V10 Patreon Feature Poll

[umbral goblet]

> Item Layer

[green cave]

what's the scene trigger for

[umbral goblet]

https://giphy.com/gifs/reaction-55itGuoAJiZEEen9gg

[lusty bane]

Placeable Items would introduce a new canvas layer and object type, allowing for Item documents to be placed into a Scene which can be interacted with by players.
My one pain is the endless desire to create chests and personal items for my players to store things (homes, etc). I would LOVE this.

[midnight haven]

We're really excited about all of these features, and we would love to do all 8 if we could 😉

Hopefully some day

[brittle shard]

I'm personally all in on Journal V2
the journal works but it definitely could use a rework

trying to get any level of fancy with the current iteration tends to require actual HTML/CSS shenanigans

[nova beacon]

Serious question to those voting for the Player Client, and there seem to be a lot of you, if it's just an Electron client like GMs already might have what's that gaining you versus just using a browser?

[lusty bane]

I've tried so many journal modules and even the ones that do a great job, as soon as I set it up, I just realize there is NO way I am going to spend a month writing stuff on a piece of paper when I could just read stuff otu to my players 😛

[brittle shard]

less overhead

[urban bane]

could the adventure importer application extend to making modules for audio composers? to make it easier for people who arnt coders to make audio modules?

[brittle shard]

also consistency

Different browsers don't necessarily implement different features the same way

whereas having a standalone client for players would ensure everything works as it's supposed to without the potential variability of firefox vs chrome vs edge

[stiff ermine]

lighting multipliers allow for certain tokens to be represented as having better night vision, etc; as light sources seem brighter, light more area, eatc; for a certain actor (so only when clicked into that actor)

[urban bane]

also instead of it being an adventure module id prefer a module creation tool thats an application seperate to foundry so that you can make a module easier for content creators. rather than macro developers.

[nova beacon]

Ok, sure, but you could just recommend to your players to use a certain browser.

[brittle shard]

I have repeatedly done so.

[stiff ermine]

so if a cat-folk is supposed to have excellent night vision, you could make it so that every light source appears to light twice as far as they do for other characters

[brittle shard]

I have made no secret of Firefox being objectively the best choice in 99% of situations.

[stiff ermine]

when you look through their eyes (select their token)

this has literally been the number 1 issue I ever had with foundry since it was first released

[brittle shard]

...On a more serious note, that's. Yes that technically solves the problem but that's also completely missing the point.

People are stubborn.

[stiff ermine]

but since most people play D&D which has max vision ranges, rather than more natural lighting/vision mechanics, few people seem to care about lighting multipliers or have even heard of them

[random hemlock]

Same

[nova beacon]

What are some actual examples of browsers handling things noticeably differently?

[silk shell]

Really the 2 I am most excited for are advanced vision modes and the player client! I wonder if that will allow my players to set their own passwords...

[brittle shard]

There are literally different CSS properties that do roughly the same thing in different browsers.

Most prominent example I can think of at the moment is more complicated border properties like rounded corners, but I know there's more than just that.

[uncut crater]

A player client would enable us to do some cool features we can't currently do, such as native Discord Rich Presence and invites. We could also do a lot of optimizations tailored to Foundry

[lost sun]

I empathize there. D&D's popularity tends to sway opinions on things to "well D&D needs this instead"

[compact belfry]

Would a player client allow offline caching of files like modules, assets and systems to ensure better connections? Or is it literally just opening the webpage with a few "connect to favourite game" buttons?

[brittle shard]

And I know I've run into weird discrepancies between browsers with Foundry specifically, though it's been long enough that I can't remember exactly what

[lost sun]

I'm not a programmer but maybe a module could do it? But I'm not sure how lighting intensity and such is rendered or if a module could do anything with it. It feels like one of those "simple in principle, hard in implementation" things

[sweet girder]

How would that last point work since (I hope) the player client will be optional? Only apply it to client users?

[brittle shard]

Broadly it's not a huge issue but it is a thing that exists

[lost sun]

Though I agree that it sounds like it could fall under more advanced lighting

[oblique willow]

team #advancedtemplayes here

[stiff ermine]

No module has ever done it, I've been looking every once in a while. I'm pretty sure its not possible currently

[lost sun]

Blast

[uncut crater]

We obviously don't know full details until we do it, but the browser already caches these files. We might have more cache control in a client though

[uncut crater]

Yep

[gritty belfry]

Player Client would be a big one for me too. Might make life easier on the devs too, not having to deal with browser compatibility shenanigans. Then again, I do like the idea of being able to log in from anywhere. So maybe an and/and situation would be nice. My only ask for a player client would be to have it be able to buffer the entire world beforehand.

[stiff ermine]

because lighting as far as I understand, is something baked into the map, and not something that ever gets recalculated until new lights are placed

[tame badge]

please people vote for simple fog of war

[stiff ermine]

this would effectively require lighting to be recalc'd every time a token is selected.

(as you look up that token's lighting multiplier)

[merry steppe]

I'm having a hard time deciding which of these v10 features I'm rooting for!

[uncut crater]

As always, ideas are not commitments at this stage, but I at least want to outline some benefits that could come

[green cave]

my players use different browsers like chrome and firefox and still have a hard time running the game smoothly

even with adjusting the browser settings

[oblique willow]

seriously, congratulations foundry devs, ALL of them look amazing

[midnight haven]

The regards to player client: the basic value would be providing a lightweight installable app that is specifically optimized for Foundry VTT and makes it easier for your players to get set up and connected with fewer inconsistencies between different player experience.

If we had a player client, we could then consider doing some additional things like Discord integration, some performance optimizations for file loading, perhaps some tools to make it easier to diagnose connection difficulties between server and client. We're not sure exactly what of those features we would capture right away, but having a client would allow expansion on those fronts.

I wouldn't want us to 100% commit to it being anything more than just a standardized browser experience with some extra convenience perks.

[brittle shard]

I'm personally in favor of journal revamp but that's pretty heavily informed by the fact that I use it
a lot
(combination of writing my own setting and also doing a lot of system hackery that requires rule writeups)

but a player client also sounds like a great idea

[compact belfry]

Understood but that would be the only real benefit for me I think. Cache is always difficult but if you can just tell the client to load the locally cached world files ||ideally encrypted from players|| (e.g. open a map/play a track) rather than "send this file to 6 people" that's incredibly useful.

[waxen heart]

I like the player client

[compact belfry]

Understood cheers

[nova beacon]

The only way I'd care about a Player Client is if it pre-cached more intelligently to help players with less-good connections. I don't really care about Discord presence. But that's, like, my opinion, man.

[green cave]

it would be a MASSIVE foundational benefit to me and my players if the Play Client cuts down on the laggy performance

[brittle shard]

Removing a lot of browser overhead will probably help with that

[lost sun]

I think client side settings would have more of an impact on that, especially with V9's performance modes

[sweet girder]

Chrome has a reputation for a reason 😄

[worldly token]

From a helper perspective, I feel like we have more consistency issues with Electron -> other browsers than between firefox/chrome/etc, simply because it uses a different hardware blocklist to Chrome and it's fiddlier to disable the blocklist.

[midnight haven]

V9 improved browser caching behavior, so I'm not sure how much performance benefit a player client would have beyond what we have now. There would be some benefit, but maybe not as much as people are imagining.

[gritty belfry]

Yeah, this would be my second pick too. But honestly the journal system is pretty good and workable as is - especially if you use One Journal alongside it.

[analog bronze]

I wouldn't count on a client fixing problems. If the problem is the hardware being too slow, low odds the Player Client helps much.

[compact belfry]

A "preload world" button is what I'm thinking

Rather than cache files as needed

[past yacht]

I know in past polls, the Foundry team usually picks their OWN desired feature to work on on top of the community-requested feature. Assuming that continues, would that feature be picked from this list of 8? Or potentially something entirely different?

[midnight haven]

We do see, however, cases where some players have a really bad experience because their browser is out of date, or running a ton of extensions which interfere with performance, or they have like... 500 tabs open and don't realize that is not free. A player client would cut out a lot of those "gotcha" cases.

[gritty belfry]

God, please. Yes.

[brittle shard]

I mean, my thoughts on the journal actually have nothing to do with the overall structuring- I use a very similar module to OneJournal. It's the text editor.

Which I guess is a broader Foundry thing than just the Journal, but.

[worldly token]

Under the hood, Electron is just a Chromium browser anyway, so not likely to be markedly different to Chrome in terms of performance.

[nova beacon]

I'm also in favor of the player client if it makes you more money so you can do more other things too.

[urban bane]

what do you guys think about having a creator module development app? that would be a wizard tool to make modules for content creators? because it would save alot of hassle and provide alot of people to come onto a foundry market place without having to know X amount of code to do it. i.e for composers like me and for map makers.

[stiff ermine]

anyway I'm not a patreon, and since most people just play D&D, I'll just be waiting another 2-3 years maayybee for lighting multipliers to see the light of day. (heh).

*and objectively some things like reveal/hide fog of war/parts of map are likely to provide much more utility to most people, even if the above is what I need most)

[midnight haven]

We would not plan to charge anything for the player client, so while your sentiment is appreciated, it's key to stress that it's not something that would generate revenue.

[stiff ermine]

though fog of war control can be done in wacky ways with walls and current lighting

as a workaround

[sweet girder]

I suspect the Adventure Builder will be neglected in the poll results; it's a great feature but one that doesn't directly improve the average end user's experience 😕

[worldly token]

Would the Player Client be likely to have the same issues with the Popout! module as the current standalone client?

[nova beacon]

Sorry, not accusing you of ulterior motive there! Heck, I'm voluntarily giving you more money every month. Keep up the good work.

[tacit nacelle]

I voted for Journal v2, but holy hell, there are some nice features in here: Advanced Measured Templates, Advanced Vision Modes, Improved Canvas Interaction Tools, and Placeable items are all features I'd love to see in future versions of Foundry.

[urban bane]

the only issue i have with a player client is the setup time to make everyone use it the broswer is great but the limitations i find with the browser is that loading times can be long if you have hi res maps. if the player side client can handle hi res better then it might be worth it. I remember managing fantasy grounds player side clients and it was alot of hassle.

[lost sun]

I enjoy making adventures and wrapping them up into modules so I'd love it. I think it'd open up more opportunities for creators to release premium content too. But I don't think it benefits enough people to get enough votes 😦

[midnight haven]

likely, yes. It is on our roadmap at some point to provide core electron support for pop-out windows. If we were to invest in a player client, it might end up being necessary to solve that problem in core, at least at an API level so that modules can continue doing that.

[lost sun]

The high res map bottlenecks are connection speed and hardware, unfortunately

[nova beacon]

As a player/Gm I'd like the vision modes, but as a system developer (and adjacent to content pack makers) I'd like to see what the builder and importer could do to make that easier.

[graceful lake]

Not a single weak option. Now it's too tricky.

[compact belfry]

A bit off topic but in terms of revenue generation, could you maybe speak a little (perhaps in a future dev update) about how you came up with $1/user/months for the patreon integration.
It seems like you're taking a percentage more than double that of patreon's own merchant fees while your only cost (less initial setup) is the hosting and traffic, which would be more fairly scaled with module size than with user count.

[worldly token]

It's coming over the same internet connection, rendering on the same hardware, and Electron and Chrome are fairly similar under the hood, so a player client isn't likely to make a difference for high res maps.

[urban bane]

its also browsers that have issues because of chrome and firefox etc being different and people using different browsers etc.

[compact belfry]

Unless there's a button to download them before the session.

[lost sun]

Yes, less so than those two in my experience helping out users and using them myself

[tacit nacelle]

A suggestion for future polls would be the option to rank new features in order of preference. Don't know if that's possible within Patreon's poll system but I thought I'd ask.

[urban bane]

noones gunna address this tho?

[lost sun]

It's outside the scope of this thread I think

[worldly token]

For folks that leave their servers up constantly, that could be an option - but actually that could potentially be implemented via a module anyway (since the preload function is exposed in the API....).

[oblique willow]

Imo the adventure builder importer would be the best for Foundry as a VTT we all love and share. That being said, congratulations again, ALL the options look amazing

[urban bane]

it was in response to the adventure importer.

[midnight haven]

@urban bane I don't have a good mental image about what a separate "content creator app" would look like. I suspect that you have something in your mind - but probably it's a different vision than the direction we want to take things.

We want - in the long term - Foundry Virtual Tabletop itself to be a great tool for creators to make content which they can later share.

Creators would be developing and creating content inside the VTT, and then packaging that content for distribution.

If the development/packaging happens in a separate app I think you end up with a disconnect between the structure of the content and the UX/presentation of that content inside the VTT (which is where it counts).

[urban bane]

yeh i would just like a step by step wizard that could do the packaging for the content distribution.

so if you make something like an audio module or a map module you can select the type of module creation you want and the wizard would do the back end to enable it. i dont expect this for macro modules. or specific enhacnments but just for easier content distribution.

it would be nice to have a tool so if i do compose stuff i dont need to know ontop of knowing how to compose complicated music being able to code just to get a module ready for foundry on github.

just something to make it more accessible for non coders and creative people like myself to distribute content faster and have another way to monetize peoples works if they so choose.

[green cave]

think a tool youre thinking of might be way more complicated to make, might just be better off learning to code at that point

[urban bane]

it would be for the benefit of thousands of content creators.

[lost sun]

The closest to coding you need for content module creation is building a JSON file for the manifest, which can be automated, but that's more #tech-chat than v10 poll options

[wooden moth]

oh my god i NEED better token vision

[brittle shard]

Broadly it sounds like the thing you're looking for is 'take these specific compendiums and put them in a module'
which yeah is pretty straightforward a thing to do

[wooden moth]

NEEEED

[urban bane]

i was just suggesting it because of the adventure module importer idea.

[urban bane]

its mainly for distirbution and sale that it becomes more of an issue.

