Daniel

[Exmortis]

DWeiers Keep us abreast of how this all turns out as they add features, though my current gaming group is face to face, I have been in contact with my old group, which would be playing just like you, virtual only using D20 Pro , RW and Teamspeak; essentially exactly the way you run.

I would be very interested in undertstnding how you over come and work within this gaming evironment.

One advanatge I have I pay for a static IP, so connecting to me for D20 Pro is not hard, sae as every game we all play that I host.

[Jamz]

Rob,
I just purchased a Player account (already own a GM account via kickstarter) only to find out it doesn't do me much good.

Similar to what the others want to do for "Online" games, we use a virtual table top for our weekly face to face game (6 players around a table with a 50" TV embedded). The GM controls the VTT (maptool) via Laptop. The TV has it's own dedicated PC. Additionally I planned on running Realm Works on a 2nd laptop (Surface Pro 3).

I was hoping to run the player view on the TV so that "During the game session", I could "reveal" NPC's, places, magic items, etc and the players could in real-time view said items, portraits, etc.

There's no convenient way to share the "player view" from the GM client to an another PC. I'm hoping this isn't set in stone and you could take a look at some options to help us VTT users?

[davidp]

I experimented with one possible approach to sharing the Player View screen with other computers over the network. I did this without extra hardware or buying any additional software, just using Windows 7 along with free software/services.

I ran Realm Works on my laptop. My laptop supports hooking up external monitors, but I didn't have any hooked up. I right-clicked on my desktop background and selected "Screen Resolution" to get to the control panel. There is a "Detect" button. I clicked that. It said "Another display not detected". I clicked on this and it showed a drop-down for "Multiple Displays" with "No display detected". Other options in the drop down are "Try to connect anyway on: VGA" (repeated three times). I selected one of these and clicked apply. I then was able to extend my display to that second screen and set up the resolution.

Next, I started Realm Works and showed player view. I could then select that second screen. I used the free service join.me to share that second screen with my other computer in a web browser over the network and it kept it live as I made changes.

So this might be an option for some people to accomplish what you want and you may have all of the tools available to do this right now.

[Jamz]

Originally Posted by davidp

I experimented with one possible approach to sharing the Player View screen with other computers over the network. I did this without extra hardware or buying any additional software, just using Windows 7 along with free software/services.

I ran Realm Works on my laptop. My laptop supports hooking up external monitors, but I didn't have any hooked up. I right-clicked on my desktop background and selected "Screen Resolution" to get to the control panel. There is a "Detect" button. I clicked that. It said "Another display not detected". I clicked on this and it showed a drop-down for "Multiple Displays" with "No display detected". Other options in the drop down are "Try to connect anyway on: VGA" (repeated three times). I selected one of these and clicked apply. I then was able to extend my display to that second screen and set up the resolution.

Next, I started Realm Works and showed player view. I could then select that second screen. I used the free service join.me to share that second screen with my other computer in a web browser over the network and it kept it live as I made changes.

So this might be an option for some people to accomplish what you want and you may have all of the tools available to do this right now.

Hmmm, that may be a workaround (until maybe we can get some realtime RW going). I'll have to see how much trouble it is to set up and how much I'll have to "redo" each session.

The realmworks definitely has to show as a window on the VTT (vs remote desktop), so will check out the join.me.

Note to Rob, I'm still hoping for more real-time integrations with HeroLab (with itself and RW). I'd be more willing to pay for "Cloud services" if that meant more real-time updates from GM to PC to GM integrations. I'd like to see my PC's AC/HP/XP realtime as conditions are applied and share info via RW realtime.

I know it's a small shop and willing to wait, but is this pie-in-the-sky (for-get-about-it) stuff or something that you are looking into eventually(tm)?

[DWeiers]

Originally Posted by Exmortis

DWeiers Keep us abreast of how this all turns out as they add features, though my current gaming group is face to face, I have been in contact with my old group, which would be playing just like you, virtual only using D20 Pro , RW and Teamspeak; essentially exactly the way you run.

