Improve user experience of players when host uses the focus tool.
The focus tool allows the host to snap the player cameras to match their own. At the moment, the effect is extremely abrupt. I've had players tell me that they thought it was a bug and were annoyed at losing control of what they were looking at.
Here are a few things that might improve this experience...
- The host's screen should fade black and back in again quickly, like the appearance of taking a photo, to provide feedback that the action "worked".
- Disable the focus action for a second or two to avoid accidental re-clicks.
- Transition the player camera slowly to the new point and zoom level while disabling manual control of the scene.
- Avoid focusing at all if the player's camera is already "near" the focused point.
I kind of see two use cases here:
- I want to transition the players to another scene
- I want to show my players something
In the first case, it might be more intuitive to attach the view mover to the scene tabs, something like
In the second case, I know roll20 has a ping tool and Owlbear rodeo has a laser pointer. Both ways do not steal control from the players. Maybe something like this would be good. Another example could be drawing a rectangle around the DM's visible area and providing some visual nudges towards that rectangle - or drawing a big pulse around the shared cursor