[past yacht]

Advanced Vision Modes would be pretty slick, and kinda bring the entire thing to "completion" for my use case, but I think since we just got a vision + lighting overhaul it will probably fall to the wayside.

But man if that doesn't bother me, these are all really good features to pick from

[urban bane]

im looking forward to that im guessing its going to do what perfect vision does for greyscale and other colours for vision

[past yacht]

That and roof tiles being able to be revealed by the vision polygon, and some more goodies

[urban bane]

but my vote will go to journals. its more core to the program. imho.

[sage basin]

Reminders:

Those of you who are Patreon subscribers get a pretty name color if you link your Discord and Patreon accounts.

Those of you wishing you could vote, you can! Sign up to Patreon before the end of the poll and you can vote! 🙂

[vocal junco]

Atro and team, what an AMAZING list of features to consider.
While I'm puzzled by the lack of active effects, its not a "WTF" its a buffet of wonderful options to contemplate.

Part of me wants the Journal System V2 ... so much -
But... were in a business that sought to include Foundry as a revenue stream, that Adventure Builder and Importer is the thing that I know would help onboard new content creators.

Can we get a Instant Runoff / Ranked choice voting system!?
(in the future)

[sage basin]

For what it's worth, I cast my vote for Journal System v2 🙂

[vocal junco]

Its a solid - across the board solution. without a doubt,

benefits content creators and not.

[lost sun]

I just subbed solely to put in my vote 😆

[worldly token]

OK yeah from a quick bit of poking about, it would absolutely be possible to make a module which will preload scenes when a player connects before session (even with the GM offline). A player client could potentially do this a little more intelligently, but browser caching is generally pretty decent if you've got enough free storage on your machine. (the hard part is figuring out which scenes to preload, which is the only thing stopping me going and making this right now)

[urban bane]

if you could make journals have cool looking scroll like backgrounds and stuff

aswell as make them have more ways to embed treasure or encounters. and drag them from journals onto the map.

[brittle shard]

That's technically a thing you can already do, since the editor does allow you to just straight-up edit the HTML of the journal (I've done that)

[urban bane]

or drag from a journal treasure to players

[sage basin]

You already can, if you use HTML/CSS

[brittle shard]

but it's not exactly something you can do easily

my biggest complaint actually has been
I had to go into HTML edit to change text colors.

[sage basin]

In fact, one of my paid jobs is doing just that for a company doing Foundry stuffs 🙂

[urban bane]

does a whole version have to be dedicated to one option?

[past yacht]

It won't be, but it will be one of likely 2 major feature of the update

[brittle shard]

Technically no, Cards were the main focus of V9 but other stuff got worked on too, for example

or at least they were the prioritized feature

[compact belfry]

Just preload all of it

[past yacht]

Cards was the poll winner and the vision + lighting was a Foundry staff pick

[compact belfry]

And I'm not joking, why not

[urban bane]

i would go for advanced vision and jorunals. imho.

[lone steppe]

I think I saw before that Patreon doesn't really support that. It has limited polling options

[brittle shard]

No yeah, as a point of perspective, anyone that does extra voting power for higher-level patrons on Patreon either has to do multiple polls, or has to do math.

[worldly token]

That turns your slow internet problem into a RAM/storage problem, unfortunately. My current thinking is that "everything the GM has on their navigation" is a decent default for "what the GM might use next session".

[grave quartz]

I think I’ll pledge to patreon just to support the player client option

[lone steppe]

Because browser caches are finite, at a certain point they'll start tossing other stuff to make room for new stuff

[brittle shard]

'everything the GM has on their navigation' could potentially be a lot

[compact belfry]

Which is why an electron app doesn't care and has file access...

[brittle shard]

including stuff that may no longer be relevant and is still in the navigation because something something disorganized GM

I definitely am not calling myself out with that.

[compact belfry]

I genuinely mean Preload world

[lone steppe]

Eh, not quite. An Electron app is just a Chromium browser under the hood.

It would probably give more control over cache, but it's still ultimately a browser cache at the end of the day

[grave quartz]

You mean zero loading time?

[urban bane]

if the player client can use ram more efficiently i think it would be good. but the issue i had is getting people who arnt computer literate to use player clients well. most of my players who join my games as randoms are older returning dnd players. and i found it an issue for them to use a player client when i was using fantasy grounds.

[compact belfry]

The viewport is electron

The backend of it doesn't have to be

[urban bane]

its why foundry was much more user friendly and i switched coz of the easier browser setup

[lone steppe]

Electron runs a chromium browser under the hood. That's fundamentally what it uses

[compact belfry]

And the current foundry app is a node.js app.

[lone steppe]

Electron is, at the end of the day, Node.JS+Chromium strapped together

[compact belfry]

With an electron viewer on windows/mac

If a player client is to be of any real use what (most) everyone here wants from it is dramatically reduced latency

[lone steppe]

There's a reason Atropos posted earlier trying to make sure people knew to temper their expectations to what's actually technically feasible. Because at the end of the day, any "player client" for Foundry is fundamentally a browser, it's just a question of having a bit more ability to pre-tweak the browser settings

[urban bane]

its hard to know what it entails i guess. or what benefits it would give.

[lost sun]

#929425351183052951 message

[urban bane]

could the player client be a companion app for your phone or ipad ?

[tacit nacelle]

That's disappointing. I too would like ranked choice and runoff options for polls.

[sage basin]

Let Patreon know your desires, they're the ones with the power

[compact belfry]

Have done, I voted for Journal System V2.

[worldly token]

That's like asking if a bicycle could be a sportscar. Those are very different things, requiring very different levels of development

[urban bane]

fair enough excuse my ignorance

[brittle shard]

Practically speaking a companion app might not be all that useful anyway
if it's to look at the canvas in any capacity it'd probably need a total UI overhaul specifically for it, as the existing UI. Is not optimized for displaying on the tiny-ass screen of a phone.
And for most of the other things it could do, there's already a dozen or more dedicated solutions out there

[compact belfry]

Could the "Custom font support" in Journal V2 be extended to work in drawings on the canvas?

[tacit nacelle]

I'm still so chuffed that these types of polls even exist (for Patreon supporters, anyway), regardless of what feature ends up being chosen. Having a say in how Foundry evolves is ... not something I'm used to, after years on another platform that shall remain nameless. 😆

[sage basin]

We don't require users to never name other VTTs.

And in the appropriate channels, saying, "$VTT does this, how can I accomplish the same here in Foundry?" is fully appropriate.

This just isn't one of those channels. 🙂

I also appreciate being able to have a voice and vote in some of what Foundry evolves into

[brittle shard]

To be fair, I suspect that's not the reason said platform is remaining nameless.

But yes, having a voice in these things is, in fact, very cool.

[urban bane]

lol wheereas i dont care and ive used all of them. and i love the flexibility foundry provides. im just happy theres active involvement in the development and it isnt stagnating like the others.

[tacit nacelle]

Exactly. I know I can mention that other platform by name, but I have zero desire to use it as a baseline for my Foundry experience.

I just love that we have a voice here. Even if a feature is chosen that isn't my exact cup of tea, it's such a positive way of engaging the Foundry community. If the community votes for a feature, whatever it is, and they see it implemented in the next version of Foundry, they will be a happy community, which keeps Foundry thriving, which benefits me regardless of the feature chosen. 🙂

[urban bane]

also the features listed all plan to be put in eventually.

so if you dont get it this version you can vote for it next version

actually

scene transitions looks like it will expand to transportation right?

thats pretty important

[lone steppe]

"Transportation" isn't a core Foundry concept.

But if you're talking about the potential to use whatever scene transition effects might exist to narratively represent transporting players to a new location, that sounds plausible enough

[urban bane]

i meant does this extend to being able to go upstairs and then be pushed to a new scene

[worldly token]

That would be Event Triggers I think... Huh, which isn't on the list this time around.

[lone steppe]

I'm vaguely wondering if staff may have selected that as their feature already. I'm not gonna assume that's the case, but the hope exists

Either that or they've decided it's not a near-term option and they need to wait for later

[past yacht]

I would also kill for core integration of something that MLT or Stairways does. Love those mods to death but they're tricky at times. 🤞

[buoyant flame]

Yeah i'm assuming (desperately hoping) triggers aren't on the list because it was their default pick, I know atropos really wants to do it

[past yacht]

I kinda love the mystery of it. Getting a vote in a feature but knowing there's a mystery one coming with is exciting

[copper crane]

Come on. I just released Custom Fonts for this 😒

[compact belfry]

And Forien released it months before you with a google fonts integration 😛

(Although now deprecated)

What I mean is

If the journal addition is adding custom fonts anyway, can we tack on this tiny feature please

[lilac hollow]

I feel like the journal needs so much love. It's clearly a stub, and people needing to have folks with html skills take over journal entries to fix/add useful things doesn't seem right for what is absolutely a userland feature.

[copper crane]

I know. I adopted that module and improved on it. It didn't support uploading your own fonts, changing the UI font, or have an easy way to use them in journals.

[compact belfry]

Changing the UI font?! Oh no it'll be like early 2000s android

[copper crane]

Just a bit bummed that this is on the poll

[compact belfry]

😩

[lone steppe]

It depends on how all it's being done. It may be a drop-in thing, it might require significant extra work to change that sort of thing. It all depends

[compact belfry]

Hence the suggestion/request

[gleaming iris]

Journal v2 sounds sweet.

[copper crane]

It doesn't, no

[urban bane]

i think journals are gunna win this edition.

[compact belfry]

Could someone pin a quick link to the poll to this channel?

[lilac hollow]

Also improved journals has compound effects. GM Screen, for example, is waaaay more useful if you know html right now.

[lost sun]

Extra work for a module versus integration and testing for deployment into a production workflow are two very different things

[compact belfry]

Seems like a good onboarding point for new supporters

[copper crane]

I want Journals too, but would prefer to keep the custom fonts thing

[lilac hollow]

Otherwise trying to build charts with diagrams for your GM screen is simply not fun at all.

[lone steppe]

Link to the poll: https://www.patreon.com/posts/patreon-poll-10-60899477

[compact belfry]

[urban bane]

if the journals were made easier to make links to other things and be capable of storing data such as encounters and treasure and tables with rollable buttons in them that would be far easier to use

[lone steppe]

No reason you can't still maintain that module

[lone steppe]

I feel like "just drag and drop the thing" is about as easy as it gets

[copper crane]

Why would I?

Core Foundry sherlocking modules doesn't leave room for that

[lost sun]

Sherlocking?

[lone steppe]

Well, you said you "would prefer to keep the custom fonts thing", if you want to keep doing stuff, feel free to do so, especially if core functionality doesn't completely replicate the behavior

[copper crane]

https://www.howtogeek.com/297651/what-does-it-mean-when-a-company-sherlocks-an-app/

https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/06/08/apple-strikes-again-which-developers-got-sherlocked-at-wwdc

[lilac hollow]

Journals are clearly a "this will suffice for now" feature. I absolutely want them to improve their own functionality.

[copper crane]

It's a disgusting practice honestly. I know Foundry feels like they have to do this to continue improving, but I think fonts is easily done with a module and they really don't have to.

[lilac hollow]

It's a chicken/egg thing. Some modules exist to shore up weaknesses in foundry.

Surely that doesn't mean foundry can never fix those weaknesses themselves, later.

[lost sun]

We're getting outside the scope of the thread again

[copper crane]

I have a lot of Apple articles because I did a thesis on this, but here's a really good perspective which definetly applies to Foundry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNAo0UdYF6g

Sorry

[lost sun]

Which I take responsibility for this time 😆

[compact torrent]

So i think there's a misconception here about what, exactly, our development practices are when it comes to functionality provided by modules arriving in the core software.

So i'll take a moment to address that.

With a couple of extremely notable exceptions, despite what folk may believe, we do not trawl the module repo for ideas to improve the software.

[copper crane]

Apple doesn't do this on their app store either

It's still an issue

[compact torrent]

One need only look at the dates on many of the long-standing issues on gitlab to see that we've had features currently provided by modules on our roadmap for a very long time.

I filed isometric support as a wish list item in 2020.

Should we not implement it as part of the core software because a module developer got there first?

[copper crane]

Not necessarily, but I don't think the dates matter either.

There's still the effect of trodding on developers which we should be able to agree is negative

This poll seems to be largely ideas that already exist as modules that are doing the task successfully

[compact torrent]

I think you should, perhaps, reflect on how many of these ideas have been in previous polls.

[icy hull]

(all ideas already exist; there are like 1800 modules)

[worldly token]

That'll happen when you have several hundred module developers implementing the things they want. The things that people want in foundry will be implemented in modules, but there's no reason to assume they won't come to core later.

[compact torrent]

I'd like to think that we communicate pretty effectively with the development community and do our best to work with them where we can, and that framing it as though we step on developers to further the software is a gross mischaracterization of our development practices.

[copper crane]

This is only the second poll since I joined this community and I'm not a Patreon so I haven't followed as closely. Either way, it shouldn't really matter whether this is a new practice or an old one.

[lunar prawn]

Funnily enough chrome is the one whihch works best for everyone in my group

[copper crane]

Were any of the developers whose modules will be affected by this poll contacted? I certainly wasn't...

[copper crane]

Sure. That's a valid point. It doesn't change the reality of what is happening though. It's still trodding on developers.

[compact torrent]

We don't make a habit of contacting every developer who might potentially be affected by internal design choices. We do make an effort to communicate with developers whose module functionality we are intentionally consuming.

There's a key difference in intentionality there.

if we have an idea, and slate it on our gitlab or in our internal design structure documents, but a module developer has the same idea and implements it before we do- what do you propose we do?

[copper crane]

What if the developer says "no thanks" or only agrees conditionally? What happens?
Or is this just done to consult them to learn from their mistakes?

[compact torrent]

To date, the developers we've reached out to have either readily agreed, eagerly assisted, or been excited about the opportunities core API functionality would open up for the future of their module.

