CincyBattletech

Saturday up north is good though I may be tied up until 3ish if that's ok.

For anyone following, a test with at least two players where I can just observe would be real handy. The test would be two smallish games (2v2, 120 tons) or ~ two hours of play time, whichever is less.

I can provide two tablets and pizza. Flexible on time and location.

The downside to this approach is it makes other UI elements larger as well, so some of the dropdowns for things like damage become unwieldly.

*facepalm* Should've taken a longer look around before I said anything. If this changes I'll let you know.

It's a Galaxy Tab S 10.1 inch with 2560x1440 resolution via chrome. I was trying to share general status, but the forced orientation in the browser wasn't working well. Adding to the home screen works better and assists with correct orientation, so ignore the tablet issue.

Roger. Could you clarify "forced orientation"? Was it stuck in landscape?

Depending on the difficulty involved, adding a button to flip orientation in the browser 90 degrees would be nice, though obviously lower priority.

Do you mean in a desktop or tablet browser? If Desktop, is it the case your monitor can go vertical?

Thanks again for taking the time to answer all my questions!

The dark popup window is what I am talking about currently. Especially with the dice icons being so small...
For reference, here is a ammo exploded mech...

Oh woooow, your screen is monster! Thanks for posting!

Good news! I just checked and you can scale up the text size in that console (and in obligation strip) by just using your browser's built in size-adjust. On Chrome it should be 'view > zoom in'. There should also be a shortcut including '+' and alt/cntrl/windows key or similar.

I tried out the site on my tablet and have some similar scaling issues, though the lower resolution on my tablet helps. My tablet is running Chrome on Android 6.0.1 for what that's worth. One thing that would help both cases is to allow screen zoom to zoom in past full on the record sheet itself (and scroll across the sheet beyond X% zoom, or a check box to unlock the zoom). The current behavior of locking to the most restrictive dimension is understandable, but it can make it hard to show people without passing the tablet. Unless I'm missing something.

Gotcha. Sorry to pester, but more questions:
- What's the screen size and resolution on the tablet?
- Were you using FS in a browser window or after having added it to the home-screen and launched from there?
- What information were you trying to share specifically? [Assuming attack results but don't want to make sure.]

Looking into re-enabling browsers' default pinch-to zoom behavior is on my mind for sure — there's just some other technical issues blocking this at the moment that I need to resolve.

Out of curiosity what are you using for a backend on this and what language/IDE are you programming in/with? I have a few web/app/program ideas and I'm working out which ideas will go which route.

The backend is extremely minimal (relative to the client).

There's a server for inter-client messaging is Node.js (running on Heroku). It uses Express and Socket.io. All it does though is dumbly route JSON messages to the right user and so is not complex, in contrast to an actual game where the game-state (or even game-logic) would be centralized on the server. I wrote it in straight JS using VSCode. The client can run without it.

The client also access a unit data catalog hosted completely separately in an AWS S3 bucket. The catalog is really just a limited fork of MegaMek files plus JSON translations  (https://github.com/IanBellomy/helm-core-fragment). Because I'm only doing name searches (using a pre-generated XML doc no less) there's no database to build and query. (The sheets' SVG representations are generated client side.) The client can also run without this catalog.

I do rely on PHP for performing a poor-man's 'import component html-template + style' but I do this as a build step, so the client is static and can run offline straight from a device.

Aside: Printing sheets / creating PDFs is handled straight from the browser with some careful CSS and a trick or two 🤘, so there's no need to hit a server on that front either. Though Safari's @page support is bad©, so printing works way better in Chrome and FireFox.

Maybe a better general solution would be a font size slider. Then users could go large or small as desired.
Also, is there a trick to selecting which ammo slot is used to fire a weapon?

Re: Ammo slot selection: Coming in the next version soon.

Re: text-size: Are we still just talking about the pop-over message window / unit event console? On your screen is the text for that panel smaller than, say, the critical hit text on the sheet? Could you PM me a screenshot if so?

Regardless, desktop support items are just not a goal [atm] regardless of how trivial they might seem. I can elaborate if you'd like, but the short of it is that there are many issues important to the tablet use focus (like 'select ammo bin') that haven't been addressed. For an idea, see the list here: https://flechs.net/sheets-preview/changeLog.txt

I keep issues in like this mind when planning though so I appreciate it being brought up.

27 inch monitor at 16:9 viewed at approximately 20 inches. I think the issue may be auto sizing to fit the screen in landscape mode when you are programming for portrait mode on the tablets.

Cool. Thanks!
You're not the first person I've talked to who wants to use, or is already using, a desktop system alongside their table-games (BT or otherwise). It's not something I expected and the actual spatial situation in these case seems to vary a lot. (One person had a screen mounted on the other side of the room from where they sat, I think so that it'd be visible to other players for whatever other things they were using it for.) If I loop back around to desktop (not any time soon), It'll be helpful to know what the actual situations are. 

But yea, landscape is definitely not accommodated right now.

Looks interesting. What's your download/distribution method?

It's web based so you can just go here: https://sheets.flechs.net
The more raw 'preview' version in the video is here: https://flechs.net/sheets-test/

On Android/Chome there should be a button in the top right to 'add to homescreen'. If done, you can launch it full-screen from an icon on your homescreen. The new preview version can even launch offline (sans unit catalog).

On iPads/iOS/iPadOS you'll need to dig for the 'add to home screen option' in the send/share options menu to add.

Hi all,

I'm new-ish here. I played with this group, once, almost ten years ago at Sci-Fi city, but moved away soon after. I've since returned to Cinci and am getting back into the game.

In addition to looking for some Battletech around Cincinnati proper, I'm also looking for a couple players to user-test a digital tablet-based record sheet program I'm working on. It'd involve playing at least one small encounter (~2v2) and maybe a little debriefing, hopefully no longer than 2 hours total. I can provided additional details as needed. Feel free to reply here or PM if interested.

Cheers!