I would be very interested in undertstnding how you over come and work within this gaming evironment.

One advanatge I have I pay for a static IP, so connecting to me for D20 Pro is not hard, sae as every game we all play that I host.

Well If you have a static IP that will make things somewhat easier. I’m from Germany and here most people have a dynamic IP because most ISPs here cut the line after 24h of usage (no big deal since you can immediately reconnect and most routers do it automatically somewhen in the middle of the night to prevent discos in the middle of something). But it leaves us with an IP that changes on a daily basis, therefore I rather went for Web-based services than self hosted ones. Thats one of the reasons why I use roll20, but of course that doesn’t make such a big difference.

Alright so this is my online-gaming setup right now:

-Roll20 for the VTT
I only use the VTT for BattleMaps, rolling dice, and some Handouts. Basically all the stuff that you would have on the game table or would need when running a battle or Encounter were miniatures would be involved in a face-to-face Game.

-Realtimeboard (www.realtimeboard.com) as a Player Infobase and visualisation tool.
I only recently discovered this service and have to admit that I (and my Players) love it. It’s like having a limitless, endless zoomable PinBoard (or magnetic whiteboard) in your gaming-Room where you and all the players can put notes on, draw arrows, scribble something down, move it around and so on. It supports pictures, Text, PDF-Files (Which everybody can read just from the board), I think even Videos (which I never used), Google-Docs and maybe even more. Everybody can make comments on everything (which everybody can answer to) and so on. The possibilities of this are almost endless, although there ist little to no automation. So you have to take care of everything for yourself (no automatic links or so), but the players can do this as well - any time they like, anywhere they are, during the game and outside of it.

-freeconferencecall as voicechat
we use the phone for voice chat, just because some of us don’t have proper headsets yet and we wanted to get rid of those echos. But we will move to something else soon (maybe Skype, maybe one of the voice chats implemented in roll20 or so.

-Hero Lab as Tool for character-Generation and Maintenance
Doesn’t need explanation, there simply is nothing better for that purpose. I usually „print out“ the Character-Sheets as PDF-files which I put on our „Whiteboard“ for better reference (Players and I can look up things quite quickly during game).

-RW as GM-Tool for Storytelling and Managing of the Campaign
Right now I only use it as a GM tool. I just haven’t had the time to adjust all my entries for proper „revealability“ if you know what I mean. For me as the GM its very helpful. At least for the things i already entered. It’s very good to use when you have your stuff in it, but getting it in definitely takes some time. I’m really looking for the content-market and hope that the Paizo stuff will get in it quickly. Until then I have to input the things manually, and right now I’m just not yet ready for showing my stuff to the players without risking to reveal more than I want because I did something wrong.

So although I’m very excited about Player Edition it will take a while before my players and I will be able to really make use of it as a player tool as well. One Problem here is that some of my players are not too tech savvy and another one is that they use different Computer-systems. Most of us (like me) are using Apple Computers and thus its not possible for them to run RW on their computers natively. As you might imagine it’s one thing to convince them to buy a software (well I would even buy it for them if they would use it) and use it but it’s another thing to make them install a virtualisation-software und run windows in it in order to be able to use that software. Especially if (at least from their point of view) everything is already working perfectly on web-based services that they
a) don’t have to pay for
and that
b) run on every System with a more or less up-to-date web browser.

Of course this solution I’m using right now is subject to change if there comes some more functionality to RW. The things most interesting for me are of course content market (if the „right“ stuff is in it) and Player-Web-Access (since my players would more likely accept another web-Service than a special software). So I’m very curious about whats to come next.

The extra work that has to be done by providing the players with Information is definitely more compared to a „single-software“ solution, but since the players can contribute to the work (for them its quite similar to taking notes) this is not too bad. At least right now.

So thats my situation right now (which, of course, is special to me and my players for – someone else it might look entirely different).

Hope this is helpful
Best regards
Daniel

P.S.: maybe we should consider to open up a new thread for Onine-gaming? Might get interesting to get the thoughts of other on this subject.