March 9: Q&A with Software Development Manager Jeff Lamb

Howdy! Jeff will be joining us to answer your questions, especially around our Bug Hunt and Spring Cleaning . Morgan is handing over the reins for this round of questions to connect you directly with one of our veteran devs. We’ve been identifying and fixing issues affecting performance and fine-tuning the new Integrated Voice & Video chat. We’ve also squished some bugs that have been hanging around, and we’re compiling our next list of fixes. As we have only an hour, feel free to add your questions ahead of time and get ready! Jeff will answer as many questions as possible. Q&A Details: Date: March 9, 2023 Time: 1:00 PM PT to 2:00 PM PT  Where: Here in this thread!

Hello! I’m Jeff Lamb, and I’ve worked at Roll20 for almost 6 years. I’m a part of Operation Fire Bolt, which is our project to improve performance on the VTT and the platform overall. We’ve worked on performance problems that have popped up recently and some bugs that we found while researching. I’ll answer questions in the order they were posted. I can’t answer every question but I will do my best, and the Roll20 team will follow up where possible. Please keep in mind that I’m a software development manager; I can focus, largely, on those topics! If I don’t get to your question in this hour we’ll keep the thread open and I’ll revisit it. Appreciate your patience, and let’s get started!

keithcurtis said: There are a number of much-reported dark mode issues, such as links appearing as light gray on white text.  They have been around a long time.  Is there an initiative to quash these? We are absolutely resolving these issues as they get to us; there is also a systemic problem especially in the VTT where the dark mode switch operation that swaps out the CSS styles on the page encounters a race condition and does not apply all styles correctly.  We're working to fix that, too, to make sure that when we actually make fixes to styles that they will actually be reflected correctly. To note a few we've tackled, there have been a number of fixes to issues such as on the D&D5e character sheet and Charactermancer. Some of these include: changing the roll button stylings, adjusting specific lines on the Charactermancer to better contrast, etc. We’re trying to be responsive to these issues - so if there are more, send them via the help center to the team.

Starr Saphyre said: THAT. When are we finally going to be able to actually post links and see them? Are we ever going to get a better handout editor than what we have? We’re actually in the middle of discussing how we can improve the handout editor in the future. We don’t have any firm plans right now, but hopefully soon! Starr Saphyre said: Are we going to ever get the ability to have API scripts actually copied when we copy a game? Or even to save a "default loadout", so that if I make a new 5E game I can click "Load APIs" rather than taking 30 minutes to do it manually every time. We previously avoided this kind of thing (and I mean, multiple years ago) largely to limit extraneous sandboxes from being created, but that is not so much of a problem anymore with various improvements we've made to infrastructure.  I have a really strong desire to improve the entire Mod Scripts interface, because there are so many *awesome* things that can be done there and it's not super easy to understand how to use it or even what the cool stuff our community has made even does!  Including Mod Scripts as part of what can be copied is definitely one improvement, but just general improvements to the interface for adding scripts are super high on my list of things I want to do. I would say if you have a desire to see this stuff happen faster than my personal hopes will drive it (which is not never, but not immediately, either), please do get a post rated high on the suggestions forum.  I'll vote for it*! *None of us actually vote on the suggestions forum–don't want to tip the scales–but you'll have my vote in spirit at least. :) (EDIT: Formatting. Whoops.)

Mikah F. said: Hey! I'm wondering when you're planning to address the performance issues with character sheets. As of right now they border on unusable, even on very high end machines. It seems clear to me that there are numerous issues with race conditions and blocking api calls happening that seem to contribute to the issue. Do you agree that this is the source of the problem, and if not, what do you consider the source to be? Additionally, in what time frame do you expect to address these issues as they are the core of your product? I'm having a hard time justifying any expenditures on the site in its current state.  By our measurements and testing, the vast majority of character sheets work quickly and respond in a snappy fashion for the majority of users.  However , we have identified 3-5 scenarios where sheet performance can get bad, which we are focused on addressing: When a user owns a large number of books that are all associated with a single Charactermancer. Browser Extensions & VPNs - we have encountered issues where third party browser extensions, particularly extensions that do a lot of DOM manipulation tend to have a disproportionate effect on sheet performance. As we've expanded the type and complexity of features character sheets are capable of, we've hit some limitations on the old system in terms of concurrency and sophisticated editing. Specifically with regards to your questions about race conditions and blocking api calls; our own profiling hasn’t encountered these issues directly. We have improvements for this stuff, especially on our internally produced sheets, coming out regularly (the 5th Edition sheet specifically will be getting a few updates to batch together some of those API calls pretty soon, I believe).  I would say though that if you are at the point of 'unusable,' with your sheets, that there might be something else going on that we're not aware of, as during normal play, all of the sheets I've used (quite a few) are mostly very snappy, outside of one or two rarely used operations that take a few moments.  The most useful thing would be to open a help center ticket.  I will definitely make sure to take a look – call me out by name! Improvements to the existing system aside, we also have an entirely new system to power Character Sheets in the works, and we're actively working on internal sheets that will leverage that system.  We will be launching new sheets in 2023 in this new system - be on the lookout for future announcements here.

