Version 11 Q&A

[proud breach]

===================================
Version 11 Q&A Thread

I'm not able to do a Twitch dev stream today, but in lieu of that I wanted to offer the community a chance to participate in a Q&A thread where I'll be answering questions throughout the day about Version 11.

[umbral star]

Will Foundry’s ProseMirror implementation support inserting tables?

[languid socket]

How much of a performance increase should we see with animated assets / maps?

[proud breach]

Yep! We're planning to work on it during V11. We weren't able to do it quickly/easily because it requires some custom prose mirror plugin implementation to do well.

[white nexus]

Just how 🔥 is the new /Setup screen?

[proud breach]

Good question, I don't have a benchmark result to share with you on that. There are some theoretical gains that should occur due to changes in PIXI v7, but it's hard to disentangle them from other things we have also improved. @last cliff may have some further thoughts on what the impacts of PIXI v7 migration are for scenes using video backgrounds.

[proud breach]

I'm proud of it, but it's a UI change and so inherently there's going to be a lot of hate I think. We'll see.

[blazing jungle]

Can the "News" and "Featured Content" panels be shut off? I don't need to get News in-Foundry and the Featured Content is 99% useless to the games I'm interested in.

[proud breach]

Not currently, but we've had discussions about this within the team. For now, no.

[keen notch]

How much room is there for change on the new setup screen? Because I've got pretty major issues with the color palette used (it seems to be the same eyestrain-inducing colors from the new website) and can we have a proper list view instead of the (IMO) very problematic tile view?

[dusky mauve]

With the new compendium overhaul, will it be easier to transfer data from world to world?

[mental raptor]

Major updates obviously necessitate module updates and even overhauls in some cases. Although this update is clearly still at the very start, how much work to update the average module do you anticipate this update needing?

[proud breach]

I like the idea of a display toggle between "tile view" and "list view". I think we should explore that. I don't know about the other concerns you've raised, but part of the prototype process is collecting user feedback.

[blazing jungle]

I'm with mxzf on perfering a list view over a tile view. I don't (and likely never will) have appropriate art for my worlds to use in tiles like that. I suspect I'm just going to see big black boxes.

[proud breach]

Not because of the compendium overhaul per-se, but we have some other features planned for V11 that will make it easier for users to create their own personal module for sharing data across worlds. So this is definitely a user experience that we are focusing on making easier for people.

[keen notch]

I mean, I know I'm gonna be poking core files to get a more usable UI if it ships as-is. I'm just hoping it can get into a better state before stable

[raven zodiac]

I really don't care for the tiles especially when you don't setup a background image on the worlds

[blazing jungle]

Let me know what you come up with.

[raven zodiac]

A configuration file for those colors would be nice

[errant dust]

Can I customise the setup screen to hide adverts from appearing in software I’ve already purchased?

[hazy stream]

Co-signing this hard. Definitely want the option to be able to turn these panels off.

[proud breach]

Our goals and expectations for V11 is that this effort should be low for most modules. We have specifically approached V11 from a perspective of wanting to minimize disruption following V10 which was a really important update from a technical perspective, but was more disruptive than we had hoped for.

Our goal for V11 is for it to be a very smooth process for modules and systems to offer compatibility. So far, I think we are achieving that goal. Most modules and systems already work out-of-the-box.

[blazing jungle]

#1081224367171715102 message

[little folio]

I recall in the previous livestream previewing V11 features, it was mentioned that the new database architecture would somehow obsolete/remove the pack/compendium getDocument(id) functionality.

I'm currently developing/testing a system (designed specifically for Foundry to allow crunchy mechanics but with the busywork automated away) that uses this functionality to dynamically fetch the 'master copy' of our 'Stunt' items (abilities/talents/etc that take the form of cards player-characters can unlock and assemble into decks), since each actor could potentially have 1000+ different Stunts unlocked, and it seemed sensible from a performance standpoint to not have 1000+ unique item entries duplicated across the many actors a campaign could accrue, so we just store a list of IDs instead.

Is there still a way to fetch things from compendiums by IDs in the new model?

[proud breach]

One thing to comment on about folks concerned that their worlds will not have any tile artwork. Most game systems define (or in the future may define) a piece of artwork that is used in this situation when the world itself does not provide one.

[spice heath]

For people who cannot install 11V2 immediately, can anyone share screenshots of the new Setup and World screens?

[last cliff]

Very difficult to say. The PIXI v7 framework has been streamlined, and the new interaction system: FederatedEvent, is fast. Thus, at the CPU level it should be smoother. Also, users with high performance cards, high refresh rate screen, and in maximum performance mode should notice a better animation quality.

[blazing jungle]

Most? What percentage of the 241 current systems do so?

[errant dust]

Please revisit this decision, it’s effectively advertising, in software I’ve paid for a perpetual license for. I can’t see this being popular. News is fine, but “featured premium content”?

[hazy stream]

You can find screenshots in the update notes. https://foundryvtt.com/releases/11.293

[keen notch]

I think the lack of artwork is a relatively minor concern compared to the tile UI itself. I know that's the case for myself, at least.

I strongly dislike tile-based UIs just period. I don't think they're the right interface to use for a lot of things that people use them for. A list of worlds in Foundry (or a list of things period) is something I don't think they're appropriate for in general. At least, not for me.

[proud breach]

Have no fear, compendiumPack.getDocument(id) isn't going anywhere! Sorry if it sounded to you like that was the case.

[hazy stream]

Being able to switch between tile and list view would be fine, though, for me.

[little folio]

Awesome, thanks for the clarification!

