Tag: Solo

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Characteristics Overhaul Incoming! :)

This week I have got custom folders to the point where it is nearly fully integrated with the rest of the system. That is, Sojour is nearly fully operational with the same functionality it currently has, but using the new custom folder technology rather than the older static views technology.

However, despite the work on custom folders, I have also been working on overhauling Sojour’s characteristics system. The intent is to release the characteristics overhaul first – as this has a bigger impact on gameplay. This will then be followed up by custom folders.

At the time of writing, Sojour’s characteristics system is extremely crude. It can only track hit points and that’s for NPC’s only!

Many RPG’s don’t have hit points. Some RPG’s use a total of several different characteristics to keep track of hit points, whilst others have additional characteristics that also need tracking – such as magic points. Sojour currently has great difficulty in modelling these values unless you do it directly within the journals, character sheets or campaign documents themselves.

The new characteristics system will allow the user to add up to four trackable characteristics for use with NPC’s, PC’s and Campaign Assets.

These characteristics will be defined at ruleset level:

The image above is from the new ‘Add Ruleset’ dialog window. It now allows the user to add zero to four trackable characteristics for the ruleset. Here, I have set it up to model the characteristics found in the Traveller TTRPG.

Sojour will default to giving you a single field called hit points, which if left unaltered will provide similar functionality to what we already have.

When a character, token or campaign asset is created, it will inherit these characteristics from its parent ruleset. At this point you can choose to enable or disable them for the newly created entity.

Characteristics will normally be filled out with numeric values, however, tokens will also allow you to use a dice expression in lieu of a fixed value. Where a dice expression is provided, sojour will automatically roll these characteristics when the token is dragged to a map.

I have restricted Sojour to four trackable characteristics as I wanted them to be easily editable with the mouse wheel. Alas, I can only think of four easy to use mouse wheel combinations: Mouse wheel only, <Ctrl> Mouse Wheel, <Shift> Mouse Wheel and <Ctrl + Shift> Mouse Wheel – hence the limit.

All NPCs and PCs will display health bars, one for each characteristic. These will also be visible on the map – though this will be a toggled feature under Sojour’s settings.

There is still a ways to go. But most of the low level coding is done and the characteristics system is now fully integrated with entities, map-tokens and journals.

Existing games will be auto-upgraded to use the new system. The way this will work is that each existing ruleset will get Hit Points as a characteristic. This characteristic will then be disabled for everything except NPCs, with the current values ported over. In theory you shouldn’t notice any changes to existing games (other than some of the new features).

Once released, I will put up a video too, as this system is very flexible and pretty extensive in scope.

I hope you folks like where the characteristics system is heading. 🙂

That’s it for this week!

Thank you for buying Sojour and have fun!

RobP

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Sojour 1.0.46.0 has been released!

This update improves journal conversations (though there are still more improvements down the line for that) It also fixes a bug introduced into the PDF viewer by Microsoft.

Details below:

FIXED! RPG-254 Unbeknownst to me, Microsoft broke the toolbar on the WebView2 component that Sojour uses for displaying PDFs. The toolbar is now visible again and I have also fixed an odd threading issue, where once upon a time, opening a character sheet used to make that character sheet’s window unresponsive for the first click. It’s now responsive from the get-go.

I have also updated the WebView2 component to its latest version. This is a really tricky process and whilst it works on my machine, I would be interested to hear how others fare.

ENHANCEMENT! RPG-256 Anonymous conversations no longer inject a newline when they have finished. This was added because my latest campaign has many anonymous characters in it and I discovered that anonymous conversations tend to have a more complex structure than the standard token based conversations. For example: “Go Away” said the troll, “Don’t bother me!” – all this appears on one line, but the old system’s insistence on adding a newline character simply got in the way.

ENHANCEMENT! RPG-257 Active conversations are now automatically deactivated if the user deletes any part of the conversation’s text prefix, up to and including the first speech mark or any of the portraits. Sojour will remove the whole of the prefix section with portraits and reset the journal to having no active conversations.

The same thing happens for anonymous conversations if the first leading speech mark is deleted.

Note, the above applies to active conversations only. Once completed (and inactive), a conversation can be edited in any way that you see fit.

This was introduced because I’d occasionally go to write a conversation and then change my mind by deleting it. However, the old version of Sojour never detected the deletion, so it stayed in conversation mode which lead to all sorts of weirdness.

That’s it for the changes!

My current coding schedule will be following a philosophy of releasing little important things like the above on a relatively quick cadence and the larger bits of new functionality – like custom views – on a slower in-parallel cadence. If I don’t do this, your updates would be held up by the bigger features, which I don’t want to happen!

