Beta 0.5.4 Release Notes (Patreon)

Hi everyone I'm thrilled to release Foundry Virtual Tabletop Beta 0.5.4  which is a major update that is an even-numbered "unstable" release for  Council-tier Patreon supporters. The changes in this update are quite  broad and do a huge amount of work to get Foundry Virtual Tabletop ready  for release which has been announced for Friday, May 22! If you haven't yet gotten a chance, please check out the Release Announcement Video which was posted last week.

This update includes a ton of major new features including: an  expanded Application Update system, the addition of an integrated  Systems and Modules Browser, improved Canvas Keyboard controls, more  robust player management, a Drawing Text tool, and a large number of  performance and stability improvements. This update sets a new record  for the largest Foundry Virtual Tabletop update ever, clocking in with an enormous 111 closed issues on GitLab.

Thank you all so very much for supporting my project and relying on  Foundry Virtual Tabletop to bring us all together amidst health concerns  and difficult times of social distancing. Please stay healthy, care for  each other, and stay up to date on progress by following the project  roadmap on GitLab: https://gitlab.com/foundrynet/foundryvtt/boards.

You can also read these notes on the official Foundry Virtual Tabletop website here:  https://foundryvtt.com/releases/0.5.4 

New Features

• Added a major new feature, the Systems and Modules Browser  which allows you to easily discover and install with a single click  many game systems or add-on modules from the setup menu. Click "Install  System" to browse available systems or "Install Module" on the Modules  tab to browse add-on Modules. Systems and Modules will appear in this  list if they are featured on the Package Directory page of the official  Foundry VTT website. Instructions for having your module or system  featured on that page are available in Discord. Users may still install  any System or Module directly using its JSON manifest URL even if it  does not appear in the browser, and packages may still be manually  installed by unzipping their contents into the appropriate folder of  your user data.
• Allow the installation of Systems or Modules where the Foundry core version exceeds the stated compatibleCoreVersion  of the package, but display a warning to the user that some features  may not be supported. Previously such packages would be refused  entirely, which was often unnecessarily strict.
• Implemented the internal updater strategy that will be used at  software release. All software updates are classified into one of three  channels: "Alpha (Unstable)" which reflects new features under  development and may be relatively unstable, "Beta (Candidate)" which  reflects sets of changes which are nearly ready for release but are not  yet fully polished, and "Release (Stable)" which includes only changes  which have been through earlier phases of testing and are viewed as  stable. Select your desired update channel when requesting an update.
• Implemented an authenticated software update procedure where, when  attempting a core software update, you will request access to the update  from a centralized server which validates your software license and  provides you with a limited time access token to download the update.  You do not have to have a license yet to update the software - in the  near term Patreon access codes will still be used.
• Improve (slightly) the smoothness of keyboard movement by adjusting the throttle timing and set 
• Added C as a keyboard shortcut to toggle the character sheet of the currently targeted Token or primary Character.
• Provided a Game Master only method to kick an idle player from the  game session, returning them to the login screen. Access this feature by  right clicking a User in the bottom-left Players menu.
• Provided a Game Master only method to ban an unwelcome player from  the World, revoking their user role and booting them to the login screen  (where they will be denied access). Access this feature by right  clicking a User in the bottom-left Players menu.