If not, we would discuss the matter with them and come to an understanding.

[copper crane]

I would see them consulted about ways to further integrate their module. Foundry could contribute to the module to improve it if it's insufficient or if you want to do something more or differently.

[compact torrent]

In the event we couldn't reach an agreement, we'd deal with that matter internally at the time. We're not some massive faceless corporation.

[winged garnet]

I don't think possible future features of foundry should be held hostage if module developers already have a module of their own and decide they don't want their module to be obsolete.

[whole grove]

Foundry wants to further develop its core features. Sometimes that means it implements things that are currently only available through modules. I mean the module wouldn’t really exist anyway without Foundry right?

[compact torrent]

I understand that you might feel like the Poll featuring options which you yourself have a development interest in might be some sort of intentional attack, or might be some kind of aggressive action for consuming modules from the community, but the overwhelming majority of the poll options are ones which have been poll options since we started dev work on v7 in 2020.

The reality is that, as BIB said- a lot of the features module developers work on are ones which are obvious gaps in the software that could use improvement- ones which we ourselves recognize are gaps, and are working toward improving.

[copper crane]

It's not held hostage. The features can be developed alongside the module.

[lilac hollow]

Weren't cards originally a module?

[compact belfry]

I think you've discovered the real world isn't quite as nice and fair as it feels like it should be.
In software in particular ideas are extremely hard to keep hold of.
Only copyrighted source code is protectable.
You ultimately have to be competitive in your implementation in some way, or be open source enough to be the preferred solution.
If you want your work to be profitable and controlled by you, I suggest you start copyrighting it with something a bit harder than MIT, and writing your own closed source software rather than putting it in the public domain or picking up other developers' deprecated modules.

[lilac hollow]

And being a module, we were far less likely to see card-based systems.

[compact belfry]

No one's out to get you. We all need to eat.

[winged garnet]

The more that core foundry can do out of the gate, the better for everyone, including module developers.

[reef pollen]

and the developer was more than happy to have it recreated in core

[worldly token]

It's worth noting that the licensing on the module doesn't matter here. Any feature that gets implemented in core is implemented by the dev team. They will consult with the original author to identify potential pitfalls/approaches, but will write it to their own design principles.

[copper crane]

I choose that license with a full understanding of what it means. Foundry is free to take the code, but it I just wanted to say that I don't appreciate it because of their position in the market.

[compact belfry]

Yeah for sure, there's no (intentional) implication that the devs aren't writing their own code.

[buoyant flame]

I would assume if you refuse, there won't be any "taking" involved

[winged garnet]

Worth noting also, considering how long it takes to fully implement a feature into core foundry, you have more than enough time to make your own version that you believe is better.

[lilac hollow]

Yeah. I just mean that without -official- support, it was less likely people were going to do something requiring cards. Otherwise your system is reliant on an unpaid module developer. Not a great idea.

[compact torrent]

There are reasons we work as closely with community developers and the league of devs as we do. We don't ever want a situation where the community feels we are taking from addon developers like some data hungry, code-consuming black hole.

[reef pollen]

While I agree, I would like to also ask everyone to return to the topic of this thread, which is the poll

[copper crane]

Yeah. I was talking about how things could be done differently in cases where this is not true.

[copper crane]

(sorry. I already attempted to move this to #discussion)

[compact torrent]

I appreciate your efforts to steer us back on topic.

@copper crane if you have further concerns about this, please feel free to DM me or have the league of devs (i think you're in a leadership role over there, aren't you?) convene on the matter and bring it up through our official channels with them.

[copper crane]

Sorry if I offended anyone here. That was not the intention. I just wanted to bring something to attention and I realize that there are probably better ways to do that.

[vocal junco]

Ok so, moving on.
of all the options.

One is more positioned as a business development tool/onboarding tool for content creators.

Helpful, certainly for GMs, but it does seem out of place "one of these things is not (as) like the others"

Nath - i believe that's the first time I've seen such on the release poll.
Will things like that be listed in the future as well? (more input insight into directing business side efforts?)

or was this just a happy overlap in venn diagrams?

[lone steppe]

I think it has been a long-standing request from a lot of content creators.

Also, this isn't the first time something with less than overwhelming crowd support was on the list. Heck, when Card Support was on the list last time there were a bunch of people shrugging it off as not something they cared about (because games like dnd5e and pf2e don't really use cards for anything), but it was a feature useful for the VTT overall in general.

More streamlined content creation might not be directly used by most end-users, but easier content creation generally means more content creation happens, which means more content for end users to use.

[crude canopy]

There were also some people who voted for Card Support so it would get done and people would stop asking. 🙂

(If any card fans with no strong opinions on the v10 choices wants to throw a vote at Vision Modes for me, that'd be nice. ^_^ )

[vocal junco]

Definitely!
Even community members as features like duplication of a world for many different groups (in a west marches scenario) or PaidGms or product evangelists running/showcasing certain campaigns.

[worldly token]

It's worth noting that "content creators" can be anywhere from "Massive TTRPG publisher" to "GM using foundry who just wants to put their cool stuff out there".

Like, if adventure packaging was easy, I have a couple one shots I would probably box up and punt onto the module list (or however they would be distributed, since it might be a new class of package).

[winged garnet]

Looking through the poll options, I like them all. Can I vote for all of them?

[icy hull]

Yeah vote for none 🙂

[lone steppe]

Heck, even "GMs that want to box up a section of content for later use" could make use of it

[lone steppe]

They're all on the "eventually" list, the question is what to do first

[vocal junco]

Absolutely, and we'd have more content (Like yours, PLEASE AND THANK YOU 😉 *(I'll look forward to that content)

Saying that differently; It does however seem that additional weight from outside the general population would be THE significant factor.

[worldly token]

Yeah, true - there's definitely a chunk of a game I'm playing in right now that I would love if I could get my GM to just box up and send to me (happy overlap in the village we're currently in and something I need for my campaign somewhere later on)

[vocal junco]

I'm sold on it personally, its just.. its also something that I think I'd see as more driven by business development.

[lone steppe]

I know the underlying direction of Foundry is "be the best VTT the staff can make", and I can see a strong argument that enabling making and distributing content for others to use is part of being the best VTT possible

[winged garnet]

https://tenor.com/view/i-want-to-be-the-very-best-pokemon-gotta-catch-em-all-singing-dancing-gif-13863741

[vocal junco]

AB-SOL-UTELY.

[copper crane]

It's a great direction, yeah.
I really like the Journal stuff direction-wise as well.
Hopefully they can do it while continuing to empower community developers.

[lilac hollow]

From a business perspective, the packaged adventure thing seems like something they should be doing regardless of the poll results. They'd be providing more ways to engage with publishers, and that is a very good thing.

[vocal junco]

that's sort of my slant on that.

[worldly token]

Everything on this list is on the roadmap somewhere - the poll is more "should we do this now?" than "should we do this?"

[copper crane]

I think they will 😅
They've already written a portion of the code and it's already in v9.

[lilac hollow]

That said, the journal thing is just so important imo.

[lone steppe]

I think the poll is more of a "do we add some mild scriptable support or add a full-blown UI for better support" (just my personal vague guess, that's all)

[lilac hollow]

Since it affects not only journals, but every mod which uses journals in some capacity.

[worldly token]

"Please vote for the thing we're doing anyway so we can just sit on the beach and drink mai tais" 😛

[vocal junco]

where Foundry has CONSISTANTLY been better than other VTTs about community developer support.
That feature (Adventure Builder and Importer) is an exciting move into the content creator support.

• seriously, if it wasn't an option I'd have smashed JOURNAL without hesitation.

(because in a similar manner the Journal is another feature that is rather pivotal for rich content creation)

[compact torrent]

There are some options that we've already done some work on- in the case of any of these polls it's sometimes to take the temperature of the community and get a feel for just "how wanted" a particular feature is

[tacit nacelle]

I voted Journal (though there are plenty of other options that attract me) because the Journal, in its current state, really feels half-finished and in dire need of an overhaul to bring it up to par with other aspects of Foundry. But I would not be unhappy at all if Adventure Importer, Improved Canvas Interaction, Placeable Items, Advanced Vision Modes, or Advanced Measuring Templates won out in the poll. No bad option there.

[lilac hollow]

That's exactly what I figured.

[compact torrent]

All of these options are ones that will likely be developed at some point in the future- more of a vote about prioritization than it is about whether or not we do it.

[compact torrent]

I'm personally a pretty big fan of how Journals work- they're probably one of my most used features when running my own games. I don't know that i agree that they feel half-finished, but there's definitely room to grow.

[lilac hollow]

Journals become dramatically more useful if you can manually dig into the html.

[compact torrent]

I haven't cast my own vote yet, still trying to decide which of these features i'm rooting for XD

[lilac hollow]

Which is a weakness imo, since you can't expect everyone to know html.

Best example was a friend who wanted a diagram directly next to a chart for her gm screen. Couldn't do that with the default gui tools. I needed to manually build a table for her.

It's the classic case of 'the gui is lagging behind the command line'

[lone steppe]

A bit. But at the same time, I think they're similar to Foundry in general, where you can generally make stuff work just fine with the UI tools, but if you're willing to dig in deeper you can make it sing and dance.

[tacit nacelle]

I like a lot of what Journals do currently as well, but I would use them even more if, for example, Custom font support was enabled and there was a better UI for searching, viewing, and crosslinking documents.

[winged garnet]

I ended up voting for Journal, but was ranking them to see which ones I prefered over others. Here's what I ended up with in order:

Journal System V2
Advanced Measured Templates
Improved Canvas Interaction Tools
Placeable Items
Simple Fog of War
Player Client
Advanced Vision Modes
Adventure Builder and Importer

[tacit nacelle]

I mean, I use Monk's Enhanced Journal and PHB Journal Styling to improve the experience, but I'm always a fan of module functionality being incorporated into core.

My current ranked choices:

Journal System V2
Improved Canvas Interaction Tools
Placeable Items
Advanced Measured Templates
Advanced Vision Modes
Adventure Builder and Importer
Player Client
Simple Fog of War

[copper crane]

I'm always a fan of module functionality being incorporated into core.
May I ask why?

[winged garnet]

Foundry doing more is always better.

[copper crane]

(also check out my Custom Fonts module 😉)

[copper crane]

It leads to bloat especially for users who don't care

[whole grove]

IMO it provides a better base of functionality that modules and systems can then use to improve the game experience.

[compact torrent]

I don't care about dice, but it doesn't mean i don't want a dice system in core. XD

[winged garnet]

I prefer foundry adding stuff like this, rather than taking the Roll20 route and doing next to nothing for years.

[lilac hollow]

Every module represents a point of potential instability (if it introduces a problem) or vulnerability (if you rely on it and it is abandoned). I try to keep the number of modules I run at a minimum for this reason. Just the stuff I need or "really want" and nothing because "it's cool".

[crude canopy]

There are a few modules I'd like to see in core, or at least their use-cases if not their actual approach. In most cases, it's because I think Atropos and his folks could not only do a better job with direct access to the serverside code, but because it would be less janky in general.

[copper crane]

My take (which has already been exhausted here) is that Foundry could contribute to modules, keeping things modular.

[crude canopy]

The individuals on the Foundry team do contribute to modules as individuals. Foundry as an entity itself has one product - the platform itself. I'd prefer they stick to it.

[compact torrent]

I think this is ultimately how cards came to win out during the last go round. The card support module, while functional, had to do a lot to navigate around an API that wasn't really built to support its use case- which lead to a lot of workaround decisions and implementations that were not particularly great.

Core card support is less flashy as a result, but overall easier to work with for community devs to build on.

[lilac hollow]

I'm still quite eager for the foundry devs to introduce visual 'cut away' under overhead tiles so I can stop using Better Roofs (which doesn't clam to support v9 but still works). Great module, but every mod I run is like a weight I carry around.

[copper crane]

I don't think contributing to their own module ecosystem is making a new product.

[lilac hollow]

Could we maybe have a discussion thread for this?

[worldly token]

The good news is that this is part of the Advanced Vision Modes poll option.

The bad news is that that's only at 6% at the moment

[lilac hollow]

Heh.

[copper crane]

There's one in the League. I'll add you if you like

[gray sparrow]

I think I'm gonna be in for Adventure Builder / Importer. Might open the flood gates for future collaboration and partnerships

[compact torrent]

I just commented to someone elsewhere that I think i'd be really hard-pressed to decide on an answer for what 'one feature' i'd like to see developed in the absence of all other factors. There's so many great options.

[winged garnet]

Just do what I did. I made a google sheet and just rearranged them.

[compact belfry]

If I remember correctly Event Triggers came second last time, any news on that front?

[compact torrent]

A feature very close to Atro's heart that we want to do, and want to do right. We've known for a long time it's coming, it's just a question of when to prioritize it. It got left off of this poll for a few internal reasons, but i think you can expect to see it back for the poll for v11 or v12.

[compact belfry]

I'll take this even further, I believe that the dnd5e system has stagnated vs other systems like PF2e as it's always playing second fiddle to the core software.
I'd like to see Foundry really commit to it as a long term product that ~half their userbase uses and develop it accordingly or let the community take over.

[winged garnet]

What is event triggers?

[compact belfry]

Unimplemented 😢

Event Triggers (V1) which will add the foundation for a comprehensive system for scripted or triggered events. You will be able to define trigger regions on a map with a variety of triggering conditions including (but not limited to) tokens moving into or across the region. When the trigger condition is activated, the event trigger will execute a linked Macro which will be executed for all users, allowing for the configuration of sophisticated scripted events like revealing enemies, warping between linked locations, toggling lighting conditions, or activating a trap.

[lone steppe]

dnd5e accepts merges from community devs the same way that pf2e does, people are free to contribute in the same way

[compact torrent]

Things like "When a token walks on this space, do a thing."

[winged garnet]

Ah, kinda like what Trigger Happy does?