[errant dust]

The changes to compendia, the Pixi overhaul, and finally being able to edit active effects fully are all brilliant improvements

[raven zodiac]

I agree here. I really dislike the tiles and it's more difficult to find my worlds now as I have a lot of them for a lot of one shots/little projects

[proud breach]

Probably low at the moment, but I wager once Foundry VTT has a UI that displays system-level artwork if present more systems will rapidly adopt to add artwork 😉

[raven zodiac]

At least it can be searched

[hexed coral]

Does the addition of grandchild embedded documents mean we'll be able to relatively painlessly implement items within items?

[hazy stream]

I am delighted to see folder depth increase to 4.

[keen notch]

Potentially, yeah. I still have concerns about the UI design direction as a whole (I love Foundry's current simple and functional UI, whereas the new one looks like a generic launcher page that EA/Ubisoft/etc would make), but the tile based setup is the biggest non-starter for me

[raven zodiac]

I also feel the warnings are less useful as I have to mouse over to see what they are (on specific worlds)

[blazing jungle]

Or won't, because they don't have license to distribute any art as part of the system.

[raven zodiac]

As long as an option for default view was available this would be nice. Edit: As in to set one of the two views as default

[proud breach]

The hierarchy that is supported for a document schema is still fixed, so you will only be able to work within the parameters of the hierarchy that we define as allowed for documents.

It's fair to say though that we haven't gone down the route of having more deeply nested hierarchy because our document management APIs haven't been able to support that. Now that our DB architecture and document management APIs can support it elegantly, we may move in the direction of adding more such relationships.

[blazing jungle]

Speaking of art... I don't care for the background. It feels very fantasy-specific, leaning towards implying that Foundry is intended for one kind of gaming. I would prefer a plain, non-genre-leaning but still Foundry-branded background like we currently have. Can it be changed (even if at the server-configuration level)?

[proud breach]

Hey folks, a general request. Sharing your opinions to a certain extent is welcome here, but this should ultimately be a Q&A thread, so if it's not a question please leave space for people who are asking questions.

[rare echo]

With new versions being pushed out yearly, is any consideration given to slowing updates thus requiring modules programmers to not have to convert their modules to support the latest Foundry release so often?

[raven zodiac]

Oh the tiles are on the systems and modules too... That's just ick

[keen notch]

Will there be a spot for feedback like that to be collected and, hopefully, acted on at some point?

[proud breach]

I think as a long-standing mod on this server you're well aware of the feedback mechanisms we use. Yes, of course.

[raven zodiac]

Oh found a bug. Can't install Premium content 😛

[proud breach]

Not currently, but potentially yes! It's something worth exploring as an application configuration option.

[vast stump]

The UI update talks about a more convenient layout and responsive Design. Does that also mean more work toward tablet/touch support? That's one place where I'd love to see improvement still.

[hexed coral]

Follow-up on this: What sort of embedding depth does the db change support, in theory? Does the change just mean "grandchild" documents or could it potentially lead to "great-grandchild" documents?

[proud breach]

Our goals as a team would be to release major versions at least twice a year, but to ensure that those major versions are less disruptive than some have been in the past. We have been oscillating a bit with V8 being relatively disruptive, V9 being pretty stable, V10 relatively disruptive, V11 pretty stable. We would like to normalize that and hopefully have every generational update of Foundry VTT be in the "pretty stable" category.

It's difficult to execute because sometimes there are critical technical changes that we need to make for the long-term good of the product. We try to do those in the least disruptive way possible.

[proud breach]

Yeah, we designed the new setup menu to work well on Tablet - although definitely further testing and iteration is required. This is just a prototype.

The design is responsive for lower resolutions and compatible with touch input.

[hazy stream]

Might be slightly out of scope, but given how close touch improvements came to winning the Patreon poll, did you consider implementing it for v11 (in addition to compendium improvements)? Can users expect it to appear in v12, or will it simply be an option in the next Patreon poll?

[peak peak]

Compendium Folders: will this allow creating top-level folders, instead of (or in addition to) the current situation where everything is on top? or is the new feature only for folders inside compendiums?

[gilded trail]

Are the compendium improvements going to include a Shared Compendiums feature to allow us to easily share compendiums and their content between worlds? The Forge currently has a module that allows this, but it would be fantastic if it was natively supported and had the polish that came with that.

[rare echo]

Understood, thanks @proud breach. I know it's a challenge between rolling out improvements and features, and having compatible with older versions. It just was readily noticeable moving to v10, and numerous programmers have stopped updating their modules. It is good to know y'all have a plan.

[keen notch]

Point of order: mobile updates were never in the running. Touch improvements were all that was on the list (for tablets with a more usable screen size)

[hazy stream]

I knew I was going to mess up that terminology. 😄 I've updated the query.

[proud breach]

We have made some touch improvements in V11 actually, yes. We swapped all our old click events to pointer events which work for mouse, stylus pen, and - to a degree - touch gestures. It's not going to be a core area of focus though since it didn't win the poll.

Also the new setup menu design is responsive to support lower resolution devices like tablet.

[knotty geyser]

Modules that modify the chatlog: seems like this has an obvious answer, but I may as well ask. Will modules like Dragon Flagon Chat Enhancement and Tabbed Chatlog be affected by Version 11? UI changes were mentioned in upcoming changes.

[proud breach]

The new feature added in V11P2 is folders inside compendium packs!

We do have plans for folder organization of the compendium sidebar itself, that's not done yet but will be something we work on later in the V11 cycle.

[proud breach]

Please see <#1081224367171715102 message>

[peak peak]

can you share what this new "warnings"/"error log" button does? is it like the "updated module versions" window?

[proud breach]

I'm sorry but I won't really be able to comment on the specific compatibility (or not) of individual packages (there are around 2000 of them). I would not expect a module that makes improvements to the chatlog to be disrupted by V11, but we did add some chatlog improvements ourselves in V11 like a different scrolling behavior where the chat log does not autoscroll when new messages arrive but presents you with a "Scroll to Bottom" button. Depending on what a "Chat Enhancement" module does, it could be affected by that improvement we have made.