Loren the GM said: Custom compendiums: how is the work going on this? What is the current status? I know there has been much talk about the complexity of compendium development, what work is happening to simplify and make it more available? Is there any timeline when we could expect to have them available to everyone, as opposed to only specific content partners? We're trying to iteratively build towards a solution that lets anyone build game data to use across games like the Compendium. Right now we're focusing on improving the compendium editing and creation experience for publishers, providing more tools and automation so that they can self-service.  As those tools get more mature, and we continue to get feedback from those publishers, my hope is that we can then start to expand the availability of these tools to even more publishers, creators, and eventually allow anyone on the platform to make use of them.  We don't have a timeline yet, but we're definitely working towards this.

Loren the GM said: What new or expanded feature in current active development are you personally most excited about? Our design team has been working on a new VTT UI that’s super slick. There will be a new toolbar, with easier access to the tools you need most.  It’s been heavily tested, and my engineering team is in the process of building the foundation for this new UI! Alongside the new UI, we are building new features to help GMs, including: a new layer selection system, improved measurement tools, and lots more general workflow improvements. These UI updates for the VTT look super awesome, and feel great too.  I think I've said "I can't wait to use this in my game" to the team like 10 times in the past couple months. It's really good.  And it's only the start! :) We will be reaching out more to the community for more feedback, and will slowly let users start opt-ing in to try it out.

Loren the GM said: Related, is there something else on the platform you'd love to tackle or improve (doesn't have to be in active development, just something you'd love to get a crack at)?  Well, a lot of the stuff we are already planning on is really exciting, so I don't know that I'd change those plans all that much.  I can't get into too many details about stuff we haven't announced yet, plus what I would say about things you've already heard about won't be terribly interesting. Like I said above, I'd really like to make improvements to the Mod Scripts system, the Mod sandbox, and the entire interface around using and adding scripts to your game.  There are so many cool things there but it's a bit opaque to use, especially if you don't have experience writing code or using command-line programs. For my own benefit, for entirely selfish reasons, I also really want to make some improvements to selection and manipulation of items on the VTT.  I want to make some improvements to smaller stuff like token tooltips, or linking items together, because I've been playing a lot of Ironsworn: Starforged and I think there are some relatively powerful improvements we could make so that I can generate sector maps more quickly :)

RainbowEncoder said: The organic growth of the dice roller and macro parser has resulted in some jagged edges which infuriate further fixes and quality of life improvements. Notably the aborted attempt in October 2021 to allow special characters within queries; there were two threads this week alone that would have benefitted from this fix for it is commonly attempted to nest macros and other queries within queries. Given that breaking changes will be required to smooth out these jagged edges my question is this:-  What considerations have been made in how to handle breaking changes within the dice roller and macro parser?  If you want some inspiration I presented a possible way in the rewrite the dice roller suggestion I'm not directly working with the team on this, but I do remember the issue you were talking about.  After those issues, they made improvements to their process on testing and deploying these kinds of changes.  I'll have to ask the team to get more details!

Erich S. said: When will PDFs work correctly in the VTT? I've had a ticket in since August and keep being told "It is being looked at." As far as we know, PDF uploads are functioning correctly.  The last time I checked our metrics, we had tens of thousands of games sharing PDFs. I took a look at your ticket, I'm not entirely sure what's going on but I'm happy to follow up there.  Could you upload the PDFs to that ticket (or if you submitted via email, include the PDF in an attachment)?  If it's not an issue with the file, it seems like there might be something wrong with permission control sharing with other players in your game. Regardless – I will take a look and follow up with this specific issue.