[compact torrent]

Or active tiles. or MLT. Or stairways. or....

[compact belfry]

*Is open to having merges submitted
You can't state it releases on anything approaching the same frequency

[compact belfry]

Yes I'd like a core method pls ❤️

[copper crane]

The core team reportedly has some slowing so that things don't iterate fast or get very creative

[lone steppe]

AFAIK, it also doesn't have anywhere near the same amount of community devs working on it as pf2e does

[compact belfry]

Because it's not community owned, there's many forks

[vocal junco]

mmm. if you look at the DnD5e content modules,

I think the issues are largely (and necessarily) SRD cuffs
Putting in or supporting "luck" "sanity" "honor", wouldn't be a good choice. business wise, and would need be a separate group for that reason.

[compact torrent]

I don't really think that the purpose of this thread is to discuss the differences in development practices between systems.

[compact belfry]

I suppose that's true as well. But Andrew's stated that they're open to adding features like "heroism/sanity scores" as long as they don't include rules text.

[compact belfry]

True

Can we put dnd5e on the prioritisation list for foundry products next time?

Serious question

Please take it away and consider

[icy hull]

dnd5e =/= core Foundry

[compact belfry]

It is a Foundry LLC product none the less

[crude canopy]

Let's not. Thanks.

[icy hull]

I'm saying it has nothing to do with these core feature polls. 🙂

[compact belfry]

You're welcome to not vote for it of course

[compact torrent]

I will astound some people when i say that I don't consider dnd5e development at all when i'm considering feature prioritization for the software.

[compact belfry]

I absolutely believe that.

I expect you may not even play the system

But maybe consider a user story perspective of what large groups of users want?

[icy hull]

Core Foundry is going to evolve to be the best platform it can be for all 180+ game systems it supports.

[compact torrent]

I play in a weekly 5e game that will probably be the last d20 game i play in- i have my own system i prefer, but it's perhaps more accurate to say that i don't consider any system should have influence on what should be developed as core features.

[compact belfry]

We can't release a dnd5e version on our schedules, fork or not, as there is a definitive version we can't make go faster

Anyway

[lilac hollow]

I'd hate for d&d 5e itself to become a priority feature. It's one thing when there's a feature you don't expect you'll use. It's another when you -know- you won't use it under any circumstances.

[compact torrent]

I am a firm believer that FVTT is system agnostic and should remain system agnostic in its development.

[compact belfry]

Lets return to topic

[gray sparrow]

I agree, as someone who primarily plays d20 systems.

[lilac hollow]

I view the foundry 5e system as a technical reference at this point.

[compact belfry]

I'm all for system agnosticism.
But it's not agnostic if you split dev team time between the core software and a system as a company product rather than a personal project.
Not being able to focus on it hampers it.

So my original point, I think it's stagnating.

[vocal junco]

Very fair point.

(and well stated)

[compact belfry]

I'd love to see the community given more ability to accelerate it.
that might mean relinquishing some level of control.

[tacit nacelle]

The way I see it, if Foundry incorporates modules into core, that means the product is better stronger at base, and module creators are free to address other gaps and deficits that need fixing.

[icy hull]

(A very opinionated point; many people in the community would strongly disagree.)

[compact belfry]

Unless you're not as agnostic as you seem and its an important strategic investment for the company

[arctic creek]

Please anything that help GM life easier

[vocal junco]

That's the thing about opinions.
HOPEFULLY there are differences or else its just dogma

[tacit nacelle]

I trust Foundry devs to incorporate only what is necessary. If a feature is peripheral or not relevant enough to large enough percentage of users, they won't do it.

[tacit nacelle]

Exactly. I don't care about cards, but I'm happy card support is now in v9, because a lot of users apparently care about cards very much.

[vocal junco]

yeah, the cards is a REALLY good example
while i do WANT the ability to play cards, in part ... not having that feature drives innovation to showcase the new feature's abilities.

[sage basin]

.
.
This thread is for talking about the features in the poll and beating the drum for the feature you want most in this round of voting.
.
.

[compact belfry]

Journal System V2 please

[vocal junco]

I'm more kicking the tires with vote. 🙂

seeing what debate helps me educate myself.

[tacit nacelle]

(Better Roofs is v9-compliant btw. theripper just hasn't updated the compatibility listing.)

[vocal junco]

Journal WOULD be #1 ... where it not for the Adventure Builder and Importer, which ... I'd vote for if I felt it wasn't really more a business driven feature and that outside factors should/would be better gauge and pressure for such

[compact belfry]

Interested to see the least desired feature from the last poll (Improved special effects) snuck it's way in under the umbrella of "Advanced Measured Templates" this round

[compact torrent]

I think i've read the poll options about 30 times, including when helping to draft the post

and i'm still no closer to deciding what i'll vote for

[lilac hollow]

Oh god. It doesn't SAY this, but imagine templates with proper old school "D&D fireball support"

[winged garnet]

If Journal System v2 wins, I don't suppose we could get flipping pages? 🙂

[compact belfry]

No no mentioning of D&D!

[green sage]

especially not Fireball AOE Discourse

[compact belfry]

[lilac hollow]

Called for '30 foot circle'. Area is constrained by walls. So we'll just have to... fill out all the hallways and nearby rooms until we get the equivalent area. I hope you're wearing suntan lotion.

[vocal junco]

If you put in your UI updates suggestion from the stream, I'd probably have voted for that honestly.

Because overall a great user experience and game flow would also reduce support and help bring in more users and more (perhaps not a good thing given MC issue) fervor for the platform.

[compact belfry]

Would Advanced Measured Templates include the ability to customise the rules on how they apply?
The current template rules are opinionated no?
Not system agnostic some might say?

[vocal junco]

THAT sounds like a module.

😉

[winged garnet]

lol

[tacit nacelle]

Journal improvement is something players and GMs will notice and appreciate. The Adventure Builder and Importer is more GM- and content creator-targeted.

[winged garnet]

I'm honestly suprised that Advanced Measured Templates is in the lead. I knew it'd be popular, just not that much.

[crude canopy]

I'm not surprised, but I am sad. It's almost completely useless to me. 😦

[tacit nacelle]

I'm surprised too, but that's maybe because I can use modules to take care of most of what's part of this feature request.

Journal is still close at #2 in the poll. I'm still repping for Journals myself.

[sage basin]

Just remember: The poll ends on the 31st. Lots of time for lead changes and changes and changes and changes 🙂

[lost sun]

A majority of games I see are crunchy systems that benefit from the templates

And I think PF2e and then D&D 5e are the largest communities on Foundry

[tacit nacelle]

Hey, card support was useless for me, but whatever benefits the most users is a win for all, right?

[vocal junco]

Well, similar to a divergence in the conversation above.
once something is more "core" - I suspect that will also open other developer's time (and interest)
time in that .. hey there is an API for that now - if not the "ok, that's done" (Blitz's dancing lights)

and interest in the. this other thing MIGHT be doable.. I'mma poke at it.

[crude canopy]

Kinda... I mean... I did vote for cards, just so that something else might win after it. 🙂

[vocal junco]

cheers, that's community minded thinking,

[crude canopy]

Sadly, there are a few features from Blitz' lighting module that aren't available in v9... I need the police flasher for my cop game. 🙂 ...but that's a conversation for another thread.

[vocal junco]

I KNOW! or the RGB shifter

[tacit nacelle]

It's down to whether you prefer strategic voting or voting your position. I'm always the latter.

[vocal junco]

grumble.
wish we hand ranked voting or instant run off.

[crude canopy]

I generally am, too, but there were no other choices in the v9 poll that I cared about.

[sage basin]

Talk to Patreon, they're the ones who set what options we have

[winged garnet]

Ranked voting is better for everything.

[tacit nacelle]

That's too bad, but hey, as devs have mentioned, these polls are less "do you want this feature y/n?" and more "do you want this particular feature sooner rather than later?" At some point, you'll get what you want. And I'm looking forward to seeing what features the devs themselves want, and what they can sneak into v10. It's nice to be surprised too. 🙂

[compact torrent]

Sadly, patreon doesn't support ranked voting 😦

[compact belfry]

The dev team has familiarised themselves with the patreon integration tools recently, maybe a page on foundryvtt.com?

[sage basin]

I understand the frustration of not having your preferred voting schema employed. Remember, this is simply, "Which one of these features do you want the most right now?"

[vocal junco]

@compact torrent

Is there any insight into the vision thing? like "Infravision" would tokens in that field of vision have alternate forms ( see image - CERTAINLY not a need, but was curious how that might be handled) or would that more be coloration/saturation (in DnD5e - black and white; or Shadowurn - nightvision goggles giving everyone a green/blue hues)

[compact torrent]

I think if you look at the advanced lighting features for the adaptive lighting system, specifically the dropdown for lighting mode and the sliders for saturation/contrast/shadows, you'll have a fairly good idea of what vision modes would look like

[lone steppe]

Also, Color Burn allows for some pretty neat effects along those lines

[vocal junco]

Yeah, but with infravision, you might be able to give hint markers "footprints" or make skeletons/golems or less visible.

that's why I was wondering about how FAR afield from current that could drift

Thank you for the answer btw.

[worldly token]

Top tip: If you use pog tokens, colour burn lights with a tiny radius can give some really cool effects to your monsters (/that one player who got some smouldering armour)

[compact torrent]

My usual answer on things related to envisioning implementations of how we're going to do something in the future is:

Whatever your brain excitedly runs off to get hyped about. Take two steps back from that and be pleaseantly surprised by what shows up instead. 😄

[vocal junco]

Very fair.
was doing EXACTLY that to be sure.
started thinking about...
https://www.htm-lighting.com/blogs/news/3-switch-for-1-bulb-brain-teaser-riddle

[compact torrent]

It's super easy to read a feature and get excited and have all these ideas about how it will look when it's done---and then it comes out and it doesn't have this one particular feature that you envisioned and you end up disappointed.

For example: a lot of people jumped to the conclusion that card support would 'obviously' include support for placing cards on the canvas, a feature of it which we never committed to for its first iteration (because it's complex and requires a lot of assumptions about how it would work) --- and as a result they ended up disappointed and, to this day, we get messages about how "Card support is broken" or "Card support is useless"

Do we intend to add some kind of visual support for cards in the future? ABSOLUTELY

[vocal junco]

I love what you did with cards. honestly. I thought I'd be annoyed.

[compact belfry]

Would you expect placeable items to include some sort of container dynamic, (items within items), or would it be individual items placed on the floor relying on modules for the container functionality?

[vocal junco]

But - this creates space for many people to envision what cards play on the canvas will look like

"the lego factor"

[sage basin]

For those of you new-ish to Foundry, the team takes an iterative approach to development. Put down a framework and some features, see what the public does with it, see how the code shapes up for a second round, repeat through time.

I'm really excited by v2 things 🙂

[compact torrent]

I actually have no good answer to this one.

I think i'd personally see it more along the lines of props on a stage - A torch that sheds light, which an actor can pick up and move with or drop and have it reappear. But i honestly don't know what the scoped plan for items on the canvas would look like.

[compact belfry]

Ok thanks for the response. I imagine that much like the real world people will want to interact with items in all sorts of different ways. And "chest of loot" is just one of those.

[tacit nacelle]

Chest of loot, dropped torched, disarmed weapon, etc.

[compact belfry]

Battlefield hazard, injured npc, quest item, lever, workstation, meal, bin/trash, book etc

There's many options

Item within item recurs quite a lot though

no pun intended

[vocal junco]

... Tardis.

[compact belfry]

||That's a creature not an object 😉 ||

[vocal junco]

touche

[worldly token]

Item within item on an API level is unlikely (for various backend reasons). A PlaceableObject which could represent one item or several might be possible. (not a Foundry staff member, just a helper/module developer who watches a lot of the conversations in various places)

[compact belfry]

Yeah I've certainly noticed idiosyncrasies in modules like lootsheet, magic items, item container etc

[lone steppe]

Yeah, that's bound to happen sometimes when modules use data types for things they're not designed to be used for. It's just how stuff has to be done 'til core support happens, but it is a massive perk about core support for a functionality, they can implement it deeply and properly, rather than having to coerce code into working.

[compact belfry]

For sure

That said

I would like a bag please 😛

#when

[worldly token]

So I'm going to disagree with the framing there - the lack of items as EmbeddedDocuments in items is an API limitation for various good reasons, and those modules are mostly doing things in the way that Atro recommends module developers to handle things for "I want an item to reference another item", as has come up in several discussions.

[compact belfry]

Still, it's better than roll20 where I have my bag of holding set to a weight of -485

[compact torrent]

as BIB put it in this case, yeah.

[lone steppe]

Oh, no, I wasn't talking about recursive bags there. I was more talking about stuff where modules have to do stuff like hacking a token to work as an "item" in the scene where core can add a whole new document type from the ground up if it's needed

[cyan hearth]

Yo, player client would be sweet, having to optimize so heavily for browsers is a real drag, my huge-ass token library is definitely not in .webp and I have hopes it would address needing to refresh every so often when something breaks down on the less... perfectly maintained game systems.

[sage basin]

We can help in #media-and-assets getting your tokens turned into webms and webps 🙂

(One for the canvas, one for the sheet)

[lone steppe]

Well, Foundry is still a browser-based software that people are using in a browser. A player client would realistically be a browser pre-tuned to get over some common sticking points.

It can't fix the hardware restrictions that make using a more optimized file format a good idea.

[lone steppe]

IIRC, webp should work ok on the canvas too when it's not animated, it's just animated that has to be webm on canvas

[copper crane]

I wouldn't expect very much performance-wise with a player client. I believe it's for convenience only.

The same way that the GM client is only a convenience

i.e. using Chrome & NodeJS is equally performant, but less convenient

[sage basin]

Wellll.... a Player Client opens the path to some nice integrated things down the line

Some things far less easily done in browser. Maybe you still consider that 'convenience' 🙂

[cyan hearth]

Huh, I suppose that does make sense, but those integrated things would be nice. Admittedly i'm not a web designer. (On the assets thing - thanks, I got it covered though!)

