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- The Lone Wolf Development Team
Different Colored Pins
- Thread starter JustinA
- Start date
There are two big gotchas with letting users pick and choose their own colors. First of all, once content can be shared, colors will have different meanings across different content. So the only way this works is for us to have an official list of purposes for pins and then let users assign different colors to those purposes. That way, a pin of purpose X will always use the same color for UserA regardless of what colors was used by the publisher of the content. Of course, this means that we have figure and dictate the official set of purposes, and I don't expect we'll be able to satisfy everyone's different desires with anything we come up with.
This also introduces a new complication, though. Let's say you have a player in your game and that player is also in a game with another GM. You decide to use red pins to mean PurposeX and blue pins to mean PurposeY. However, the other GM chooses just the opposite mappings. Now the player is completely confused as he moves between one GM and the other. The only way to solve that is to now require players to also pick their own color-coding for each of the different purposes. This makes life more complicated for players and will ultimately result in some players not bothering and deciding they won't even bother with using Realm Works due to it being confusing for them.
Now we've shot ourselves in the foot in the pursuit of making things flexible. That's not good. Therefore, based on the above complications, this is something that we need to figure out a better solution for before we can implement anything. Lacking some brilliant idea that solves this problem, this is something that won't be on the upcoming survey. If any of you have ideas along these lines, please share them. Once we have a good solution, we can put that solution squarely on the todo list.
This also introduces a new complication, though. Let's say you have a player in your game and that player is also in a game with another GM. You decide to use red pins to mean PurposeX and blue pins to mean PurposeY. However, the other GM chooses just the opposite mappings. Now the player is completely confused as he moves between one GM and the other. The only way to solve that is to now require players to also pick their own color-coding for each of the different purposes. This makes life more complicated for players and will ultimately result in some players not bothering and deciding they won't even bother with using Realm Works due to it being confusing for them.
Now we've shot ourselves in the foot in the pursuit of making things flexible. That's not good. Therefore, based on the above complications, this is something that we need to figure out a better solution for before we can implement anything. Lacking some brilliant idea that solves this problem, this is something that won't be on the upcoming survey. If any of you have ideas along these lines, please share them. Once we have a good solution, we can put that solution squarely on the todo list.
One possible (short-term?) solution could be to allow a map to have its pins show the icon for the type of information that the pin is connected to (where a pin contains a link).
This would allow creature pins to be differentiated from location pins (assuming each has their own linked topic).
An alternative would be to allow labels to appear on the pins directly
This would allow creature pins to be differentiated from location pins (assuming each has their own linked topic).
An alternative would be to allow labels to appear on the pins directly
Allow the GM to build a list in some topic of which color means which and he/she can reveal that list to the player and inform the player that that list is the "Official Color Pin Collection" for the realm. 
AS a GM I really need some way of differentiating pins as revealed in the player view.
AS a GM I really need some way of differentiating pins as revealed in the player view.
Rob, I get your concern, but isn't this just another manifestation of your categories? You've already pointed out that if you import stuff and you have changed your categories, the import might be confused (i.e. if you changed the 'Communities' category to 'Taco Stands' despite the warning in the documentation). This seems like just another variation of that. Maybe I'm not seeing it right, but I don't think people would be too bothered by the colors meaning something different in different realms. After all, when I get a Rand MacNally atlas, there is no standard as to the colors they use versus some other company's atlas, and I don't lose any sleep over that.
As to the icon solution, if you believe colors having different meanings is a problem, icon standardization would be arguably worse.
Cartography has a solution to this, and it is called the 'legend'. If there is a legend with the meaning of the colors or icons, the problem is solved, and there doesn't need to be any standardization whatsoever.
Please at least let us vote on it. I doubt it will make the first (or even fifth) cut, but there really needs to be some method to distinguish between the pins on a map, and colors and/or icons seems a really great way to do it.
As to the icon solution, if you believe colors having different meanings is a problem, icon standardization would be arguably worse.
Cartography has a solution to this, and it is called the 'legend'. If there is a legend with the meaning of the colors or icons, the problem is solved, and there doesn't need to be any standardization whatsoever.
Please at least let us vote on it. I doubt it will make the first (or even fifth) cut, but there really needs to be some method to distinguish between the pins on a map, and colors and/or icons seems a really great way to do it.
I use different colors for the same information on different graphs and charts at work all the time. As @Bidmaron notes, the 'legend' is a necessity and it resolves all the confusion.
As for players in campaigns that use differing standards? It's all about me.... I cannot control what others do and I cannot fret that they made poor choices.
As for players in campaigns that use differing standards? It's all about me.... I cannot control what others do and I cannot fret that they made poor choices.
Dark Lord Galen
Well-known member
As others suggest, a legend is the "index" that defines what is what within cartography. Seems a custom "category" that defines those elements that allows the author to choose colors/ symbology would be the approach.
If / when it becomes "shareable" via community or market place,the end user, can simply modify this category to make those global changes to suit their need or preference.
