Out of curiosity, Bill, other than those items (Mac compatibility, PBEM features), what would you personally want to see on an improvement list?Bill Barrett wrote: ...
I'm very pleased to see some life injected back into the forums, and particularly your evident enthusiasm. It's a real shame (and something of a mystery to me) that ZunTzu hasn't attracted more adherents. Sure, it doesn't work natively on a Mac and PBEM is not integral to its design, but in my view it's much easier to use and offers the closest experience to playing an actual "physical" boardgame. Of course it has its shortcomings, and I would love to have use of some of the features/ideas available in VASSAL and CB, but not if it would be at the expense of accessibility or graphic quality.
If I were to rank features I think it needs by time-and-effort-to-implement (as I see it), it'd be something like:
GOLD
Mac OS
Matchmaking (might be Silver)
Matchmaking lobby
PBEM
In-program scenario editing
SILVER
Snap Grid
Rotation Snap
Changes/additions to hand layouts (like adding rows)
Better error handling (encapsulates all the Bronze error trapping in one)
Corner-of-screen display of images (this might not fit Jerome's ZunTzu philosophy, I'm not sure it'd pass muster)
On-tabletop shuffle of cards
Improved typed-chat features
Module-designer-defined sounds and sound effects
Ability to connect a turn marker to user names at top
Zoom (camera bounds) limiting -- prevent the user from zooming out too far (or panning too far off the mark), or zooming in too much (producing ugly artifacting at a view that's far past useful for zoom-in)
Add dice tray: where dice got after a roll. Dice can be individually returned "home" with Del key, button on tray will return them all to home. XML gamebox attribute made available to maintain existing behavior
Add game log: record certain moves from players in log (especially dice rolls, shuffles, and card reveals)
"Designer" mode -- the ability to read files outside of a .ztb file
BRONZE
Xoffset and Yoffset attributes on stack (determines inter-counter-distance and direction of stack)
Counter tooltips
Error trap for bad use of back
Error trap for bad use of terrain in stack
(etc.)
User-defined icons in scenario list
Ability to fill user hands with items via scenario (such as, using "player1, player2," rather than a GUID linked to a particular game play)
Ability to change LOS distance feature units (I don't know why Jerome thinks he needs to rewrite this otherwise)
Implement "lost" translations (Polish, especially)
REMOVE: Shadows on terrain pieces (like on counters)
"saved" zoom/position values (Ctrl-digit to save, digit to restore)
auto-shuffle (add attribute to stack tag, game will automatically shuffle that stack when the scenario is loaded)
remove the requirement to have a second, "dummy" tab installed in order for tabs to show up (one should be sufficient)
add "nudge" functionality: the ability to move assets on a map by one pixel at a time
add alpha setting for shadows, so gamebox designers can set how light or dark the shadows appear.
EDIT: Added zoom limiting, game log, dice tray
EDIT: clarified/expanded my naming of some wish list items, better capitalization of list
EDIT: added designer mode idea
EDIT: added translations to BRONZE list
EDIT: added shadows on terrain pieces idea
EDIT: added saved zoom/position values
EDIT: added auto-shuffle
EDIT: added removal of dummy tab to get tabs to show up fix
EDIT: added nudge functionality
EDIT: Marked shadows on terrain pieces idea for removal (it's Already In There[tm]!)
EDIT: Added alpha setting to shadows idea