[umbral goblet]

A player client would also ensure stability and similar behavior in all clients - browsers are wily, especially with videos and audio

[lone steppe]

It would help. Even Electron apps can't completely avoid issues, which is why the troubleshooting Prezi has instructions for forcing the desktop app to use the GPU properly

[worldly token]

This, but with "there are three major browsers we need to support" -> "We should have a player client" ->
https://xkcd.com/927/

xkcd: Standards

Fortunately, the charging one has been solved now that we've all standardized on mini-USB. Or is it micro-USB? Shit.

[umbral goblet]

oh no 😄

[thorny light]

Seems ppl are forgetting the Player Client is optional

[lone steppe]

Yeah, I'm reasonably confident that Foundry will never only support a player client, so any player client is intrinsically another browser on top of existing popular ones

[vocal junco]

I assumed the Player client was a half step towards a mobile support,
otherwise,

I'd be interested in what benefits it would really be -

I guess more generally, are the options for the poll connected with any of tracked gitLab issues? if so, can you share which one(s) goes with which?

[compact torrent]

some of them have open gitlab issues - some don't, i'd have to go comb the gitlab for it because it was never really intended to have them linked to specific issues, and i don't really have the time presently to do so--- but you could check the milestone "epics" on gitlab where you'll probably find related issues for most if not all of them

[haughty bough]

Not a Patreon supporter, but wouldn't a player client allow for caching of assets/sounds loaded in a previous session? Wouldn't this be a thing? (unless that's already existing)

[lone steppe]

Browser caches are already a thing, and it would still be a browser cache at the end of the day. It might have some more control over the cache size and it would be less likely to have Foundry stuff bumped out of the cache between sessions, but it's still ultimately a browser with a cache

[sage basin]

Be a Patreon supporter for a month, so you can vote! 😉

[worldly token]

I am vaguelny noodling with the idea of a "how does the patreon poll feature list match up to existing modules" article, and might skim gitlab issues alongside that if there's interest.

(no promises. Basically depends on whether this feels more doable than the things I should actually be doing this weekend)

[compact torrent]

if you're gonna, it'd be worth looking back at previous patreon votes to see how many of them have been expressed in one form or another all through, some of them have dropped off of votes and returned, some of them have been remixed into other broader scopes

[gloomy elk]

There are two options that my wife and I really like: the advance module importation and the journal v2 as priority for v10.

[copper crane]

Agreed. Those are my favorite options too!

[honest glen]

I hesitate between 'Placeable items', 'Improved Canvas Interaction Tools' and 'Journal System V2'. The choice is really difficult. 😄

[lone steppe]

That just means you're almost certain to be excited with what gets picked, so many good options

[honest glen]

Alright, I voted for 'Journal System V2' which seems to have a chance of being picked up (the other 2 don't). At least this can help deprioritize 'Advanced Measured Templates' which would be completely useless to me.

[tacit nacelle]

They're all really good options, I don't blame you!

[honest glen]

We all need to help advertise FoundryVTT so that the list of Patrons grows larger and/or more licenses are bought. This way Foundry's dev team could grow larger and we eventually might be able to pick 2 of those at a time. 😄

[sage basin]

Just remember, there'll be other things in v10. You're picking one, not all 🙂

[tacit nacelle]

Yeah, exactly. Whatever wins in this poll is not going to be the only thing in v10.

[lone steppe]

And I'm sure a poll for V11 will be just around the corner too

[tacit nacelle]

Journal v2 has pulled to within 2% of Advanced Measured Templates! Keep it up, people! 😛

[midnight haven]

Love seeing all the discussion about our V10 poll options, thanks for all the enthusiasm and energy 🙂

[copper crane]

I'm just hoping people still use my Custom Fonts module for more than a few months

[icy hull]

(Tip: Make it enhance/augment what core offers.)

[copper crane]

I will!

[lone steppe]

There's always a use-case for modules that enhance what core functionality can offer. No matter how much core offers, there's always gonna be someone who wants just a bit more in some way

[random current]

I'm surprised A/V doesn't show in the poll. Many people seem to think the current implementation is lacking, and it's not uncommon for games to use outside A/V solutions, like jitsi and discord, instead of the internal ones.

[uncut crater]

full disclosure, I also use Discord for my games

[random current]

So you agree there's room for improvement?

[uncut crater]

absolutely!

[green sage]

honestly, I'd almost assume any A/V improvement would be contingent on getting a client app first

[uncut crater]

but there's like 10 thousand things that have room for improvement, and A/V is not high on the priority list right now because we don't really have a way to make it meaningfully better at the moment, just incrementally

[green sage]

the big hurdle with A/V for a lot of folks is HTTPS cert issuance, which is nontrivial to make user-friendly for self-hosting folks

[uncut crater]

if we get a Client App, I will strongly push for us just using Discord's Audio streams and see if we can force Video through it as well

[green sage]

but that is 125% fully required as no modern browser will allow mic/camera access without a valid HTTPS cert

yeah, that'd be a fairly reasonable way to do it

[uncut crater]

if we can't force video through, idk what we do haha

[gritty belfry]

The real question is, what's the advantage of having it in a client app, instead of a program like Discord that's specifically built for it. I like the idea, but I'm sure like many others, it's one of those features that wouldn't get used all that much I feel.

[green sage]

the big advantage I've heard is that a client app would allow single-pane A/V

[random current]

Everybody has a web browser. Not everybody has, or wants, a discord account.

[uncut crater]

if audio runs through Foundry, you can do cool things like do location-based audio based on token positions

[green sage]

same as how it currently works, rather than having to juggle a discord window and a Foundry window.

[uncut crater]

but since audio is so hard to setup right now, there's no point investing in features that rely on in-app audio

[gritty belfry]

Ah, that is cool tbf.

[gritty belfry]

Are there people that vehemently opposed to installing discord, if you've already gone the length of getting together with a group, deciding you want to play and using a digital environment. If your DM goes "Oh, by the way, we use discord.". Is there such a large group out there that goes "No! That's where I draw the line."?

[green sage]

it's actually come up a few times on here, sure.

[lone steppe]

Some people hold very strong opinions about making extra accounts on random sites like that

[random current]

Exactly. My wife dislikes having to create accounts in services she's not going to use otherwise. And she's prone to forget the password afterwards.

[gritty belfry]

I'm sure there's situations, because people are people. But is that group large enough to warrant investing dev. time into it.

[lone steppe]

Well, the dev time is also for the people who would prefer to have their A/V in their VTT, rather than just people who require it

[random current]

But that's not the main reason. The main reason is that if FVTT controls the A/V, they can do cool things.

[tacit nacelle]

Doesn't Discord eat up CPU? This would be a non-trivial issue especially for users running on low-spec machines.

[uncut crater]

The main reason for a player client is that it opens the door for some cool stuff that isn't currently possible. Performance, features, integrations. I'm sure there's a lot more devs will unlock than I can think of

[lone steppe]

Positional audio's another possibility, for when your party splits up and such

[gritty belfry]

I mean, that's absolutely fair. Like people who would genuinely prefer it, and the cool audio trickery are good arguments for it. For the record, I like having options and I definitely like the idea of having a player client that'll have additional functionality. But looking at what's already possible and what else can be worked on in Foundry, I personally feel it's not a very high priority issue.

(The A/V stuff I mean. Player client is higher on that list)

[lone steppe]

(There's a reason it wasn't on the list for the poll this time)

[uncut crater]

As someone who streams foundry games, a client app would be nice simply for OBS detection

[random current]

Recording a session with video is easier if the A/V comes through FVTT than having to use external servers and then mix several streams or compose scenes with OBS. At least for a newbie like me.

[green sage]

to be honest, a lot of this is why one of the major features is tossed open to the public (to pick off a list)

[gritty belfry]

Yeah I like that idea a lot. Though there would have to be some hotbutton for the players to turn that off on the fly for out of character chatting.

[green sage]

why would you allow that, if you want to talk freely, don't split the party 😈

[uncut crater]

Man, could have a lot of fun with a silence spell actually muting the player

[green sage]

don't

do not tempt me like that

[sage basin]

chuckles quietly

I already get complaints because of not allowing character to share token vision

[lone steppe]

If you wanna get really crazy, you could probably do some voice modification stuff similar to how Polyglot does stuff and scramble the GM's voice for when they're talking as NPCs that the PCs can't understand. That would be crazy

[green sage]

but anyways, yeah, the biggest barrier to serious A/V improvements being on the table is a player client not existing which limits what the dev staff can do

[gritty belfry]

Oooft, I have multiple issues with that. x.x

[uncut crater]

Have a clip of random nonsense saved, and if the player doesnt understand the language, they hear that instead

[lone steppe]

I do too, but if we're talking about "what could be done", there are many possibilities

[green sage]

(the next one is precisely how do you deal with the underlying audio streams, because the best way to fix the A/V problem is go to a client/server model, which begs the question -- who hosts the server)

[gritty belfry]

Haha, yeah fair.

[gritty belfry]

I mean, you as a DM already kind of do by having Foundry open. So, same system I'd think. But I could see that being a problem for people with poor connections/low speeds.

[green sage]

bingo

that adds a not inconsiderable amount of overhead to the host

plus routing all of your audio all the way down a residential connection and back again is messy for latency reasons

[gritty belfry]

Guess a P2P situation could be a better solution then.

[green sage]

P2P is where we're at now

basic P2P webrtc works but has this tendency to generate "this is kinda janky, there has to be a better way" moments

(also P2P can be somewhat accurately thought of as client/server but everyone's a server)

[gritty belfry]

Hrm, well that's technical stuff that the devs can figure out. 😄

[green sage]

I used to do this stuff for a living so I'm pretty aware of the common problems and pitfalls

[gritty belfry]

As it stands, I don't see myself moving away from Discord in favor of Foundry in games any time soon regardless.

[green sage]

I'm kinda at the same place, unless there's some killer solution that the dev staff comes up with I'm not inclined to switch either -- but I get why some folks want the built-in to be better

[lone steppe]

You're far from alone there, which is fine. This seems to have drifted a bit out of the scope of this thread though

[green sage]

yeah, it's not on the table now and I think the challenges have been sufficiently outlined

[gritty belfry]

Yeah, you're right.

[green sage]

nice chat see you all in V11 Patreon Feature Poll to pick this back up

[gritty belfry]

Oh, I know the results of the poll are Patreon only for technical reasons. Is it possible to get a update how it's going (for us non Patreon plebs)?

[green sage]

sure, sec

spoilers as to what I voted for, I guess

[gritty belfry]

Haha, busted. I'm surprised. I genuinely thought Player Client would get a bit more attention. Still, I'm very ok with Advanced Measured Templates and Journal System being this high.

[green sage]

i realize it's inadvertently gotten hyped up in here but

[gritty belfry]

What's the limitation with the measured templates that has people picking this?

[green sage]

it's easy to see it as an incremental infrastructure improvement

[sage basin]

There's plenty of time for the lead to change and change and change and change 🙂

[green sage]

and those are hard to make sexy

tbqh

I'd assume it's getting driven by A) auras and B) framework for template animations in core

[gritty belfry]

Should've named it just that. "Sexy Player Client". 90% poll score, garuanteed.

[green sage]

do

NOT

give cody ideas

[gritty belfry]

😅

[lone steppe]

Like you're one to talk, lol

[green sage]

listen I have nothing to do with what comes out of that boy's head

you can't prove anything

[gritty belfry]

Oh yeah, as it stands I use mods for that. I guess that wouldn't really change for the graphical side of the animations, but getting better core support would be welcome I'm sure.

[green sage]

I went Journals for the markdown editor, if it wasn't for that I'd probably go for the adventure builder/importer because that's going to be a long-term good

given the team's usual approach to frameworks I have zero doubt that the changes made will just make the animation modules better.

[winged garnet]

Back from work, I see Journal System v2 is starting to gain on Templates.

[gritty belfry]

You know what would make me (and a whole bunch of worldbuilders and other folks) have a nerdgasm, automatic link recognition. As in, if something is a journal, or a header in another journal - Auto-link that.

[winged garnet]

Hmmm, hopefully that comes with v2. That would be nice.

[green sage]

that'd be nice, but

[copper crane]

I don't really understand why the positional audio thing discussed above requires a player client. Only thing I've heard so far which is not possible in the browser is Discord Rich Presence

[green sage]

I think speculation past the bulletpoints listed should maaaaybe be a little constrained until at least one of the options wins

[winged garnet]

That's no fun

[lone steppe]

It doesn't. It was more about "why someone might want to use integrated AV over external"

[gritty belfry]

Oh yeah, fair. This is just wishful thinking on my end.

[green sage]

yeah, but As A Mod, I prefer people to not get excited over possibilities that aren't even listed yet

[lone steppe]

Yeah, we've just seen it happen where people get disappointed when their wishful thinking doesn't exist because they hyped themselves up for it. So, we try to warn people away

[gritty belfry]

Understandable.

[green sage]

wouldn't even say warning away necessarily, just keep the enthusiasm at Reasonable Indoor Levels

[gritty belfry]

Speaking of bulletpoints. I'm not sure if it's by design (if so feel free to ignore this). But non-Patreon folks (i.e. me) can't see the Patreon post linked in the announcements. So outside of the announcement here on discord and the short descriptions along with it for the various poll options - there isn't a whole lot to go on.

[green sage]

it's probably gated behind Any Patreon Support, At All

[gritty belfry]

Yup

[winged garnet]

Yes

[lone steppe]

Yeah, short of making two separate patreon posts, it just isn't visible to non-supporters while still locking the votes to supporters. So, #announcements it is

[green sage]

because if they let anyone see it, they'd be able to vote in the poll, because Patreon Is A Well Designed And Stable Platform

[gritty belfry]

Yeah, that's what I figured. Has the unfortunate side affect of kind of guessing what is and isn't within the scope of some of the options though.

