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Dual-Screen Initiative Tracker: JInitTracker

I've been slowly putting together a GM toolset for dual-monitor.  I currently run a 12" dual-core Atom Asus laptop with a 22" USB AOC Monitor.  Screenmonkey seems to be my favorite tool at the moment for displaying stuff like maps on the dual monitor set up.  The big thing I don't like is the various initiative trackers I've found thus far.  They all look like spreadsheets and seem to want to track everything.  I wanted something more like my combat pad, so I wrote a little Java app I call JInitTracker.

I coded this in two nights with crappy Java code in Eclipse.   Most of the underlying code is AWT.  I haven't even gotten around to double-buffering to eliminate flicker yet.  So here it is:

  • It starts with a single circle token you can drag around to indicate round.
  • Double-click on the background to add one of the rectangular name tokens.
  • Double-click on the token to change its text.  It pops up a text entry dialogue.
  • Ctrl-click on a token to change it's type (which currently changes the border color from blue (ally) to red (enemy / hostile) to green (neutral / calm) ).
  • Drag a token off the screen to delete it.
  • Double-click with ctrl to move all name tokens to the bottom of the window in a stack (suitable for a starting place for moving tokens into place for initiative).
  • It automatically notes when you are running dual screen and starts a clone version on the second screen.
  • The clone does not respond to controls, but just mirrors the master display.
  • The clone is always on top, so for my setup, it shows over ScreenMonkey.
  • I run it at about 300 wide by 500 tall.  We'll see if this is readable at my game table.
I consider this an alpha version, though I'm not really a big Java programmer, and I'm not sure I want to release this thing because of 'support' issues.

I'm thinking I may want to add a few 'overlays' to indicate status -- in particular Dying (maybe a slash across the name token), Dead (X across the name token), and Prone (maybe a small square in the top right corner with a P or a down arrow?).  Typically I don't run into many other things I need to indicate.  It seems like indicators I could easily toggle through using an Alt-Click.

I still have yet to set the background and token images as even resources in the jar.  Right now they are just png files hanging around that I made with Gimp.

I guess I'll try it out and see what happens.  It will be interesting to see if there is any public interest for it on this blog too.
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