Alpha 0.0.9 Release Notes

Hello friends, I'm excited to share Foundry Virtual Tabletop Alpha version 0.0.9 which contains many small feature updates and bug fixes to the more major additions added in 0.0.7 and 0.0.8. While this update focuses mostly on performance, stability, and polishing of previously added features there are some nice new goodies included like token overlay icons which are pictured below.

The next release version will be Alpha 0.2.0 which will be very exciting because it marks about the 1/3 point along my envisioned path towards Beta! 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/23195780

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New Features

• Entries in the Combat Tracker now have a context menu which supports options to modify or reroll an initiative roll or to remove that participant from the combat.
• The overall scale of the Foundry VTT interface has been reduced slightly.
• Tokens can now support a single overlay effect which is managed using the existing Status Effects UI. To assign an overlay effect, right click on the status effect icon. See the image at the top of this post for an example of overlay effects in action!
• Improved the performance of selecting multiple tokens using the rectangular select tool. Previously all selected tokens would (one at a time) compute their own vision calculation now all tokens are selected and only a single vision calculation for the group is performed.
• Related to the above improvement - performance of moving multiple tokens via keyboard movement has also been improved. Previously each token in the moved group would compute new vision one at a time, now only a single vision computation is done for the whole group.
• To help simplify the user experience for brand new players - the first scene you create in a new World will automatically be activated as this has been a frequent source of confusion for new users testing the software. 
• Added a new API and corresponding application for managing client settings. Client settings are stored locally and will apply to all games that you join from the same PC. Module developers can use this same interface to store their own game settings.
• Added a configurable core game setting for whether or not to enable Soft Shadows which provide a lovely aesthetic improvement to the lighting system but can be too taxing for less powerful machines which don't have a modern GPU.

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Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue with using the ENTER key to choose default options in Dialog menus which sometimes allowed that enter key to accidently perform other actions also.
• The last update added the ability to position tokens without having them snap to grid... unfortunately this lack of snapping was only occuring for the original user who moved the token and to all other players the token was displaying in a snapped position. Now un-snapped movement correctly renders for all clients.
• Fixed a quite annoying issue which caused updates to actors who were off-screen to cause the GM (or occasionally player) view to snap back to a reset position.
• Fixed an issue which made entities in Compendium Packs appear as if their sheets were editable.
• Attempted to fix an issue which was causing some errors on Thumbnail creation for certain Linux or Docker setups. I say attempted because I have not yet been able to verify that the fix worked. Please report back if you were affected by this issue!
• Fixed a bug which allowed an actor to incorrectly keep the same ID field when being copied out of a compendium into a World.
• Corrected an issue which prevented players from double-clicking on a token to open their character sheet while the game was paused.
• Fixed two Firefox specific bugs which prevent chat message submission and drag/drop of Actors into Folders.
• Fixed a bug with token movement animation which could rarely cause the token to go flying off the screen instead of successfully concluding its move.

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Mod Development and API

• Documentation page added for Audio and Playlist API concepts. http://foundryvtt.com/pages/entities/audio.html
• The Roll API has been refactored slightly. Previously creating a Roll instance automatically rolled any included dice upon initialization. Now the Roll instance is created and then its .roll() method is called to trigger the actual roll. The key advantage here is being able to construct a Roll, but have a window of opportunity to modify included dice (like for critical hits) before the roll is submitted. Updated documentation with example usage is available here: http://foundryvtt.com/pages/dice.html
• Improved the behavior and consistency of Owned Item APIs for Actors. These APIs now return Promises which resolve to the item that was created, modified, or deleted once the update has been sucessfully handled by the server. Documentation is available here: http://foundryvtt.com/pages/entities/actor.html 
• Added the chatMessage hook which fires each time a new message is entered into the chat. I haven't worked up documentation on this yet, but you can use the hook as follows: Hooks.on("chatMessage", log, messageData, function() {}). If you return false in your callback, the default behavior of the chat message handling will be prevented. This allows you to intercept chat commands and easily define your own custom chat logic. More formal documentation to follow.

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D&D5e System

• Added support for "Fast Forward" dice rolls. This provides users and GMs a way to roll more quickly without going through the standard Dialog prompt workflow. Fast-forward rolls are made using the default/typical formulas without any situational bonuses. SHIFT+Click performs a normal fast-forward roll. ALT+Click performs a fast-forward roll which favors "good" outcomes like Advantage or Critical Hit. CTRL+Click performs a fast-forward roll which prefers a "bad" outcome like Disadvantage. If you need full control over the formula that is rolled you should use the normal workflow, but fast-forward rolls can be convenient when you need to execute many attack or damage rolls back to back without any situational modifiers.
• When using Tools, the pop-up dialog will now prompt for what ability score should be used as the modifier for the tool check.
• Added a "roll HP" button on the health attribute of the NPC sheet which allows you to re-roll the health values for your NPC using their provided HP formula.
• Added a button to manually create a spell if your spellbook is currently empty.
• Fixed a bug which prevented situational bonus dice from being correctly multiplied by 2 in cases of critical hit damage.
• Added the ability to configure the diagonal movement rule with support for both PHB (5/5/5) and DMG (5/10/5) flavors. Currently this is configured as a client-side setting (as described in the New Features section) - eventually this needs to be configured globally for all players in the world, but I felt it was better to add support for this now as a user-specific setting and migrate control to a world-wide setting later once the settings system is more fully developed.
• Fixed several incorrect spell entries in the PHB Spells compendium. Still a lot more work to do here before it is complete, though!