I think I have struck the right balance, but if you folks would rather I switched to some other release cycle, then please let me know! (Email address is in the release notes and the manual)

Once again, thanks for purchasing Sojour!

Have Fun!

RobP

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Sojour 1.0.39.0 has been released!

This is a minor release that updates the installer only.

Two enhancements have been made to the installer:

  1. The installer is now named Sojour_n.n.n.n.msi by the build server. This is to allow you folk to better identify what the installer is for when you download it.
  2. A shortcut to the 134 page manual is now added to the user’s desktop on installation.

I added the manual desktop shortcut because there was a flaw in my thinking with regard to the manual….

The manual defines within its pages how to access the manual by clicking a specific Sojour toolbar button….. Which you wouldn’t necessarily know about unless you read the manual! 🙄

In the meantime, work is still continuing with the custom views functionality.

Thanks for taking a punt on Sojour!

Have Fun!

RobP

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Sojour 1.0.35.0 has been released!

This is a minor release featuring some enhancements and two bug fixes. As of now, the only known issues with Sojour are:

RPG-245 – Installer sometimes fails to install Direct-X. I have only had 2 reports of this one. I can’t fix it until my laptop is at a point where I can wipe it for testing purposes. There is a workaround if you are afflicted by this – download the release notes for further information.

RPG-251 – Sojour crashes when the screen turns off or goes to sleep for an extended period of time. Alas, I have not been able to reproduce this one, either on Windows 10 or Windows 11. However, if you are seeing this please get in contact with the email address in the release notes and try to provide as much information as possible.

Fixes in this release:

Fixed!! PG-246 Changing a character portrait now properly updates maps where the character resides.

Fixed!! RPG-247 The transparency tool now works for images captured using the screenshot utility.

Enhancements this release:

Enhancement!! RPG-248 The journal inline dice roller can now be toggled between showing results only (as usual) or displaying the full dice roller text.

Normally to use the inline dice roller you type [1d6 + 2d10] or {1d6 + 2d10} to get either a result or a detailed result respectively. (Though the latter’s output has been tweaked to make it more usable)

However, you can now also type [[1d6 + 2d10] or {{1d6 + 2d10} (use double brackets/braces up front) which will then replace the dice expression with exactly the same text that you would get if you were using the journal dice roller button at the bottom of the journal.

Enhancement!! RPG-249 Map scale assistant improvements. Better control alignment. More instructions. Other map toolbar buttons now disable when registering the map.

That’s it for this release. If you have any ideas for enhancements or you have spotted any bugs, or perhaps some feature or another is annoying you, then please get in touch with the email address in the release notes and I will see what I can do 🙂

Once more, thanks for buying Sojour and I’ll see you next time!

RobP

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Sojour 1.0.29.0 has been released!

This is a bug fix release that addresses inaccurate map scaling that used to sometimes occur when scaling maps.

Remember the map scaling tool?

The old map scaling tool

It is gone! It is no more! This tool has been completely replaced with a new Map Scale Assistant wizard.

The core problem with the above tool was that you never made your measurements directly on the actual map. Instead, you made them on a picture of the map within the scaling window. This was the root cause of the scaling issues.

Why should the above cause problems?

Well, it’s all down to a little secret within the map pane in Sojour…

Don’t tell anyone, but the map pane in Sojour is really a 3d map pane! – I just choose to display the maps in 2d only. (I’m saving 3d for some really cool future functionality!)

3d images – maps in this case – are displayed by using a ‘camera’ to project them into the 2d space of the window that you actually see. The problem I had with the original scaling system was trying unify the measurements on the picture-of-the-map with the measurements of the actual 3d map.

I had some cunning math to do this which was based on recreating the projection matrix of the camera so that I could use this to unify the scaling. But, as it turned out, that tended to produce small rounding errors, which can on occasion, lead to scaling discrepancies.

I had originally thought I could fix the math, but after numerous fruitless attempts I realised that this was proving to be an impossibility.

The only way to fully address this issue was to take a completely different approach. This new approach would hinge on allowing the user to take their measurements directly from the 3d maps themselves! Doing this would eliminate any rounding issues.

Hence the Map Scale Assistant wizard was born.

I’ll now take you through how the new wizard works – more information can be found within Sojour’s manual.

Firstly, the user opens the map that they wish to scale and then clicks the ‘Scale Map’ tool button.

This results in the first page of the wizard being displayed:

This page allows the user to set the ‘yardstick’ that they are going to use to measure the map. It defaults to the map’s associated ruleset’s measurement system. However, this can be changed to match existing map annotations.

In the above example I have set my ‘yardstick’ to 10 km.

