Beta 0.2.9 Update Notes (Patreon)

Greetings friends and supporters! I'm really excited to share another Foundry Virtual Tabletop beta release 0.2.9. This update focuses on some key improvements to the Journal System  by adding rich text options for secrets, linked entities, and image  type entries. Furthermore, journal entries can now be added to a Scene  in the form of Map Notes by dragging and dropping journal entries onto the canvas. This update also adds support for Animated Tokens and Tiles  allowing you to use video assets as placeable objects in addition to  Scene background images. Lastly, this update adds support for Alternative Actor Sheets which lets you customize which sheet style is used both at a world-level as well as on a per-Actor basis!

As a special bonus to accompany this update, I have a Development Video Update which showcases some of the amazing uses for the new Animated Tokens feature. Please check it out and share with your friends!

https://youtu.be/CEv-BiMI_9I

I'm really excited about the continued progress for this software and  motivated by the support and encouragement of the community. Thank you  all for appreciating my work, providing thoughtful feedback, and  encouraging me to do even more. As always, 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

New Features

• Added a new Canvas Layer for Map Notes which are placed by dragging  Journal Entries from the sidebar onto the canvas. When creating a new  map note you will be prompted to choose an icon from a (small for now,  but larger in the future) set of icons that will represent your note.  I'll be expanding this icon set in the future, so please provide  feedback for good icon ideas that would have a lot of value to support.  Players can see pinned map notes by toggling to the notes layer of the  canvas. Notes will be visible on the Scene for any Journal Entries where  the user has at least the LIMITED permission level. Double clicking on a  map note will open the associated Journal Entry. Each map note has a  text tooltip which corresponds to the title of the Journal Entry.  Holding the ALT key will highlight and display all map note tooltips  when viewing the Notes Layer.
• Added a new type of Journal Entry for a featured image. This type  of journal entry is a great way to highlight concept art that shares  with your player a illustrated view of a certain character, place, or  item within your world. When viewing an image type journal entry, the  artwork is featured in a lightbox-style pop out window which can be  shown to your players the same way a text-based journal entry can be  handed out.
• The rich text editor now supports the addition of Secret Blocks. To  add a secret block, highlight a section of content and under the  Formats menu select Custom -> Secret. Content marked a secret block  will only be visible to users who have ownership permission for a  certain Entity. For example, a detail from a character's personal  biography could be marked as a secret and it would be only visible to  that player and the Game Master. Likewise, the GM could inject secrets  directly into the journal entries they show to players - only exposing  the non-secret content.
• Rich text fields in sheets can now support dynamic entity linking -  this works for Actor biographies, Item descriptions, Journal Entries,  and more. Currently, entities of the Actor, Item, Scene, and  JournalEntry types may be linked to. The syntax to link to a specific  entity is as follows: @EntityType[Entity Name]. For example, to link to an Item entity whose name is "Sword of Doom", I would type @Item[Sword of Doom].  These entity links will be automagically converted to working links  when the editor instance is saved. See the following issue for more  examples: https://gitlab.com/foundrynet/foundryvtt/issues/668
• Added support for video files as Token artwork. The same file  formats that are supported for Scene backgrounds will also work here:  webm, mp4, mpeg, ogg, and more. See the featured video at the top of  this post for an example of animated tokens in action!
• Added support for video files as Tiles. The scope of support for this feature mirrors that added for Tokens.
• Made the title of the Token Configuration sheet more clearly  designate whether the user is editing a placed token (i.e. an instance)  or the default token (i.e. the prototype) for an Actor. Moved the  "Assign Token" button into the Token configuration sheet for an Actor.  This has the advantage of simplifying the Actor header and keeping token  configuration options more closely grouped.
• Added the ability to configure which type of Application is used to  render the Sheet for each Actor type within a game system at the World  level. This allows for multiple modules to define custom sheets that can  be chosen between for each different Actor type. For example, you could  use a certain sheet for the "NPC" type actor provided by Module A,  while using a different sheet for "character" type actors provided by  Module B. Furthermore, this choice can be overridden at the individual  Actor level, allowing for support of Actor-specific sheet selections. My  hope is that this can promote a new type of module development that  could - for example - provide something like a "shopkeeper" style  character sheet that could be assigned to certain specific NPCs in a  game world.
• Previously, players could only open an Actor sheet by double  clicking on a Token if they were the OWNER of that Actor. Now you can  open an Actor sheet by double clicking a Token as long as you have at  least LIMITED visibility permission to the Actor.
• Improved the handling of aspect ratios for Actor profile artwork to  better allow for non-square artwork formats. The selected artwork will  always be fully displayed even if it's aspect ratio is not 1:1.
• Newly created scenes will now begin with a default size of 3,000  square pixels until/unless a background image is selected or the  dimensions are manually changed. This avoids a confusing failure mode  for new users where certain canvas controls would not work properly  because the Scene lacked a finite size. Assigning a background image to a  scene will automatically change the width and height of the scene to  match the native dimensions of the selected image or video file.
• Improve the FilePicker user experience to disable the ability to  upload a new file to the server until a file which is currently in the  progress of being uploaded has successfully completed. This helps to  avoid a confusing user experience that could result in attempting to  upload the same file multiple times.