[green sage]

i'm being a pest and bugging the adults to see if I can just blap the full option text in here

[winged garnet]

What about a follow up post in #announcements with more detail like what's in the patreon post, minus the poll obviously.

Oh you just said that magic. I should read.

[green sage]

what I'll probably do, if able, is just post the full bulletpointed text in here and then abuse my mod powers to pin my own posts

[gritty belfry]

What a powermove. 💪

[green sage]

ayyy let's see how bad this looks unformatted

lol discord Does Not Like That

The full text of the v10 feature poll, With Bulletpoints

[green sage]

"mhb this sucks and doesn't word wrap" this is what discord's got for us, buddy

[gritty belfry]

Thanks for the effort magich8ball. I can see where some of the discussion was coming from. Very happy with how the poll is going then, but honestly most things on there are great.

[green sage]

yeah to be full honest any of these would be fine

I'm almost tempted to swap to Improved Canvas Interaction just because, well

pings and pointers

[gritty belfry]

Yeah I saw that, but honestly that's one of those things a module has solved very easily for me and I don't really see it being that needed for the moment.

Transition animations would be nice though!

[green sage]

my experience with those modules has been... kinda dodgy, but it's been a bit

for better or for worse I think basically any of these options, excepting the player client, is going to end up integrating module functionality into core

the perils of having an active mod community, I guess.

[lone steppe]

If it's a good idea for adding to core, odds are that someone out there had that same good idea too

[gritty belfry]

Yeah, understandable. But holding off on improving your product because other people have mods in that same territory is worse if you ask me. There's also the issue of support, what if a mod dev moves on or doesn't update. I feel there's nothing wrong with incorporating good ideas; from what I've seen the devs are pretty respectful about such things as is.

[green sage]

basically, it's a careful path to tread but one that needs to be walked

[errant mist]

I was excited to see Simple Fog of War on the voting list, but it seems to have the least votes.

[gritty belfry]

Yeah, seems similair to what's currently on Roll20, and honestly that kind of system ... well, it works just fine let me say that. Buuuut it does look a bit janky with rectangles of 'vision' revealed and whatnot. What we have now in Foundry already feels like an upgraded version of that. So I can kind of see why people wouldn't be very excited about it.

[errant mist]

@gritty belfry Yeah, what Foundry has is much more advanced and fancy, but often I just don't have the time to prep maps with carefully placed walls, lights, etc and just need to whip up something fast. In those cases a simple fog solution is ideal.

I did use the Simplefog module for quite some time, but it hasn't been updated now for quite a while and got so buggy for me that I ended up disabling it.

[lusty bane]

Items is even cooler than i expected 😯

[rancid raptor]

To be honest, none of these features are that compelling for me. Most of them are covered nicely by modules, others I wouldn't use. I was hoping for some more universal features usable in all gaming systems, like more efficient music streaming with audio scrubbing - or a resource-efficient multi-window capability to take advantage of different multi-monitor configurations. If Journal system v2 will support constant save and real-time update during editing for all connected players, just like Google Docs, I am all for it. Just more formatting in editor is not what I need, as I usually don't work on text in Foundry. I spend many hours editing my articles on different devices, some of them mobile - and then just paste ready documents from OneNote to Journal Notes.

[vocal junco]

then... it seems Adventure Builder is the one for you.

its not really covered, except by blair's scene packer. so its a bit more niche and applies to all systems to facilitate business development with (and for) content creators into FVTT.

[vocal junco]

Choices (For me) are: (top 3 ranked)

If I focus on

FUTURE OF THE PLATFORM (business development)

1️⃣ Adventure Builder and Importer (most benefit for onboarding content creators and some basic world management tools for paidGMs)
2️⃣ Journal System V2
3️⃣ Improved Canvas Interaction Tools

FOR PLAYERS

1️⃣ Player Client - A more friendly configuration would be helpful for some users, I'm hesitant to ask them to download ANOTHER thing, or have ANOTHER support element - but, would be interesting to see how effective it is for addressing user issues for things like extensions causing problems; and such a thing would likely be a step to a mobile app as well.
2️⃣ Place-able Objects
3️⃣ Advanced Vision mode

FOR GMs

1️⃣ Journal System V2 falls inline with the development of an adventure type document and CERTAINLY helps with lore/adventure/notetaking etc etc - would be interested in how WAG compatibility would be handled (if at all).
2️⃣ Advanced Measured Templates
3️⃣ Adventure Builder and Importer

And that's my dilemma, for different approaches there are different values.

last time (For me) it was either cards or active triggers - and ultimately it just became a spoiler vote scenario for what I voted.

[midnight haven]

The types of features you are excited by are the types of features we don’t put on a Patreon poll. We do invest in those types of features every update though, but we internally choose the prioritization for more infrastructural stuff.

[worldly token]

Current results, for the curious (after 474 votes, last one had about 700 by the time it finished)

[past yacht]

It's been interesting seeing Player Client start off neck-and-neck with Templates and Journals V2 and steadily fall down. I wonder if it has to do with a misunderstanding of what it would entail? I see some people vocalizing discontent with the idea entirely, which seems like maybe a lot of people fundamentally misunderstand what it would be.

[versed citrus]

Eh, I'm kinda apposed to the player client on a level. For the most part, it just adds more stuff a user needs to update, as it is just another browser. Frankly I'm also wanting to kill of the normal desktop app as a client of the server it runs.

Killing the client inside the desktop wrapper (Electron) would allow some things to become core features.

[past yacht]

Seems fair. I've just seen a handful of comments from people seeming to think that this feature would do something ridiculous like remove normal browser connecting. Seems to be the most misunderstood of the options on the poll.

[versed citrus]

Naw, a player client will never kill the browser based nature of Foundry.

That would literally be the death of Foundry in a lot of ways.

[past yacht]

Oh yeah trust me, I'm fully aware haha. Just seen a lot of confusion

[lone steppe]

I've also seen some people that started out with unrealistic expectations for just how much performance benefit a player client could give. At the end of the day, it's still gonna be a browser, that's how Foundry runs

[versed citrus]

Yea, there is zero performance boosts a player client would grant over a properly setup browser. The one thing that might be possible is solving the GPU issues.

And even then, it will probably just hold back Foundry like the Electron wrapper does.

[lone steppe]

A player client would likely start out a bit closer to "a properly set up browser", but that's all it could really do

[versed citrus]

The one module that would have been core ages ago that I know of is Popout!, but due to the fact Electron makes it impossible to open new windows the same way as a browser, it can't be made core until that issue is solved.

[past yacht]

I can see it being convenient for players who never GM on Foundry and are less tech savvy. Easier to say "just download this and connect with it" vs trying to coax out what someone means when they say its "lagging" and run through the entire troubleshooting process. Hardware acceleration (and having to explain to them how to enable it, for the tenth time) ? Who knows.

But yeah totally hear you on stuff like Popout.

[lost sun]

Unfortunately there's no guarantee that Electron will use hardware acceleration outside the box, at least with Windows.

We might see less HWA issues but there's a reason there's instructions in the troubleshooting Prezi to force it for applications 😆

[versed citrus]

Yea, Windows is a royal bitch about using the wrong GPU or trying to "optimize" apps for the wrong goal.

[lost sun]

Windows is a royal bitch
Amen

[past yacht]

Boy howdy aint it

Really interested in seeing if the top 3 options are going to duke it out for the rest of the month, or if any of the other options will make a comeback. Journals started out a little lower and is now vying for 1st place already.

[versed citrus]

Personally I lean to the Placeable Items and Adventure Builder & Importer.

Journals can be changed with modules, but placeable items is far better built as a core feature since core can add new documents to the data storage. Pick-Up-Stix worked, but it was hacky and caused problems.

[past yacht]

I'd be pretty happy with any of these coming through, they're all features I use a ton. But I agree on Adventure Builder being up there, it seems to be monumentally helpful across the board

[versed citrus]

Yea, a tool for adventure scale import/export being core will help content creators over all. Most probably don't want to require modules to be able to use their content.

[worldly token]

The thing is, most of what causes lag and troubleshooting to be required is entirely independent of the browser being used. All a player client is going to do is to shift the blame (probably wrongly) to the software rather than get people checking their internet/hardware specs/whatever else first.

[worldly token]

And now there's Item Piles, which is slightly less hacky and hasn't yet caused problems https://foundryvtt.com/packages/item-piles (mostly by not trying to be anything other than a special kind of Actor, which is a decent approach but might mess with some high automation games e.g. when the fireball ends up killing the pile of coins)

[versed citrus]

I just recall Pick-Up-Stix since I was the one that was cleaning up after it blew up worlds and bricked them or some nonsense.

[past yacht]

Generally agree. I put lagging in quotes because in my anecdotal experience, a lot of my players don't know the difference (or can't express the difference at least) between slow connection "lag" and low framerate "lag," one of which is usually fixable and the other not. So for me, if could I say "okay, download this and connect. If it doesn't fix your problems, it's a problem on your end," would helpful for me trying to determine what the issue is with a player. But yeah, I could see it causing more confusion overall outside of my bubble.

[buoyant flame]

I definitely hope for journal v2 as the sooner the better, in the case of my content modules. Something I would expect from v2 is be able to link to specific headers in a journal, and boy going back and revamping my modules is going to be a bit of work

[past yacht]

@shut jacinth The Templates option would provide Auras on tokens, animations within templates, templates obeying walls optionally. Really cool features that would benefit a lot of the most popular systems. That's my guess on its popularity

[shut jacinth]

I see! makes sense... that said, I vote for Journal V2!

[dusty nymph]

I'd really like to see the rest of the D&D SRD filled out with token art.

[icy hull]

Taps the 5e Is Not Core sign

[foggy sinew]

Mostly a case of waiting for FA to release more tokens TBH.

[dusty nymph]

Yes, I know... but people can use the art without using the system. :P

[dark sand]

Yes, but afaik none of that art is part of Core. It's part of #dnd5e

[dusty nymph]

Art is art. Can be used regardless of system.

[icy hull]

To be fair a lot of the core icon art started as 5e art and worked its way over.

[dark sand]

https://tenor.com/view/you-dumbass-missed-point-stupid-gif-5785598

[dusty nymph]

/eyeroll

[icy hull]

To the on-topic point: I think bundled art improvements are always on the table for core, and they'll increase the stockpile as licensing and availability allows. Likely no need for it to be a future poll option.

[dark sand]

I would love some bundled sounds personally.

[dusty nymph]

Eh, I'm in favor of throwing money at artists to get a variety of icon packs and art packs included.

[versed citrus]

Money is not much of a question, it's the licensing bit that is the issue.

[dark sand]

But also yeah, it's not so much a feature to request as something that happens how/when it can.

[versed citrus]

Foundry kinda sits on the edge of most terms that artists use, since Foundry is not much like a video game. It allows others to turn around and directly reuse the assets.

[dusty nymph]

Not like that's stopped people from ripping artwork and models from published games.

[dark sand]

It's a really weird edge case. Don't get me started on the licenses for fonts...

[tacit nacelle]

Modules already do just about all of this, at least for 5e, which is why I'm still repping for Journal v2. But if those options made it into core, I sure wouldn't be displeased. This poll is almost can't-lose for me.

[past yacht]

It's so funny that everyone seems to have a "modules already can do this" for... almost every option in the poll. 😆

[sage basin]

You wouldn't be happy, WP?

[tacit nacelle]

Edited because I can has speak English

[sage basin]

Ah, fixed 🙂

Yeah, I can find use for all the options.

Once upon a time I was working on a module for Placeable Items.

[tacit nacelle]

And I think that's a perfectly valid criterion. For the end user, it's a lot harder to overhaul a major component of the system (journals, dropping items on the canvas) with modules than it is to have templates respect walls (which Midi already does, I think) or add ping to core (at least two mods handle pings already).

[tacit nacelle]

The two I really have little use for are the Player Client and Simple Fog of War. The rest? Bring it/them on!

[sage basin]

For me, I value this from SFOW: This work would also expose some additional fog of war customization options to the user, like fog color or texture.

[tacit nacelle]

Ah! Did not know that.

[sage basin]

A lovely rolling grey would be nice

[tacit nacelle]

Very much

OK, now it's just Player Client I have zero use for. 🙂

[sage basin]

And for Player Client: The player client would allow you to save bookmarks to frequently connected game servers.

Not cluttering my browser's bookmarks would be nice 🙂

[past yacht]

I only bring it up because I think it was literally earlier today that someone said they weren't picking Journals V2 because they can be easily modified with modules. Really highlights how many different ways people use the software.

I'm always for bringing features into core though, it makes me feel better knowing they will be stable and robust. A lot of mods already are, but the peace of mind is nice.

[tacit nacelle]

Absolutely. I always gain from hearing about how other ppl use Foundry.

[sage basin]

I'm excited for journals, however.

A new Journal overview UI which provides a multi-panel view for viewing, editing, cross-linking documents, and search.

New custom HTML blocks for collapsible sections and secrets which can be revealed to specific users

[past yacht]

Ugh. It does sound so cool

Empathizing with Nath's pov more and more every single day. Can't pick!!

[sage basin]

grins

[dusty nymph]

You don't save them as tabs? ^_^

[sage basin]

wrinkles her nose at Sky I went on a purge recently and the desktop still has 5 windows and like 93 tabs

[tacit nacelle]

Even if no Google doc functionality is built into the initial Journal overhaul (i.e. two users being able to edit the same journal at the same time), I am still VERY chuffed about Journal v2.

[sage basin]

I would value having my Foundry stuff outside my usual browser environment, as a player

[tacit nacelle]

Secrets for specific users is also very cool

[sage basin]

I'm hoping that there'll be secrets for GMs that aren't seen by owners (yes, I know there's a module that does similar but that text is in another tab)

I'd also like stuff that owners can see but only GMs can edit

[lost sun]

Foundry 100% NFT artwork with ownership validated by blockchain when?

