Dice Tower UX Discussion

[Eric]

Thanks to everyone who has been steadily providing feedback on the Baldr dice tower functionality. I've been saying for some time that our initial focus was on the back-end functionality, and an overhaul of the UX would come later.

 

Now is that time.

 

Here are some mockups of the various interfaces currently being evaluated (none of which are themed yet, obviously). As stated in the design document, we aimed to:

• Provide a simple means of entering a one or more sets of dice rolls.
• Provide a graphical, user-friendly way of entering dice rolls.
• Provide a power-user "command line interface" way to enter dice rolls without needing a mouse or a tab key.
• Provide an interface for sheetrolls
• Provide a way to copy-paste dice rolls from other posts.

Please have a look and let us know what you think!

CLI Mode

AKA "Power User Mode", CLI is just a text box you can type in. No formatting, no frills. Enter one set per line, separating the label from the roll string with a colon.

 

Table/Spreadsheet Mode

 

I see table-style entry as the "middle ground" between the GUI and CLI modes, and is quite similar to the existing dialog-based interface. Building the roll is the same as CLI, but you get visual separation between the name and the roll (and between roll sets). Name and roll fields auto-expand vertically.

 

 

GUI Mode

This one is the most complicated and fiddly. However, the intention is to give the full power of the roller to everyone, even if they don't want to memorize (or type) all of the functions. You can enter multiple dice sets by using the Add a set... button.

 

Standard mode (all polyhedral dice), showing a single dice set entered:

 

Standard mode, showing multiple dice sets entered:

 

While the "standard" mode covers the bases for all the sorts of normal polyhedral rolls you might want, that dropdown allows selection of various "special" modes that customize the interface for particular systems that have more complicated functionality. Shown below is the "TOR" mode for The One Ring dice:

Sheetroll Mode

The ultimate goal is to make sheetrolls work even better than they did on OGMW. Rather than having to remember the sheet id and the field name from the sheet, you'll be able to pick from any of your attached sheets (or the players' sheets, if you are the GM) and select what to roll from a standard set of defined rolls for that sheet type.

 

 

What is not shown is how these would be represented in the context of a post. The vision is that the interface would automatically expand underneath existing rolls, rather than being a dialog box over the top of your post content. This allows you to add rolls as you go, and to refer back to your post content without closing the dice roller. Confirmation dialogs will not exist; your confirmation will be that your new dice show up in the table. (There will, of course, be an error dialog if you gave bad input.)

[Daryk]

The table/spreadsheet mode seems to be the worst of both worlds.  I would skip that one, personally.  The other three seem like a solid variety of options.  Yes, three remains the magic number for humans... 🙂

[Scarecrow71]

I'll try to keep my comments brief...but you know me.

 

CLI Mode

Probably my favorite mode of the four presented here.  I am used to typing rolls on OGMW, and I would really love the ability to keep doing that here in Baldr.  And being able to add multiple rolls at once is a true game-changer on Baldr, so that's awesome.  My questions on this mode:

 

1. No line terminators might cause some problems in the long run if someone fails to hit enter after a given string.  It is more aesthetic than anything else, but bbCode forced us to terminate the tag so the roller knew where the end was.  Is that not needed here?
2. Will we be given a drop down or some button to insert types of rolls with this?  Remembering all the syntaxes and new commands at first won't be easy, so some way of clicking to add a given roll type would be nice.

 

Table/Spreadsheet Mode

My least favorite mode here.  It simply looks clunky and unwieldy, with no real descriptors.  To my untrained eyes it just doesn't look like it would be very useful.

 

GUI Mode

Damn, is that ever pretty.  While I prefer CLI, I can see this mode being the gold standard of dice rolling here, especially for new users who are trying to find their way.  Seeing dice types, and being able to add rolls, and having advantage and damage and everything right there to be seen is awesome.  This would be my 2nd way of doing dice rolls here.

 

Sheetroll Mode

I don't use sheetrolls on OGMW, so I really can't comment on this.

 

One Final Thought

Will we be given the ability to flip from mode to mode as we see fit?  Or do we get 1 option and that's it?

Edited September 5, 2022 by Scarecrow71 (see edit history)

[Colin]

22 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

Will we be given the ability to flip from mode to mode as we see fit?  Or do we get 1 option and that's it?

---

 

I can answer this part at least! The bar at the top of each of the mode images is actually a selection menu, so you can switch between the modes as desired.

[Eric]

40 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

No line terminators might cause some problems in the long run if someone fails to hit enter after a given string.

It'll probably get spruced up with some alternate-line shading and maybe even line numbers.

 

41 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

Will we be given a drop down or some button to insert types of rolls with this?

I can give you a link to the roller documentation. The whole point of CLI is to make it as stripped down as possible.

[Tsunami1768]

as long as the modifiers added by a player are easy to inspect you probably won't hear too much from me regarding the dice tower. (I did read the note about the current tower rolls being arranged in order as rolled, thanks!). Otherwise, I'm all about keeping it simple, so the CLI mode looks best for my needs. 