This would open the possibility for specialty token sets depicting anything from colors to styles to symbols from the community or market place that would subcategorize sets And "unlock if they choose" (like other structure already in place)
If / when it becomes "shareable" via community or market place,the end user, can simply modify this category to make those global changes to suit their need or preference.
This would open the possibility for specialty token sets depicting anything from colors to styles to symbols from the community or market place that would subcategorize sets And "unlock if they choose" (like other structure already in place)
Viking2054
Well-known member
You could add a mouse over feature to each pin that could show more information or maybe a graphic associated with the pin.
Say I mouse over a location pin and I have a pop up show a town graphic and a little bit of information... or maybe a city graphic, capital city graphic. It could even be a camp site graphic or small village graphic...
At the same time, you could put in portraits to mouse over for pins relating to known locations of various NPC's.
There are lots of possibilities for customization by simply adding mouse over functionality that can be customized by the GM. Then you can minimize pin color madness.
Of course you could put the suggested index in the mouse over also.
Say I mouse over a location pin and I have a pop up show a town graphic and a little bit of information... or maybe a city graphic, capital city graphic. It could even be a camp site graphic or small village graphic...
At the same time, you could put in portraits to mouse over for pins relating to known locations of various NPC's.
There are lots of possibilities for customization by simply adding mouse over functionality that can be customized by the GM. Then you can minimize pin color madness.
Of course you could put the suggested index in the mouse over also.
CorzatTheGray
Well-known member
I think a map Legend would cover this as others have stated already. Set your map legend in the Mechanics somehow and then when placing a pin, when you link to a topic the pin color would match that topic's color as defined in the Mechanics by the Legend. ie. Communities get Red, Geographical regions Blue, etc. If it isn't set in the Mechanics and tied to the legend, then the pin is just the generic red that is now.
I don't see that being much of an issue. I put that in the same boat as knowing what each GM's house rules are, and if the legend is in place there is also a reference for the player to use to alleviate the confusion.
Are the smart images being used for anything other than maps? I'm sure they may be, but the majority of users will be using them for maps, which lends itself to having a legend.
While that is the simple answer for us as users, I won't even begin to speculate on the difficulty of how you would begin to implement that on your side of things Rob.
Not having dug too deeply into the customization of the tags and what not in my own realms, I am not speaking from personal experience, but from what I've seen in the tutorials and from lurking around the forums it seems that it would be ideal for the users to be able to set the colors of a pin with either a Mechanic entry or in the same manner in which they set up a new tag. That would then correlate to the legend on the map.
JustinThomason
Well-known member
+1 for the legend.
I'm about to start an overland sandbox campaign and having some differentiation in the tags will be very important to make the map easier to read.
I would also like to second the idea of having a small image be a possibility in the mouse-over information. That, combined with colors to differentiate pins, would make my day. That way a pin colored as a "settlement" could have a different icon if it was a village, a town, a city, or even a trading post.
As long as you have an easily accessible Legend, I don't think confusion will be much of an issue. Also, if you tied the Legend entries to the topic types, (like "settlement" or "adventure area") I would think it would be possible to have the colors automatically assigned when you connected a pin to an existing topic. Of course, that's my non-coder, design minded self talking - I obviously have no idea about the technical hurdles involved in any of this.
I'm about to start an overland sandbox campaign and having some differentiation in the tags will be very important to make the map easier to read.
I would also like to second the idea of having a small image be a possibility in the mouse-over information. That, combined with colors to differentiate pins, would make my day. That way a pin colored as a "settlement" could have a different icon if it was a village, a town, a city, or even a trading post.
As long as you have an easily accessible Legend, I don't think confusion will be much of an issue. Also, if you tied the Legend entries to the topic types, (like "settlement" or "adventure area") I would think it would be possible to have the colors automatically assigned when you connected a pin to an existing topic. Of course, that's my non-coder, design minded self talking - I obviously have no idea about the technical hurdles involved in any of this.
Please realize that having all this stuff be fully configurable and adaptable increases the amount of work many-fold, sometimes by an entire order of magnitude. So the more customizable this stuff becomes, the longer it will take to implement, which means the more competition this feature will have from everything else on the todo list. Tasks that can be done in a couple days are vastly more likely to get tackled during small windows of opportunity compared to tasks that will be measured in weeks. That's something critical to keep in mind here, so it's most likely that features like some of you are requesting will be implemented in small increments.
There's another important thing to keep in mind for all of you folks who want a wide range of colors to "color-code" an array of purposes on a single map. That sounds great in concept, but it's going to run into some nasty problems on a practical level. And those problems have NOTHING to do with technical hurdles. When we picked the map pin colors, we tried dozens of different colors. There were THREE that we found were generically good against virtually all the diverse assortment of maps that users will be employing. All the other colors we tried ran into serious problems with one type of map or another, as the pin color was nearly the same as the underlying map. For example, we wanted to use green to indicate something is revealed (for consistency), but green gets washed out against many overland maps. Blue sounded like it would work well, but it virtually disappears against water areas. The list goes on.
