I actually would like to see players have the ability to create and resize tokens themselves. Whenever I start a new map or set up a battle, I have to create a token for every player in their preferred colors, name them all, make a second copy of all of those tokens and name those too, then arrange them on the map. It’d be nice if the players could just make their own tokens. I have no more worry that players will move or delete things inappropriately than I do of them in a real game, which is never a problem at all.
(I split this off from Allowing players to have ownership over tokens since this is a distinct, separate feature request)
This has come up a number of times. I’m mostly for this idea, but I have a concern and I think the problem this solves might be solved via a separate feature that’s planned. First, my concern…
I think the mobile interface I envision for players won’t need a toolbar (ie: the user won’t need to switch between different modes while using Shmeppy). I think this modeless interface will be much harder to create if players can do these things with tokens, so I’d like to finish mobile support for players and only then try to add this (if indeed I’m going to) so that I have a better grasp of how it’ll complicate the interface.
And now, the other feature I think will solve this same problem…
Whenever I’ve gotten this request, it’s around trying to let players create their own tokens so you don’t have to. Useful when using tokens to track initiative or when creating new maps. I believe the ability to Copy + Paste tokens (including across maps) will also solve this problem pretty tidily.
These two factors together makes me very inclined to leave this work on the shelf for awhile…
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One use case I found for letting player edit text labels at least is for tracking damage. I’ve used Matt Colville’s suggestion to let let the players track the damage they did, and it worked out pretty well. In more complex VTTs that would be a bit of a hassle, as you’d probably have to give them complete control over the token and thus its associated char sheet, but that wouldn’t be an issue with shmeppy.
It’s also quite neat for conditions, spells etc.
Editing token text can just be a long press on mobile, so no need for modes just for this.
Tracking damage in token labels isn’t something I’ve thought of, thank you for bringing that up. Merely allowing token labels to be edited will probably be doable without muddying the mobile interface too much.