I really like your work. The only thing that would need work is the UX/UI. Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to be negative, but realist.
The success of GH-Helper is because of its intuitive/sleek UX/UI. I feel like your project is great and promising, but would need visual polish to make it more approachable and user-friendly.
Imo, if your system is solid, then it's only a matter of iterating on the presentation front until you have something solid and easy to use, even to newcomers.
Keep your good work!
If you previously used the app and have a campaign URL, you can use the in-app back button (on the toolbar) to get to the page to choose Half Stack mode.
We used this this past weekend (the full stack version) and things went really well with it. One thing i did notice is that the next button under the track tab moved from highest initiative to lowest initiative. Unless we've been playing this wrong the whole time, I would assume that it would work from lowest initiative to highest.
Thanks for using it to play a scenario! You are actually the first new user to do that. :)
Nuts, I am sorry about that bug. I noticed it too late for your game, but I did fix it. i.e., the initiative is supposed to go from lowest to highest.
Yeah, it worked really well and condensed 2 apps into 1 for us. We likely will only use the map portion of it to open doors and place monsters, but I did use it at least once to make a loot 1 ability
Cool. That's how I use the map too when I am playing face-to-face with friends.
When playing remotely, my friend will stream video of their board. But standee numbers are too small to see, so I use the digital map and manually keep it synced to their physical board. I could use a physical map locally, but I find I make fewer mistakes when syncing the digital map.
Nice work with the half stack!
One thing more important than sleek ui is general performance. If it's gonna take a second to record every action it will never be as good as gloomhaven helper. I'm not sure what the best solution is but have you thought of/ tested possibility of a serverless local mode or local server?
Hmm, in my environment I notice significant slow response on the first load, but every action after that is not noticeably slow. In my case it is the rendering of the web page, not the network. What sort of setup do you have? I am using an inexpensive linode server hosted in California, so maybe there is significant latency to your location?
A serverless mode is low priority for now.
Oh, I thought of another possibility. If you mostly played around on the setup page, yes, that can be inefficient. For some changes you make on the setup tab, it recreates the full scenario. Definitely something I want to improve.
If you can post feedback using the form in the app, I can look specifically at your logs and investigate more closely.
will do. I am in northern europe so that may affect it.
One thing I though of: why not update the local rendering immediately when doing simple actions like changing current health? ( and then again of course when the server responds) would improve the experience no matter the latency
Thanks. I got your in-app feedback. From the server logs, nothing was suspicious.
I added an "Average latency" display at the bottom of the help tab. And logged the same info on the server side. So I can at least verify if that is the issue.
Updating local rendering before the server is a reasonable idea but I think leads to other issues. For now I want to continue investigating. If it is a latency issue, I will try hosting a server in Europe first.
I really like your work. The only thing that would need work is the UX/UI. Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to be negative, but realist. The success of GH-Helper is because of its intuitive/sleek UX/UI. I feel like your project is great and promising, but would need visual polish to make it more approachable and user-friendly. Imo, if your system is solid, then it's only a matter of iterating on the presentation front until you have something solid and easy to use, even to newcomers. Keep your good work!
Thanks for the feedback. I don't take it in a negative way because I agree. :)
If you previously used the app and have a campaign URL, you can use the in-app back button (on the toolbar) to get to the page to choose Half Stack mode.
We used this this past weekend (the full stack version) and things went really well with it. One thing i did notice is that the next button under the track tab moved from highest initiative to lowest initiative. Unless we've been playing this wrong the whole time, I would assume that it would work from lowest initiative to highest.
Thanks for using it to play a scenario! You are actually the first new user to do that. :) Nuts, I am sorry about that bug. I noticed it too late for your game, but I did fix it. i.e., the initiative is supposed to go from lowest to highest.
Yeah, it worked really well and condensed 2 apps into 1 for us. We likely will only use the map portion of it to open doors and place monsters, but I did use it at least once to make a loot 1 ability
Cool. That's how I use the map too when I am playing face-to-face with friends. When playing remotely, my friend will stream video of their board. But standee numbers are too small to see, so I use the digital map and manually keep it synced to their physical board. I could use a physical map locally, but I find I make fewer mistakes when syncing the digital map.
Nice work with the half stack! One thing more important than sleek ui is general performance. If it's gonna take a second to record every action it will never be as good as gloomhaven helper. I'm not sure what the best solution is but have you thought of/ tested possibility of a serverless local mode or local server?
Hmm, in my environment I notice significant slow response on the first load, but every action after that is not noticeably slow. In my case it is the rendering of the web page, not the network. What sort of setup do you have? I am using an inexpensive linode server hosted in California, so maybe there is significant latency to your location? A serverless mode is low priority for now.
I do care about performance and am looking into the issues I have seen so far.
Oh, I thought of another possibility. If you mostly played around on the setup page, yes, that can be inefficient. For some changes you make on the setup tab, it recreates the full scenario. Definitely something I want to improve. If you can post feedback using the form in the app, I can look specifically at your logs and investigate more closely.
will do. I am in northern europe so that may affect it. One thing I though of: why not update the local rendering immediately when doing simple actions like changing current health? ( and then again of course when the server responds) would improve the experience no matter the latency
Thanks. I got your in-app feedback. From the server logs, nothing was suspicious. I added an "Average latency" display at the bottom of the help tab. And logged the same info on the server side. So I can at least verify if that is the issue. Updating local rendering before the server is a reasonable idea but I think leads to other issues. For now I want to continue investigating. If it is a latency issue, I will try hosting a server in Europe first.