Wishlists

General discussion about ZunTzu in English.

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dulcaoin
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Wishlists

Post by dulcaoin »

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.
Out of curiosity, Bill, other than those items (Mac compatibility, PBEM features), what would you personally want to see on an improvement list?

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
Last edited by dulcaoin on 16 Oct 2014, 03:51, edited 11 times in total.
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btrhoads
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Post by btrhoads »

Bill already has most of my wish list items. I would also like to add dice locking too. There are several games I would like to implement, but dice locking is a problem.
dulcaoin
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Post by dulcaoin »

btrhoads wrote:Bill already has most of my wish list items. I would also like to add dice locking too. There are several games I would like to implement, but dice locking is a problem.
Could you explain in more detail what you mean by dice locking?

I did mean to add to the list "indicator which dice were rolled last turn" and also "game log" :)

-- joshua
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btrhoads
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Post by btrhoads »

In some games you are allowed to roll a set of dice a defined number of times and keep certain beneficial dice as you go. One such game is Roll Through The Ages. Once you have reached the defined number of rolls you must keep what you have and make the best of it. In ZunTzu, let's say I roll 6 such dice. Let's say die 3 and die 4 are dice I wish to keep and not roll again. If all six dice are part of the same die row on the interface, I can't choose to only roll die 1, 2, 5 and 6 without rolling die 3 and 4 also. I would wish to "Lock" these dice.

Now I suppose I could make 6 rows of 1 die each on the interface and roll the dice individually, but then I would have to add 3 more positions for the bonus dice and then I would have to roll up to 9 dice individually. That can get tedious.
dulcaoin
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Posts: 79
Joined: 26 Aug 2014, 01:30
Location: Denver, Colorado, U.S.A.

Post by dulcaoin »

btrhoads wrote:In some games you are allowed to roll a set of dice a defined number of times and keep certain beneficial dice as you go. One such game is Roll Through The Ages. Once you have reached the defined number of rolls you must keep what you have and make the best of it. In ZunTzu, let's say I roll 6 such dice. Let's say die 3 and die 4 are dice I wish to keep and not roll again. If all six dice are part of the same die row on the interface, I can't choose to only roll die 1, 2, 5 and 6 without rolling die 3 and 4 also. I would wish to "Lock" these dice.

Now I suppose I could make 6 rows of 1 die each on the interface and roll the dice individually, but then I would have to add 3 more positions for the bonus dice and then I would have to roll up to 9 dice individually. That can get tedious.
Maybe ZunTzu could have a dice tray added (gamebox attribute whether it's enabled or not). When you roll, dice animate the roll, then return to the dice tray. "Del" on a die in the tray moves it back to the "home" position for dice. Then you could reroll any "returned" dice from the home position as normal. There could be a button on the dice tray to "return all" for end of turn.

EDIT: I added this idea and the other two "missing" ideas to my original list
dulcaoin
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Translations added

Post by dulcaoin »

I found in another thread that translators volunteered past the time Jerome was working on ZunTzu 1, and he had promised to put those (Polish, especially) into the build.

So I added that to the list.
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