[raven zodiac]

It shows all the warnings and errors from packages that you used to have to retrieve from the error console to see

[gilded trail]

Awesome, thanks. Will this feature perhaps include something like the ability to have actors and other items in a scene reference entities from a compendium rather than entities that exist within the world? Right now, if you add a scene from a compendium to another world, all the actors and items in that scene break if they don't already exist within that second world.

[proud breach]

Yes, sure! It's a way to surface warnings or errors from installed packages in a user-friendly way that makes it easier for a user to understand what packages may have issues that need addressing.

Here's an example of mine currently:

[mystic sierra]

For the Worlds page, I'd love a little dropdown to decide filter order - Alphabetical, Time Played, Recently Played (since it looks like, based on the notes, it will currently only be Recently Played), plus maybe the option to reverse any of those orders

[raven zodiac]

The new sidebar on the launch page configuration page feels very much like it's advertising at me (especially the featured content module ) I can 100% tell you I will be blocking that element with uBlock Orgins. Is there any chance to get the ability to toggle that off?

[proud breach]

Good suggestion, currently it sorts according to most recently played, but I agree ways to toggle the sort order is a good idea for us to add.

[hexed coral]

This is also the first thing I thought of when reading about this feature. I'm no fan of seeing ads (in general), I definitely don't want to see them every time I launch Foundry

[last cliff]

I'm just speaking for myself here. Is it so dramatic to have a link to featured content? My personal habit with ads is quite simple, I ignore them, until I come across content that interests me 🙂

[hazy stream]

For me, ads are awful. Don't want to see them. I have enough ads in spaces that I can't control.

[proud breach]

taps the sign. Hey folks, Q&A thread is for questions! #1065764029278212230 is for feedback!

[cyan anvil]

On the world selection page, where do the images for each world come from? And if I'm setting them, what does it look like if I don't set any images?

[severe oracle]

I really like the look of the new configuration page, and unless my eyes deceive me there are also changes on the compendiums. Is this something you plan to generalize on the UI completely for v11?

[gilded trail]

Just bumping this question because I think it may have been missed. 🙂

[errant dust]

I appreciate your position, not least of which because you've just clearly admitted as a staff member that it is intentional advertising.

My issue is that I bought a license for a piece of software, which at the time was categorically not ad-supported, this is a slippery slope to Roll20 style adverts during scene/map transitions.

My question: would you as the staff team actively reconsider making this a feature that can be toggled off? It doesn't have to be removed completely, it can be on by default, but let those of us who don't want to see it get rid of it.

[tacit path]

I assume it's background image you always have set in the past for the login screen, probably falling back to the default image from there, or a new one just for this purpose.

[proud breach]

The current design is that the world thumbnail is determined by the World background image falling back to the System-defined background image.

It's possible that assigning a background image for the world might fail to take effect without a reload or server restart. If that's the case it's a bug worth reporting in #1065764070680186930.

We have plans, however, to add a specific "thumbnail" field rather than using the background image which is not the most frugal solution. We didn't get to that in P2 but will be working on it in Dev1.

[raven zodiac]

I remove them because it annoys me to be advertised at in something I bought

[hexed coral]

Would like to re-ask my previous question. The system I'm developing ideally supports an arbitrary depth of item nesting. The current implementation works, but requires accommodating for every instance of functions which handle embedded documents.
Will the db change theoretically make this less painful?

[proud breach]

We did a lot of work to standardize the behavior of compendium packs to work the same way that world sidebars work. This extended to the underlying software design where both concepts now share the same underlying code implementation. A consequence of this is that compendium packs look more like a sidebar tab now, for example:

[proud breach]

I realize I didn't finish answering your question:

Is this something you plan to generalize on the UI completely for v11?
Not in V11. We are only doing the setup UI redesign in V11. This is part of a longer-term overhaul that will probably (don't hold me to this) look like this:

V11 - setup menu redesign
V12 - game UI redesign, initially disabled but opt-in for testing
V13 - game UI redesign, initially enabled but opt-out to return to old UI
V14 - game UI redesign, enabled with no opt-out

[severe oracle]

Well, that's just great. 👏 Personally I like it a lot, I will be able to remove my interface module. :D Good job. Thanks for the answer!

[proud breach]

Not exactly, I'm afraid. There is some complexity there in terms of the management of IDs which is not so straightforward, although we're certainly going to be working on this UX to try and have things be as seamless as possible.

[cyan anvil]

Might be worth considering how easy/hard it is to tell apart different worlds on that page if none of them have a world image set. As the way the info is weighted, it's the background image that has the clearest level of identification.

[proud breach]

My question: would you as the staff team actively reconsider making this a feature that can be toggled off? It doesn't have to be removed completely, it can be on by default, but let those of us who don't want to see it get rid of it.
Yeah, we would consider this for sure. We will consider this.

My initial position is this. I want to create an environment where the best quality content possible can flourish in Foundry VTT. I aspire to a day where publishers might invest 6-figures in creating a Foundry VTT product. I want to see products made for Foundry VTT that blow away prior conceptions that people have about what digital TTRPG content looks like. I want to see things made that herald a new generation of roleplaying experiences.

The only way we will ever get that kind of investment and that kind of quality of product is if publishers feel that they can recoup investment in creating high-value content like that. An important friction towards achieving that future is discoverability and awareness. There isn't a single solution to that, but having an opportunity for a publisher who has made something truly remarkable to be able to let people discover and find out about its existence is an important part of the business strategy to create an environment where it's possible to achieve my vision about the quality of content available.

