Version 12 Feature Vote

can we please improve vision API developer experience in v12? The v11 vision is simply impossible to maintain and popular mods like Perfect Vision are dead because of this.

Sorry if it's already been detailed somewhere, I haven't been able to find clarification on my own, but seeing as Event Triggers and Terrain & Cover are neck-and-neck I thought I'd ask as my vote change could actually matter. Event Triggers as described in the article brings to mind "Monk's Active Triggers" and while obviously I'd like that in Core, it didn't seem as much a priority as Terrain & Cover because there's already a great mod that doesn't break often handling it. Would Event Triggers differ from the mod in function more than I'm picturing or will it be improving, smoothing, and integrating?

How about the option to remove "News" and "Featured Content"?

GM SECRETS One thing that has always been a little frustrating is the way the SECRET BLOCK works. If you create text that is secret in an item or journal and the player is then given permission, they can SEE the Secret. This hinders hiding Curse items and other things you do not want the player to know about. There was a simple module called GM SECRETS which made the secret block tied to player role (GM or Player) rather than ownership. It worked in v7 - v9, but with the big changes in v10 it no longer works. https://github.com/kaelad02/gm-secrets/tree/v10changes I would think this should be a core basic feature in Foundry. Making Secret Block text tied to roles rather than permissions. I just thought I would share.

I would be happy with any of these improvements but the 2 I am most excited for are Scene Types and Terrain and Cover. The others would be cool, but nearly all of them I can do to some extent with a module. It would be great having the options in standard Foundry, but I still have access. But Scene Types would be the thing I use the absolute most. I use animated scenes during TotM moments and the amount of times I forget to change the lighting so that players can actually see it is obnoxious. And also feels really weird to spend so much time going through the options to *remove* the grid and make it so players can see it right out of the box. It's different for battlemaps because I'm probably spending a lot of time on walls and such anyway, so doing the lighting at the same time just makes sense. But if I want to throw up an area map or animated scene, spending minutes making it so everyone can see it really is annoying. Terrain and Cover is something I haven't seen modules for, so I would be super excited for that. My players never seem to be able to track or remember things like that on their own and I've already got a bunch of monsters to handle. It would be great for the VTT to do that

I would love to see an improvement to the music playback function. - Having the ability to blend music tracks together by crossfading two songs or the beginning and the end of the same track to enable a seemless transition would be great. - It would be awesome to have foundry check the download progress of the tracks for all connected player so that everyone hears the same thing at the same time. (Currently it is possible the the music hasn't started for one player while some other player is hearing music for the last 10 seconds. This makes it impossible to fit the narrative to the music). - It would be awesome to be able to preload audio tracks like you can do with scense. Right click -> prepare playlist - It would be awesome (but probably unrealistic) to have foundry optimize tracks for streaming. It would be cool if you could have an optional feature which could compress / reencode audio to save bandwith.

I was wondering why the "Touch/Tablet Support" option didn't make it into the list of v12 features seeing how it was almost the winner of the v11 feature vote? Now that life after the pandemic is starting to get back to normal, this feature is even more so needed! My regular group that has been playing for decades found foundry a fantastic option when we all had to stay home, but now that we can meet up, foundry doesn't lend it self to in person games. But this option would allow us to use foundry to its fullest again while allowing us to be in person. Is it possible that we could get that added back to the list of options for the vote?

