Playing on a Phone

Purple Cat runs in the phone's browser — nothing to install. Open the same link you use on a computer. On a touch screen the app gives you a phone layout: a bar along the bottom instead of the rail down the left, and on a map, buttons that put the map, your character, the chat or the sidebar on the screen.

The phone layout is chosen by how you point, not by how wide the screen is: a finger gets it at any size, a mouse or trackpad gets the desktop layout down to a window narrower than a phone in landscape. A tablet with a trackpad therefore gets the desktop layout; the same tablet without one gets this.

The bar

The bar sits at the bottom, above the footer, on every page.

Off the map it holds Menu, which opens the navigation over the whole screen — the same rail the desktop shows: Home, Play, Campaigns, Characters, Library, Systems, with the current section's pages indented beneath it, and at the foot Search, Settings, Notifications (with how many are unread) and your profile — and Chat. Pick anything and it closes. The Menu button shows your unread notifications too.

On a map the bar is, left to right: Menu, Map, Chat and More. They work as tabs over the map: the one whose screen is open is marked by a pill behind its icon (Map, while nothing covers the map). Tapping another switches the screen in place; tapping the open one again, tapping Map, or swiping the screen down by its top edge closes it.

Map shows the map, closing whatever is over it.
Menu opens the navigation, as off the map.
Chat opens the chat over the whole screen; see below.
More opens the left sidebar over the whole screen: its panels as icons across the top — Me, System, Library, Edit Map, Edit Campaign, Wiki, the Initiative Tracker, and Edit Object while you are inside an Object — and the chosen one beneath. With none chosen it lists them, with what each holds. Tap the chosen panel's icon to go back to the list.

The tool palette is pinned to the map's upper right as one button (🛠). Tap it and the tools run down the right edge — Add to Map, Delete Mode, Drawing Mode, Measure, and the GM's Fog of War, Vision Blocking and Edit Grid — with Find a token by name, Undo, Redo and History, and at the foot the button that folds it back. A tool's own controls (the drawing tools, the snap bar) stand down the left edge.

The map's name hangs from the top edge in a small tab, between the palette and the left edge's tools — tap it to switch maps, change the layer you are on, see who is connected, or invite players. Tap a token to see its hover card; tap empty space to dismiss it. Tap your own token to play as it, or choose one under More → Me.

Modes

A tool that puts the map in a mode — Measure, Targeting, Delete, Drawing, Heal and Harm, placing an Object — shows a strip across the top of the map, where the map's name was; the name moves down under it. The strip names the mode and has its main button (Done, Cancel, Cancel Drawing). The ⌄ at its end shows the instructions and any other choices.

Mini-Me

While you play a token, a second bar stands on the bottom one:

the token's picture, its name, and up to two of its bars (HP and the like);
its conditions and effects, a letter or icon each — tap them for the full list, where you can remove one, edit a timed effect, or add one;
Actions (⚡) — the token's actions in a sheet, in tabs by the system's groups (Ability Scores, Attacks and Powers in System 8). Tap one to run it; ⋯ beside it shows its description or edits it. What your token can reach on the map (a door, a chest) is listed first, as Nearby;
Character sheet (📄) — the whole character sheet, growing up out of the bar; tapping the picture, the name or the bars does the same. The back button at its top left, the same button again, or the phone's back gesture collapses it. If you own other tokens on the map, the sheet's title switches between them;
× — stop playing the token;
End Turn, at the right end of the bar while it is your token's turn.

The bar stays in view under the chat, More, the Menu and the sheets.

Chat

The chat at full height, with the composer above the bar. The header names the view showing and carries the voice-transcript button and Chat Settings.

View (▴) opens a list of your conversations — the campaign's, the map's, your direct messages, Personal — above the four views (Chat, Transcript, Initiative Tracker, Combat Log), the current ones checked. The row above the log names the channel and opens the same list. See Channels.

Unread messages show as a badge on the Chat button while the chat is closed.

Sheets and the back gesture

The Actions, conditions and View sheets slide up over the map and stop at the bars; the bars stay tappable. A tap anywhere outside the sheet closes it. While you play a token its bar stays in view under all of them. The whole-screen views — the character sheet, the chat, More and the Menu — are each one step in the browser's history, so going back closes them rather than leaving the map. On a map, a horizontal drag pans the map.

Landscape

Turn the phone and the bar stays at the bottom; whatever is above it gets the rest. The character sheet lays itself out by the width it has, as it does in a desktop sidebar.

Notifications

Toasts and the action-result bubbles all sit above the bars, never behind them — and above a sheet while one is open. Your turn in initiative is announced once, when it starts. Notifications for you (invitations, mentions, requests) are under Menu → Notifications, and announced as they arrive.