GM- & Player-Viewer released
about 6 years ago – Tue, Mar 20, 2018 at 12:15:48 AM

Today we have released the first version of our GM- & Player-Viewer as well as a couple of improvements to the interface (new icons - yay!).

How to use the GM- & Player-Viewer?

Since there is a lot to show and even more to explain, I decided to make a tutorial video where you can learn all the basics of the viewer(s):

Development state of the viewer

This is the first version of the Viewer and although we have tested it thoroughly, it turned out to be rather tricky to catch all the technical issues that come with session management, RTC connections and different browser versions. 

So as of today, we recommend using Chrome to test it, since Firefox and Edge are still sometimes playing tricks on our websocket and the connections. We need your help to collect data from your testing and your feedback and we will have the next two weeks as focus weeks for the viewer to further improve it.

To learn more about known issues and bugs, please visit our forum.

Is this going to be a virtual tabeltop? 

I know that this has already been said a couple of times, but since the question is still coming up fairly often, I want to emphasize it once more:

We are not building a full featured virtual game table. (at least not in near future)

Virtual game tables are designed to allow long distance games, where all the players are spread around the world and need a tool that brings them together on a virtual table. Although we support multiple viewports, our viewer is intended to be a tool for game parties who sit around a real table and have a projector, TV screen or tablet to enhance their game at home.

If you are looking for a virtual game table for long distance games: We are already talking to companies who provide virtual game tables (PowerVTT for example) and we are working on an API to connect our services, so that you can sync your maps with their system, where you then have all the features of a true VTT. 

State of development & upcoming updates

Today we have reached an important milestone.

With the first version of the viewer live, we have now completed more than 50% for each of our four cornerstones. That means, that for each cornerstone there is a basic version available and we can now focus on growing and improving each part step by step.

We will do this in focus weeks, where we take one cornerstone and focus on improvements for this specific task. For the next two weeks, this is going to be the viewer, since we are aware, that there is still some work to be done. 

After that, we would like to involve you directly into this decision process by making polls about needed updates and features. I am already preparing a polling tool where we will give you options, what improvements should be getting priority.

There will always be base tasks, that we need to address (like the soundscapes, the last set of assets and the final interface) but in terms of new editor functions, new viewer features or new things for the notes tool, we would like to hear your opinion on what to do first.

More about that, once we are ready for this endeavour.

Sofia Board Game Week

DUNGEONFOG will be at the Sofia Board Game Week this week from March 23rd to 25th - the first such event in Sofia, Bulgaria. We are very excited to showcase there the first version of the GM- and Player-Viewer and we can't wait to meet more awesome game masters and players to chat about tabletop RPGs and game session preparations. https://www.sofiaboardgame.com/

Have fun testing and let the dice roll!

Till

Update Closed BETA v0.1 - Custom Upload, Sci-Fi Props and more
about 6 years ago – Thu, Mar 08, 2018 at 09:44:17 PM

The beast is tamed! As mentioned in our previous Kickstarter update, we had to fight some dragons, before we were able to release our first closed BETA update. Now we are done, and we have released our first Update to Closed BETA v0.1.

Upload your own assets

We have updated the asset library today: You can now upload your own props and textures and use them on your maps.

We have also improved the interface of the asset library to help you organize props and textures.

Working with custom assets 

There a few things that need to be pointed out:

• Every account comes now with a 100MB cloud space for storing your props and textures. We are starting with 100MB for now and will increase the quota as we progress.
• You can multi-upload props and textures by dragging them into the upload area or select them from your file browser.
• You have to define, if the image you want to upload is a prop OR a texture, so that we identify them for the proper tools. There will be more options in future for images, tokens and sounds.
• Delete images from your cloud with care! If you delete an image from your files area, the according props or textures will be removed from all maps, where this prop or texture has been used. We are working on improvements for the user feedback, so that in future your will get better notifications of the affected maps.

When you are uploading props, make sure that they meet the following requirements:

• The file-type should be PNG with transparency
• Max file size for uploads is currently 2MB - we will adjust if needed
• To support displaying in high resolution, props should not have less than 1024 pixels in either dimensions The ratio should be a multiple of 512 (eg. a square image could be 1024x1024, a rectangluar image could be 2048x1024)
• Make sure that you use file names, that can be converted into prop or texture names (try to complex file names).

Sharing maps with your own props

You can share maps with props or textures that you have uploaded yourself. Just keep in mind that these assets will be shared too.

Here are the rules for sharing maps with custom content

• To prevent license infringements, you have to verify that you are the owner of those assets and have the proper rights to share them. Please take heed of this restriction, because we will have a keen eye on this and the consequence of miss use would be, that we have to turn of public sharing for any map, that contains custom images.
• We are currently working on a report mechanic, so that you can report public maps in case you feel that a license infringement has been made nonetheless.

Cloning maps that use custom images

Here are the rules that apply to cloned maps:

• As long as you work on a map that you have cloned from the public area, all the shared custom images contained in this map are at your disposal.
• Cloned custom images are restricted to the map they were placed on. You can not clone maps and stock up your asset library with all the different custom images that other users share.
• To keep your cloud storage clean, we automatically delete cloned custom images from your cloud,i f you don’t use them anywhere anymore. Example: Jennifer has used custom trees as props on her map. You clone this map, but you don’t need any trees, so you remove them from the stage. Once you click on “Save” we remove the trees from the tab “Used on this map” and check if those custom trees are in use on any other cloned version - and if the aren’t used anymore at all, we delete the file from your storage.

