This is a very minor tweak to the load-save mechanisms that were themselves updated in the previous release under RPG-396.
The reason for this adhoc release is that a customer has reported on Drive-Thru that Sojour wasn’t saving their data. I couldn’t replicate this issue, no matter how hard I tried, but I was paranoid enough to go over the updated load-save code with a fine toothcomb.
This examination resulted in a few minor tweaks. I don’t think these tweaks will affect anyone, but I’d personally feel a lot happier if customers use this release rather than 1.2.155.0. As a result I have taken down 1.2.155.0 and replaced it with 1.2.160.0.
If anyone else sees any data saving issues, please contact me at sojour.pollysoft@outlook.com.
I’ll start by saying that this is NOT the custom folders release. Work is still ongoing for that release, but I do have a video of it in action!
Instead, this release is focused on bug fixing and maintenance that addresses the following issues:
RPG-396 When Sojour crashes (on load), we should not be overwriting the main save files: This is an important one. I have had 3 reports over the last year of customer’s save games being corrupted.
When I examined their saved games, it looked like the save files had become partial save files. I finally traced a potential use-case where this can occur…
There are occasions where Sojour could crash during loading resulting in incomplete data being resident in memory. The global exception handler would then try and save that data resulting in partially complete saved files.
This will no longer happen. In addition, I have changed the code for closing down Sojour post crash so that it more reliably closes its process down.
RPG-397 Sojour shouldn’t crash if there are missing data directories on load. A week or two back I had a customer report that their Sojour game was crashing during loading and there was nothing they could do.
On investigation, I discovered that some of the customer’s data folders were missing. This upset Sojour and caused it to crash.
Sojour is now a lot more tolerant with regard to missing folders or data. In addition, if a crash is detected whilst loading, Sojour will now offer the option to pick a different data directory, restore from a back up, or simply exit:
The new exception handler for failed loading! (Click the image to see a larger version)
RPG-399 Sojour crashing when dragging character to map with journal open. This was an odd one in that the investigation had found some corrupt internal data within the customer’s save file which, alas, I hadn’t been able to reproduce.
This corrupt data was centred around token characteristics. All token characteristics code has now been updated to be more fault tolerant.
RPG-400 Adding or editing a map-link with no campaign selected crashes Sojour. Sojour used to use the assets browser to get the current campaign or ruleset. The flaw with this approach is that if a user selects a different campaign, or no campaign at all, it can lead to Sojour having problems.
This code has been entirely re-written and all places that used to rely on the assets browser for the active ruleset or campaign, no longer do so, and instead, use the updated code.
RPG-401 Adding or editing a map-link when the map is set to show all, doesn’t show them! This is a minor issue where adding or editing a map-link would result it in not respecting the current map’s Show Map Links option. This has now been fixed!
Work has been slowed down a little by the fact that Sojour currently has three work streams associated with it:
The three main work streams / branches!
Having three streams of parallel work means that any issues I find in one of them has to be merged into the others. This is normally pretty easy using my source control system.
However, the fly in the ointment is that the Custom Folders branch sports a radically different UI architecture from the other two branches, which means that some fixes have to be hand coded as opposed to merged!
Normally I try to work on one thing at a time, but I soon realised that if I stayed on the calendar work, my customers would see very little new from me as that work is such a large undertaking.
Custom folders sprung up as a result of many customer requests and of seeing Lord Gwydion struggle with his data during the live streams. As with most things software related, I had thought it would be a quick and easy update, but it has turned out to be a little more complex. Hopefully the video above will provide ample evidence that we are headed the right way.
Finally we have the main branch where all the hot-fixes and high priority changes go.
My end game is to get back to one branch again, but this is predicated on me delivering the Mk2 Calendar and Custom Folders functionality! 🙂
I spent most of last week on the unscheduled refactoring work alluded to in the last post.
Doing a big code refactor is always a scary experience that can be likened to renovating a house.
You start off by ripping things out, moving them around and then trying to re-wire everything back up. It all feels like a real mess that could never ever work again!