[dark sand]

That's all? 19 days ago I had:

Down to only a few now:

[dark sand]

Colaborative editing would be excellent

[sage basin]

shifty-eyes at her laptop

[dark sand]

Not bad!

[sage basin]

I need another purge.

But anyway!

[dark sand]

You're a little short on windows, but the tab count is respectable.

[dreamy mirage]

Y'all know you can bookmark things right?

[dark sand]

Anyhow, I'm leaning toward Journals v2 as my favorite. Most of the options have merit, and if I could just pick one and not have to participate in democracy 😜 I think I would choose placeable items, or vision modes. But of the leaders, Journals would really be a help for me, as all my notes are on Google Docs due to journals being a little lack luster at the moment. Measured templates are also cool, but I rarely use them for very long. Auras would be the best part of that. Adventure builder/importer would probably not do me any good, but it would solve a lot of common issues I hear people having.

[crude canopy]

One window... three tabs.

Nope... two.

[dark sand]

No no, you see that's not any good. Tabs aren't things saved for later they are things distracted from now.

The reality of course, is that every time I look something up I don't know if I still need the last thing, so I open a new tab. And naturally, I don't want to save the thing, because I probably won't need it later.

[sage basin]

I did say I didn't want to clutter my browser's bookmark stuffs (with foundry games) 😉

[versed citrus]

I lean to adding something that modules can't do, or have no reasonable hope to do it as good as core could. Placeable items are one such thing.

[dark sand]

From my work on placeable cards, I can say without hesetation: Anything that wants to change the way the canvas layers work, or worse, how embedded documents work, is in for an uphill battle. Implementing placeable items as a module would probably be even more problematic than cards.

Modifications to the lighting/rendering system of course are another really tricky area (though generally for different reasons) so vision modes would be a strong contender in that aspect.

Fascinatingly, from the standpoint of picking something that's hard to do as a module, all three of the major contenders are lacking. Adventure importing is possible already, albeit less structured than an official solution. Advanced templates I think is more or less fully covered by various modules. And Journals are (especially since v9) probably the easiest thing to modify short of character sheets.

[dreamy mirage]

bookmark folders is how I handle that

[sage basin]

Ok, you've 'solved' one of my 'issues', but I'd still make extensive use of a player client 🙂

[versed citrus]

Yea, this is why I'm looking at placeable items, then probably adv vision modes, then improved canvas tools if I could rank 3, though vision and canvas tools could swap.

[dreamy mirage]

I also want the player client 😛

[dark sand]

Player client is completely usless to me, lol. Since I use Foundry at a table, I don't need my players to deal with it. I also think they would complain at me if I told them to install something on their computers.

[dreamy mirage]

It wouldn't be required but it would come with some benefits. I already use a dedicated browser for foundry because my privacy settings in my daily driver don't get along with foundry

[lost sun]

The ol' "trivial in theory, hard af in implementation" trap strikes again

I wish I knew as much about programming as I did before I learned how to program <_<

[foggy sinew]

It sounds like you're describing GM notes. There is also GM Secret Block. There is the slight risk of the owner blindly deleting the text though - as they can't see it! Worth a browse though, I know my players won't generally be editing descriptions of stuff. https://foundryvtt.com/packages/gm-secrets

[sage basin]

GM notes has the stuff in a different tab. I'll peer at gm-secrets.

Interesting and useful

[thorny light]

I ditched team Advanced Measured Templates and I'm now with team Journal System V2

Go team!

[dark sand]

A seperate section (seperate editor) for GM Notes would be nice.

But also inline secrets would be cool.

[sage basin]

Yes, we want it all

[dark sand]

Would be neat to say "The guard captain ||Alvin||..."

And players just not see that part.

[tacit nacelle]

I use the gm-secret block to store monster info for players until/unless my players roll well enough on their knowledge checks to find it out. Then it's just a matter of revealing that text on a per-monster basis.

And because that info is stored on an NPC sheet, they won't ever accidentally delete it.

[dark sand]

Ooooooooh. What if "secret" blocks (and inlines) had a little tooltip button to toggle them visibile or not, just like tokens and tiles can be hidden.

Better yet: with permissions per-block 😱

[tacit nacelle]

I would LOVE to be able to click a tooltip to make a text block visible. But someone will likely and rightly remind me not to let my imagination run too far ahead, so I'm not disappointed when Journal v2 makes its debut. 😛

[lilac hollow]

Where's the feature to make me a better javascript developer?

I'd vote for that instantly.

[lone steppe]

It's a great idea. However, I can already hear the confused players in #core-how-to trying to figure out what their permissions are. I already see enough permissions confusion as-is.

[uncut crater]

start learning, you can do it! I wasn't a JS dev before I started working on Modules 😆

[sage basin]

Start with macros. They start off as tiny and bitesized 🙂

[lone steppe]

I'm pretty sure a large chunk of the dev community had basically zero JS knowledge before buying Foundry

[lilac hollow]

I've been working on a system for months (with a long pause in between). I've basically learned js doing this. It's just an annoying language. :D But this is beyond scope for the channel.

[dreamy mirage]

That’s a clever idea. In-line secrets

[compact torrent]

I wasn't a JS dev before FVTT

and i'm still not

XD

[sacred umbra]

I was not even a Dev, i'm a cook

[empty rapids]

https://tenor.com/view/spider-man-we-one-gif-18212100

[sacred umbra]

lmao

cooks rise up

[dreamy mirage]

Just for you

player view

[dark sand]

Haha, nice.

[copper crane]

Does it still not show up if they Inspect Elements?

[dreamy mirage]

Not for the player

It completely removes the text

[dark sand]

You went all out

[dreamy mirage]

I'll send you an installable link here shortly

We are off topic though so I'll move this to #513918036919713802

[copper crane]

Well this does reinforce the point made that the Journal stuff can be done with modules 😛

[dark sand]

I would have just typed <span class="hidden"> in the HTML view. And added a custom CSS rule.

But then, I know none of my players would know how to view it.

Actually removing the text is

[dark sand]

Not untrue.

[lone steppe]

I don't think anyone ever doubted that

Core devs can do deeper integrations of things, but most functionality can be hacked together by modules if you want it bad enough

[dark sand]

Though there are certain things I would like to not need to rely on modules for. Keeping my journals? Probably not something I want to risk a weird module bug/compatibility issue with.

[lone steppe]

Yeah, no one wants to discover their "hide this text from the players" module is on the fritz as a player starts reading it out-loud, lol

[compact torrent]

Amusingly we had a near miss with something like that with FQL in our Sunday game ages back

[icy hull]

A few sessions ago I had a macro written up that would whisper a few paragraphs of very secret info to one player. Fired it off and then watched in horror as the whole thing started scrolling through a token’s speech bubble — hadn’t switched it to a script macro.

[dark sand]

Oof

[compact belfry]

I just wanted to show up and mention that I'm really happy to see a load of accessibility features be milestone-d for v10.
Big props to the dev team for making time for them

[compact torrent]

We've wanted to move forward with more a11y features for a while - but many of them required some groundwork to be done in other areas of the software or a suitable period where similar features would be worked on.

[foggy sinew]

When does the poll close, and anyone care to post the current poll stats?

[past yacht]

Closes on the 31st

[lost sun]

The worldbuilders are gathering

[past yacht]

Patreon is weird and let's you change your vote seemingly whenever you want, so I'm giving the underdog a chance ;p

[honest glen]

Indeed.
I think it's clear based on the description of "Journal v2" that, aside from the direct benefits it's meant to deliver, it will also be a stepping stone towards a better integration with World Anvil.

[gray sparrow]

Honestly...I voted for Journals V2 because I don't want measured templates to win. It seems minimal but I'm sure I'd use it.

[lost sun]

Out of genuine curiosity, how so? I'm familiar with but haven't used World Anvil

[honest glen]

Me too. My actual preference was for Placeable items.

[sage basin]

So vote for what you actually desire

[honest glen]

I prefer to use my vote against something I think is pointless and currently winning. :p

[lost sun]

Nothing wrong with being fueled by spite

It keeps me going

[honest glen]

Today, WA-Foundry integration is quite limited. And one thing is that when you put certain kinds of secrets in WA (the ones which you put below articles, as oppposed to 'proper' secrets) , I believe they show up as visible to everyone, meaning your players will see them if you're not careful enough to remove them after a resync from WA.
The 'secret' conditional block planned in "Journal v2" would help fix that.

[lost sun]

Nice, I see how much nicer that would be

[sage basin]

I'm sad but I understand. Personally, I'm excited by these mentions:

Linking Templates to a Token so the template moves when the Token does (for things like auras of effect).

Template placement that integrates with the targeting system to auto-target creatures inside the placed template area.

[lost sun]

mutters something about tactical grid based combat games getting all the player population

[past yacht]

Yeah, hate to admit it but auras are an absolutely huge deal for systems like DND and I assume Pathfinder as well

Animations and all that is just a cherry on top

[sage basin]

Eh. My Theater of the Mind is permanently closed, so even more abstract systems need some sort of mapping for me 🙂

[honest glen]

I'm sure players of D&D, Pathfinder & other games which use cones of effect and stuff like that would love better template options. But I don't personally play such games.
Saying better templates was pointless was a bit harsh on my part. They're not pointless. But they're just a feature I will likely never use.

[past yacht]

Totally valid

[gray sparrow]

If I didn't already use modules that let me customize animation ranges that already stick to a token and targets through midi-QOL I'd be stoked. Unfortunately I have to be selfish with my vote; I dug around a bit and saw the PF2E community focus votes on the option. It sort of pains me that efforts like that could get it over the line, but whatever the community wants I hope is what they get. They're voting with their wallets by becoming Patrons and getting more income to Foundry, so I'm happy about that.

[honest glen]

This poll was the trigger for me to become a Patron. :p

Statistically speaking, I do expect my vote to always lose if the poll is about an important D&D/Pathfinder-focused feature vs anything else.
But V9 introduced a system for cards, which D&D/Pathfinders players couldn't care less about, so I keep my hopes up. 🙂

[analog bronze]

Cards have some use for some D&D/PF games. Deck of Mangy Things, etc...

[honest glen]

aahh, dang it, didn't know that. Now I've lost hope 😄

[analog bronze]

There's official cards for a bunch of things for D&D, PF, & Starfinder...

[gray sparrow]

Cards is cool, if it had a visual aspect to it for everybody I would totally have my players play fantasy blackjack or something.

[green sage]

for a long time a very common request was "how do I do CoS tarokka in foundry"

[crude canopy]

Those are reminder cards, not really what Foundry's card support is for. It's meant for when cards are an actual element of the game's rules.

[crude canopy]

Deck of Mangy Things? Is that the one that only produces dirty animals? 🙂

[analog bronze]

Fatfingered n, was amused by the typo and deliberately left it.

[crude canopy]

Nah I mean... I think it'd probably be more useful (and less campaign breaking) than the typo-free version.

[analog bronze]

Dunno, Sarcoptic Mange is nasty stuff.

[worldly token]

BRB reflavouring the Bag of Tricks my PC has

[honest glen]

Now that I'm thinking about it a bit more. Maybe the best compromise is, like I have to do in my day job, to try and build the best foundation possible which will allow flexibility later on to keep the Product alive and successful for a longer time, all the while catering to what the business wants NOW since they're the ones paying for the whole thing.
For Foundry, it translates into building a very strong API to allow alternative games being built by the community, all the while catering to what players of games of 'commercial successes' want now. And I think it's not doing too bad a job at that.

[green sage]

fortunately

it's not like the option with the least votes is sent off the island

eventually all of this should make it in, just the question is the order it gets added

[gray sparrow]

True, but I worry, as the team has stated in the past (if I remember correctly) they revamp the next prioritization poll with stuff that got the least amount of votes in mind, but maybe not re-applied. Even so, event triggers had the most votes on a poll dated October of 2019, 12% of votes in May of 2020, 13% of votes in October of 2020, and 24% of votes in May of 2021. In this poll it isn't an option, which gives me hope it'll be implemented without choice like the new lighting was.👀

[green sage]

even then, sometimes options drop off one poll and are back on the next, e.g. player client I think hasn't been on every survey

[uncut crater]

our V10 Gitlab initial milestones are public and do not include Event Triggers at this time

[gray sparrow]

Thanks for the clarification!

[uncut crater]

no need to guess what we're planning, the list is there for your perusal!

[compact torrent]

To add a little clarity on how the poll is formed. One of the factors that informs our decisions of what gets listed in the poll is whether we have the dev hours available for specific devs to focus a particular goal. While all of our devs are extremely capable, they each have areas of expertise to work within and there isn't much point in us having a feature on the poll which requires a specific dev who may not be available to work on it.

For example if we know a particular dev is going to be focusing a different task, or has some obligations that are likely to disrupt their schedule for a significant period of time, we deprioritize certain features that require their personal focus.

[icy hull]

This is why for example you'll never see Journals V2 and Core 1001 Fish on the same poll.

[green sage]

false, you'll never see core 1001 fish on the same poll as journals as that would be urgent infrastructural improvement, and would bypass the poll

[uncut crater]

core 1001 fish is slated for V1001

[novel spindle]

My suggestion is to have a mobile UI at last.

I honestly think this needs to be considered as kinda urgent.
In my mind, there are two scenarios in which Foundry is used: one is fully online, and another is with physical presence of every player (I should clarify that I have ttrpgs in mind while making this suggestion).
The first scenario is the one that gets all the attention, while the second is uncatered for, to the point of being almost unusable.

Right now we have no way to fully utilize the application in the second scenario, except if everyone sat there with their laptops or something, which is pretty bad.

A mobile ui in which players could at least use their character sheets and use chat. If the map could also be shown, then extra goodness.