• Players with an assigned role of NONE are no longer able to log into the world.
• Improved the capabilities and permissions of the ASSISTANT role to  more effectively be able to assist the primary Game Master by creating,  editing, and deleting Entities within the World.
• Provide server administrator users with a safe method of deleting a  World from within the application. In the Setup menu, you may delete a  world after first completing a confirmation dialog which verifies your  intent. Be cautious when using this feature - data from deleted worlds  cannot be recovered (unless you have backed it up yourself).
• Added a method of panning and zooming the canvas using the  keyboard. Holding CTRL (or CMD on MacOS) plus directional arrow keys  will pan the canvas in the corresponding direction while CTRL/CMD plus  Equals (=) will zoom in and CTRL/CMD plus Minus (-) will zoom out.
• Added a new Drawing Text tool which allows easily creating and  placing text labels directly on a Scene. The Text tool is in the Drawing  Tools control palette. While placing a text label, simply type and  update the label in real time. Press ENTER to confirm your text, or  ESCAPE to discard it.
• Text in Drawings will now rotate to remain aligned with the rotation of the drawing itself.
• Improve Drawing creation workflow by automatically assuming control over a created Drawing after it has been created.
• Added a rectangular select tool for the Walls Layer which allows  you to easily select multiple walls within a rectangular area. Walls  will be selected if their midpoint falls within the selection rectangle.
• Significantly reduced the amount of computation needed when  modifying Walls on the Walls Layer. Previously each wall update was  doing a lot of work to recompute all the vision settings for all light  sources and Tokens on the scene - but this was largely wasteful and made  the experience of editing walls on the map unnecessarily slow. Now  those computations are deferred until the Walls Layer is deactivated  which greatly improves the fluidity of wall creation.
• Optimize the number of fog exploration events which must occur  before the pending exploration progress is committed to a rendered  texture.
• Added a toggle control in the Walls Layer which will force exact  snapping to grid intersections while it is toggled on. When "Force Snap  to Grid" is enabled, wall endpoints will only be placed exactly at  (square) grid intersections. With this mode toggled off, wall endpoints  will continue snapping at sub-grid precision.
• Improved the user experience with the new Grid Configuration tool  by better supporting manual numpad entry of values and automatically  minimizing the main Scene Config sheet when the Grid Config is  activated.
• Enlarged the displayed size of walls on the Walls Layer for large  dimension grids (>100px) to be more prominently visible and easy to  edit. This makes the experience of working with walls for  high-resolution maps more consistent with what is the "intended"  experience at 100px grid.
• Added support for the TinyMCE Link plugin in the rich text editor  toolbar, making it easier to customize links to external URLs or  content.
• In the Windows Electron application, added some Jump Menu (right  click on the taskbar) links which conveniently open the User Data  location or the Application Installation location in your windows  explorer. This enhancement will only be available if you install a fresh  copy of Foundry VTT using version 0.5.4 or later as Electron does not  get updated when using the internal software update.
• Added a new option in the context menu of each Scene in the sidebar  to regenerate its thumbnail image on demand if, for any reason, a Scene  fails to have a thumbnail generated properly the first time.
• Added support for .m4v video files as an allowed and supported  video format. Note that for m4v videos to work your web browser must  natively support this file format.