It’s at this point, with a multitude of compiler errors, that one experiences the temptation to just scrap the refactor and go back to the original code. However, with a little fortitude, patience and a large dollop of luck, one can see it through to the end and reap the benefits!
One of the benefits for me is that the amount of code in the main window almost got halved!
From over 6000 lines of code to around 3600 lines of code! (Click for larger image)
The removed code was taken away and componentised by functional area. So all the map actions are now in one place as are all the journal actions etc. They are no longer intermingled in the main window’s code. This makes it much easier to locate and understand the code I need to work on!
The refactor has also enabled me to create a custom context menu component which allows for the addition of the custom functionality to support user defined folders.
For example, every user defined folder’s context menu now inherits functionality from its parent asset:
The context menu on a folder under Journals. (Click for larger image)
The context menu on a folder under Tables. (Click for larger image)
If you examine the two images above, you will see that the folder under journals inherits journal functionality, whilst the folder under tables inherits the tables functionality. This will work for all other asset types too.
Custom behaviour such as this would have been a right royal pain to do inside the main window’s code – hence the refactor.
Now that the refactor is behind me, work has re-commenced with user defined folders – itself a distraction from Calendars Mk2 – but we will be going back to that too!
The result is that we are now at a point where one can now perform most of the standard operations that one would expect to be able to perform on the new user defined folders.
For example, here is a screenshot showing a whole bunch of journal and map folders that I created:
Folders galore! (Click for larger image)
All your existing data and games will work with the new folders system – Sojour will automatically update your data to be compatible. (It will also create a backup of your data too!)
What’s left to do?
Firstly, I need to get the whole thing to work with drag and drop – this can be non-trivial.
Next up, I will be refining the deletion code. Right now there isn’t a lot of warning if you delete a top level folder containing a lot of your precious work. I want to make sure that such deletions cannot happen accidently.
Once that’s done, I’ll need to look at character activations and deactivations, as these got a little more complicated under the new folder structures.
Finally, I’ll need to update the manual and accompany that with a lot of testing.
So a fair bit to go, but the hard stuff is now out of the way!
Alas, I can’t give a release date for this as there are simply too many variables at play, but hopefully, the screenshots above will provide some assurances as to how far along we are.
As many of you know, I have been finding it difficult this year to get the time together to do as much development on Sojour as I would like.
However, progress is being made, and if anyone reports any game-breaking bugs or other general usability issues, I will try and make the necessary time.
The calendar’s user interface has had a few changes made to it. Here is a screenshot of it displaying a Gregorian calendar designed from first principals using time units:
The new calendar pane! (Click for larger version)
The changes are required to allow the calendar to accommodate the additional information that the Mk2 calendar system can support.
In the future one will be able to get a zoomed in view of a day as one’s mouse cursor passes over it!
Time Units will now show you when they are being overridden by rolling entities by turning red and displaying a message to that effect. The affected fields also show the overridden values and are set to read-only:
Overridden time units (Click for larger version)
Clearing their overrides or moving the rolling entities to a different level results in the colour’s moving with the changes. Here I have moved the day rolling entities up to the week level (level 2):
The rolling entities are moved up a level! (Click for larger version)
Not a good idea, just demonstrating functionality! Note that there is a new bug in the above image where the original level three values are not being restored. This used to work and will be fixed!
Rolling entities image coding is now mostly done. Here I have created a second rolling entity group just called Images and have assigned three rolling entities to it with three different images (a speaker, a basket ball and a musical keyboard). Here is the speaker one:
Rolling entities now support images! (Click for a larger version)
Here we have assigned the Image rolling entities to level 3 and set the speaker image is the start of the sequence. We have also set a parameter called ‘Skip’ to 1. This means that every single calendar cell will get a rolling entity. (If it had been set to 2, every other calendar cell would have got this rolling entity):
Setting the assigned level! (Click for larger version)
By assigning our Image rolling entities to level 3 we now get this on the calendar pane:
Two sets of rolling entities in action at the same time! Days of the week and Images! (Click for larger image)
The above image is quite significant in that it shows that Sojour can now handle multiple rolling entities, simultaneously, even when assigned to the same level!