Please note this is just me paraphrasing (in a limited way) my thoughts on the matter and not me trying to convince you that you're wrong. The short answer to your question is that we are definitely going to assess feedback before making any sort of final decision.

[ashen scaffold]

hey mr atropos long time no chat i wanted to ask is the implementation of my suggestion for roofs going into v11 so that we can fully remove the foreground for gms? i saw you added it then removed it after adding it. so i got confused.

[proud breach]

We don't have - at this time - plans to support Items inside Items as a hierarchical structure. Those plans might change, but our current guidance for authors who want this kind of experience is to store all items as a flat collection of siblings and organize those items using standard tree structures and algorithms. You can accomplish your goals for the system efficiently and elegantly without requiring hierarchical data storage of items.

[tepid tangle]

With the user data collection, do you have plans to get similar info from hosting providers (eg forge)? There's notable differences in the forge stats and GitHub download stats, and an accidental bias to self hosted users (or those on hosting providers with less modifications to the interface) could skew things a fair amount.

[proud breach]

Hmm.. I'll have to double check if something went wrong, but that issue should be tagged to the V11 project. So, yes! I think it was a good suggestion and we should hopefully implement it in V11.

[proud breach]

Good question. We need to work with our hosting providers to carefully test V11P2 on their infrastructure to understand what happens "out of the box" and what requires some further integration. Ideally we will receive these usage stats from hosting partners as well (if users have elected to share them) without any special effort required.

I do want us to receive stats (if permitted) from users hosting via 3rd party partners as that is an important part of understanding our user ecosystem.

[errant dust]

I'll try to keep this short as it's not a question, thanks for the response. 😅
It's great to hear that you'll reconsider, I'd also love to see that sort of investment (infact why settle for 6 figures!)
I definitely see your side on discoverability, and it's clearly no mistake that this update also features telemetry:

(I see you like PF2e, how about this adventure path! Nice selection of content modules, how about this audio pack from your favourite creator?)
For me, I own multiple licenses, am a Patreon supporter, if I want something, I will seek it out, but I do not want it shoved in my face.
A toggle button rather than a white square for a blocked asset would keep my impression of Foundry a lot more positive each time I look at it.

[ashen scaffold]

also could the standard behaviour of opening actors/journals be changed to expand and pull focus to the sheets you open. as minimised tabs for actors and journals dont expand and when you are double clicking on the actor or journal on the canvas its expected they expand. could that be changed for v11? because it would save alot of time for us gms trying to find things that are minimised. its a good workflow/qol improvement. many thanks.

[dapper oxide]

Will the UI exposure include the exposure of the music tab? If so, in which version of V11 is it worth waiting for? The music tab is in great need of improvement, several of my friends DM use third-party tools due to problems with the UI. Interaction with music is very uncomfortable right now.

[dreamy spindle]

Question: for the devs, out of the new updates, which one excites you the most? And which one do you think you would use the most as a DM? What about as a player?

[shy forum]

If, for example, an actor's sheet is minimized and you click on the actor in the sidebar Foundry will already expand and bring it to the front. If that's not working for you it might be a module issue.

[ashen scaffold]

its not for side bar behaviour. its for on the canvas behaviour.

[shy forum]

If you click on a token and have the actor's sheet open (even if minimized) it will also be brought to front and expanded.

[keen notch]

I've run into this issue myself a lot while running BB the other week. If you open up a journal and minimize it to clear up some screen real estate and then click another note linking to the same journal, nothing happens. You have to un-minimize manually

[proud breach]

I think it's unlikely that we will make any significant changes to the playlists tab in V11 - but if we do end up working on a UI overhaul of the game UI in V12 we would work on it then.

[shy forum]

Ah, got'cha. That I can replicate. So that might be a journal specific bug. Will look into it!

[proud breach]

As a dev: improvements to game system data models and the API around that
As a GM: compendium folders
As a player: new weather effects

[grand wyvern]

Q: is v11 winning? Yes/no.

[dreamy spindle]

Thanks! I appreciate the break down! And it helps me know what you all think I can sell my players on too. 😉 looking forward to all of this!

(And as a fellow dev, I can really appreciate the api improvements!)

[errant dust]

Really? Not proximity walls?

[proud breach]

ooh, forgot about that! YES

[dusky mauve]

As featured content will now be shown, is this featured content in any way personalised? For example will it show featured content for systems I don't play.

[tacit path]

Actually, the more pertinent one in my head, not showing content I already own. Nothing like seeing an ad for something you already have.

[proud breach]

I don't have a great answer for you yet. We're taking it slow for now. In V11 P2 this is just a static UI mockup basically, the source data doesn't come from anywhere.

At first it may not be personalized. One of the things I would like us to do if the user has elected to share opt-in usage data with us is to be sure that we surface a recommendation to them that is likely to be interesting and relevant. If the user doesn't ever play dnd5e, we should not show a featured content that is a 5e adventure.

[ashen scaffold]

im currently using a mod that re opens things you click on to make it work.

[sonic flower]

Two little questions from my side!

1. I suggested some time ago having some way of installing modules on the S3 integration - generalizing that more would be better probably: having a way for appropriate modules to live in the S3 integration, say, big and/or animated battle maps, sound effects, music packs, etc.
   Just wanted to know if this was still up for consideration! I understand it might be a niche use case, but as someone how self-hosts, and tries to be aware of the space requirement of modules vs the hosting solution I set up, it would mean a lot if I could those higher-capacity-demanding resources in my games in a smart way.
2. Considering the ongoing efforts on the UI front, is there any plans to also start considering smaller-size screens either as full clients or in some other fashion like character-sheet viewers or the likes, for tablets and phones?

[fleet bloom]

a good note, and one that we might be able to do even without opt-in data, since the website knows what content you own

[tender jasper]

How customizeable or even moddeable will the (main menu) UI be in the future?

