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Rotating field of view without rotating the token

February 25 (7 years ago)
I'm trying to find a way to let a player turn around to look in different directions without flipping their tokens upside down and what not.
I use a 210 degree view cone to prevent them from seeing behind their backs. It's great and works well. The issue is that we use side profile and isometric sprites so it takes about 2 seconds on a battle map before everyone is lying in a dog pile upside down and sideways and it's all rather ridiculous.

Earlier today I thought I had come up with the genius solution of making a transparent token, putting it on top and rotating that instead. I figured, "I'll select both and Group the tokens, then they can move them together and right-click to send to Back and Front when necessary!". It doesn't work so well, since moving grouped objects eventually makes them spaz out, go misaligned and become a real bother because they of course don't behave that way when you want to stack them back. You have to ungroup and pile them up again, so it turns out that it's not that much of a solution.

I only want to achieve one thing:
Rotate the field of view cone (emit light) without rotating the player's token.

The easiest solution by far is to give up and use a full 360 FoV or start using those round pog tokens instead but none of us want that.
February 25 (7 years ago)
Bast L.
API Scripter
I don't believe there is a reasonable method for plus users, though I could be wrong. Just FYI, though it doesn't solve your problem, you can hold e, or alt+e while selecting a token and then use the mouse wheel to rotate it. If you do stick with field of view limits and accept the rotated tokens, that's can help.

For pro users, I would make a script that gets checked on graphic change, and it checks the token's rotation. If it's a player token, I would have about 8+ images, each rotated 45 or fewer degrees, in a table for each player, and change the token image based on the rotation, so that it cancels out the rotation.

For example, have a normal image, and one that's rotated -45 degrees, then when you rotate the token 45 degrees, the image changes to the -45 degree image, creating an apparent cancellation of the rotation.
February 25 (7 years ago)
The Aaron
Pro
API Scripter
Also in the Pro user spectrum, I have a script called Facing that manages a separate graphic which indicates the direction of view.  I know some people have put the light source on that facing token to get what you're talking about.
February 26 (7 years ago)

Bast L. said:

[...]
For pro users, I would make a script that gets checked on graphic change, and it checks the token's rotation. If it's a player token, I would have about 8+ images, each rotated 45 or fewer degrees, in a table for each player, and change the token image based on the rotation, so that it cancels out the rotation.
[...]
I do have 10 images for the PC tokens, it would take some work to make it doable manually but I think that would be more annoying than anything. I don't think I want to upgrade my sub just for something like this...

Does anyone happen to know if there is a suggestion to this effect on the forum that I can add a vote to? I could not see one but it seems unlikely that I'd be the first one to ask for this.
February 27 (7 years ago)
Bast L.
API Scripter
I don't look there often, and search is kinda hit or miss on the forums. I've actually only used limited field of view in a "thief game" I was running for a solo player once. He found it really annoying (we didn't know about holding 'e' at the time). Could also be really good for a horror game, like Call of Cthulhu, where it represents a flashlight.

It does remind me of what I thought was a neat idea of mine: making a script to adjust facing on a token, similar to Legend of Zelda. So, for example, if you hit the up arrow, your token switches to the up-facing one, and field of view matches it. The only thing is, I'm not sure how diagonals work in this game. If I hit up and right at the same time, I go diagonal, but I don't know if I'm going up then right faster than it shows. It's only an issue if I limited field of view though.