The image render code is an early version and is just there to show me the system working. It will be improved as coding continues.
Why support images?
By doing so, one could add an image sets that represent cyclical things such as, for example, the phases of the moon.
That’s about it for the calendar progress. It is slow, but it is getting there!
Now for v1.2.86.0 release notes – (this update will be up very soon):
Enhancements RPG-386: The drop down lists in the journal for look-up tables and turn sequences can now be filtered and searched by starting to type the name of the table or turn sequence you are trying to find. It should make finding the required items faster when you have a lot of them!
You can now filter the drop down lists! (Click for large image)
RPG-387: Sojour only used to save data on exit unless the user used the various manual save buttons. The problem with this approach is that if Sojour crashes or your computer dies, you could lose a lot of data.
Sojour has now been updated to be a lot more aggressive with regards to saving your data. It will now auto-save your data for no less than 41 additional activities! Alas, there are some activities that I couldn’t add this for without compromising performance. However, I will keep this under review.
Fixes RPG-388: Fixed a bug where events could end up on the wrong day for years with leap days. Also fixed recurring events so that they take account the origin year’s leap days and all subsequent year’s leap days. This ensures that recurring events now always occur on the same day across all years.
This is a shout out to Lord Gwydion who has started filming some great You-Tube videos using Sojour to run a solo adventure using Ker Nethalas (click to go to its store page).
So far there are three videos, an introduction to Sojour:
And the adventures of Samuel through what looks to be a fairly dangerous dungeon:
Lord Gwydion also created a video demonstrating using Sojour to create a ruleset for Ker Nethalas:
The system is very interesting one in that it is solo focused, but also provides the player with a lot of agency. I highly encourage that you pop over to Lord Gwydion’s channel to follow the adventures of Samuel!
Also, don’t forget to thumbs up Lord Gwydion – producing videos for You-Tube is not an easy task and takes considerable effort!
On the development front, work is happening on Sojour, albeit at a very slow pace as I’m finding it hard to get the time together.
The current plan still stands: A calendar update to version 2, followed by tables enhancements, followed by dice enhancements. Once they are all in, I’ll ask the community what they want to see next!
Sojour has had a good year in 2023 with numerous enhancements added and many bugs squashed. (As an aside, all updates and enhancements are offered free of charge to all existing customers!)
Despite many new features being added, there is still a huge list of enhancements that I want to incorporate!
For those new to Sojour, the key take away from this retrospective is that nothing stands still! Sojour will continue to improve based on customer feedback and my own designs.
Here is a list of some of the major achievements and enhancements that Sojour attained in 2023:
Sojour got released!
This was a huge milestone. It’s one thing to code Sojour for personal use, but quite another to make it ready for commercial use. Over 200 hours of testing and refinement got pumped into Sojour to ensure that it would work under a much expanded use-case regime.
In addition, a manual had to be created – and subsequently re-written to avoid copyright issues – which itself took several weeks of effort. This illustrated manual currently stands at 166 pages!
At that time, everything I did was focused on getting Sojour released and I had naively assumed that once released the journey would be over and I could then re-focus work on my other project Ancient Armies. (Sojour borrowed a lot of technology from Ancient Armies)
But as it turned out, the release marked the start of a whole new journey – one that I hope many of you will join me on! If you are interested, Sojour can be bought at DriveThruRPG for a one off payment of $10USD with no DRM or servers needed.
Map Scale Assistant added!
The map registration system got a complete overhaul. It was replaced by a new wizard called the map scale assistant that allows one to directly scale their maps using the actual maps rather than a separate window.
The original blog post covering this new map scaling assistant can be read here. Please note this is an earlier version of the assistant and things have progressed!
Custom Health Bars added!
These are known as trackable characteristics and are extremely flexible. The user can create up to four health bars for each token and these can be defined in characteristic sets. This allows one to have multiple health-bar configurations in one ruleset!
