Roll20 uses cookies to improve your experience on our site. Cookies enable you to enjoy certain features, social sharing functionality, and tailor message and display ads to your interests on our site and others. They also help us understand how our site is being used. By continuing to use our site, you consent to our use of cookies. Update your cookie preferences .
×
Create a free account

Image Search Uncooperative

I posted some months ago when the built in image search was tinkered with and noted that where I used to be able to type in a number of things: "Dark knight, armored warrior, plant creature D&D, old warrior" it would return many related results and I would use a number of pictures this way to run my entire campaign. A few months ago the back end of the image search was tampered with I believe, it was looked into at the time as other users reported my similar findings - this led to the image search once again pulling up images more readily as it had since launch. Now after a break I have had in playing I have returned and noticed over the last few days that the built in image search is borderline infuriating as I have to be so extremely specific to what it wants to pull up images now that it is near impossible to find them: I.E. I need an alligator/crocodile warrior - so I type Crocodile warrior, knight, man, person, D&D, Pathfinder, art, fighter, myth and all of these once key words result in the search finding nothing at all or finding completely unrelated things (In this instance finally typing crocodile fantasy returns results despite that adding fantasy usually nets no results). Requesting that someone looks into this once again and wanted to see if anyone else was having a similar issue still. I much much much prefer the way the search engine was working in game since release as opposed to whatever has been changed. I provided examples in my previous post on the subject and if need be can provide more examples as well - it comes up often in play if I need a picture for a nobleman or medieval guard on a whim. Sometimes even typing in the exact name of a creature or thing now will not return an image at all and I must instead find the keyword that the search engine wants me to use in order to find the images. This change seems to be on the back end as it acts the same across multiple computers and campaigns and is a repeat of a previous issue. This is how I have always collected and used all of my tokens due to limited storage space and the massive size of all of my 20+ campaigns and now makes it extremely difficult and forces my players to stay on standby sometimes if I need to pull a token.  TL;DR - Image search refuses to find 75% of images and requires extreme precision to find what you want. Thanks!
1465433935

Edited 1465433943
This is a known bug. Previously, the Devs said: Google changed the way their search APIs work, which really messed up our "not-roll20 specifically" internet searches. We are currently looking for a better way to do these searches, but so far haven't found anything that would be any better than what we have now. You can always search through google and upload the images yourself if you're not finding anything through the in-app search. Sorry it's not great now, it's just as annoying for all of us too and we would love to be able to fix it, but there's not an easy answer for that issue at this time. And elsewhere in a discussion: We are keeping an eye on it, but currently there are no better tools being offered. If ever these tools become available, we will jump at the chance to update the current system.
Awesome, thanks. Just wanted to make sure that it was still a widespread issue and not just myself. Super unfortunate to hear though, it is the bread and butter of how I built my campaigns as quickly as I could and sometimes even lead to inspiration. Thanks for letting me know and the links.