Core Bug Fixes

• Enforce a horizontal limit on the width of the Scene navigation bar  to prevent it from underlapping the Sidebar as more Scenes are added to  navigation.
• Fix an issue which led to soundboard style audio playlists simultaneously playing all their tracks immediately upon page load.
• Player-specific permissions on an Entity could be overridden by  default-level permissions if the default was more permissive than the  player-specific setting. This is no longer the case, a player-specific  permission level will always override a default permission level.
• Previously, players were able to begin a copy+paste workflow for  Tokens even though they lacked permission to actually complete that  workflow. I have moved the permission check to an earlier point in the  workflow to prevent non-GM users from being able to copy Token data in  the first place.
• Improved a propagation issue with permission changes for Entities  and their sheets which previously allowed an open Sheet to remain  editable even if Actor permissions were changed in a way that revoked  (or added) that permission. Now permission changes will propagate  immediately to be reflected in the status of any associated sheets.
• Fixed an issue with Ambient Sound configuration which caused it to  not properly assume the existing value of the sound type (local vs  global).
• Fixed an incorrect behavior that could occur during Scene thumbnail  generation with filenames which were not properly url encoded  server-side before the thumbnail filename was generated.
• Improved the rendering of the updated Combat Tracker to show  changes to active token effects immediately. These changes were  previously only reflected in the combat tracker once the turn changed.  Additionally improved the display of effects to avoid overflowing when  more than 5 to 6 effects are currently applied to a single token.
• Corrected a failure of the Token hidden state toggle button from  correctly showing the hidden status to a GM user if another GM-level  user modified the toggle state.

Core Software, APIs, and Module Development

• Reduced fragility in module.json files which could cause an initial  load crash if keys for "styles", "scripts", or "packs" were not  provided. Now those keys may be omitted and interpreted as an empty  array by default.
• Rather than only supporting a single default actor sheet class,  multiple sheets may now all be registered for use by players. To  register a custom Actor Sheet use the Actors.registerSheet(scope, class, options)  method. See the following ticket for example usage:  https://gitlab.com/foundrynet/foundryvtt/issues/748. As a result of this  change, no longer define the CONFIG.Actor.sheetClass configuration global.
• Improved the error handling workflow for server-side updates of  EmbeddedEntities and PlaceableObjects. This means that database save  failures due to invalid data in a Token, AmbientLight, or Tile (as  examples) will propagate back to the requesting client and display an  error message that will help identify failures and promote easier  debugging.
• In the Scene entity data model, the attribute previously named notes has been renamed to description  so that the notes attribute may be reused for the array of map notes  which are pinned to the scene. A migration has been applied for existing  Scenes to handle the renaming when an existing world is loaded for the  first time.

D&D5e System Improvements

• Support multiple alternative Actor sheets for the Character and NPC  actor types to allow for modules which define sheets to coexist in  harmony.
• Add a new character sheet for users which have LIMITED permission  to view a certain Actor. When viewing the limited sheet, the user will  only see the Actor's artwork and non-secret biography. This can allow  game-masters to let players have visibility into important NPCs in the  world to help remember who they are or what they look like without  exposing their attributes or abilities to the player.
• Support the addition of new "Secret Blocks" in Actor biographies  and Item descriptions in the 5e system. Secrets in Item descriptions  will only appear for the Item owner, but will not display when the Item  is posted to the Chat Log as part of a dice roll.
• Resolved an issue with the new creature size dropdown menu which  made the size text field in the header of a NPC sheet no longer required  and redundant.
• Restored availability of "healing" as a valid damage type in the configuration of Spells.
• Support "Diseased" as a valid condition which an Actor might have immunity against in the Traits sidebar.
• Added pre-configured tools to the SRD Items compendium pack. Thanks  to DoomRice for setting these up and sending me the items to be added.  There's still more work to do on the 5e compendiums but I am always  happy to receive help from the community to make progress on this  process!