The intent is to allow for more health bars in the future. The core technology already supports this. The hold up is figuring out how to make a large number of health bars a practical proposition in the user interface.
This video demonstrates an earlier version of trackable characteristics:
3D Map Tilting added!
Sojour uses a custom graphics engine called Ionian. This engine was originally written for Ancient Armies and one of its hidden secrets is that it is really a 3d engine!
I decided to take advantage of this by offering map tilting which makes many maps really shine.
In addition, there is built in functionality to allow the user to accurately align the tilt of a map so that it is in the same plane as a 2d isometric drawing – this results in an uncanny 3d effect!
Here is a video that goes through map tilting:
Fog of War added!
This was a huge piece of new functionality. It enables the user to add fog of war to any map!
The backend code is super configurable. However, only a small proportion of its functionality has been surfaced to the user interface – so expect more enhancements in the future!
There are two videos covering fog of war.
The first is for the original iteration:
Whilst the shorter follow-on video describes some enhancements made to the fog of war system as a direct result of user feedback:
File System Manager added!
This was a major piece of work that provides users with a number of useful functions for dealing with their data. These functions also include the ability to backup and restore games.
A video covering its extensive features can be viewed here:
Tutorial Videos added!
These might seem unimportant, but many users rely on these to gain an understanding on how to use Sojour and how to solo scenarios designed for multiplayer games.
Producing videos takes a lot of effort, but I think the results are worthwhile!
All the tutorial videos can be found in this You-Tube playlist. The playlist is incomplete. There are many more planned videos to come!
In addition to the Sojour tutorials, I also released a handy video describing how to solo multi-player RPGs!
Well over 300 sales!
It would be fair to say that Sojour has sold a lot more copies than I envisioned.
The reason for my low expectations is that I have done no real advertising. I was kind of hoping to make it ‘feature complete’ before really pushing it out there.
This low profile combined with the fact that the product is in a niche of a niche (a solo VTT, in a VTT market), meant that my original sales expectations were generally a lot lower.
In fact, truth be told, Sojour was never really meant to go on sale!
I originally wrote it to satisfy my own personal needs for a VTT. I had tried many of the popular ones out there and each one of them was great for multi-player gaming (their design intent), but not so good for solo play.
As Sojour developed, and I started using it, I got an inkling that many others might have a need for a solo VTT too. That’s when I decided to commercialise it.
I’d like to thank everyone that took the plunge and bought Sojour!
Not forgetting the minor enhancements!
A huge number of enhancements got added to Sojour. Here is an incomplete list of some of them:
Static Campaign Assets. The user can now create tokens that are part of the map – for example discovered caves.
Ability to create on-map custom names for multi-instanced tokens or campaign assets. For example, you could drag 4 goblins to the map and then set about giving them custom names to add more character to them.
Sojour’s default automatic token scaling can now be altered by the user on a per-map basis.
Improved map context menu. It now looks better and is much more context sensitive based on what’s been clicked.
Dead tokens can now be optionally hidden – or not….
Tokens can now be double clicked to view their associated documents.
Sojour’s installer got many improvements, including the ability to directly upgrade an existing installation in-place without needing to manually uninstall it first.
Various improvements to the journal, including the conversation system (now more flexible) and enhanced dice rollers (in fact the original version of Sojour had no dice rollers at all!)
The Failures….
No one likes to talk about failures, but every software project has its share of failures. They are an intrinsic part of the natural evolution of the software. If one doesn’t take the risks, then the software can never hope to improve in any meaningful way.
Sojour suffered from two setbacks in 2023, both of which cost a lot of development effort and ultimately lead nowhere:
Dark Mode
An attempt was made to give Sojour a dark mode. Alas, this ill fated attempt failed because the technology underpinning Sojour doesn’t really support it.
The aim is to re-write Sojour at some point in the future using a more modern technology stack, but this will only occur once the current feature pipeline reduces somewhat.
