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Any Plans to Fix Years Old Bug?

When you attempt to drag a creature from the srd/compendium to a character sheet while another character sheet or sheets is open, it will often copy the imported character to a different sheet than the one you physically drag it to. Often these are minimized sheets or sheets on opposite corners of the screen or sheets in the background far removed from where you're importing to. This has been a technical issue since day 1 of this implementation, and while it can be avoided by closing everything on your screen before starting the process, sometimes this inconvenient and unnecessary vigilance is overlooked and the above error occurs. Years ago this was merely infuriating. It has now progressed well past that.

Any plans to fix this? 


June 26 (4 years ago)

Edited June 26 (4 years ago)
Andreas J.
Forum Champion
Sheet Author
Translator

I think I managed to replicate the behaviour you describe(On both Firefox and Chrome), and also manage to narrow down the behaviour for it, thus also concluding habits that would reduce the risk of encountering this behaviour.

NPC/Monster Compendium Drag-n-drop behaviour (5E at least)

For open character sheets, their drag-n-drop zone is larger than the open sheet itself. This causes trouble if you have sheets open on the map and want to drag-n-drop NPCs to the table, without accidentally overwriting one of the open sheets.

1. The whole map area below an opened character sheet act as a drag-n-drop "zone", preventing drop to the map.


2. The drag-n-drop "zone" covers the map below the open sheet even when the sheet is open so small that the sheet itself can't act as a drag-n-drop "zone".

3. The map area above the open sheet is not part of the drag-n-drop "zone".

4. Minimized character sheets don't have a drag-n-drop "zone".

So I'd say the drag-n-drop "zone" of open character sheets should be reduced to only cover the open sheet, and not the whole area below it, as it is now.

Habits to avoid overriding characters when drag-n-drop NPCs from compendium

1. If you have multiple character sheets open on the map, and tend to drag-n-drop NPCs to the map somewhat often, it's best to have a habit of keeping the open character sheets toward the bottom and left side of the map, to reduce the risk for dropping npc stats onto an open sheet.

2. drag-n-drop NPCs only to the top right corner, where you shouldn't have any open sheets.

3. minimizes sheets when possible(with a double-click), as they won't be overwritten like other open sheets.

4. Keep some or all open sheets in separate windows. Apparently popped out sheets are still having a drag-n-drop zone on the map even if the sheet isn't on the map. Thanks to The Aaron for pointing this out.



Sidenote

Isn't it much more common to drag-n-drop NPCs directly to the map and make a new character, rather than overwriting existing ones?

Is overwriting existing characters primarily used for quickly stat out NPCs that might only have a name at the start, so if Bob the Burglar is a npc that only have a name and some GM notes and the players end up fighting Bob, you'd just quickly drag-n-drop the "Thug" statblock on top of Bob and it would be ready to go. Or is there some other application of overwriting existing characters that I don't see?

I do appreciate the diligence of your testing, however unlike yourself my testing does indicate that minimized sheets have drop zones. It is consistently possible to drag from the compendium to an open sheet while another is minimized on the screen in the opposite corner. I did it last night which rekindled my existing grievance, and verified it twice on two different computers, using two different browsers this morning. Minimized sheets do indeed have a drop zone and while invisible it is often overlapped with other sheets drop zones on the complete opposite side of the screen. 

In reference to your sidenote, I'm not always a DM. Sometimes I am a player with blank sheets and I need to import stats quickly for a new familiar form, or a wild shape, or a summoned beast. Some people might ask the DM to do the drag and drop for them, but that disrupts them for a moment as they drag and drop it to the game and assign visibility and control over to the player. In addition, not all DM's have the various releases of monsters available on the marketplace (volos, tome of beasts) which means importing it myself to a blank sheet already provided is a better bet. 

The best and only reliable process I've found so far is to make sure every single sheet is closed every time I do an import. The accuracy or care used in my drag and drop has no bearing on the outcome. If a sheet is open, eventually it will overwrite it. While it doesn't happen every time, it has killed more than a few innocent character sheets. 



June 26 (4 years ago)
Andreas J.
Forum Champion
Sheet Author
Translator

So it's unclear what the pattern is with the minimized sheets, as it doesn't seem to happen ever time(and I couldn't replicate it).

June 26 (4 years ago)
keithcurtis
Forum Champion
Marketplace Creator
API Scripter


Andreas J. said:

Is overwriting existing characters primarily used for quickly stat out NPCs that might only have a name at the start, so if Bob the Burglar is a npc that only have a name and some GM notes and the players end up fighting Bob, you'd just quickly drag-n-drop the "Thug" statblock on top of Bob and it would be ready to go. Or is there some other application of overwriting existing characters that I don't see?

There is a fairly common practice thanks to a video made by Cody of Taking20 wherein he sets up a generic template with Abilities and Token Action Buttons. He places an open copy of the template on the desktop and drags a creature over it so that it automatically has the setup. There are better ways of doing this, but the video persists.