• Implemented a brand new TextureLoader which fully replaces the  built-in PIXI.Loader to load image and video assets and prepare them for  use on the game canvas. The new custom loader demonstrates noticeable  performance improvements over the PIXI loader, as well as better  supporting a wider variety of media formats (like .m4v video and better  .svg support). The new texture loader also removes the requirement that  only one Scene can be loading at any given time - eliminating errors  when trying to switch to a second Scene before the first finished  loading.
• Added a loading bar just beneath the Scene navigation bar which  displays the progress of asset loading when switching to a new Scene.
• Added a command-line flag when starting the server --noupdate  which can disable the core software update functionality. This could be  useful in hosted or managed environments where you do not wish to  permit a software update without handling other related work.
• Improved the way that AWS credentials are loaded for integrating  with S3 File Storage. Previously credentials had to be loaded from a  JSON file, the path to which was specified in the options.json file. Now  the awsConfig setting may be optionally set to true which  will, instead of using a JSON configuration file, attempt to load AWS  credentials from Environment Variables or user-level AWS configurations,  or IAM roles.
• Improved the Macro configuration sheet by allowing it to be  resizable to adjust the amount of space allowed for typing chat or  script macros.
• Changed the behavior of dynamic entity links to Macro entities.  These links will now execute the linked macro when clicked (if the  clicking User has permission to do so) instead of opening the Macro  sheet.
• Added an "Execute" button to the Macro Configuration sheet which allows for quickly executing a Macro while editing it.
• Add a new configurable User Permission which can allow players to  create Journal Entries for themselves without needing to request that  the Game Master create journal entries on their behalf. This can make it  much easier for players to take notes during the session within the  convenience of the Foundry application.
• Reworked the Module Management application to allow all Players to  view the list of Modules which are currently active and enabled within  the game world. Modules which are installed, but not activated, will not  be shown in this list. I felt it was important for the set of modules  which are active to be transparent and shared knowledge for all Users. I  realize that some GameMasters would probably prefer to keep their list  of modules a secret - but this was a carefully reasoned decision that I  hope you will understand.
• Display a prominent error message regarding hardware acceleration  and WebGL which does not disappear until the user clicks on it to  acknowledge the message.
• Improved the behavior of user click detection in the Combat Tracker  to make it easier to hover and click upon Combatants and have their  tokens be highlighted (on hover) or controlled (on click).
• Users will now be clearly informed of their error when attempting to install a package (system or module) of the incorrect type.
• Improved the rendering performance of multi-token movements by  ensuring that all sight updates are deferred until a single operation  for the set of all updates.
• Implemented significant performance improvements for sight updates  when opening or closing doors by reducing the amount of re-computation  required in the Walls layer.
• When a new file is uploaded in the file picker, the UI will  automatically select that asset as the active choice, reducing the need  to find your uploaded file afterwards.
• Reduce the dimensions of the Setup and Configuration app slightly  to get it closer to 680px height which will work better for players on  the (minimum supported) resolution of 768px height.
• Changes to Entity permission levels will now immediately revoke (or  enable) the editable state of an open sheet associated with that  Entity.
• Added a large number of translation strings to the English localization dictionary.