Edited September 5, 2022 by Tsunami1768 (see edit history)

[Neopopulas]

Evreything is looking great, and i'm glad to hear that roll order will be preserved and that confirmation boxes will go away - though they are less of a problem once you can roll more than one thing at a time, they are an unnecessary gate.

 

• CLI mode seems perfect for the power users - it also means that if you want to be a semi-power user you could just copy your most commonly rolled dice, say you are rolling for a bunch of mobs in a combat, then you can just paste it into this box for every post you need to, you don't even have to re-enter it every time you make the post, which is about as close as we'll get to the OGMW where you can just quote the whole post, rolls and all, which is great.

 

• The Table/Spreadsheet mode might get the least use, though it might help people get used to the CLI mode and allow them an ability to transfer over, but the actual mechanics of it aren't really different enough that its probably going to get a whole lot of use where it sits between CLI and GUI, either way its handy to have and if it doesn't cost the devs too much brain power, why not have it?

 

• GUI mode is probably going to get the most use, no surprise to anyone, and it looks good. I'm not sure if the icons for the dice types are absolutely necessary, but it looks good and is laid out well so why not.

 

• The sheetroll is something i never used on OGMW and probably won't here either so i won't really comment, it seems to work just fine but since i make sheets in posts and don't (often) used the website sheets themselves its never been something i have experience with.

 

Naturally seeing them all in use and seeing how it feels to push all the buttons will determine ultimately how much people like each kind i think its a great start.

[Vladim]

They all seem to have use and merit, and I agree that GUI mode seems the most intuitive, and thus perhaps the most user-friendly. Though I do like my 'weird' dice on rare occasions, like 1d5s or 1d40s, which I sometimes use to select a random PC or whatever, but I guess those are not a big deal to most users.

 

I may be an exception, but I think I prefer Table/Spreadsheet mode over CLI mode, but that's maybe because I'm getting used to the current Baldr dice roller. Overall, the differences in syntax between the two seem very minor, so... I guess it doesn't matter.

 

I haven't used Sheet-rolls before, but if this will extend beyond D&D and to other, more niche, systems, I could see it growing on me. Hard to evaluate right now though!

 

I am not sure if I'm the only one here, but I have a preference for dice rolls not to clutter too much the IC threads. Not a big deal, but sometimes lots of rolls can distract... I was wondering if we could get an option where rolls could be hidden by default (instead of the current setting, which is display by default)? Again, not a big deal. In OGMW I handled this as setting a separate dice thread, which is still an option, of course, so there are workarounds.

[Eric]

9 hours ago, Vladim said:

I was wondering if we could get an option where rolls could be hidden by default

The current behavior was decided upon based on this poll, https://test.myth-weavers.com/index.php?/topic/1240-dice-tower-panel-locationbehavior-poll/#comment-8800, which showed a clear majority for below-post-expanded-if-dice-present.

[PigLickJF]

Looking good Eric.

 

I just have a couple thoughts/questions that haven't already been mentioned:

1. CLI/table modes - would it be possible/feasible to have an Intellisense-type feedback mechanism of some sort built into these? That would keep it stripped-down but still give the user some immediate help when inputting roll code. I'm sure that's probably a lot of extra work if it can even be done, but it would be pretty awesome.
2. Would it be possible to add a button that feeds the GUI-mode rolls into the CLI instead of rolling them? It would be a good learning tool, and it would also be helpful if you mostly use CLI mode but have one or a few rolls that are a bit more complex and you're having trouble with the code in CLI - you could just hop over to GUI mode, input your roll, then move it over to the CLI so you can finish the rest of your rolls.
3. Sheetrolls: I don't use these on OGMW, but they're pretty cool and I can see how they'd be a nice feature, however, it seems like there should be a spot for each roll for a modifier (i.e. bonus/penalty) since anything that's temporary wouldn't be on your character sheet.

 

[Eric]

43 minutes ago, PigLickJF said:

I'm sure that's probably a lot of extra work

Damn straight it is 😄 Intellisense is unlikely to happen unless someone replaces my regular salary to let me code MW full-time.

44 minutes ago, PigLickJF said:

add a button that feeds the GUI-mode rolls into the CLI instead of rolling them

This should be achievable from GUI>CLI, GUI>Table, and Table>CLI. Going the other way would be much harder.

45 minutes ago, PigLickJF said:

spot for each roll for a modifier (i.e. bonus/penalty) since anything that's temporary wouldn't be on your character sheet

Excellent point.

[PigLickJF]

4 minutes ago, Eric said:

Damn straight it is 😄 Intellisense is unlikely to happen unless someone replaces my regular salary to let me code MW full-time.

Heh, I figured as much . Let's all hope you win the lottery or something then, I guess. 😉

 

5 minutes ago, Eric said:

This should be achievable from GUI>CLI, GUI>Table, and Table>CLI. Going the other way would be much harder.

Yah, that would be great, I don't see much need to go the other direction anyway. I'm not even sure Table>CLI is really necessary since they're basically the same thing, but GUI>CLI and GUI>Table would be nice.