[fleet bloom]

we still have no plans for packages to be allowed on Setup screens, but we may roll out some more Foundry-defined themes and light customization options

[tacit path]

Probably also worth adding the note that you can run out of featured content that's valid to show, thus remember to handle that edge case.

[proud breach]

I suggested some time ago having some way of installing modules on the S3 integration - generalizing that more would be better probably: having a way for appropriate modules to live in the S3 integration, say, big and/or animated battle maps, sound effects, music packs, etc.
Just wanted to know if this was still up for consideration! I understand it might be a niche use case, but as someone how self-hosts, and tries to be aware of the space requirement of modules vs the hosting solution I set up, it would mean a lot if I could those higher-capacity-demanding resources in my games in a smart way.
Not up for consideration right now, but support for remotely installed package is something that I would like to explore in the future. I think there is an opportunity to do something valuable there, but it doesn't fit into our near-term roadmap.

[fleet bloom]

the fallback is to display 1001-fish always and forever, don't worry /s

[proud breach]

Considering the ongoing efforts on the UI front, is there any plans to also start considering smaller-size screens either as full clients or in some other fashion like character-sheet viewers or the likes, for tablets and phones?
Not part of the V11 redesign which only addresses the setup menu, but once we start extending our UI overhaul to the rest of the game environment a key goal will be to lower the effective screen resolution to work towards tablet support.

[ashen scaffold]

one thing that would be really useful is if it was made easier to transfer the settings.db file and paste it from world to world from the settings menu upfront. so that its easy to transfer module settings from world to world. it would be super useful for setup times and it doesnt have any breakages afaik. could this be made a feature? this is really useful for gms like myself who run alot of games in different worlds.

[novel hawk]

Does Foundry as a company intend to keep an eye on partners selling premium content?

There are some examples where content still hasn't been updated to v10, and once v11 hits, those may be even further behind and less likely to work.

[proud breach]

Yeah, it's definitely something we are keeping an eye on. We want to help make sure that content does not get left behind. We will offer a range of support options to the publisher ranging from encouragement, reminders, suggestions, guidance, assistance, or even possibly intervention in extreme cases.

Getting content over the V9->V10 hurdle is sort of the hard step since V10 changed a few more things than we would have normally liked. V10->V11 should be very low effort.

[grand wyvern]

Is there more in store than what has been shown for 'windows 11'? (And do you prefer we don't call them that?)

[spare shore]

Loving the new setup screen, especially the card layout for the worlds, I suspect it uses the world background from the login screen as the image? Can't wait to dig in and check out the other tabs.
One thing I did note however is how dark it is (yes I know, everyone's a critic). In general I am in favor of a dark-mode UI but I feel that the current rework may have gone a few steps too far. It's all a bit too dark almost, makes me want to turn up the gamma on my screen or get a flashlight. It's especally egreggious on the House Divided screencap with the dark background image where the individual UI elements are very hard to distinguish from the background. In short it lacks a bit of contrast, the important bits need some more hghlighting.

[fresh spoke]

I think I saw a GH issue for something like this float by at one point - with the new changes to the setup screen, is there the potential for options to hide certain worlds or favorite/pin them to the top of the list? Seems doubly advantageous in the new tile view. Looks really slick!

[proud breach]

We added reverse-proximity in V11P2 which hasn't been shown off yet. This allows walls that permit visibility through them when you are distant from them but not when you are up close.

[proud breach]

One thing that doesn't come through from a static screencap is that a world that you aren't hovering on has its background darkened to be less obtrusive and to provide a (hopefully) nice UX as you browse around the screen. For example this:

Becomes this when you hover over it:

feedback is welcome, just clarifying that since it's probably not obvious from a still shot

[spare shore]

I'd actually recommend making those hover effects the default, at least the card border to help distinguish a tile from the background. it wouldn't be obtrusive on light color images and would help the darker images a lot

[proud breach]

Yeah, I want to add a pinning/favorite system. The first order change I implemented was tracking most recent timestamp which should fairly closely track to your "favorite" worlds without actually needing a pin, but we may add a star/pin type thing also.

[spare shore]

one more question, is the background image of the setup page configurable? Doesn't really matter if it is or isn't

[proud breach]

Not currently, but that suggestion has come up.

[ashen scaffold]

in addition to this i think modules should be sectioned off to their respective systems if they are system exclusive. so that when you load a world not all of the modules get loaded if they are system exclusive. and maybe having default module options in the world setup page so that you have modules youd always use for those systems. it would cut down on setup time.

[proud breach]

I may misunderstand you, but the first part of your comment already happens

[ashen scaffold]

it does? maybe mod developers are not labelling mods just exclusively for some systems. as alot load from different systems into other systems from my experience. but i think having a default module list for each system would be valuable for each created world. as a suggestion.

[fleet bloom]

the modules vended to a world are only those that are marked generically compatible or compatible with that system

[keen notch]

Yeah. Modules only show up in a world if they're marked for compatibility with that system or have no system compatibility info at all (indicating support for all systems). Stuff that explicitly defines its compatibility with other systems won't show.

[sonic flower]

it might not be the most revealing photo for what I was looking for, but desaturating the "off" version helps a lot imo; makes everything a little more grayscaley, and the hovered one pops up double-time

[dusty palm]

Since the native Compendium Folders is a feature provided already by the Compendium Folders module there will be any compatibility issues or migration script or something for the worlds currently using the module?

[tacit path]

It's going to be on the module's dev to provide any migrations.

[proud breach]

We will want to work with the module dev for Compendium Folders to provide a suggested migration path. Ideally that module will become deprecated and aside from providing a one-time migration will no longer be required. The way that module stores folder data is not inherently compatible with the way that V11 does though. Some migration would be required.