Bug Fixes

• The Combat Tracker header would incorrectly state "No active  encounter" if no Combatants had been yet added to the encounter, even  though the encounter itself was active.
• Login could fail if attempted before all script resources and  language translations were finished loading. To improve upon this the  Join form is initially disabled with a spinner icon which becomes  enabled for login once required scripts have finished loading for the  client.
• Players who have entity creation permission are now able to import  or drag+drop Entities of that type out of Compendium packs into teh  World where previously they were prevented from doing this despite  having permission to create new entities directly.
• Added explicit response headers from the Foundry VTT server to DENY  attempts to cross-frame Foundry Virtual Tabletop within an external  iframe.
• Using the createMany operation for Drawings fails to call the  _adjustPoints method which needs to occur before data is sent to the  server.
• Accessing the FilePicker on the World Config app requires admin  access, but doesn't perceive access as being allowed if no admin access  key were present. This will now work even if no access key is set.
• Dynamic entity link name overrides were no longer working, the intended syntax like @Actor[Big Bad Guy]{Innocent Civilian} will now correctly display the link as "Innocent Civilian" instead of the true Entity name.
• The orientation of the Scene darkness layer failed to take canvas  image offsets into consideration. This has been reduced in importance as  the Scene darkness layer has been expanded to also cover the buffer  area surrounding the Scene background image, allowing room for offsets  to be defined while still remaining under the area of darkness.
• Inline roll messages were not working properly with modifier terms  which included greater-than or less-than signs. These should now be  working as expected.
• A crash could occur if a background image sprite was created using a null texture where the texture source was null.
• A crash could occur if a Tile object specified an invalid image  path. Such invalid tile images are now replaced with a generic hazard  sign icon so that you can clearly see which tiles do not have image  paths properly defined.
• Using a pattern fill for a Drawing without providing a valid  pattern texture would fail rendering and break the Drawings Layer of the  Scene. This has been resolved.
• Tokens with invalid image URLs caused the Token to show the mystery  man icon as expected, but become non-interactable (not expected). This  has been resolved.
• Fixed a bug which prevented non-GM players from configuring their  own client settings because the entire settings configuration menu was  incorrectly gated behind the modify settings permission. Now this menu  is available to all players, but only settings which can be modified are  visible for alteration.
• Token light source tinting suffered from a bounding rectangle which  was incorrectly clipping the edges of the effect. This has been  resolved.
• Shift+Click to add or remove walls from the currently controlled  set had broken and was not working as expected. This is restored and you  can now shift+click wall endpoints to add that wall to your control  set.
• Using negative values for light source emission produced a result  which did not match the radius of light emitted with positive values due  to the extra half-token width padding applied for Token light sources.
• Editing the World configuration would accidentally result in the  "Disable All Modules" override being incorrectly applied even if that  checkbox was left unchecked.
• Improve the shorthand world description displayed on the Setup page  to prevent it possibly contaminating and breaking other nearby HTML  structure due to unclosed tags in its preview.
• Pressing the TAB key will now only cycle through controllable Tokens when the Tokens layer is active.
• Strictly enforce that Foundry VTT urls may not end with a trailing  slash via a redirecting middleware. Any URL requests which initially  have a trailing slash will be redirected to the non-slashed address.
• Toggle Navigation for a singleton active scene removes it as Active  and de-populates the navigation bar. This should be prevented, you can  no longer toggle off navigation for your active Scene.
• Roll Tables with an unreachable entry which falls outside the  probability distribution of the roll formula could result in an infinite  loop where the table tried but failed to draw a valid result.
• Improved the visual tooltip style of long macro names to not break  and overflow the preferred tooltip width by allowing the tooltips the  possibility to scale horizontally as needed.
• Fixed an issue with roll data attribute references not working properly for deferred inline rolls.
• Resolved an error which would occur when changing the type of a wall segment to contain a Door.
• Hidden Tokens could occasionally and briefly be displayed when  re-rendering the Canvas. I have prevented this by starting every Token  in an initially hidden state and only revealing that Token if conditions  allow for it to be visible.
• Fixed an issue with the Setup Configuration application which failed to record the changed value of the UPnP preference.
• Improve the naming convention of newly created entities in the  sidebar to apply localized strings instead of using the class name of  the Entity.
• All FormApplication._updateObject methods should have  been asynchronous and return Promises once their target objects were  updated. This was not the case in a large number of cases. I went  through and applied the correct functional standards.
• Initiative rolls on the Combat Tracker will attempt to respect the  Roll Mode dropdown selection. Some exceptions may occur in cases where a  token is explicitly hidden on the Combat Tracker, it's roll will always  be Private.
• The FilePicker would not correctly assign it's active target and search path in some cases.
• The Combat Tracker would fail to render image previews for video  tokens since their icons were not static. I added additional logic to  create thumbnails for video tokens that can be used in cases where a  static representation of the Token is required.
• Dragging the token of an unlinked Token would misleadingly reset  the display of their attribute bars to full during the drag preview  operation.
• Pressing the Enter key has been disabled or restricted while  navigating the File Picker to prevent it from unexpectedly submitting  the form or traversing the directory path backwards.
• Improve URI decoding in the displayed results of the File Picker to  display the original names of files and directories even if they  contain special characters.
• Interacting with a Door could, in some cases, cause Fog of War  exploration to be lost. Some refactoring of the Sight Layer has improved  the workflows being used here and eliminated this method of incorrectly  losing exploration progress.

