Roll20 uses cookies to improve your experience on our site. Cookies enable you to enjoy certain features, social sharing functionality, and tailor message and display ads to your interests on our site and others. They also help us understand how our site is being used. By continuing to use our site, you consent to our use of cookies. Update your cookie preferences .
×
Create a free account
This post has been closed. You can still view previous posts, but you can't post any new replies.

Metric

1335998315
Abd al Rahman
KS Backer
Sheet Author
API Scripter
An option to switch from imperial system to metric system would be nice :)
I second! Games like Shadowrun use metric for measurements.
Here's a question that Riley and I are trying to figure out... does it matter in any real sense? Like, we get measuring in different NUMERICAL lengths. But... is an indicator for what the units are important? EDIT for clarification-- we are talking about not saying feet, meters, etc. Just leaving it as "you are X away from that location", x just being a number.
If you could edit the "5" in "1 in = 5 ft" and the "ft" part of it would be dropped, it'd be ok, too. It'd be nice to keep track if a page is setup in yards, miles or parsecs, but it's not as if you couldn't find out by using you brain ;) It'd be nice to see the measurements as "4 x 5 in\n8 x 10 m" or "4 x 5 in\n20 x 25 ft", but it's not a game killer if it's just "8 x 10" or "20 x 25".
1335998797
Abd al Rahman
KS Backer
Sheet Author
API Scripter
It matters when you are calculating movement. Actually I take 5 inches for one meter. It works, but every time I use the ruler function, I need to calculate again.
er...well...when you put it that way...lol Yeah I guess it really doesn't matter. Though it helps with the *ahem* story telling ;-) I wonder if it might be possible to have the unit entered by the GM for each map (or the campaign). Granted, it is just a word, so you could end up measuring things in bananas or monkeys or both! Just a thought.
If it doesn't matter, you ought to remove the 5 feet thing entirely and replace it with generic grid units. It would be a lot less confusing. I'll just put a note somewhere on the page to let everyone know the scale of 1 grid unit = whatever. (Though the text tool itself needs work to make it more visible on different types of maps).
Honestly, I like having some sort of actual measurement for the grid. May I suggest that you keep the measurement but make it arbitrary? Like a campaign setting that is a textbox where the GM can input an arbitrary unit to be placed after all measurements (eg, ft, m, parsec, furlongs, etc). A number box next to it can adjust the number of units per square/hex. :)
It USUALLY won't matter, but it certainly can be a convenience. Allowing for the unit of measurement to be a map variable can free the GM of having to remember, or look up the scale of a particular page. The less the GM has to keep track of, the better :)
Plus having it adjustable per map allows for close battle maps, where a square would equal 5 feet, and then wide out world maps, where each square might equal a mile.
I would be okay with the distances just being given in "squares" or "hexes", and I think most players in most games can handle multiplying by five. But definitely count me as a vote for changing away from the fixed five-foot squares/metres. I play games in which a hex is one metre, games in which a hex is a yard, one game in which a hex is two metres, and one game in which a square is 10 feet. I definitely don't want the measuring tool to tell players that the range is forty feet when it is supposed to be eighty feet, and I think I would have trouble with some players getting told that the range is, say, eighty feet when it should be 32 metres.
it would be nice if on the page tab there was a space where you put how many units each grid was then what unit you are using is called. For example each grid space is 17 groksjes. If you used the measuring tool to measure two hexes it would show the distance to be 34 groksjes. That way since you can set it yourself you dont have to worry about what system or scale people are using.
...it helps with the *ahem* story telling ;-) I like that you went straight for the philosophical jugular. :) Seriously, though, this should be a small fix, we're just talking about what to do with it. We got this question bunches throughout the Kickstarter, and it puzzles/amuses us greatly. We'll be trying some things.
(Somewhat related: note that the voting system on the forum puts comments that get voted up at the top, despite when clicking on a previously-visted thread it plops you at the bottom of the comments where the most recent comments may not actually be... In other words, check the top of the thread too! XD) (Vote this comment down to keep it at the bottom :P)
You can also change the sort order to something that actually makes sense...
Well crap. Had I but known... :/ I didn't even see that up there! Why isn't that the default?!
Yes, I would use the "Sort By Date" option for the comments. Once you set it on one thread it defaults to that for you from then on. Sorry, unfortunately it doesn't let me choose to only enable voting on top-most topics...
Well crap. Had I but known... :/ I didn't even see that up there! Why isn't that the default?! Because this kind of software isn't built for discussions. The vote-sorting works well for "question/answer" and "feature request" type boards...
I went in and hacked the plugin and it now no longer sorts by votes no matter what you pick. So feel free to upvote comments you agree with, and they will stay in chronological order. Because this kind of software isn't built for discussions. The vote-sorting works well for "question/answer" and "feature request" type boards... The Vanilla forum software is definitely built for discussions, but this voting addon tries to turn it into Q&A site...but that's really not what we want. But it's the closest thing I"ve got without spending 20 hours working on the forum software instead of working on bug fixes, which I assume is what everyone would rather I spend my time on.
...it helps with the *ahem* story telling ;-) I like that you went straight for the philosophical jugular. :) Seriously, though, this should be a small fix, we're just talking about what to do with it. We got this question bunches throughout the Kickstarter, and it puzzles/amuses us greatly. We'll be trying some things. What can I say? Gamers! Am I right?!
Plus having it adjustable per map allows for close battle maps, where a square would equal 5 feet, and then wide out world maps, where each square might equal a mile. In my fantasy game tactical distances are measured in fathoms, and strategic ones in stades. It would be good to have control of scales. Most of my players are too young to remember what a mile or foot is, though they do know that a yard is about a metre.
Oh, yeah "does it matter?" I run games in which weapon ranges are given in metres, and games in which they are given in feet, and one game in which they are given in yards, and one game in which they are given in squares (each square being ten feet), and sometimes a game in which they are given in hexes (each hex being two metres). Having the distance and token-size tools report in feet is not convenient. Having them report "five feet" where the scale is actually one yard, one metre, two metres, or ten feet is an obscenely-qualified pain in the arse. If we get confused over whether "30 feet" is six yards or ten yards, or over whether it is six metres, nine metres, or twelve metres that will not be satisfactory. But if the scale and measuring tool say "distance: 11" I am perfectly happy interpreting that as 110 feet if I'm playing "James Bond 007" or 55 feet is (God forbid!) I should be playing D&D.