[shy swallow]

Regarding Featured Content: Would you consider at a minimum excluding Featured modules if that module requires a specific system and that system is not installed, or no world is using that system? For example, I don't use 5e or PF2e, and seeing content for those systems wouldn't be of any value to me, but modules for systems I use and system agnostic modules might be.

[wispy flower]

thats the first thing i'm gonna throw out. i'm fine if the news etc. hits me as the one running the software but i don't see any need to bother anyone beside that with the info presented. And even i would rather have that as a UI panel inside Foundry after starting it and being able to toggle "don't show this anymore" and a link in the settings to it.

[proud breach]

Yeah, as I mentioned here <#1081224367171715102 message> the goal will be for us to avoid recommending featured content to people for whom that is likely to be a poor match.

[devout mauve]

Question about grandchild editing- currently (as I understand it) when an embedded item has an embedded active effect that transfers to the item's actor, it does so by creating a copy of itself in the actor's embedded collection of active effects. This copy is removed when the source item is, but could be edited independently- and before now the AE in the source item was immutable. Now that that source AE is editable while embedded, how does that behavior/interaction work? Do the source AE and the copy placed in the Actor fully reflect one another now? (Assuming all that is system-agnostic and I'm not mistakenly including system-specific behavior)

[proud breach]

There's no change to this behavior yet, but now that we can support the active effects remaining on the Item, this is definitely a behavior we may wish to revisit. Transferring the active effect to the Actor was a bit of a crude workaround to ensure that those effects remained manageable to the API. Now that they can be managed inside their Item there is not really a need to copy/transfer them in that same way.

I created an issue to track this: https://github.com/foundryvtt/foundryvtt/issues/8978, feel free to comment on it if you have further input

[devout mauve]

Mhm. So what is the current v11 behavior, then? (Can't go installing the prototype right now to check myself, sorry). What happens when I edit the AE in an embedded item- does it replace the transferred copy?

[proud breach]

Currently there's no change in the behavior here, for some systems (like dnd5e) this workflow is blocked at a system level even though the core software now supports it.

V11P2 has opened the doors of possibility here, but not yet enacted the change that should be made to capitalize on that possibility

[late nebula]

Is there any chance of being able to select walls by clicking on them, rather than needing to click their endpoints after mousing over the wall?

[proud breach]

Possible, although we found that UX to have some messy side effects in the past. You can select walls with the rectangle-select tool without needing to grab the endpoint

[void saddle]

Sorry if already asked, Discord search...
Does the opt-in data usage contains the module list?
If yes, does it only contains officially listed modules?

[keen notch]

Pretty sure it's a straight dump of the installed module IDs+versions

It's in Logs/diagnostics.json in the user data folder

[tacit path]

A sample data output is included in the issue linked for it.

[proud breach]

Take a look at our updated https://foundryvtt.com/article/privacy-policy/, there is a section "Example Usage Data" which provides a sample.

You can also look at your own Logs/diagnostics.json file to see what would be shared (if allowed)

If yes, does it only contains officially listed modules?
The Foundry VTT server doesn't know (at the time) which packages are "officially listed" or not, so what we do is share usage data for any module that exposes a publicly installable manifest URL.

On our end (receiving the usage data), we don't really care about packages that aren't in our repo - as there's nothing we would do with that data.

[sullen stag]

I know this is a long shot. But does the responsive design of the setup screen potentially mean that mobile support is being worked on?

[keen notch]

AFAIK mobile support isn't in the short or medium term plans.

Improved tablet/touch support is on the table (it was on the poll for V11 features), though it didn't win the poll and likely isn't a meaningful focus in V11

[sullen stag]

Bummer

[grim swift]

With the filtering of worlds on that startup page can we get a ‘favourite’ filter or star.
If I have a lot of worlds I have to currently rename it “A-my world” so that it is at the top of the list.
Also tiles will mean I have to scroll more to get to other games, so another hand up for option to switch to list mode.

[oak cloud]

With the filtering of worlds on that startup page can we get a ‘favourite’ filter or star.
One of my early suggestions as well. I believe it's scoped and planned. 🙂

Also tiles will mean I have to scroll more to get to other games, so another hand up for option to switch to list mode.
Fun note; you actually have to scroll less, the tiles fit more per page than the previous view did.

[quick escarp]

I haven't heard about it in a while, are there any plans for a standalone player client? if not, will it be considered in the future?

[keen notch]

It was on the patreon poll for V11. It didn't win the poll, so it's not a thing this version, but it being on the poll means it's on the "eventually" to-do list

[ashen scaffold]

will difficult terrain be a part of the system at some point? so we can have it auto calculate distances and have maps with that specified especially for premium content?

[quick escarp]

Well I'm looking forward to it if it ever comes up again!

[grand wyvern]

That would be a system feature.

[ashen scaffold]

thats what im asking.

[keen notch]

Personally, it doesn't seem to be that important to me, it's always a browser at the end of the day, but I know some people are interested in the idea

[keen notch]

Then you should be asking in your system channel, not here. The concept of "difficult terrain" is entirely dependent on the TTRPG system defining the concept

[ashen scaffold]

ahh i confused the term system to being foundry rather than game system. my bad. but im guessing what im asking is for there to be a function to label certain squares to affect movement. and then for the system to ajudicate what that means.

[oak cloud]

welcome to module/system country nick, XD

[keen notch]

That sounds like something for #feature-suggestions; IDK if it's in the issue tracker or not

[ashen scaffold]

im stuck in module hell. i want less but i keep getting more! help!