A re-write would require considerable effort and take me away from general Sojour enhancements and bug fixing – which is why I need the feature pipeline to dry up a little first!
The trials and tribulations of this doomed feature can be read in this blog post and this one.
Custom Folder System
This was to be a system to allow users to completely configure Sojour’s asset browser in any way they saw fit. It even allowed one to create custom views that could show combinations of assets.
The problem with the system is that it was complex and took too long to write and test. Alas, it got to a point where its code base was too far behind the current version of Sojour to make any kind of integration a viable possibility.
I still have the code on its own test branch, so it’s not completely dead. I will probably resurrect this feature as a simpler cut down version sometime in the future.
You can read about my initial aspirations in this blog post.
A final thanks!
Finally, I would like to personally thank each and every customer that took the punt and bought Sojour from an unknown developer. It means a lot to me and helps instil a sense of responsibility that I have to all my customers.
Customer feedback has been really good thus far. Thirteen reviews, all maxed out at 5 out of 5 stars.
One quote that makes me particularly proud is this one from DriveThru RPG:
Overall, Sojour Solo RPG VTT offers a level of functionality and ease of use that is unmatched by any other VTT platform. – David S.
It’s quotes like this that provide some feedback that we are headed in the right direction! 🙂
I hope Sojour has provided for a lot of fun and enjoyment. There is more to look forward to in the future. The version of Sojour that you have in your hands right now is only the beginning!
This is a hotfix release to address two issues and to add two minor improvements.
The big calendar v2.0 release will still happen, but it will be early in the new year.
There are four changes in this release:
RPG-369 Hot Fix – When a map is set to hide token health-bars, the cursor will no longer change nor allow you to alter these health-bars as if they were still visible.
RPG-371 Minor enhancement – Double clicking a token on a map will now directly open its associated document, if it has one. This should save having to right click a token to get its context menu displayed first.
RPG-376 Hot fix – Static campaign assets no longer appear in the initiative tracker. This was a very serious bug that got reported to me yesterday and the main driver of this hot-fix release.
RPG-377 Minor enhancement – The installer has been updated so that it will automatically replace previous earlier versions of Sojour – your data is safe. There is no longer a requirement to manually uninstall earlier versions of Sojour first! Note, this installer will not let you downgrade Sojour to an earlier version. That is something you must do manually.
The hotfix can be downloaded from your DriveThruRPG library and installed over any previous version.
That’s it for this small release. I’d like to thank all my customers for Sojour’s first year of release. A lot got added to Sojour since it released and I anticipate a whole lot more in the new year!
I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
It’s been a while since I have posted. This is due in part to not being able to get enough time on Sojour and also due to the size of the current task in-hand. That said, progress has been made!
I guess the first question for me to answer is ‘What are rolling dates?’
I feel that the easiest way of answering this question is to firstly explain what non-rolling dates are.
Calendars that have non-rolling dates are characterised by each month starting on the same day of the week:
A Gloranthan Calendar – with Non-Rolling Dates! (click for larger image)
The above example shows two different seasons from the Runequest Gloranthan calendar. Each season starts on a very specific day – Freezeday. This would still apply even if I was to go to a different year: Sea Season’s first day will always be Freezeday.
It’s this lack of relative motion between the days and their months that make this Gloranthan calendar a non-rolling calendar (otherwise known as a fixed calendar).
It turns out that many role playing game systems use non-rolling calendars as they are the simplest to use in terms of gameplay. Examples of games using non-rolling calendars are Runequest, Dungeons & Dragons and Traveller.
In direct contrast, the Gregorian calendar, as used in the West on Earth has months that do not start on the same day. This is the case even when looking at the same month over many years.
For example, April 2023 starts on Saturday, whilst April 2024 starts on a Monday.
These variations in the start day occur because the day of the week, Sunday to Saturday, roll independently of the month that they are in. They always form a full seven day week even when crossing monthly boundaries.
It’s this that makes the Gregorian calendar a rolling calendar.
Now, it might come as a shock to most people, but Sojour has never natively supported rolling calendars!