Seriously I don't know how other players play the game using Foundry, we just find it impossible to use, while keeping our character sheets elsewhere, and sending private messages through e.g. facebook. Foundry then just becomes a screen that is shown on the tv, with no real merit for the dm (except for fog of war).

I hope this is considered.

[winged garnet]

I wouldn't hold my breath, as this is a relatively small segment of users.

But there are modules that largely do this.

[foggy sinew]

I would have assumed in-person play would would be done primarily with paper and dice TBH. But plenty of people have asked about mobile UI over time, so I'm sure it's something that has been / will be considered.

[winged garnet]

I know some people like to use TTRPGs like Foundry in lieu of say minis and such, as those can often get expensive.

[novel spindle]

we generally use apps, like fight club 5e, or others, while playing in person.
Now that I think about this, another benefit is that for a group that mostly plays in person like this, going online would be a breeze, as everything would already be stored on the server.

[tacit nacelle]

I haven't played regular F2F in years, due to my core group and I not living in the same city, but on the occasions when I'm visiting and we have a F2F session, we just break out laptops to play around the table. I don't find it bad at all. That way, we can keep track of everything on maps. If you just want character sheets but don't want laptops at the table, go pen and paper or use the mobile mods.

[midnight haven]

Our team had a lengthy discussion about mobile support as part of the v10 prioritization process - we considered it as a poll option, and we agree this would be a valuable feature for Foundry VTT to have.

It’s something we would like to do eventually, but there were two significant reasons why we rejected it as an option this time around.

1. As you yourself mention a key goal would be “a mobile ui where players can at least use their character sheets”. Even if we were to develop a great mobile theme for most of the foundry app, character sheets which are provided by modules and systems would not just magically work. The hardest part of providing mobile support would be providing a character sheet which is highly functional while compact and easy to use. This creates a big (too big) responsibility on community devs to solve the problem. We feel like we need to provide better tooling to make that process easier.

2. In order to provide better tools to devs to implement mobile support for their sheets and other apps, we want to first implement “Application V2” which would be a new generation of ui rendering tools that would, among many other features, provide a built in framework for supporting mobile and desktop versions of an application definition. When on mobile, apps that have a mobile mode would serve that view instead of the desktop one. Application V2 is much more than just mobile though, and not something we are doing in V10.

[novel spindle]

thank you for your answer, it is good to know that this is seriously considered! Here's to hoping for a 2022 christmas gift

[gaunt lake]

personally I find it more urgent to solve the AV than a mobile application

[novel spindle]

What is the AV? Something about audio?

[compact torrent]

Audio-video chat integration, which is a core feature.

Works pretty good and we recently made some changes to improve it a bit, but it is admittedly part of the software that could do with a bit more improving.

I don't think i agree that it is something that needs to be "solved" though- as that implies it's a problem or that it's broken, which is not the case.

[lone steppe]

As with mobile support, it's another thing that any given user either finds essential or finds utterly uninteresting/useless, depending on their exact usage

[foggy sinew]

Yeah, my vote is on useless

[past yacht]

Given that A/V exists and functions in core, I'd think that inherently would make some kind of mobile support "more urgent" imo. But yeah mx is right, you either need it or don't.

[compact torrent]

my personal gold standard A/V option would be to provide some sort of core integration with discord's AV, but to achieve that would require not only discord opening A/V features to their API, but also likely some sort of agreement beween us and discord about usage.

[past yacht]

that WOULD be pretty awesome

i dont mind having discord video popped out beside my foundry instance, but i know some of my players with limited screen real-estate would like to use the built-in A/V. but then comes the problem that they will struggle with anything more complex than discord's "join the server, click button" 😆

[dark sand]

Interstingly, Mobile support and better AV are on opposite ends of the spectrum.

AV is needed by those who want to use Foundry only, and want to do so in a fully remote setting.

Mobile support though, is generally geared toward those who use Foundry in-person such that the players don't need to see the full application, but could still benefit from access to information from it.

Personally, the later use case is more useful. Even when we were doing remote games, I used other existing video calling solutions rather than the integrated one. Currently, running a game in-person, all my players just use pen and paper sheets, and the only thing I track on their in-Foundry characters is HP. I haven't even bothered entering most of their stats. It would be neat if they could track their own stats, hp, inventory, etc. using their phones or tablets.

I'm glad to hear that Application v2 will be a step in that direction. It's one of the updates I'm most excited for, though I'm not surprised that it isn't going to be part of v10.

[worldly token]

Nice tablet functionality + full AV would be a cool thing even for remote play, but overall yeah (and we're well off topic now)

[dark sand]

I think the topic got lost on this thread days ago 😆

[uncut crater]

I love all of the enthusiasm, but yeah, we are not adjusting the poll options, and the things Foundry is committed to doing in V10 outside of the poll is in our public milestones.

If there's something you want to see in the future, make sure it's on our Gitlab for future consideration!

[sage basin]

Or, #feature-suggestions awaits your offerings 😈

[lone steppe]

I'm pretty sure all of this stuff is already tracked on GitLab as epics, it's just a question of prioritization

[tacit nacelle]

We use Zoom, so A/V is useless for our group. Mobile might have some minimal value for 1-2 of my players. But if either feature shows up and wins a future poll, I'll be happy, as always, that Foundry is listening to its community.

Journal v2 still maintaining a slim lead.

[copper crane]

When is Application V2 slated for? V11?

[ocean flax]

When it's done ™️

[copper crane]

Sure. My question is not about when it will be done, but rather when they foresee working on it

[sage basin]

"Not Yet"

[icy hull]

If it's not on the gitlab, it doesn't exist anywhere in Concrete Time.

[copper crane]

https://gitlab.com/foundrynet/foundryvtt/-/issues/5441

[icy hull]

Okay more specifically: If it hasn't been tagged with a milestone... 🙂

[copper crane]

Sure. I was just asking because last we heard he said it would be considered for v10

[sage basin]

Stuff that doesn't have a milestone doesn't have the sort of answer you are looking for

A lot depends on who is available for a given version push, as Nath said up-channel

For example, if they're going to add 1001 Fish to Core, they need Cody!

[midnight haven]

We decided it would be too ambitious given other commitments to try and tackle Application V2 for 10. It’s not slated for any version in particular, but we’ll definitely consider it for V11!

[copper crane]

Thanks for the answer! Very excited for that 🙂

[crude canopy]

I would like to use the response for this, but that would benefit at least one of those fish.

[lost sun]

You dare to suggest 1001 Fish shouldn't be core?

[tacit nacelle]

I know I'm a broken record, but this level of transparency and timely response from the devs is INSANELY REFRESHING after years on that other platform which I won't name even though I know I'm allowed to name them. Keep on shining, folks. 😄

[sage basin]

I wish for my examples to be treated solely as examples and not as signs of upcoming features.

[uncut crater]

We're glad to hear!

[uncut crater]

I've heard Foundry might have an official partnership with an aquarium in the works for V11, can you confirm?

[sage basin]

[uncut crater]

🐠 🐠 🐠

[sage basin]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/emojis/878349765023256607.webp?size=128&quality=lossless

[silk shell]

Will the new client have some form of optimization for connecting to the server? I have some players in the country with very spotty internet.

[icy hull]

Client app wouldn't really be able to help with crappy internet.

[lone steppe]

At the end of the day, Foundry's still running via browser. There's nothing it can intrinsically do to fix the internet being spotty

[whole grove]

The client is mostly just a specialized web browser for connecting to Foundry.

[silk shell]

Thought so, but figured I'd ask just in case. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[wooden moth]

even then, right now the "GM" client isnt great, iirc its not reccomended to run games from it at all

[midnight haven]

🤔

[wooden moth]

currently im launching the main.js for the electron app through a few batch commands and then opening a web app version

[lone steppe]

That's kinda convoluted, but I guess you can do it that way.

[midnight haven]

Hey, if it works for you, go for it - although if that's your preferred hosting model you should just be using Node.js directly rather than invoking the electron wrapper.

[versed citrus]

You do know the "native app" is just the Chrome browser engine in a funny hat, right? Much like Brave is the Chrome browser in another coat of paint. The perk the player client might bring is spending effort to try and fuse some flags to override the defaults in the Electron wrapper to avoid GPU issues.

[wooden moth]

see i would like to see a player client

i really would

but i use the forge

so idk how useful it is for me 😅

[versed citrus]

On paper, a player client does not care how it's hosted, though the Forge does a lot of extra stuff, IMHO, I'd call unnecessary to my power user tastes, that may throw a wrench in stuff.

[lone steppe]

... then why are you launching main.js in the first place?

[wooden moth]

this is a personal host for offline purposes. ive been told by a few people in other groups that running FVTT in headless and then booting the browser version is better than running the electron version, and its worked fine for me (was a faff getting the launch commnads done on my linux side though) so ive just been running as reccomended

[lone steppe]

I'm not sure who told you that, but the only real difference I know about is that the electron app can't make use of the PopOut module, since it can't spawn new windows, that's it

[versed citrus]

I've seen that far more a recommended thing for module and system devs than anything else. But that's due to us needing to keep our testing/deving setup clear of our actual game setup and also the small percent of us devs that test multiple versions of Foundry.

[wooden moth]

yeah i develop some basic JSON stuff for some modules so thats probably why i was told to

[lone steppe]

Even for development stuff it's not required, it's just super handy for development environments and such

[wooden moth]

if things like PopOut don't work in electron, should developers be building to be compatible with electron or browser?

[lone steppe]

People should be building to work with both. But PopOut is a very specific exception, because its intrinsic purpose is to spawn new browser windows, which isn't possible with how Electron is doing stuff.

[wooden moth]

mkay, think that makes sense, thanks

[midnight haven]

philosophically speaking, unless there is a very specific and special-case reason to do otherwise - I would encourage all developers to view the latest stable electron build as the canonical target environment for development. For example, if a brand new Chrome release included a new API, but that API is not in the version of Chromium that Electron is running - I would encourage devs not to use that API until Electron updates and we update to use that new Electron version.

in practice, that is a distinction that almost never comes up - because Electron tracks quite closely to Chromium, and we track quite closely to Electron

[copper crane]

Another reason to not use it is that the electron app doesn't work with browser extensions

[midnight haven]

sounds like a great reason to use electron to me 🤣

[copper crane]

I use some userscripts as a player so that I can do some stuff with the public API on load. No need for the GM to install a module for me.

[lone steppe]

Well, you can't use Electron as a player regardless

[copper crane]

I also usually have a Chrome window open already for other websites so the electron app would hurt my RAM too much. I already have to shut down my other electron apps (vscode & Discord) during the session.

[midnight haven]

Another reason to not use it is that the electron app doesn't work with browser extensions
A statement like this would be easily interpreted by someone who doesn't know better as "it's universally best not to use the electron app" rather than "I personally don't use the electron app because I'm an advanced user and have a reason not to"

[copper crane]

Module development is also my primary use for FVTT and the browser is better for that. I've spent thousands of hours doing that and have only played/run in it for a dozen.

[midnight haven]

Also, play more TTRPGS!

[copper crane]

So the thing is... I think I prefer programming. I came here for a solution to playing D&D online, but that's not why I stayed. I haven't run the game since June.

I'm in a very small minority of your users, I'm sure.

[midnight haven]

Definitely moving into off-topic, but what do you think would mesh with your preferences/playstyle more? Maybe different game systems? Maybe haven’t found the right DM?

[burnt vessel]

May I ask what the poll options are even If I am not a patreon?

[sage basin]

There's this that briefly describes the options: #announcements message

[lone steppe]

This pin has the full text too
#929425351183052951 message

[dark sand]

I feel this though. Often when I have free time I end up working on a module rather than preparing for my game.

To bring this back around to the topic: this leads to an oddly skewed perspective on features. I have to take a moment to think "what do I/will I actually utilize" and often that's not what my gut says "oh, I want that" I'm attracted to Shiney things that I won't really use 😆

I think Journals V2 would be the thing I would most likely use for a real game: all my notes are currently on Google Docs, moving them into Foundry would be really neat.

[uncut crater]

I now have a fairly unique lens of "What do I most want to implement" 😆

[lone steppe]

Or possibly "what am I terrified of having to implement"? lol

[dark sand]

Oh yes, the terror of needing to actually implement a cool idea is real.

[dark sand]

It must be frustrating when they keep telling you that they don't need that many fish!

[vital wedge]

how's the poll going?

[vital wedge]

oh

[past yacht]

Two weeks to go!

[vital wedge]

I really wish the player client won, maybe it would be better optimized for low budget laptops and not so heave as chrome and other browsers

[versed citrus]

The player client will not magically offer more performance.

It would just solve some configuration issues and help less technically inclined players.

[crude canopy]

The player client would just be a web browser in a wrapper, much like the GM client is just the web browser and the server in a shared wrapper. It would be Chromium, which is the same codebase Chrome is built on.

[vital wedge]

yeah, not magically offer more performance, but would probably be more optimized, right?

[versed citrus]

Nope.

The Foundry team is not going to sit down and rewrite Chrome.

[vital wedge]

so... what would it do?

[crude canopy]

Nope. About the only thing it would have going for it is being free of optional plug-ins, and perhaps have some preset or locked configurations for things that can easily be screwed up by a user.

[crude canopy]

Not much that you can't already do.

[vital wedge]

well

[sage basin]

It would provide a known good platform. No extensions, no plugins, no user-tweaked stuffs that can intefere in surprising ways

[versed citrus]

More performance can be netted with improvements to Foundry's own code, but not a whole lot can be gain past setting up the one's browser right.

[vital wedge]

I see

Hey, about the journal system v2, what it would bring to the table? Just html?

[sage basin]

One can already use HTML and some CSS in journal entries.

[crude canopy]

I think the "secrets which can be revealed to specific users" is probably the biggest player-facing non-aesthetic feature there.

[green sage]

there's a copy-paste of the bulletpointed features from patreon in the pins here

[vital wedge]

thanks! I thought there were more things, thats why I asked