Any love coming for tactical console?

[dungeonguru]

Are there any updates or modifications in the works for tactical console? One of the biggest things I keep getting requested in my group is the ability to automatically track and reset durations on spells and conditions (inside 5e).

[Kendall-DM]

I did something like this for the d20 system to track rounds. Not sure if it will work for 5E, but you can certainly get some help in the 5E forums to get this coded.

Original post follows:
Tactical Console Durations

[Conandy]

Gonna bump this thread to say I love what the tactical console offers and have been using it, but it really needs some upgrades, such as:

1. Need to be able to scale the fonts and screen size to make it readable instead of the tiny text it puts on the screen now. I am going blind trying to find combatants in the list.

2. Enemy names need to stay red (or similar color) even after their turn, so I can find them when I need to apply damage or conditions.

3. I would love to be able to indicate a "target" for each combatant as they engage each other with some kind of auto link to apply damage after a hit, just to save my squinting eyes from having to keep searching through the list for their target enemy to apply damage to.

4. Conditions that show up in bold or colors or highlighting and some way to track how long they need to apply.

All these things being said, I LOVE how Hero Lab, the Hero Lab tactical console, and Realm Works work together to import entire encounters at once and run them. I even use the built in initiative rolling cabability and re-roll each round and save a ton of time with it.

Here's hoping the tactical console gets some much needed love soon.

[Farling]

Originally Posted by Conandy

2. Enemy names need to stay red (or similar color) even after their turn, so I can find them when I need to apply damage or conditions.

In Pathfinder, enemies have their image on the right of the console, whilst the image for allies is on the left.

[Conandy]

Originally Posted by Farling

In Pathfinder, enemies have their image on the right of the console, whilst the image for allies is on the left.

Same in 5e, but very little of the content actually has images, so you just get blank black and white "place image here" image on the right, which is not terribly helpful. If I have 4 dire wolves and 5 wolves, finding the exact one is a squinty nightmare. I started putting images in my own version of some of the .stock files, but haven't figured out yet how to edit and insert images into the .user files where a lot of the content resides.

It is a start, but doesn't solve the overall problem. As long as I use creature content that comes with images, it is a touch better.

Font sizes are still an issue.

[Farling]

Originally Posted by Conandy

Same in 5e, but very little of the content actually has images, so you just get blank black and white "place image here" image on the right, which is not terribly helpful.

Ah yes, because 5E isn't allowed to include official images. The Pathfinder console usually has images for all the monsters.

Can you turn up font scaling on your device?

[Conandy]

Originally Posted by Farling

Ah yes, because 5E isn't allowed to include official images. The Pathfinder console usually has images for all the monsters.

Can you turn up font scaling on your device?

Not without really screwing with the screen realestate, I don't think. Running RW, HL, HL Tactical Console, and 2 copies of Maptools all on my laptop is kind of a lot of stuff.

For me it isn't so much just the font size, but the visibility cues to attract the eye to what I am looking for. The scroll bar on the tactical console is a little on the "not smooth" side, too, but that is a rant for a different day.

Maybe I'll try upping the font settings in Windows to see if that helps without screwing too much with other things.

I am kind of hoping that the HL Online version running in a browser window might make things a little easier to finesse the way I need them.

[Conandy]

For me being able to scale the window, with auto-flow type of text management, and able to arrange party on one side and bad guys on the other in a side by side column arrangement would be awesome!

Wonder if opening up the API (correct terminology?) for aftermarket user made apps could be in the future? Kind of like how folks program all those add-ons for World of Warcraft user interfaces. That would be awesome.

[daplunk]

We can't include pictures in the 5e version for legal reasons. Pictures make things difficult.

The work around for me is to pit the monsters i Realm Works. I add a hero lab snippet and add the default monster with a picture. Then I always add the monster via Realm works and this then uses the picture.

[Conandy]

Originally Posted by daplunk

We can't include pictures in the 5e version for legal reasons. Pictures make things difficult.

The work around for me is to pit the monsters i Realm Works. I add a hero lab snippet and add the default monster with a picture. Then I always add the monster via Realm works and this then uses the picture.

Monster pics in RW do not go through back to HL for me. If I don't have a picture already in the Hero Lab file, it doesn't show up in HL.

I create a lot of my monsters in RW by importing the Hero Lab portfolio, and then I past into RW a picture of the monster, usually from the web. But when I hit the "send to hero lab button" (that looks like two twisty arrows), only the stats go through to HL, not the picture.

Am I missing something?

Or...just thought of this, are you putting the monster picture INTO the hero lab portfolio saved by RW? Maybe that is what I am doing wrong.