Some of you will be reading the above paragraph in disbelief and will be pointing to Sojour’s built in Gregorian calendar as evidence to the contrary.
However, Sojour’s Gregorian calendar is a special case. Sojour does not use its calendar system’s time-units to model the Gregorian calendar. Instead, it uses the default Gregorian calendar provided by the operating system. It then seamlessly integrates that calendar with Sojour’s user interfaces to provide the illusion of rolling date support.
The big give away is that unlike other calendars, you cannot edit it:
The Gregorian Calendar is a special case – it’s why you can’t edit it!
Much of the recent work has been centred around getting Sojour’s time-unit based system to be able to model rolling calendars like the Gregorian calendar. Enabling this will allow users to literally invent any calendar that they can imagine!
Today is a special day in that I finally cracked it! :
A Gregorian Calendar, but not as you know it! This time it is constructed and modelled with Sojour’s time-units! (Click for a bigger image!)
The above screenshot doesn’t look too significant, however it represents a huge step-up in Sojour’s calendar modelling capability. That’s because it has managed to model a rolling calendar – the Gregorian Calendar – using its own built-in editor and time-units!
The system even takes leap years into account:
A leap year!
A non leap year!
As an aside, Sojour can model leap days, weeks, months or whatever else you can imagine. For example you could easily invent a calendar that has 4 leap days that occur every 6 years 🙂
Coding the month view to support rolling calendar dates was a right royal pain. The first issue is that the 1st can occur on any day! So the 1st will invariably not start in the first cell of the month view and will tend to move around.
In addition, some months will have more, or less rows (weeks) than other months and all of this has to be calculated:
For example April has six rows of days, whereas most other months will tend to have five. The code has to be able to account for this!
Sojour’s rolling dates are really powerful. In the above Gregorian calendar it only has one set of rolling entities to drive those dates and that is a rolling entity group called ‘Days of the week’. However, I could quite easily go on to add many more rolling entity groups and map those to different time-unit levels.
In fact, you can even assign multiple rolling entities to the same level! For example, with the Gregorian calendar I could create another set of rolling entities called ‘Moon Phases’ and then assign those to the day level. The moon phases will then roll around independently of anything else as the days go by!
Sojour even allows you to associate images with your rolling entities and these will end up being visible on the calendar’s month view. In the above example we would see the different phases of the moon on each day.
The Gregorian calendar I created here is simply a proof of concept. I figured that if Sojour’s time-units could model the Gregorian calendar successfully, then in theory a user could create any calendar that they can imagine!
Whilst I have made a lot of progress, there is still a huge amount of work left and I suspect I will be on this feature for quite a while yet.
Hang on in there and have patience! Once released, Sojour will have one of the most powerful and flexible calendar systems ever released in a VTT!
The replacement laptop has arrived as have the ordered upgrade parts. Most people don’t take apart their brand new laptops, but I do 🙂
Adding a much bigger SSD amongst other things!
With the laptop put back together and the development environment installed, we are now all green to start coding again!
The new laptop being taken through its paces!
The first coding task is to add rolling entity groups to calendars:
Rolling entity groups! (Click for bigger image)
What are these?
They are groups of any entity type that you can think of. They can be days of a week, or perhaps phases of the moon as shown above. Or anything else that you can imagine!
These groups are then attached to calendar time-unit levels. The idea being that each time-unit on that level will cycle to the next rolling entity in the rolling entity group. If the calendar is already on the last rolling entity, it will roll around back around to the first entity.
This mechanism will allow users to create custom calendars with rolling dates. It will also allow users to attach as many rolling entity groups to each level of time units as required.
For example you could set the lowest level time units to show the day of the week and the moon-phases together! Both sets of rolling entities will independently roll and display on the calendar!
I know this all sounds confusing, but it will be a very powerful feature.
Once it is done, I’ll update the custom calendars video on You-Tube to include a demonstration of this new feature. It’s much easier to demonstrate than it is to explain – honest!
Sojour 