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Macro Window

It would be nice to see a separate window just for the macros instead of the pop up which is currently used. This way i can have each macro set as a button with my custom name and its a one shot click to perform it, instead of typing. Perhaps add a column next to the macro for modifications on the fly...so if i hit my macro button for rolling a 1d20 and the "modify box" in the column next to it is blank it rolls 1d20. If i had a +2 in the "modify box" its rolls my 1d20 macro but add the +2 modifier.
Interesting suggestion. Thanks.
I apologize if this is belaboring the point, since you already posted to it, Nolan, but I mentioned in my "first Roll20 experience" post that one of my players asked for something very similar - he put it like this: If I could make one single change right now, I'd make the list of macros in the Settings window be a list of clickable buttons, which would run the macro and send the output to chat, rather than [just be] a simple list of what's been created. This program is great, it could just provide a little smoothness to the rolling process. I don't want a big scripting engine, I just want it to show me a button to click, or a link, next to the macros I write so I don't have to type "#something" in the chat window - I can just click on the macro name. I didn't want to start a new thread on it since this one already existed, but I thought it worth adding the feedback to this existing thread so it didn't get lost in large walls of text elsewhere. Thanks!
This as well. Rolling turned into a bottleneck in our first night as well. Not sure what the best UI would be some ideas are: A pseudo-window like the journal popups which has a bunch of buttons (drag and drop reorderable). Each button has a 1-3 letter 'name' that the user sets as well with a tool-tip that shows a description and the saved macro. If we do this I'd request that you have the option to add modifiers to the macro. We do a lot of conditional bonuses so we end up doing stuff like "#atk + 1d6 + 6" to add in bonuses
If we do this I'd request that you have the option to add modifiers to the macro. We do a lot of conditional bonuses so we end up doing stuff like "#atk + 1d6 + 6" to add in bonuses Does that work? We couldn't get it to understand the command if we added extra stuff after the macro name. Ah. The spaces are required. If that's in the instructions somewhere, well, that's what I get for not reading the manual.
Not sure if it is in instructions, I just tried it out a few days ago. It really does make macros usable when you have lots of conditional stuff. Also the ability to have the roll name as a prefix is handy. I setup macros like: #magicmissile "/r magic missile dmg 1d4+4" Then if I need conditional stuff I can do "#magicmissile +3" and get the roll comment and conditional bonus.
Very cool.
I was definitely surprised there was no "dice box" window, that it only used the /roll command.
It's probably the programmer in me, but to me the "Dice Window" (as easy as the mockup that someone posted on here is) seems more...cumbersome than writing a quick /roll command. *Especially* if you're just doing something as simple as a /roll 1d20+5. Maybe if you've got some crazy stuff going on and your rolls are looking more like /roll 4d6!!>3+2 or something...but again, I hesitate to make it harder for people who would just be doing quick, simple rolls. I think a shortcut window for macros isn't a terrible idea, though. Did the macro auto-complete not help at all? I usually find myself typing something like "#a ". A mouse click on a button bar would probably be a little faster, but it would be close...
1336683202
Deightine
KS Backer
Sheet Author
I gave this some thought... would it be possible to put a small HTML layer above the map window, on the lower right side by the chat box, with buttons assignable to specific tasks? Then, people could tag them with the macros. Or in other cases, maybe assign one of them on a semi-permanent basis to 'Pop open my character sheet' as it were. They wouldn't have to be big, probably no real bigger than a status effect color dot. Just each distinctive from each other in shade and tone.
It's probably the programmer in me, but to me the "Dice Window" (as easy as the mockup that someone posted on here is) seems more...cumbersome than writing a quick /roll command. *Especially* if you're just doing something as simple as a /roll 1d20+5. Maybe if you've got some crazy stuff going on and your rolls are looking more like /roll 4d6!!>3+2 or something...but again, I hesitate to make it harder for people who would just be doing quick, simple rolls. I think a shortcut window for macros isn't a terrible idea, though. Did the macro auto-complete not help at all? I usually find myself typing something like "#a ". A mouse click on a button bar would probably be a little faster, but it would be close... It is the programmer in you (and me) I found the macro and autocomplete very easy to use but it was a learning curve for my players as I'm the only programmer in the group. None of them type nearly as much and no one had used an auto-complete interface with any regularity. One thing that might help is having the autocomplete box show either to the left or above the chat box. If you have your browser window maximized you can only see the top ~2 macros in the box and the rest are cut off by the bottom of the screen. I can provide screenshots if you need them.
I'm going to agree that it's the programmer in you - in my experience with being a MapTool contributor and user, one frequent request was "give us dice we can see" (in other words, give us a dialog, a window, or even "physical" dice we can throw across the screen). I am of the opinion that typing roll commands into chat is the harder (or more inconvenient) way to do things, but I also understand that not everyone shares the opinion. With regard to macro autocomplete, I had no idea it did that. Most of my macros are similarly named, though, so I'd need to type them out almost all the way anyway (I have dozens to support the game I was running, even as simple as it is). The bottom line, really, is that personally I don't want to have to type a roll command or macro - in fact, I don't want to type anything - more than once, if I can avoid it. The screenshot below is from my setup for Barbarians of Lemuria for MapTool, and in that case, I wrote the macros (the buttons on the left; writing a macro in MapTool includes creating a button to run it) one time, and from that point on I need do nothing else but click the appropriate button to make the roll and output the result in chat. I very rarely have to use the chat window for anything but displaying rolls results or the occasional emote or in-character speech. The buttons are also just faster, as far as my experience goes. I'd love to see that kind of thing in Roll20 (not the dockable windows and extensive scripting language cruft that MapTool has, just the "creating a macro creates a button" part), assuming it's compatible with your design goals.