Hedgehog Cannon said: A couple of things: - The performance of the compendium for monsters/spells is abysmal once you add in some 3rd party stuff to the standard compendiums (D&D). It sometimes doesn't even load. Any plans to address this? We have noticed that if you own a multitude of books, or some fairly large books, a few sections of the compendium service can run slower than desired. To fix that, we have been building a new backend service that's fully revamped to handle compendium data more efficiently. It's a big project that still has a ways to go, but we are focused on the problem and are working through it. Hedgehog Cannon said: - I know we're not supposed to mention this, but a 3rd party figured out a way to add animated maps and videos to Roll20 years ago with almost no performance hit but I still can't upload a 2mb animated map and use it through supported methods. Even purchased tokens/spells often just animate as a solid block of color, ruining maps. Any plans on catching up to the rest of the world with support for animations? We're definitely working on this, though it's a little ways out.  The VTT is running on an old rendering engine that can't quite handle the feature set we'd like to use, and we're in the process of migrating to a modern one that's a lot more powerful.  We partially deployed the new engine (Babylon) to handle doors & windows a few months ago. I’m very proud of the engineering team for getting past this first, big milestone. Doors & Windows took longer than we would have liked to release, but it’s because we upgraded the backend for long term performance. We are currently scoping out how to migrate the rest of the VTT canvas to this new technology - that is a project planned for this year. Once it completes, VTT performance will improve, lag will decrease on older machines, and animations/videos will be better supported. This is one of the most exciting technical backend projects for me and the team. It’s big, and exciting. I’m only sad I can’t make it go faster - but it's worth the time.

Critical Tavern said: Hi there!  I have some concerns I have been experiencing slowdown during games while using certain 3rd party compendiums and the Charactermancer at high levels. Also, I have been having problems with 3rd party content not carrying over correctly to character sheets when using 3rd party content. I’ve submitted a ticket for the slowdown, but my concern is for the future. With large additions to the compendium on the way, like deep magic 2 and another book that adds a lot of new 5e classes, how are you planning on approaching this increase? Like I mentioned in a previous answer regarding the compendium & character sheets, we have identified that having a large number of books in the Charactermancer can cause issues for some users.  I've made sure to take your report back to the team, including the bugs you mentioned at the end of this post, to take a closer look. As for your questions on Integrated Voice & Video: Critical Tavern said: [quoted above] I am using integrated voice. I am finding with new players that they are having a lot of trouble connecting to audio and video their first time. How are you planning on making integrated voice more intuitive for newcomers to Roll20. Are you planning on having an initial setup with audio/video when someone makes a new account? How can I best help new players who cannot connect to audio and video? We actually deployed some new functionality just today to help assist with this.  There is an existing tour for players (non-GMs, or GMs who "Join as Player") to guide them to where the settings are, but we also just added a new Device Configuration dialog which lets you preview and test selected devices (camera and microphone) before joining the call, and improved the types of error messages we show when, say, a webcam can't be detected.  There are even more improvements to this whole system coming pretty rapidly, to try and help with setup and get to the bottom of why things don't always work as we'd like them to right away (so that hopefully anyone can figure out what's going on themselves!)

TheMarkus1204 said: Regarding Color Pickers: there are a few different ones depending on what tool is used. Is there a plan to unify those? Especially with the Converter for the old way of placing windows / doors etc. to the new one and the hex-value needed in that script / Settings to work. Yes!  We will absolutely be switching to a standardized color picker across the site; we just want to make sure that the various features (presets, free color entry, etc.) are well-supported before we finalize that component and deploy it across all the places it needs to be.  In fact, there are a lot of places where we're making this type of change, and to that end we've put together a standardized component library so that we can reuse and modify features and UI elements across the site in a unified way. TheMarkus1204 said: Is there a way to have Handouts (or even Bio&Info having Sub-Tabs) have tabs (as seen when installing the script mentioned above)? No handout tabs currently, but that sounds like a good thing to post in our Suggestions Forum.  We use that as the pulse of what folks want, so if there are features that you would like to see from us, post them there!

Kraynic said: If you edit something on the Bio & Info tab of a character sheet and hit the save button, it sends you to the Character Sheet tab instead of staying on the Bio & Info tab so that you can see the changes that were just made.  Is this something that is being looked at? We're still looking at different ways to improve this workflow, but I definitely agree that this flow is disorienting.  This comes as a result of a prior change which sets the Character Sheet to the default tab if one is enabled for the game, which is useful more often, but in the event you are actively working in the Bio & Info tab it definitely becomes a hindrance.  Some plans to make improvements include ensuring you return to Bio & Info when you make changes to those description boxes, or altering the Bio & Info tab to allow inline editing without requiring the Edit button. Not sure exactly what approach we'll take – maybe both – but the team working in this space is definitely aware!

Hey folks, thanks again for your questions!  I have to jump now, but we'll keep the thread open for a few days so that either myself or other Roll20 team members can answer some questions I didn't get to in this hour. Have a good one!