In case you missed it, we’re currently working to create our next major update to Roll20, the Update of Holding, which will be released in Q1 2015. Read more about the announcement in our previous post.
Everyone at Roll20 is hard at work on our next major update. While we’re busy behind-the-scenes, we wanted to give you a little preview of some of the things that will be coming in early 2015.
Folders for the Journal Tab
The number-one requested new feature right now on our Suggestions forum is for us to add folders in addition to tags to the application. But we don’t just want to add basic hum-drum folders, we want to implement a system that’s easy to use, easy to re-organize, and also works with our existing tags and search functionality as well as player permissions. A tall order indeed! Below is a preview of what it looks like right now:
We’re also planning to add support for folders (which we’re internally calling “chapters” right now) to the Page Toolbar, and then eventually in a later update to other places in the interface such as the Jukebox.
The Journal folders are on Dev today for Mentors to begin testing and giving us feedback. Join them if you’re interested in being part of that process!
Overhauled 3D Dice
We’ve completely overhauled our 3D Dice system from the ground up. The new result is slimmer (taking only about 10% of the memory as our existing system), much more reliable so that everyone will always see the same result on-screen, faster (most rolls only take around 2-3 seconds to complete), and best of all: no more spinning d6’s that don’t stop!
In addition to the graphical improvements, the other major change is that all 3D Dice results are now generated by our QuantumRoll server, with the same technology that powers our regular dice rolls, to ensure a truly random result that you can trust completely.
Popout Windows
One of the things you notice when you really start running a large Roll20 game is how many dialog boxes you need to deal with in the interface. Characters and Handouts, macros and chat, it can get a little cluttered.
Our new Popout Windows feature allows you to “pop” those dialog boxes out of the interface and into their own separate browser windows. This makes it much easier to hide and show them without needing to close them, enables switching between them using Alt-Tab or other OS-level window switching features, and lets you fully take advantage of multiple screens if you have them in your computer setup. Having played in a game with this feature enabled, it’s amazing how nice it is to just leave your Character Sheet open the whole game without blocking your view of the tabletop itself.
In the Update of Holding, you’ll be able to pop out Characters, Handouts, and your text chat pane; we’ll continue expanding this functionality in future updates as well.
Improved Character Sheet Performance
We’ve greatly improved the performance of our Character Sheets when updating values. Now when a value changes, only the fields that value affected will be updated, rather than needing to re-render the entire sheet. This leads to things such as instant tab switching for tabbed sheets, and much snappier response times in general.
We’re going to continue paying attention to the way that sheet authors are using the Character Sheets system and automatically improving performance where we can without requiring anyone to do anything other than continue making great sheets!
Plus More!
Of course, this is only the beginning. We’re still hard at work on the Roll20 for iPad and Roll20 for Android tablet apps, the Roll20 Compendium, campaign management features, lots of bugfixes and other tweaks, and even more. We’ll keep you posted here on the blog as we approach release date.
And as a final reminder, everything discussed in this blog post is available right now for testing on our Dev Server for our Mentor-level subscribers. So if you want to have a say in how these features ultimately turn out, consider joining us to help guide the development of Roll20 in a very direct way.