Fantasy grounds did something similar where they had a tool bar along the bottom and you could edit the button by entering a macro. So it was a horozontal bar with like 10 buttons and than the player edited each button with a macro of choice. It might be rolling dice or maybe a shout or whatever, than with one click of the mouse, bam into the chat window with the macro.
That would definitely work. I'm now just picturing a certain number of user-configurable buttons, say 5-7, somewhere unobtrusive that you can click to fire some sort of macro or output to chat. In the game I'm currently running using Roll20, for instance, everybody has melee, ranged, armor, and "career" rolls. So that there is probably 5 or so rolls that will happen all the time, won't vary terribly much (if you wanted to get fancy, you could give us the option to prompt for a modifier), and would be nice to have in a convenient one-click way. Just my few coppers!
1337287584
Chez
KS Backer
I'll start by saying, I personally don't have any issue with typing in rolls. That said, I've been watching the macro conversation with curious interest. I was thinking of how to address many of the concerns raised while keeping true to the Roll20 philosophy of emphasis on mimicking a table, staying simple and limiting automation. My current thought for consideration is rather then having macro buttons requiring prep, planning and can easily lead to feature creep, why not have die buttons (essentially a preset macro) that builds the formula in the chat window. Then, for a simple roll that mimics rolling dice at a table click enter/return. If one wants to add in roll or success criteria, finish typing it in or just do the mental math. Rolling 2d6, click the d6, d6 and then return. D20 + 5, click d20 button and either type plus 5 or just do it mentally as one would at a table. Should speed things up and it keeps with the idea of adding typical table tools and not too much else. Plus, leverages the roll coding already completed. Just a thought.
1337331735
Mr G
KS Backer
I've no issue with typing in rolls and the current macro system either. iTabletop used to have a visual dice try and that was dropped (quite rightly) fairly early on as it was cumbersome, took up valuable monitor real estate, and was a distraction from play. It now has a pop up window with a list of all your macros in it and you double click on the one you want to run. Don't use them myself, but my players like them.
See, the popup window where you double-click is where I was initially going - there's already a list of macros in the Settings tab; instead of clicking one to edit it, I'd be content to click one to run it. The dice images option is also a great idea instead (one thing I wrote for MapTool was a dice window which functions essentially that way - you clicked dice and it added them to chat and then you hit enter and it ran the roll). As I've said, I simply don't like typing dice rolls in chat: I find it cumbersome, error-prone, and, in my mind, dated (on the other hand, I really don't like throwing virtual dice to bounce around the screen or anything, since that's just silly fluff). I'm just hoping for something I find convenient, but of course it would need to be something that the Roll20 guys think is worth doing too. I guess my overall feeling is that I love a lot of what Roll20 does - seamless voice/video, a slick interface, web-based infrastructure so that there's no fiddling to get connected, but without a few things I'm really hoping to see, I think my use of it will be relatively low. I'd love to use it, and I'm willing to change my mindset on using VTTs to try to work with it, but I want it to work with me, too.
I'm bumping this just to ask if clickable macros (i.e., hyperlinks or something) or macro buttons are something that's on the roadmap, or if it's a "Won't Do" kind of thing (that is, if the dice rolling will remain type-in-chat rolling). I don't even know if I'm entitled to know that, but I'm curious.
Chris-- You do not have Super Double Secret Level Clearance, so if I told you, I'd have to ban you from Roll20 for life. (Or, actually, we aren't sure about this yet, and it isn't an immediate priority. Right now we're super focused on overhauling the drawing tools, cleaning up documentation, and a few mildly secret but not Super Double Secret things. Maybe down the line. Maybe.)
Thanks!
Marco difficulties are becoming more and more of a problem in my campaigns. Most of my players are brand new to Tabletop RPG's, much less VT RPG's. My old VT (Glittercomm) had a simple 'push-button' macro setup. As both a player and a DM I can see this working out better in the long run for the roll20 system. It's not a deal breaker and I don't think it should be a main focus but eventually moving to something like this would just make it that much more user friendly and functional. Below is a screen cap of my GC button macros, just to give you an example, and theres my two cents on that.
This was one of the first things I thought about after digging into the beta. It would be great to have a separate Macro window as well as a persistent macro library tied to your account as a GM and Player. This way you could import your commonly used macros and players could as well. Even having this link to a community macro would allow you to utilize much more "macro minded" individuals as well as allow the Roll20 community build out common macros (ex: Someone builds out all the D&D 4th Edition Power Macros, etc). That'd be great to have a macro library similar to the art/music library you could just pull from using a search string, and have a persistent library you could pull from linked to you account (allowing you favorite/etc). That would actually be great for all of the assets actually (tokens, music, art, macros) if that's not already possible (I'm new as of today).
a global macro library where folks can share and borrow macros from others sounds useful. Why write an attack macro when somebody else has one sharing macros for the players/GM also makes sense. Heck, I assumed macros were stored in the campaign space. Macros should be runnable from the macro list (double-click or right-click). That's pretty simple. Macros should also be Favorite-able. This would lead to the buttonizing. Mark your favorite Macros, and they'll appear as buttons elsewhere in the UI (or as a detached/pop-up window that you can slide to your second monitor).
Some of that has been done (yesterday's update activated a macro button bar, which you can turn on in the Settings panel, and the macro window now lets you add macros to the bar). They're not global or shareable (yet?), as far as I know.