Clicking Next results in the second page being displayed:

This page allows the user to set the map annotation colours. It defaults to annotation colours of the selected map – where it is set. Otherwise it defaults to red.

All map annotations, including the map scale and measurement tools will be displayed using the colour picked above. Each map keeps track of its own colours.

For this example I decide to leave it at red as this matches the current map perfectly.

Clicking Next results in the third and final page being displayed:

This is the page where the user will make their map measurements. This time on the actual 3d map rather than a picture of the map.

In the screenshot below I have clicked the ‘Register Scale’ button and have started measuring the map itself:

I have already picked the starting point of my ‘yardstick’ by left clicking the map. All I need do is drag the measurement ruler around until it measures 10 km on the map.

The map can be panned and zoomed whist attempting to take the measurement. This will help assure maximum accuracy.

Once happy, just left click the map once more to register it:

The results of this registration attempt are a map measuring 51.34 km by 25.67 km. If I’m not happy, I can simply click Register Scale to try again or even navigate back through the wizard to change some of the settings.

Once happy with the registration, all one need do is click Finish. This results in a perfectly scaled map! All assets on the map will automatically be rescaled to fit the new map scaling.

The scaled map now shows it’s properly scaled map scale in the bottom left in the chosen colour. This scale will auto-size as the map is zoomed in or out:

That’s it for this post. I hope you all find this new wizard a vast improvement over the original scaling tool!

PS: I’m still working on the custom views functionality too 🙂

In the meantime – thanks for buying Sojour and happy gaming!

RobP

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Sojour 1.0.13.0 is now ready for download!

I didn’t think I’d be posting so soon!

The previous version 1.0.12.0 had been coded on my laptop as opposed to my main desktop machine. It appears that the DPI settings in its development environment were incorrectly set, which resulted in the ‘Add/Edit Character’ window being corrupted.

Alas, because this was a DPI issue, not everyone will see the problem. However, when it manifests, you will notice that the OK and Cancel buttons are missing.

This has now been fixed. All users that upgraded to 10.0.12.0 are now urged to switch to 1.0.13.0.

Sorry for the hassles. On the plus side, I have learnt that I need to keep an eye on the laptop’s DPI settings before committing any code.

Have fun and I’ll talk to you good folk later!

RobP

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Sojour 1.0.12.0 has just been released!

Log into your DriveThruRPG account to grab the latest version. Don’t forget to download the release notes for detailed update instructions.

An excerpt from the release notes as to what has changed:

Sojour 1.0.12.0 Release Notes
This is a minor update aimed at making Sojour more flexible. The main feature of custom folders is still being worked on. If you want to know what’s happening with Sojour pop over to https://sojour.co.uk/ (you are already here 🙂 ).

Changes

  1. The internal data updater now backs up your data before making any changes to it. Backed up data is stored in C:\Users\<< Your Name>>\Documents\PollySoft\Sojour Backups.
  2. Campaign Assets now have a new attribute on them that allows you to toggle whether or not they are unique. They default to being unique, which means that the Campaign Asset can only appear on each map just once. If toggled off, multiple instances of the same Campaign Asset can be added to the same map.
  3. Campaign Assets can now have an on-map name that is separate from the Campaign Asset name. It defaults to the Campaign Asset, but by right clicking it on the map you can assign a different name. Each instance of the campaign asset can be given its own name. Handy if you are using campaign assets to represent geographical features.
  4. Characters and NPCs can now also be made to converse by using Ctrl-Shift left click on the token on the map. Doing this will toggle that character/npc’s conversation status. This was added to allow characters outside of the initial 10 token positions to be able to converse.

More information for items 2-4 can be found in the manual.

RobP

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Where we are and where we are going!

Where we are

Sojour has been out for around a month and so far very few bugs have been reported. That’s a good thing and it shows that the testing effort was pretty effective.

The current version of Sojour is 1.0.8.0. All customers should have received emails from DriveThruRPG informing them of any upgrades. If not, check your junk mail. Either way, you can always log into your DriveThruRPG Library and download the latest version from there.

(For those that still don’t have Sojour but are interested in buying, it can be purchased here for a one off payment of $10 USD.)

Outstanding known bugs in version 1.0.8.0:

  1. Suspect range scale – this does not affect the measurement tools. I think this issue is now mostly fixed – see the release notes.
  2. Installer fails when .net 3.5 is not already installed – I have had only one report on this one. It will be addressed when I get a chance to wipe my laptop as this will be the only real way to test the installer (yes I should invest in some VMs….)
  3. A chap reported seeing a crash when right clicking in the assets tree-view. I have been unable to replicate this and the chap hasn’t got back to me. If you are that chap, please check your junk mail and get back to me 🙂

These are the bugs that I’m aware of. If you know of any others, then please get in touch using the email address at the beginning of the manual or in the release notes.

