vttassets

Iconizer: Poll results and conclusions

Added 2020-03-02 03:14:19 +0000 UTC

While there was a majority that had no issues with servers being contacted while playing, there as a significant amount of people that are not feeling so great about this. I tried to demo this functionality and it would come with some major functionality changes - which I wasn't too happy about, so I focused on another angle.

In the next release, you will be able to share items that are lacking icons. This is an opt-in, so per default, this functionality is off. Since I cannot scan all D&D Beyond content for new items in new sourcebooks, it would be great if some of you switched that switch and helped getting a better dictionary for everyone.

I created a tiny app that helps me to find items which lack icons, and that enables me to search through the icon database and to assign an icon quickly. The idea is to never have a big backlog on items ;)

Both the addition to sharing missing icons to the server and a UI to "quickly" choose suitable icons for items that are missing them are nearly finished. The server parts needs to be deployed to production, still runs locally - it's logic is rather simple, most work went into the small app to select the icons.Y

Only items are submitted to the server which

are imported by the character importer or through the monster import
have no viable icon found

Three values will be transmitted: The name of the item, the type of the item and a VTTA-specific subType of the item, that may or may not exist. Nothing else is stored or logged.

While re-creating the dictionaries from scratch, the item type is inserted now as an additional field in order to be able to differ between a shield that is worn, and a shield that is casted as a spell.

Additionally, a Foundry-specific dictionary was generated by parsing the compendium packs of the dnd5e game system. You can choose to use that one instead of the World of Warcraft icons. Just keep in mind that the same items difers in naming between D&D Beyond and Foundry sometimes (e.g. "Poison, Basic (vial)" vs "Basic Poison"), therefore there will be some missing icons when importing from D&D Beyond.

The third option is to use the hosted icon sets from wowhead.com instead of using a local item library. While it works great and is therefore a hassle-free setup, I am still undecided if I can release such a functionality.

Thanks for offering your thoughts on the future of Iconizer and for taking part in the poll. That really helps to determine the best path to take.

That was a productive weekend <3