[oak cloud]

i think handling difficult terrain is something we might one day provide some API tools to make easier---but given that those rules change significantly on a per system basis there's nothing we're gonna be able to do to make that core.

personally i don't feel it's particularly hard to tell my players "Everything in the circle template i marked costs you twice as many squares in movement"

but my players are also used to me being a bit of a jerk when it comes to automation

[ashen scaffold]

sure i can do that but i would love to have tools to remind me. coz im the kinda of gm and player that wants to focus on rp and action whilst the math is taken care of. its why i love the communities around the systems on foundry as we are getting closer to that.

[keen notch]

I vaguely suspect that whenever the "triggers on canvas" functionality gets added to Foundry, that would be an appropriate framework for systems to leverage for handling difficult terrain too

[oak cloud]

yeah, quite probably

[proud breach]

Was AFK for a bit working on something. Back to answer a few more questions!

[proud breach]

With the filtering of worlds on that startup page can we get a ‘favourite’ filter or star.
Yeah, we're planning to implement a "favorite" feature. In my own personal testing though I've found that sorting by most recently played tends to accomplish much of the same goal.

[proud breach]

No plans to do it in the near term, but it's definitely in our plans as something that is around as an option we are interested in pursuing at some point.

[mystic sierra]

v11 Q: Atropos, what's your skin care routine?

[fleet bloom]

for me, I use the tears of my players after TPK'ing them as a moisturizer

[proud breach]

Pretty inadequate I imagine. I've got a thing of facial cleanser in the shower that I use about 3/7 days per week. We're really hitting the important stuff here.

[grand wyvern]

What brand

[proud breach]

I am a soap user though, if that matters.

[fleet bloom]

@proud breach what's your favorite feature in P2 that you didn't do

[proud breach]

It is CeraVe I believe.

I don't know if that's good or not, but that's what it is.

[proud breach]

Compendium Folders 🤜 🤛

[hushed spire]

I left feedback but I thought I could post it here as a question. Why was a decision made to remove the path and clickable url from the system and modules tab?

[proud breach]

The URL ought to be restored, I think that's probably an oversight. For the path, I think that information is rarely useful because you already know the package type and you already know the package ID so the path is not surprising.

Certainly we are trying to express the necessary info about a package in a more compact format, so figuring out the right way to do that is a challenge we're working on.

There's ways we can provide that info in a more compact format though, like the URL could be a little badge that shows the URL on hover and you can click on it or copy it to clipboard or something

the old layout had a lot of unused white space and so it was pretty inefficient in terms of the number of worlds/systems/modules on screen at a given time.

[hushed spire]

But how would we know the package ID? just because someone called the module "My Module" the ID could be laslos-my-module

[proud breach]

mmm fair

[tender jasper]

What's the biggest new feature in the next V11 iteration going to be?

[fleet bloom]

Possibly a brand new Foundry CLI!

[grand wyvern]

A what

[tender jasper]

a Command Line Interface? What's the (biggest) advantage of that? How's it different from the browser console?

[fleet bloom]

it'll work without Foundry running for workflows such as "serialize this LevelDB to a human and git friendly format"

one thing we lost with the db shift was a human-readable db storage, so we want to ship a CLI that will enable you to do things like

fvtt db write --type Actor // Writes the LevelDB files to disk in a human-friendly format, one file per Document

[proud breach]

Hey folks, im going to be afk for a while. I’ll try to sweep back and answer more questions later!

[last ice]

@proud breachI really enjoy the new Layout but no fan of what is the default. I´ve zero interest in seeing Featured modules and foundry news etc. I prefer that space to be usable and costumizable for us to show the content we want. It canb be a Video, A recap of last session, a quest progress log and so on. for sure nothing commercial in nature

[hushed spire]

The Features Modules and Foundry news is on the admin screen, your players won't ever see that.

[last ice]

How that will work in forge with multiple worlds

[hushed spire]

You can only run one world per license? But I don't use forge, do the players get to choose which world to spin up?

[last ice]

Each world is a Subdomain

[last ice]

You can only have an active world. Multipled setuped in same instance

[hushed spire]

I'll leave it someone who has used forge to decide if it's an issue. I know in vanilla, there aren't "users" on the server admin screen, instead they have to wait for the world to be started to log in to the server.

[tacit path]

I think Forge has the setup page all but fully locked away. You can get to it I hear, but you have to work for it. Think it's only really useful to manually install modules.

I do think that we are not the target user for this feature. Not every Foundry user is on this Discord, thus not getting bits of news and new content with #announcements and #content-announcements.

[cyan anvil]

For the featured content widget, where will it link to?

[proud breach]

it would link to a package page on the foundryvtt.com website

[warm rover]

What is considered as playtime in the usage statistics? I mean, what does Foundry take into account to differentiate prep time from play time?

[tacit path]

My understanding is "has a player logged in to the world".

[fleet bloom]

For now this is correct

[viscid osprey]

Sorry a bit late to get here. Regarding this feature, how do you define time played? More than one user logged in? I spend a lot of time tinkering in worlds but wouldn’t consider that play time. It would be interesting to see exactly how many hours a campaign does last though… (not including prep time)

[keen notch]

Pretty sure it's "has an active client session". A very coarse metric, but one that's straight-forward to determine

[viscid osprey]

Yeah bummer. I’m all for worlds being listed in recent order but far less interested in total connected time being displayed than total campaign time. I do get that is hard to define though, maybe some configurable number of connected clients considered as “play time”.

[keen notch]

I know staff have talked about considering other metrics some, but anything else is gonna be more involved to implement

[mint hull]

Could be something related to players connected and the pause/resume feature

[devout mauve]

Unpaused time specifically could be interesting, since that would likely cut out a lot of idle prep time

[somber pier]

Is there any chance that we could apply a theme to the Setup/World views like a Fantasy Brown or Sci-Fi Blue or even a Military Green vs. the Orange Foundry look to better match the game system that I am using?

