Delayed Texture Loading
This new features doesn’t have a screenshot to go with it, but it’s pretty important. With all the new backgrounds and dice textures added, it started taking longer and longer to start the app. So I moved around a bunch of code and added some checks so that it doesn’t load a texture until it actually uses it. The tradeoff is that there’s a second or two of delay when you first switch to another board. But that seemed much better than having to wait twenty seconds each time you started the app.
Regarding the dice color comments: yup, you should be able to select something like 1d6(red) + 1d6(blue) and I do have the “d” button switch to say “color” once a die size has been selected. Hopefully that’ll make it intuitive to select colors. The formula bar will say something like “d6a+d6b”, though, for compactness sake.
September 11th, 2008 at 10:45 am
IMO it’s a good idea to delay texture loading like you say… Better loading textures only when needed.
For dice color, don’t you mean “d6r+d6b”? And what about display “d6+d6” with the first in red and the second in blue?
September 11th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
I was planning on using the letters (a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j) instead of first initials because of possible ambiguities (“black” vs. “blue”, “green” vs “gray”, etc.). Also, at some point, I was hoping to support custom dice that you could texture yourself and it seemed like using the a-j letters would be more flexible.
September 12th, 2008 at 10:58 pm
So will we be able to tell which letter goes with which color on the input screen? I had an absurd idea on how to remember which letter goes with which color. Its so loony I had to share.
Apple (a)= Red
Banana (b)= Yellow
Carrot (c)= Orange
etc
etc
I am going to shut up and roll some dice now.
September 13th, 2008 at 12:48 am
Just make the font of “1d6”, “5d10” match the texture color, as Deluxe already suggested. If you’re adding the “make your own dice” feature later you could just let the user select a matching color (from a palette?) that corresponds with the texture.
I would find it hard to remember, that “f is blue” or “i is green” etc.
September 13th, 2008 at 5:48 am
on letters/colors… I understand the problems with trying to give each color a meaningful corresponding letter. Using (a) to represent the first color chosen, b for the second, etc should be just fine. I mean how many colors is a user going to want to roll at once? Seems 2 or 3 colors for the vast majority, and the user can surely remember that he chose “one red two black and a white” for example.
In any case the developer might consider coloring the text to match the colors of the dice chosen, but this would bring with it problems of clashing and/or obscuring background+foreground text coloring.
September 13th, 2008 at 10:39 am
Yeah, the idea of making the text the actual color is way better than my food idea. I don’t know what I was thinking. Perhaps I was just hungry?