So even if we do make it possible to have an entire rainbow of colors for pins, the basic nature of most maps will preclude the use of many of those colors as pins. Most maps will only reasonably allow for a handful of pin colors to be used (unless all your maps are black-and-white), since the rest won't yield enough contrast to be good choices. And there will be some maps that will reduce that number down to only two or three good options.
All that being said, I'll make sure this request gets on the survey. Just don't be surprised if this feature is not quite as useful in practice as it may seem in concept. That consideration is something we're also going to have to factor into how much development time we invest, since there are numerous other features that don't have the potential baggage of this one that are vying for the same resources. It's an ugly task trying to juggle all these competing priorities against one another.
There's another important thing to keep in mind for all of you folks who want a wide range of colors to "color-code" an array of purposes on a single map. That sounds great in concept, but it's going to run into some nasty problems on a practical level. And those problems have NOTHING to do with technical hurdles. When we picked the map pin colors, we tried dozens of different colors. There were THREE that we found were generically good against virtually all the diverse assortment of maps that users will be employing. All the other colors we tried ran into serious problems with one type of map or another, as the pin color was nearly the same as the underlying map. For example, we wanted to use green to indicate something is revealed (for consistency), but green gets washed out against many overland maps. Blue sounded like it would work well, but it virtually disappears against water areas. The list goes on.
So even if we do make it possible to have an entire rainbow of colors for pins, the basic nature of most maps will preclude the use of many of those colors as pins. Most maps will only reasonably allow for a handful of pin colors to be used (unless all your maps are black-and-white), since the rest won't yield enough contrast to be good choices. And there will be some maps that will reduce that number down to only two or three good options.
All that being said, I'll make sure this request gets on the survey. Just don't be surprised if this feature is not quite as useful in practice as it may seem in concept. That consideration is something we're also going to have to factor into how much development time we invest, since there are numerous other features that don't have the potential baggage of this one that are vying for the same resources. It's an ugly task trying to juggle all these competing priorities against one another.
Right now, I turn the pins off as they aren't useful (to me) without some means of visual differentiation. I 've chosen to edit the original maps and add the appropriate identifiers there and in RW I add an invisible pin so I have floaty text and a link.
Colors seemed to be the easier upgrade so its been my first choice. But shapes would be even more useful (to me). Add a square, a circle and a triangle and the usefulness of the pin feature would increase dramatically.
Thinking into the future, I'd love to be able to import my own images from Campaign Cartographer or other sources to identify towns, secret doors, traps, geographic landmarks, areas of interest.... Some day....
Colors seemed to be the easier upgrade so its been my first choice. But shapes would be even more useful (to me). Add a square, a circle and a triangle and the usefulness of the pin feature would increase dramatically.
Thinking into the future, I'd love to be able to import my own images from Campaign Cartographer or other sources to identify towns, secret doors, traps, geographic landmarks, areas of interest.... Some day....
Pins
Hello i can see last on this thread was from 2013..
soo i guess your not taking this so serious but i will post it here anyway
Hello L.W And thank you for a great program.
I have a small Q: can I or when will I be able to change colors of the map pins?
Would be great to be able to have diffrnt colors on them depending on what they mark, yellow for markets and store, blue for.... Etc etc
With best regards
Mandorian.
Hello i can see last on this thread was from 2013..
soo i guess your not taking this so serious but i will post it here anyway
Hello L.W And thank you for a great program.
I have a small Q: can I or when will I be able to change colors of the map pins?
Would be great to be able to have diffrnt colors on them depending on what they mark, yellow for markets and store, blue for.... Etc etc
With best regards
Mandorian.
Hello i can see last on this thread was from 2013..
soo i guess your not taking this so serious but i will post it here anyway
Hello L.W And thank you for a great program.
I have a small Q: can I or when will I be able to change colors of the map pins?
Would be great to be able to have diffrnt colors on them depending on what they mark, yellow for markets and store, blue for.... Etc etc
With best regards
Mandorian.
Welcome to the forum, Mandorian!
This is a more current conversation on the subject.
http://forums.wolflair.com/showthread.php?t=55203&highlight=color
Realise I posted this in the wrong forum... better here:
I have been doing some big chunks of data entry, so have finally hit a bunch of "love to have" features as I worked through it.
Pin differentiation was one of them. Several suggestions:
I will go and find some other forum threads for my other annoyances
I have been doing some big chunks of data entry, so have finally hit a bunch of "love to have" features as I worked through it.
Pin differentiation was one of them. Several suggestions:
- Colour options - but can understand the issues here in visibility
- Shape options
- Pin Text options - probably the simplest. When you define a pin you already enter data with it (or link) - just being able to include a few (1-3) letters/numbers that is shown on the pin at all times could give us some easy options to differentiate pins and match them up to a simple hand crafted text based key. This remains useful even if you decide to initiate the other options above. It also works when you convert to web, print in black and white, etc.
I will go and find some other forum threads for my other annoyances
+1 to the above idea