Development Update April 2022

Greetings Adventurers!

Welcome once again to this month’s summary of kobold activities.

This month the Kobolds have been very busy indeed.

What have the interns been up to?

Last month we ran a poll to figure out what you all wanted most. More effects stood out loud and clear (see the results post here). A good chunk of work this month has been on adding new effects and finding bugs in the associated software.

If you have any requests for spells/features/etc that you would like to see automated/effects added please leave a comment below/upvote existing ones.

In addition the first developer preview of Foundry v10 appeared - this is so developers can take a look and see what changes might be requred. Tokenizer is mostly unscathed and my early testing indicates minimal changes. DDB Importer needed significant rewrites, due to the way it manipulates and builds data models for Foundry (a key change in v10). For most modules this should be backwards compatible, however that’s not the case here. Most of the main changes are done, but there are a few show stopper bugs that have been logged at Foundry HQ, so we await the release of the next developer preview before I release any code.

In addition to the above there was a change to DDB that broke Adventure Muncher and running Foundry via the electron (I.e. not the browser) client. This is hopefully fixed now, but took far too long to get to the bottom of it as the breakage was not consistent for everyone.

Condensed changelog of other changes and fixes in DDB Importer

General updates:

• Feature and action descriptions now use <details> tag to hide full description.
• Better detection for scalevalue tags for features like Drakewarden.
• Adventure Uploads using S3 bucket failed.
• Keep “GM Notes”(module) on character imports.
• If using compendium folders, reimport of monsters could fail.
• Items would duplicate/nest condition links to SRD conditions.
• Fly speed would not parse on Fairy.
• Initial work on support for some features hopefully coming in D&D v1.6.0
• Some items would not generate speed effects, e.g. Broomstick
• If you have actors in DDB Monsters compendium that were not created outside of DDB but you now wish to link, you can use DDBImporter.fixCritters() from a macro or within the browser developer console to add the DDB Id to any matching actors (by name). This is necessary as recently, the Importer started checking for a name and the DDB id in order to support multiple actors with the same name in the compendium.
• Icons: update some missing icons
• Better handling of non-english SRD.
• Improve character id detection in URL.
• Improve embedded macro callbacks for damage macros like Hunters Mark.
• Attempt to fall back when DDB can’t be reached.
• Temporary workaround - Pact spells can now be marked as prepared during import by opening the browser console(F12) and entering game.settings.set("ddb-importer", "pact-spells-prepared", true).
• Spells: Guidance and Light spell tweaks for targets.

Characters:

• Character Import: Customised Actions will now carry over attack and damage bonuses. This resulted in a rewrite of the core functionality here, so please let me know if anything looks off/broken for items or spells. @Icoshi
• Character Import: When ignoring bio, the ideals would still be imported.
• Character Import: Psi Warrior: would set all weapons to consume Psionic Energy 😬
• Character Updates: Exhaustion updates could be inconsistent.
• Character Import: Imports by Players could fail if they can’t create macros.
• Character Import: Custom items could be duplicated during import.
• Character Import: Action parsing: some features would no longer parse damage. e.g. Breath Weapon (Acid) from the Metallic Dragonborn
• Character Import: Resource linking: Mercy Monk had missing resource linking to Ki Points.
• Character Import: Monks bonus action Unarmed Strike would come in with an extra die of damage.
• Character Import: Subclasses using optional features (e.g. Blessed Strikes for Forge Domain) would import even if the level did not allow it.

Monsters:

• Monsters: Monster features/attacks like the Giant Spiders Bite, which have a secondary damage vs save effect, will now attempt to put this damage into the versatile field, as per SRD style. This also allows for midi-qol to use and automate this save and damage.
• Monsters: some tweaks for Netherdeep monster parsing.
• Monsters: Improve monster spellcasting ability detection. (Astyrranthor was failing).
• Monsters: some features with recharge (e.g. Giant Spiders web) could come in as weapons, which don’t support recharge. @callbritton
• Monsters: Auril’s forms did not parse legendary resistance.
• Monsters: Try and improve weird errors importing monsters.

Effects:

• Effects: New Spell effects: Sleep, Storm Sphere (needs Active Auras), Spirit Shroud (needs active Auras), and Frostbite, Booming Blade, Acid Arrow, Ice Knife.
• Effects: Maneuvers: Brace and Lunging Attack tweaked. New midiqol full damage flag set for those with a saving throw where damage is also applied regardless.
• Effects: Vicious Mockery tweaked.
• Effects: Toll the Dead Error fix if using Automated Animations.
• Effects: Precision Attack is now No Damage.
• Effects: Enhance ability now displays dialogue to player who cast not GM.
• Effects: Spiritual Weapon: attack range tweaked so if Midi’s range checker is on you can still make attacks.
• Effects: Tweak weapon parsing for better midi support with other damage parsing and weapon damage hints.

Adventure Muncher

• Improve parsing for notes in Call of the Netherdeep.
• Captcha change at DDB caused loading issues.

Adventure Updates

• AtG: Scenes updated for new DDB Format.
• BGDiA: Tavern maps did not import with data.
• Dungeon of the Mad Mage: First level contribution by @Essarielle
• Curse of Strahd - a couple of token updates for Thorn and Rose. No major change.

Pariah Zero has been on fire this month reaching the following milestones:

• Eberron: Rising from the Last War: Complete!
• The Wild Beyond the Witchlight: Complete!
• Lost Laboratory of Kwalish: Complete (mostly)!
• Locathah Rising: Complete!
• Critical Role: Call of the Netherdeep: Complete!
• Infernal Machine Rebuild: Complete! (Plus Third party map pack available)

Tokenizer

Major updates to Tokenizer this month, stemming from a large collection of frames provided by the OldMightyFriendlyGamer - more available at https://ko-fi.com/oldmightyfriendlygamer.

• Tokenizer can now take a default frame for non hostile NPCs. 
• Tokenizer frame selection is now a GUI
• Tokenizer now looks for data-edit="img" on the character sheet, rather than a list of known classes used by avatars. This is used by the filepicker for images, so should* allow Tokenizer to work on most systems without modification.

What are the kobolds planning for this month?

• More effects! (Request your favourites below)
• Some experimental changes to Adventure Muncher to support some changes happening in recent Linux distros.
• The MacOS version of Adventure Muncher also needs some changes
• Experiments with Tokenizer to improve layering controls and mask detection.

Some of these are experiments, so they might not render success (but hopefully, learning).

And finally…

• A small holiday - as of now I’m away for a few days with the wife, child free (for the first time in 5 years), so I won’t be responding much/at all till later in the week. Thanks for your understanding and patience!

If you’re still using v7 of Foundry then the proxy that is used by that backend will be going offline this month. Please look to upgrade to v8 or v9 of Foundry.

And finally, the key posts have been updated with the new keys for April. Another feature added this month is a new key generation tool at https://activate.ddb.mrprimate.co.uk/ - this is for those who have trouble linking your Patreon accounts within Foundry. It will connect to Patreon and provide a unique key for you. This will replace the key posts later this year.

Thanks

MrPrimate/Jack