Some thoughts on the current leader: terrain metadata for difficult terrain and various wall cover. This is very much a 5E / Pathfinder perspective. YMMV at your table. I won't use it. At all. Not because of the additional prep time required, but because of a matter of accuracy. It won't work. Not in my game. Nor are handling multiple cover types or difficult terrain a burden. It's trivial problem that doesn't need a solution (at my table, again, YMMV). The facts (again, of my table): - difficult terrain changes at play time, all the time. Stuff gets moved. Enemies drop. Debris is created. Etc. You aren't going to define metadata for that at runtime, and even if you do, not all enemies create difficult terrain when they drop. Some do. Some don't. And don't even get me started on debris or Animate Objects. The runtime burden is too heavy, and static by itself isn't enough. - in my game, my 6 players have a total of 5 different ways to ignore difficult terrain, and 4 of them are based on some contextual situation that only applies some of the time. Some ignore ice/snow only. Otherwise ignore mud/swamp only, Some ignore all. Some hover over the terrain 1 foot, but only after they've activated a magic item (requires bonus action) which lasts only for 1 minute. Others get it with the Freedom of Movement spell. Is the Measurement Tool which estimates movement going to correctly factor in all of those contexts? Nope. Not a chance. Thus, we can't trust it. Thus, it's may as well not even exist as a feature to us. We will continue to do token movement one square at a time, counting off either 5 or 10 as we do because we as DM's / players know "all the things" that the VTT never, ever will for something this complex. Even with modules. - similarly, -2 / -5 / unhittable for cover is not hard. We don't need that handled with automation. The one we do need, unhittable, we already have and is enough. I get that there are automation nuts out there who love that stuff, and that's great. I used to be one, very early on, but then I saw the light. :-) I don't need an attack to resolve automatically and take into account half or three-quarters cover. Furthermore, if you think it's the lack of cover support that is "holding you back" from achieving full automation, you're likely wrong. When you get this...you will find the next thing. Then the next thing. Then the next thing. Until finally you realize that the ONLY way to achieve 100% accuracy is to ignore automation, and be less like a video game and more like a TTRPG. :-P The point is, there's no way a Core feature is getting that right all of the time. It'll be lucky to get it correct 80% of the time, if that, for systems like PF/PF2/5E. Again, YMMV as your system or your table may not use all of these items/spells/rules. Ours does (and more...variety is the spice of life afterall). Movement and Cover are VERY complex in our game, and Core won't get it right most of the time, even with these features. Perhaps with a bunch of modules it will be close, for stock items and stock spells, but what about homebrew? Hmm? This is my point on automating all the things: If it's not accurate 100% of the time, it's dead to me 100% of the time. It's why I don't use any weapon attack automation, or movement automation that exists today in the various (and great) 3rd party modules, because it can't be trusted. These features will close that gap, and empower them to get closer, but they still won't hit 100% accuracy. And, until it works 100% of the time, we won't be using them. Doing so would result in error, or slowing down the game vs. speeding it up as we "fix" what it just did wrong. Let's look at difficult terrain again...in order to get it right, I have to not only define difficulty regions, I have to tag them with ALL of the relevant metadata possible metadata (off hand I can think of at least a half-dozen types of static difficult terrain), and that doesn't even count all of the runtime versions that can be created. Then, the fact that certain magic items, or certain spells, ignore certain kinds of terrain. Some only for 1 round. Some for 1 minute. Some for 10 minutes, but require Concentration. Ugh. Furthermore, many of these things are not tied to Conditions, so 5E System level can't handle it either. There is no "Condition" that says you ignore difficult terrain. There are class features. Or spells. Or magic items. Some permanent. Some ephemeral. It's the ephemeral ones that are the bitch, but if you don't handle them, the automation is broke. I will say this though...if this is added Crymic is gonna have his hands full trying to make all of this work. Full time job that I wouldn't wish upon anybody lol. So, yeah, I get that in *theory* the feature sounds cool, and in *some* tables it may work great. But, for 5E and for Pathfinder 2, given their stock magic items and spells that affect terrain difficult and cover, I just don't see the value without going ALL IN on third party automation modules to try to wrangle all of this in and make it work, and even if you do, I 100% guarantee you won't get it right all of the time, especially once you factor in Homebrew. I've created over 500 Homebrew spells and magic items, and probably 25 to 30 deal with cover or terrain. Even if Cyrmic and his helpers get all of this working...it won't work for those without additional work from me. I won't do that work, because I know better. I know even if I do, I can't trust this all to be accurate 100% of the time, so I use it 0% of the time. So, yeah, even if somebody gets Ranger and Sharpshooter and Freedom of Movement and Boots of the Winterlands all working (and that's the literal tip of the iceberg)...what about the dozens of Griffon's Saddlebag items that affect these? Or the dozens I've created? Or the hundreds on D&D Beyond public Homebrew? And, if you can't get it right all of the time, my take is you shouldn't use it any of the time. But that's just me. Clearly not everybody has the same opinion, otherwise automation wouldn't be such a Hot Topic. :-) Early on in the FVTT days I was an automation junkie, but I have since seen the light. :-) Again, just my 2 bits about my table. I'm sure there are automation nuts out there who have embraced it whole hog, and for them, having this will improve their accuracy of their games and simplify them. But for me, it'll go unused, because I ignore this automation stuff because it's a mountain of work to be 90% right.