[fleet bloom]

There's a chance, but no promises!

[oblique swallow]

does this include GMs? because like plenty of other people have already raised i'm sure, I very often leave worlds open in the background like.. all the time, if I forget to log out. any of:

• only counting when a non-GM is logged in
• only counting time when two or more users of any type are logged in, or
• having some timeout for 'stop counting if no canvas activity last 5 minutes'

would significantly improve the quality of data imo

[tepid tangle]

Only counting non-GM would also mean you count play time but not prep time

[tacit path]

It was the simplest metric that could have been implemented while still being somewhat useful. Perfect for a prototype stage, since changing how the metric is counted for is isolated from how that present and manipulates stuff with that metric.

I know that, for me, your suggestions are just as flawed for being a false positive (for the first two, as I tend to have a user account open to double check how stuff presents, or that stuff like macros works for players as I go prepping), or creates false negatives (RP heavy, theater of the mind, or in person games that just use Foundry as sheets and dice, with battles being done physically, this the canvas never being touched often enough to count).

I don't think there will be a way to accurately count playtime in a way that makes everyone happy. I suspect a better way to track that would either require that more infrastructure be done on the server side to not make a mess of the codebase, or would create spaghetti code that would slowly make the backend an utter mess to work on. At least this is still better than the time I double signed into another VTT and it double counted my time.

[proud fulcrum]

Is there any plan to allow for font, color, arrangement, or scale customizability in these UI overhauls? Foundry's greatest strengths is its capacity for user customization, and while its purely aesthetic, being able to configure the UI directly in global settings as a user would bring me joy (and could be important for accessibility, such as selecting readable fonts like Comic Sans) .

[proud breach]

Good morning folks. I'll be in-and-out today but I'm happy to answer some more community questions!

[proud breach]

The current prototype is that it tracks time when a user is actively logged into a world. When a world is launched but nobody is logged in the "played time" does not accumulate, but when a player is logged in that time does accumulate.

[proud breach]

I agree the current heuristic isn't perfect, we might make this smarter before V11 Stable goes live.

[grand wyvern]

Are you aiming to track only one 'type' of time?

[proud breach]

One of the most important things we're doing with the new UI framework is making extensive use of CSS variables as well as the addition of CSS layers. We have exposed most/all of the variables needed to create different UI "feel". I'm not sure at what point we would offer multiple setup themes. For now we are focused on making sure that the default setup theme is a one that most people can love.

[proud breach]

Do you mean with regards to the world "time played" metric? or something else? Worlds already track the progression of "world time" which is a different time metric.

[grand wyvern]

Might be fun to see different numbers, like the accumulated time during which anyone has been logged in, the game.time like when the combat tracker advances time, as well as just how long the world has been up and running, etc etc etc.

[next grail]

How difficult was it to implement perMessageDeflate for 5942? Given the performance boost it offers, and the fact that v11 won't be out for a while and people won't be able to update on day 1 due to waiting for their favorite module to be upgraded - is 5942 something you would be willing to include in a bugfix release of v10?

[proud breach]

Ultimately it was not difficult to implement. The difficulty in this was trying to verify that it was the right thing to do, without damaging consequences, and that it was functioning correctly (because the data reported in chrome/firefox devtools is not helpful here).

It is a candidate that could be backported, yes. We haven't had a discussion among the team yet about what we would want to include in a final V10 update.

[next grail]

That's great news! Please do consider it for the final v10 release.

[raven minnow]

Bit of a deeper Q. Has having a little one changed your priorities or approach to both the company or the software itself? Other than more flexible working timings of course.

[shy swallow]

I'm excited for CSS layers and more variables. Will there be any documentation on best practices for customizing the UI?

[keen notch]

Given that the setup and join screens have been purely core code and outside the scope of modules so far, I'm kinda dubious that stuff like that will be explicitly supported/documented for users like that

[proud breach]

I think so, although probably in some fairly subtle ways. I am needing to be a lot more disciplined with my time now, the consequences of getting stuck on a problem and working on it overtime end up being a bit more impactful in terms of family time. I have a bit more structure on my work these days and I think that translates into a bit more structure in the way that I and the team are doing planning.

[shy swallow]

I was referring to this: #1081224367171715102 message

[keen notch]

Yes, that's what I was replying regarding

[shy swallow]

Oh, wait. I didn't mean setup screen. I meant in a game. My bad.

[proud breach]

Yeah, I think so eventually. We're still figuring things out to be honest. We tried applying layers to the existing CSS and it caused some damaging interactions with existing systems and modules. It has the possibility to be a really powerful feature for the way that UI development is handled in Foundry VTT, but it's a feature that will definitely cause disruption when we add it.

Ideally there will be some best practices for modules to use in terms of defining their own CSS layer(s) and understanding how that changes the specificity of selectors needed to modify core styles.

I think this is more of a V12/V13 problem though.

[viscid osprey]

Brilliant, thanks. Seeing if a player is AFK, based on if they’ve been inactive for 30secs or something would be highly useful and no module has done it yet (that I’ve seen anyway, only manual toggles). If you are looking to do smarter “play time” perhaps this could be a component of that, get it all done in one go.

[viscid osprey]

Showing AFK status is far more relevant in a VTT than most other settings imo… wondering if the player whose turn is next is even there

[fleet bloom]

right now, the playtime field fulfills the coarse need of "which world was most recently played". Ideally, that means even if you only did GM prep, it shows up as most recent.

I think we can improve the granularity of the data in the future, but this first implementation is at least fulfilling that need

[viscid osprey]

Understood, it’s the displaying total “play time” part which kicked all of this off

[keen notch]

It sounds like re-labeling the thing to something other than "play" time might be beneficial (if practical to implement), just to side-step these discussions, lol