Roll20 Blog

UPDATE OF HOLDING: Development Blog #3

Written by The Roll20 Team | Mar 2, 2015 8:00:00 AM

Roll20 Compendium, Looking for Group, and the Impending Launch...

I’m not sure how easy this is to tell from the outside-looking-in, but the Update of Holding is huge (more info here and here). Every time we get done with one of these big named updates, we promise ourselves “we’ll go smaller next time,” and then accidentally end up getting excited about doing something(s) bigger. This update we’ve exceeded 85,000 lines of new code already!

The Update of Holding– including Roll20 for iPad and Roll20 for Android– launching very soon...

...but beyond that, we wanted to have a look at the Compendium element of the update. Hit the jump for more...

The Roll20 Compendium will be launching with information from the Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 and Pathfinder _System Reference Document_s, with the intention of covering a variety of Open Gaming License materials. For those who aren’t familiar with the in’s and out’s of these resources, they allow tabletop gamers to share particular portions of game rules under a public license. There are a great many games that use these sorts of open mechanics, and we intend to dive into more rule sets as time allows, but wanted to first launch with these elements. Here’s a preview of some of the Pathfinder elements from within Roll20 for iPad:

These hyperlinked pages will also be accessible on the web, and should prove to be an excellent way to quickly check on rules during your games.

That’s a preview of what’s coming, but we also have some exciting things we’ve already taken live today, including an impressive overhaul of our Looking for Group system.

Among the changes:

  • Removed “full games” from listings.

  • Added options for Text Only, Voice Only, or Video & Voice Games.

  • Added a “Mature Content” tag.

  • Added different Game Types (RPGs, Card Games, Board Games).

  • Reformatted the visuals of the system for easier browsing.

The full details on the changes related to Looking for Group (along with some improvements to Marketplace search results) can be found here.

We hope you’re excited about all of these changes, and that you’ll let others know about what we’ve been working on. As always, our ability to improve Roll20 has been enabled by the generosity of subscribers– so thank you to everyone that’s helped us continue our growth!