Version 13 should add: Stabilizing API for modules. AKA: Put more thoughts into the general and used APIs. And redesign where needed, this might break more modules, but should stabilize future versions... I think everyone would agree that this would be useful...

Frankly, a lot of this stuff is already covered by modules that are freely available and supported by various creators. The current leader is "Terrain and Cover", but Levels already does a bunch of this and more. It doesn't support "difficult" terrain, but Foundry doesn't support movement limiting anyways. Can you talk to TheRipper here? "Placeable Items" may actually benefit from support at the Foundry level. But most systems can already leverage things like ItemPile. In fact, I'm not sure whey you want to develop and support this? Why not just talk to WASP? "Event Triggers" sounds great. But already have MATT. What are you building that Monk hasn't already created? In fact, it sounds like you're doing less than MATT currently does? I could rinse and repeat this argument for basically every item on that list. We already have modules for these, but you don't even acknowledge them. Some of them may be marginally improved by being in the Core, but that just means you're going to destroy someone's module and make upgrading a pain. I think every item on this list needs a better plan.

Better support for fog of war for hex crawls would be great

One of the things I miss from the VTTs is that there should be some solution to the problem of characters and opponents' tokens blocking vision, so that you can't see through them. As if there really is a body blocking the vision. But all this so that the token, the image itself, is visible to everyone in the same way, just not allowing the things behind it to be seen. It can be useful for similar items, objects in the sense that you want to see what that particular thing is. For example, in the case of a column, see the column itself, not just the blockage. If there is a solution to this, please excuse my ignorance. I have little experience in Foundry.

I just want Fog of War parity with Roll20, in terms of manual management. The particular use case I want supported is manually clearing individual hex maps, the current modules available don't cleanly support the flow of.... click a hex, reveal a hex. There's always some jank or non-clean revealing that happens.

Looking at the early votes, it already seems that Event Triggers won't happen, again, because the new shiny jingling keys are getting all the attention, again. :-( Such a bummer that we still have to rely on 3rd party module for a fundamental feature that actually makes a huge difference in gameplay and is massively enabling of downstream capabilities. Macros and scripting are a fundamental powerhouse that is neutered without events and triggers in Core. The Core Product has a V8, but only 6 cylinders are firing without this. In fact, I argue that this is such a pivotal missing feature from Core, I honestly don't even see why it's up for Vote. I think the executive Product Ownership decision should be made to Just Do It, Nike style. Not necessarily for V12 if there's no room, but get it in the Roadmap and stop letting the community decide, because the Community will often vote for what's shiny, especially if they already have MATT integrated. In short: they'll vote what's good for THEM, but not necessarily what's good for the PRODUCT. New customers haven't heard of MATT. They just want to know why they can't do simple, basic things and empower their macros, to, you know, fire when something happens. :-) Just my 2 bits...you know how I voted. :-P

I want to vote for all of these, but I'll restrain myself to my top picks lol. Keep up the great work!

Thanks for using approval voting!

I'm curious, is the Standalone Player Client no longer an improvement you're looking into for this update? Is it perhaps planned as a choice still for the future (Saw your reply about Tablet support). I know my players and I were much looking forward to that feature in particular since we've been struggling with performance issues in-browser since V8 released.

I'd like to see better drawing tools. When you draw a line, it becomes a huge selectable box. Draw another line over top... and good luck trying to select the one you want. It desperately needs improvement.

Is tablet improvement not an option? It was in the v11 poll and was a highly requested feature.