Pen, Dice & Paper
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HEXROLL3 user-experience: experiments update
🕑 Added 2025-03-09 13:09:33 +0000 UTCGreetings Brave Adventurers,
I'm excited to share with you some of the progress I've made experimenting with new technologies for HEXROLL3.
My focus was to explore methods & tools to provide a richer & faster experience for referees & (solo) players.
I'd like HEXROLL3 to work great both as a standalone and a web application, offer versatility, future-proof the app - and most importantly, unshackle you from needing a server, should you choose so.
I experimented specifically with improving responsiveness and interactivity, while enabling new and exciting visual features - some of which you can see in the video update.
As part of the evolving roadmap, prioritized together with your requested features - I'm either testing or considering the following enhancements:
Dynamic Lighting: Implement dynamic lighting effects in dungeons and caves to enhance immersion.
Ambient Soundtrack: Introduce context-sensitive sounds for different environments such as wilderness, dungeons, and settlements.
Auto-Spawning of Dungeon & Hex Features: Automatic placement of tokens & elements to reduce some of the workload from the referee.
More Dice Sets: Icy dice, Crystal dice, Metallic dice and more.
Day-Night Toggle: Provide a dynamic toggle to simulate day and night cycles.
Special Effects for Spells and Attacks: Add visual flair to spells and attacks to enrich gameplay.
On the technical side of things, I've started using Bevy - a highly capable game engine - as the backbone of the new app. This means that I can utilize game-development techniques to better use the device the app is running on - opening up much more visual and audible possibilities.
You can expect the source files of the app-side of things on GitHub soon, as well as the next post about more exciting additions I plan for Scroll and the generator - with some highly requested features being worked on there too.
Until then, enjoy the crawl!
Ithai
Comments
Pen, Dice & Paper
Thanks! for the feedback Peter \o/ For 1) this sounds like an edge case that I'm unable to reproduce. I tried re-rolling a settlement from both the hex-description page and from the city details page, both seem to work okay I think. For 2) Except for Inns and Taverns, the map label will usually reflect the type ('class' in the generator) of the entity being displayed. Editing the page content or title will not change the type so it stays fixed. As for taverns - this is a bug. Changing the title in the page should change the label on the map. I'll work on a fix for this. For 3) There's a hackish way to force re-rolling a certain class for an entity. Let me know if you're comfortable with using the browser's javascript console and I'll share the method. Most of the issues you're mentioning will be resolved in hexroll3 - which will be much more tuned for world editing.
Peter
Loving the app! I have found two issues, not sure if i am missing something - 1. if i reroll a city on the city level screen, it is breaking the reference link on the map. clicking on the city gives an error - something like - this has been removed or is now a memory in the sands of time etc. Clicking around in the hex and it seems to pick up a new link. I have found a way to find the link in the city them and revise it to the new link. However its rerolling that city level layout causing the problems - hope that makes sense. 2. If I reroll trying to get a keep on a city map with a 'dot' to link info to, if I change the name, details etc I cant seem to edit out the original name for the link, like a tavern or perfume shop etc. Am I missing something? btw it takes a lot of rerolling to get a walled city with a keep and a reference dot link! am I missing how to place dot pins into a city map to create references, or are they fixed? 3. Is there some way to constraint the reroll of a city layout to be actually a city with walls, and not spend 20 mins rerolling to get a better city layout? which then leads to the two issues about? am loving the world build aspect, editing is however a bit hard for a novice it feels
Pen, Dice & Paper
Hexroll does not prescribe a specific workflow, but for my games I use something along the lines of: - Determine base travel speed (based on state / mounts / etc) - Party choose travel route - Referee rolls for weather - Referee checks chances for getting lost (based on weather / conditions) - Referee rolls for wandering monsters - Referee provides hex description - Party decides on further exploration or travel - Determine time of day / party decides on camping etc..
Andy
LOVE this app!!!!!! Do you have travel mechanics built in or RGP ones you use for each Hex? I feel like I'm cobbling my own together but it should already exist soemwhere