Framework and API Changes

• [BREAKING] This version includes a major refactor of the Socket  management system which handles the transaction of data to and from the  server-side of the software. There are several significant changes  associated with this redesign including breaking changes for  multi-entity and multi-embedded entity operations, for the usage of  Hooks related to Entities and Embedded Entities, and for callback  function specifications in custom entity (like Actor) subclasses. Please  see these notes on GitLab for more details.
• [BREAKING] The Collection class which defines the containing group for each Entity type has been refactored to subclass Map directly for more efficient and semantic APIs which reduce unnecessary Array iteration.
• [BREAKING] Redefined the WallsLayer.blockMovement and WallsLayer.blockVision Arrays to always include doors regardless of their current state, deferring door state checks until vision computation.
• Added the concept of a "permanent" notification which does not  automatically disappear without being explicitly dismissed by the user.  To make any notification type (info, warn, error) permanent, pass {permanent: true} as a key in a second options parameter.
• Improved the WallLayer.pasteObjects and PlaceablesLayer.pasteObjects methods to use a createMany operation instead of iterating individual creation operations.
• Optimized performance of localization file loading by allowing all  translation files to be loaded asynchronously and in-parallel while  simply awaiting the completion of all promises to apply the translations  in the expected load order.
• Improve the rendering and closing logic of the FormApplication  class to avoid unnecessary re-rendering attempts of forms which are  being submitted and staged to automatically close after submission.
• Each CanvasLayer subclass is now drawn in it's own separate try  block with layer-specific errors displayed as notifications and in the  console log. Previously all layers were within the same block, so errors  on one layer would break rendering of subsequent layers.
• Implemented the server side HTML parsing library parse5  which adds some improved sanitization and parsing abilities for  server-side HTML cleaning. Particularly, this allows for the server-side  HTML validation to detect and automatically close any unclosed HTML  tags which could otherwise contaminate the structure of the outer  document in which such defective HTML appeared.
• Refactored the storage schema of client-side Settings to use Map instances for the registered setting definitions game.settings.settings.
• Renamed the Documentation class to FrameViewer to generalize it's usage for any iframe target URL.
• When uploading a file using the Files.upload() method, expand the data returned in the server response to provide the resulting web-safe file path of the uploaded file.
• Significant portions of the server side code have been  re-implemented in Typescript to harden their reliability, testability,  and consistency. This is a relatively major paradigm change, but it's  one that after exploring for several days felt was a good choice to  make. The initial portions of the server side code which are  re-implemented in Typescript are the entire Database layer, the  server-side Socket management interface, the software auto-updater, and  Compendium packs. This represents a considerable chunk (around 30%) of  the server-side code. I will be working to eventually convert the entire  server-side code to Typescript before the full software release. An  additional positive byproduct of this process is that all the modules  which were re-written in Typescript have been thoroughly audited and  improved for consistency, structure, and reliability.
• As part of the Typescript changes, some aspects of the server-side  build process have also changed including the approach to code  obfuscation and minification to support the preservation of source-maps  back to the original Typescript files.
• Implemented a new Collection.getName(entityName) method to get a single Entity by it's name attribute. If multiple entities have the same name, the first matched Entity will be returned.
• Some improvements to the WebRTC implementation to update to a new  version of the EasyRTC client script and change the server to bind on  all available interfaces.
• Allow for improved flexibility in localization and translation with a new i18n.format(stringId, data) method which allows for substituting a data object into a complex sentence structure.
• Support an option to register a button in the master settings  configuration menu for a Module or System which spawns another  application form for in-depth configuration. See these notes on GitLab for example usages and a visual explanation.
• Removed several instances of hard-coded Entity class references in favor of more dynamically referencing the assigned entityClass for that particular Entity type within the CONFIG object.
• Added support for the missing options.deleteAll flag  for Embedded Entity delete operations. This is similar to, but not  exactly equivalent to updating the parent with an empty Array since this  approach will end up triggering callback functions and hooks for every  deleted Embedded Entity.
• Refactored the getWallCollisionsForRay method, moving it to the WallsLayer class and adding several additional options which customize how collision testing is performed.
• Added the TextEditor.previewHTML(content, length) method which can generate an abbreviated text preview of some HTML content.

Documentation Improvements

• Updated API documentation for 0.5.4 build.

Known Issues

• If there are enough Scenes displayed in the Navigation Bar that it  wraps to a 2nd (or more) line, those subsequent rows of Scenes will  overlap the position of the loading bar which displays load progress.
• The "Force Snap to Grid" toggle in the Walls Layer produces  unpredictable effects on hexagonal grids where some alternative logic is  required to improve this behavior.