New Sci-Fi and Worldmap assets

We have added more props to the sci-fi setting and updated the world map props to better fit the style.

Share some likes

Do you like the maps, others have shared? You can show that now!

We have added a like mechanic to the public map area - so that you can show your appreciation to the author of the map.

We had to apply some changes to the browse section of the platform and were forced to remove some maps. Please check if your maps might need to be put back to public!

Author Profiles 

By clicking on the name of an author in the public area, you can now see the profile and browse all the maps, the author has shared. In preparation of the profile badges, we also show the level of support this author gave through Kickstarter or Early Access.

Upcoming update: GM- and Player-Viewer

Due to the delay on this update, we had to reschedule a bit, so the next update featuring the online map viewer will come around March 19th.

Sofia Board Game Week

Last but not least, we wanted to let you know that DUNGEONFOG will be at the Sofia Board Game Week from March 23rd to 25th - the first such event in Sofia, Bulgaria. We are very excited to showcase there the first version of the GM- and Player-Viewer  and we can't wait to meet more awesome game masters and players to chat about tabletop RPGs and game session preparations. https://www.sofiaboardgame.com/

As always: Make sure, that you have cleared your cache once, to make sure the update works properly.

Have fun testing our new Closed BETA!

Let the dice roll,
Till

Custom Upload Update delayed - Murphy's Law hit us hard
about 6 years ago – Mon, Mar 05, 2018 at 11:33:12 PM

I am deeply sorry to announce, that we have to delay the custom assets update.

What happened?

Once the new servers were up and running last Friday, we were set out to apply some minor adjustments, do some fine tuning and bring the update online bit by bit.

Everything started out fine, until we ran into our first major issue: The new server was suddenly serializing image requests instead of handling them asynchronous. In other words: If 1000 people are requesting an asset, the last one has to wait until all other images are delivered. We were instantly on that task and made good progress, when the second thing broke: The automated deployment scripts that used to work fine suddenly refused to work anymore and we were forced to deploy our updates manually. That is usually manageable, when you have a test state and a live state, but with our new three-phase-deployment and at least three developers working simultaneously on updates and bugfixes utter chaos was on the brink of breaking out.

Still hoping that we can get everything sorted out until Sunday, we reorganized us in two separated work groups: One to fix the server issues and one to continue with the update. But that turned out to be extremely time consuming: As soon as something on the servers needed to be changed, the update group had to pause and as soon as a new build was ready for testing, the server group had to delay their work and deploy the new build manually. 

It was a back and forth that costed us the whole sleep-deprived weekend without knowing for sure, if everything works out as intended when we put it together today.

Update postponed

We had to decide: Put everything together and release it - more or less untested - hoping that it will work out fine, or admit defeat and ask for more time.

So instead of forcing an update that has a high chance of breaking things, just for the sake of being on schedule, I made the call and decided to do the latter:

We need more testing, before our server architecture is stable and we have regained some trust in our deployment scripts. Then, afterwards we will have the time and the means to properly test the new build in a constant testing-feedback-update-cycle until we can make sure, that the new custom asset features is working as intended. 

I apologize sincerely for this delay and will keep you posted as soon as we have things sorted out. 

Thanks,
Till

Closed BETA Invites, New Serves, Rolling out Update
about 6 years ago – Fri, Mar 02, 2018 at 05:46:41 PM

Closed BETA Invitations are sent 

If you have backed DUNGEONFOG as a bronze backer you should now have your invitation to the closed BETA in your mailbox.

As always: Check your spam folders! 
In case you didn't receive the invitation, or lost the mail, you can request a new one by clicking on "Login" on the website and "request a new password". Make sure you use the email, that was associated with your Kickstarter pledge.

New Servers

We have successfully migrated everything to our new server infrastructure.
This was important, because we not only want to have faster servers, but also few other things that are going to be important in the upcoming days ahead:

• We have quadrupled our cores, so that server-sided image processing will be a lot faster in future.
• We have changed to a 3 phase deployment system, so that we can deploy first into a development area for us, then into a testing surrounding for internal testers (TESTAREA), before we finally release updates to the live servers. I will talk more about this in an upcoming Kickstarter update in details.
• We now have doubled our network connection to 1GBit/s which will also improve the transfer speed.
• We have re-stocked on storage, so that we can handle all your custom uploads with ease.
• We have also reworked server protocols, database- and framework versions and more to crank out every inch of speed and performance.

We are still working on fine tuning and adjustments, but all in all I am very happy with the new results.

Rolling out the new update

With the finale adjustments to the server, the new upload mechanic and according changes to the databases and file systems, we will take it slowly to make sure everything works as intended. Instead of releasing everything at once, we will take this weekend to bring the new features online bit by bit. This might mean, that our services will not be available 100% of the time over this weekend, since we might need to switch into maintenance mode a few times.

We are expecting to be finished on Monday 5th and I will let you know as soon as we are done.

Road ahead

I already hinted, that the viewer might need a separate update and we decided to postpone this to next week, after everything else is back in place and working as intended. Estimated release date is Friday 9th and I will let you know more about it after the weekend.

May the code be with us!
Till

Server Maintenance
about 6 years ago – Thu, Mar 01, 2018 at 02:31:47 PM

In preparation for the upcoming update, we are going to switch to our new server infrastructure. This will cause our service to be unavailable today in the time between 17:00 and 21:00 CET (Viennese Time).

We apologize for the inconvenience!