[Beta] 3.6.7.8 RC (Release Candidate)

Hello Gamers!

[ EDIT - One of our community found a set of bugs which were affecting import of Creatures from existing campaigns. We've fixed this up now and you can pull 3.6.7.8 from the archive instead of 3.6.7.7 which has the bug mentioned above. There were a couple of other minor visual tweaks which you can see details about in the release notes.

- Owlbear ]

(Download link is at the bottom of this message. I highly suggest you read through the message once before installing)

This marks the initial service release and feature release of D20PRO 3.6.7.8. While the majority of the changes are small and invisible there are a number of key changes which you should be aware of.

However, before I dive into that, let me point out that this is Release Candidate (RC) version of D20PRO. What that means is that if we do not find any outstanding issues in the next few days, 3.6.7.8 will become 3.6.8 and release as the new production version.

To make sure this version is as happy as can be, I'd like to invite you all to test and try out this build. I also want to make sure you don't accidentally blow up anything important though, so here is a quick and dirty guide to keeping your stuff safe:

This version of D20PRO MAY includes changes which could cause issues with existing creatures on open maps. In order to migrate an existing campaign to the new Game Model you will need to follow the directions below.

1. Navigate to the install location of your existing D20PRO version
2. Open the Judge folder and locate the Campaigns folder
3. Make a copy of the Campaigns folder so you have a clear backup to recover from. Keep this folder open for later
4. Open D20PRO (old version) and select a campaign you'd like to bring over
5. Open the campaign(s) then close each map. If you'd like to save the state of any map, simply click Ok (to overwrite the original) or Save Copy (to create a new named copy of the specified map)
6. Once all maps are closed, exit D20PRO
7. Now you're ready to install the new BETA version of D20PRO
8. I would suggest you install into a new directory so you have access to your previous install, but you *can* (at your own risk) install over your current installation path
9. Once installed, return to your previous installs Judge folder and copy your campaign folder to the new versions Judge/campaigns folder
10. Run the app
11. Download your license
12. Open your campaign
13. Open your maps, complete with creatures and state!

The major changes to the current Beta (3.6.7.7) include updates to the Character
Sheet viewer and Mini viewer.

Character Sheet and Mini View updates
The main changes to the character sheet and mini view deal with stats and saves. Well, the most obvious change is the reorg of the data. We cleared the "Saving Throws" line to allow for more content to be displays based on game system. For now, this results in a big blank space. For 5e (when we enable it) you'll have the 6 stat saves in that row + a death saves counter.

The new interface for editing Abilities and Saves breaks down changes to Base and Enhancement (Misc Mod). Changing the Base value for any of these will result in an increase of the creatures ability or save before calculations. Changing the "+" value will change the current enhancement to increase or decrease the base number and cause the value to be decorated in either Blue (Positive) or Red (Negative). The colors chosen are Color Blind safe and are nearly identical to all vision types (other than some dogs who see only black and white -- do gnolls only see black and white?).

The one caveat to be aware of is that Special Abilities, Spells and eventually Feature Effects (coming soon!) will be cause Misc Mods added manually to be removed when the effect expires. We're still deciding if this is a good thing or bad thing. Right now the intent is that a player or GM can augment an abilities granted modifiers above and beyond using this system. That being the case, it seems reasonable that the expiration of the effect should also expire the manually added mods. Thoughts and input are welcome on this concept.


We also updated the Mini View to properly reflect the updated abilities and saves. Additionally, when a player makes a change to either the base or mod, the GM's merge tool will show the final score change for approval. Right now the merge tool doesn't really know the difference between a manual change to a modifier vs. a manual change to a base number. We'll get to this eventually.



Some of the other changes of note to the Character Sheet include the removal of the "Type" drop down. This was redundant with the "Type" entry in the classes area. So now that area is called Class/Type and allows you to add Creature Types as well as Classes. Additionally, we expanded this area to offer manual control of Hit Dice in addition to Level. The drop down menus have been replaced with Pop-Overs which give you better access to formated data.