Where we are going

The first port of call are custom folders. This is the catch-all name for a functional feature that I’m adding that will allow customers to create their own folder structures in the assets tree-view.

This feature will also include custom coloured tabs that are keyed to a campaign, plus a means to link assets in the assets tree-view together. eg Adding a map link directly into a journal will be possible, as well as linking many other asset types.

To deliver this functionality, the first technical hurdle to overcome was the coupling between the assets tree-view and the customer data:

Right now, what one sees in the assets tree-view on the right is always a direct representation of the data within Sojour. With this architecture the assets tree-view can only represent the data in one way – the way it is structured internally.

My first job was to sever this link to allow for the possibility of customisation. This was done last Saturday (21st Jan 2023).

As a result we now have:

This new architecture decouples the data from what you actually see in the assets tree-view.

It allows customers to alter their view of their data without actually altering the data itself! The view is also entirely independent of Sojour’s internal data structures, further enhancing customisation.

It’s a very powerful system and one that will ultimately allow customers to create their own custom tree-views called views that will be selectable from a drop down list.

However, the custom view functionality described above will be delivered in the second iteration of custom folders feature and not the first. This is to allow me to mitigate risk and to get timely feedback that things are working properly.

Speaking of working properly, the intent is to initially release this functionality as a beta installer. That way customers can choose whether or not they wish to be at the bleeding edge of the engineering effort.

I digress however….

The first iteration of this system will have much of its internal functionality disabled. It will only support one view – the default Sojour view and will only allow customers to add custom folders under the existing Sojour structures. In addition, I will be limiting the content of each custom folder to the asset type of its parent, or another folder. eg If you add a folder under the maps node, only maps and other folders can be stored there.

The restrictions above are a temporary measure to aid the testing effort. If I enable everything at once, you folks will have to wait a lot longer for the Sojour release as it will need a lot more up front testing.

As a lone developer I need and value iterative feedback in order to be effective and to ensure that what I’m doing is what the customers want (quite a few have asked for this feature).

Once the initial testing is complete, I will enable the full views functionality that will allow customers to create any folder structure that they wish, mix asset types within a folder and to also filter folders to create any number of custom views.

Please bear in mind that this isn’t my day job – I’m a web developer – and that I’m the sole person on Sojour. I can only put time towards this project as and when it becomes available. As a result things may well be a little slower when compared to the big software houses. Patience is the key 🙂

Once again, a big thank you to all the customers that took a plunge and bought Sojour from an unknown developer. I hope that I can fully repay the faith that you have placed in the product.

RobP

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Sojour just got updated to version 1.0.5.0!

For those that have bought Sojour, you should be getting an email from DriveThru RPG alerting you to the update plus the relevant release notes! If not, please check your junk mail folders.

For those interested in buying Sojour it costs a one off payment of $10 usd and can be bought at Drive Thru RPG. If you need more information, pop over to Sojour’s You-Tube Channel.

Firstly, I’d like to thank John Herald over on Reddit for his great ideas and also for spotting the range scale bug. His feedback has been most valuable. Many of the enhancements shown in this post are his idea 🙂

So what’s changed?

Campaign assets can now be made static on the maps and you can even disable their map tooltips.

These new settings will allow the user to add Campaign Assets that represent new permanent features on the map discovered by the party. Once added, their graphic becomes a part of and indistinguishable from the map!

Of course one can still add an associated document to enable users to get more information by right clicking the Campaign Asset on the map.

If the user decides that they wish to move the Campaign Asset again, they can simply change the settings and the changes will ripple through Sojour to all instances that are out on the maps!

What else got changed?

The settings dialog window. It now uses a tabbed control:

This was necessary because the number of settings have now become too large for a single page.

The eagle eyed amongst you will have noticed a brand new setting called ‘Hide Dead Tokens’. This allows the user to toggle whether dead tokens are removed from the maps and initiative trackers.

Sojour documents have also had a few bugs fixed and their user interface updated to make them a little easier to use.

Under the hood I have also added the ability for Sojour to be able to automatically convert old save files to new versions compatible with the latest changes! The system is quite advanced in that all I need do is drop in a new update class file and the system automatically detects it and applies the changes if required:

The final tweak was to the window that’s used for registering map scales. It’s internal native measurements now match the user’s selected settings:

In the above screenshot the user chose miles, which results in the map size registration calculation also being displayed in miles (on the right). In the past it would always display as metres as that’s what Sojour was using under the hood.

This change should make the map range scales more accurate and if I’m lucky, it will fix an outstanding issue with said range scales. Alas, I will only know once I get feedback from my customers.

Laters

RobP