Alpha 0.1.4 Update Notes

Hey there everybody, I'm excited to share Foundry Virtual Tabletop Alpha version 0.1.4. This release focuses largely on bug fixes and quality of life improvements related to some of the new features added in the previous 0.1.3 update. I improve upon the initial release of Ambient Audiosources by enabling distance based easing which allows a source to grow louder as tokens get closer to the origin. I have made improvements to the Audio Playlists system which improves the loading efficiency of audio tracks, avoiding loading an audio file until playback is requested. Lastly an improvement to the Fog of War system adds a button under the GM lighting tools which allows you to reset fog back to it's initial state for all players within a Scene.

I also have a new Development Video Update - Ambient Sound Sources which was posted this week highlighting the new feature introduced in the 0.1.3 update which was improved upon in this version. Be sure to check the video out and please consider sharing it with friends of yours who have an enthusiasm for tabletop roleplaying!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MF5YREiladg

The next release version will continue focusing on improvements to the new player experience and standard workflows while adding an automatic self-updating system which will allow future updates to be downloaded and installed from within the FVTT client, so stay tuned for that!

Thank you all for your continued help, enthusiasm, feedback, and support. Please keep an eye on the development progress board here for visibility into what features are in progress and coming up next!

https://gitlab.com/foundrynet/foundryvtt/boards

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Download Instructions

If you are a Patreon supporter at the $10 or greater level, please download the new build here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/24274493

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New Features

Added distance-based volume easing to Ambient Sound effects. This is configured through a checkbox in the ambient sound configuration sheet (double click the sound icon). If enabled, the sound will grow louder as tokens approach the origin of the effect and will be quieter near the edges of the audible area.

Improved window resizing logic to prevent UI elements from getting lost "off-screen" when moving from a large resolution to a smaller one. Any UI elements that would have been pushed off screen will now get stuck at the border of the new window area.

Audio Playlists have been migrated to use some of the new audio playback technologies that were built to power the ambient sound effects improvement. This results in some small changes across the board for Audio Playlists including lazier loading where audio files will only be streamed to the client when they are required for playback.

Added a GM control button in the Lighting controls menu (left side of the screen) which allows for the GM to reset fog of war for all players back to its original state. This reset will clear saved fog exploration for the current scene (but not other scenes) and is networked so that currently active players will have their view reset. Players who are not currently connected will have their fog of war reset the first time they re-join the session.

Made improvements to the Simple Worldbuilding game system which now restores functional, but basic, Actor and Item sheets which can be used to explore FVTT in a more free-form way which is not bound to a more complex game system. These new simple sheets feature editable actor and item descriptions, two simple resource pools for actors, and a collection of owned items that can be dragged/dropped onto the Actor sheet.

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Bug Fixes

Corrected a rendering defect which caused lighting and shadows when "Soft Shadows" are disabled to have visibly jagged edges.

Solved an issue with Journal Entry context menu failures which made it impossible to set permissions or show journal entries to players.

Fixed an issue with compendium import functionality for Item type entities.

Corrected a problem with ambient sounds which caused them to remain playing when a scene was deactivated or changed. Now, when the scene changes any ambient sounds on the prior scene should have their playback terminated.

Fixed an issue with the sidebar and folders which prevented them from being correctly populated in Firefox.

Resolved an error with the FilePicker ui which would cause it to throw errors and refuse to browse the public directory if there were issues with the existing file path. If the current file location is not browseable, file browsing will default back to the public root.

The folder an entity was assigned to is now stripped from the data model with that entity is added to a compendium pack. This caused a funny bug when, pulling items back out of your own compendium, they would get lost in the original folders from which they were first stored.

Resolved a harmless (but verbose) console error which was reported from cursor movements before a map canvas was active.

Fixed an issue that caused "Play All" or "Stop All" buttons on the audio playlist to not store those playback changes back to the database, causing audio tracks to continue playing after a refresh even if they had been stopped in this way.

Assigning an Actor's name for the first time will now also populate the "name" field of their default token sheet (as was originally intended but had been broken). 

Assigning an Actor's profile image for the first time will now also populate the "image" field of their default token sheet (as was originally intended but had been broken).

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Core Software, APIs, and Module Development

[BREAKING CHANGE]The Tabs helper has been reworked to feature a more consistent API. Instead of positional arguments for the initial tab and callback function, those optional arguments have been folded into an object as the 2nd parameter in the constructor. Documentation of the change and example usage has been updated, but this change is likely to break the code of any modules that have implemented tabbed navigation using this helper. Sorry about that folks: http://foundryvtt.com/pages/apps/helpers.html

[BREAKING CHANGE]Expanded and improved the Entity.create() method to allow for additional options to be provided at creation time which can configure the behavior of the creation request. The two new arguments allow for temporary entities to be created which receive the full conformed data model from the server but are not saved to the World database. Another optional argument allows for the entity configuration sheet to NOT be shown by default when an entity is created (as is currently the default behavior). This applies to all entities, but example documentation for the Actor case is here:  http://foundryvtt.com/pages/entities/actor.html#raw.Actor.Entity.create

Added a new abstraction layer - the FormApplication, a subclass of the Application object. A very common use case for building Application UI elements is to edit an existing data object. The editing workflow has many common features - you have a form of input fields which are modified and then saved, at which point the underlying data object is saved and further downstream updates may also occur. The FormApplication will automatically register event listeners for FilePicker and Editor template tags (described below). Documentation (which still needs a working example) is here:  http://foundryvtt.com/pages/apps/forms.html 

Added a convenient template tag for the FilePickerUI which allows you to include this UI in your own HTML templates easily. Some details are available here:  http://foundryvtt.com/pages/apps/templating.html

Added a convenient template tag for the Rich Text Editor which allows you to more easily include this functionality in your HTML templates. Some details are available here:  http://foundryvtt.com/pages/apps/templating.html 

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D&D5e Game System Improvements

Added many new carefully set-up spells to the SRD Spells compendium covering letters D through F. More spells are coming soon. Thanks very much to Felix who contributed a large database file of many spells which were missing from the core SRD. I am working through these a few at a time and soon enough the entire set of spells will be covered! Huzzah!

Fixed an issue which was introduced in 0.1.3 where the new NPC sheet did not have a way to directly add items on the character sheet and instead had to create items externally and drag/drop them in. There are now (+Add) buttons in the various item sections of the NPC sheet.

Fixed a bug which caused consumable items that reached zero charges to not correctly self-destruct if the appropriate option in their configuration was selected.

Fixed a glitch that sometimes caused the D&D5e character sheet profile images to lose track of their intended aspect ratio.