Along with the Hit Dice update there is now a "Roll" function next to hit points. This rolls all the hit dice for a creature by level or effective level (class and/or type). This doesn't prevent you from manually changing the hit points though. You can have a zero in a Type or Classes level entry, so you can put in EL 0 things here. Additionally, Races can be added to the Type list in the Classes.txt file with this system. Why? Well, so you know if you're a human or halfling right? No, it's so we can assign traits!



Fog of War speed improvements
A slew of bug fixes and some performance fixes to temporarily patch some of the alpha blending issues we were seeing in the Fog of War renderer.



To take advantage of the speed improvement mode, toggle the "Hide Fog of War" check at the bottom left of the Game Tools panel. Previously this would completely hide all Fog of War and lights. In the new model (temporary -- looking for feedback) lights and region borders are still visible when FoW is set to hide.

This gives you a best of both worlds view of the map. Regions no longer cast alpha blend colors over your art, while still giving you the ability to see the lights cast by your players. I'm open to having this also paint lights as outlines only for GM use -- let us know your thoughts!

Manually Specified Files
Significant changes were added to the Classes.txt handler for Manually Specified Content. These changes fix the long stand bug involving "GoodSaves" for 3.5, 4e, and Pathfinder. Additionally, these changes introduce a Trait mechanic which allows for specification of a Features#=<Trait>|<Trait>| declaration. Right now this is still rough around the edges and will get updated to a production worthy solution before the next release.

Creature Type has been removed as a dropdown on the Character Sheet and moved to a combined Class/Type system which, using the Classes.txt file, can provide more useful information such as HitDie, AttackRate, SavingThrows, Features, Skills, Attacks, and Tools. Not all of these elements are functional in this build.

Functional Classes.txt fields are: CreatureClass, AttackRate, HitDie, GoodSaves, SavingThrows (5e), Features, Spells, PerDay, Known, Domain<type>, and SpellCaster.

For more information on changes and updates, please see the release notes included with the build.


Where to get the Beta?

For now, you can grab the Beta from the D20PRO Public Archive here.

We'll add beta links to the getd20pro page on the website this weekend.

Additional Information
Updated System files will be included with the full release. However, either Krilion or I will post updated files for testing to the forum as soon as we have them ready.

Attached are the example 5e files we used at GenCon. The Pathfinder, 3.5 and 4e files are in progress. For those who don't want to wait, the format for the updated Classes.txt file is as follows:

Code:

### CLASS: NAME
CreatureClass=
AttackRate=.25
HitDie=
Armor=
Weapons=
Tools=
SavingThrows=
Skills=
Features=
Features1=
Features2=
Features3=
Features4=
Features5=
Features6=
Features7=
Features8=
Features9=
Features10=
Features11=
Features12=
Features13=
Features14=
Features15=
Features16=
Features17=
Features18=
Features19=
Features20=
SpellCaster=
##SPELLS AVAILABLE
Spells0=
Spells1=
Spells2=
Spells3=
Spells4=
Spells5=
Spells6=
Spells7=
Spells8=
Spells9=
##SPELLS PER DAY
PerDay1=
PerDay2=
PerDay3=
PerDay4=
PerDay5=
PerDay6=
PerDay7=
PerDay8=
PerDay9=
PerDay10=
PerDay11=
PerDay12=
PerDay13=
PerDay14=
PerDay15=
PerDay16=
PerDay17=
PerDay18=
PerDay19=
PerDay20=

(repeated for folks who skipped to the end)
Where to get the Beta?

For now, you can grab the Beta from the D20PRO Public Archive here.

We'll add beta links to the getd20pro page on the website this weekend.

 

Beta version updated to 3.5.7.8

 

Just FYI. we're going to be skipping right over 3.6.7.9 for public consumption tonight/tomorrow morning and moving straight into 3.6.8 for release.

I'm uploading/archiving 3.6.7.9 and then will build out 3.6.8 which will be a release version. See the next announcement for release style information!