Calling all Sheet Developers

I'm very interested in this, but have a medical condition that means I can't sign for anything (or know if I can attend specific times) more than a few days in advance. Please provide a way for us to access whatever is revealed.

Roll20 added character sheets, then roll templates, then repeating sections, then sheetworkers/js, then CSE, and now... BEACON™.

No doubt, this will be a HUGE advancement for roll20's character sheets. I'm excited for what this opens up for sheet developers but also a little intimidated... It took me a long while to come around to feeling "comfortable" using roll20's sheetworkers/javascript (thanks to Scott, GiGs, and others), but I'm still a long way from being confident.

On the surface, the new system sounds like it's primarily geared toward programmers, or rather those people that posses a much deeper understanding of javascript and/or general programming concepts. Curious to see how this will impact new or beginning sheet builders since this will definitely raise the bar on sheet expectations.  ;-)

Although I've edited and created roll20 sheets for (too) many years, I'm not sure I'm qualified for this focus group, but I am looking forward to learning and exploring what Beacon makes available.

vÍnce said:

On the surface, the new system sounds like it's primarily geared toward programmers, or rather those people that posses a much deeper understanding of javascript and/or general programming concepts. Curious to see how this will impact new or beginning sheet builders since this will definitely raise the bar on sheet expectations.  ;-)

Booked.

i'm still new the sheet developing world, i only use a custom script right now for my games but id be happy to see any features, tips and ticks

Will this mean that at some point the current sandbox system will be phased out?

Looks interesting, however, I also have a concern, you are moving to a new more modern framework, good, however it is still primarily aimed at people with a dev background who understand web technologies. It is far from user friendly, I think you would get many more character sheets built if you provided something like a code light/WYSIWYG editor to allow more users to contribute.

While that might be so. Building a wysiwyg is extraordinarily complicated. Additionally, this actually makes it possible for the community (or roll20) to build such a thing.

Scott C. said:

While that might be so. Building a wysiwyg is extraordinarily complicated. Additionally, this actually makes it possible for the community (or roll20) to build such a thing.

I nominate Scott. All in favor?
;-P

vÍnce said:

Scott C. said:

While that might be so. Building a wysiwyg is extraordinarily complicated. Additionally, this actually makes it possible for the community (or roll20) to build such a thing.

I nominate Scott. All in favor?
;-P

I might be planning something ;)

Scott C. said:

vÍnce said:

Scott C. said:

While that might be so. Building a wysiwyg is extraordinarily complicated. Additionally, this actually makes it possible for the community (or roll20) to build such a thing.

I nominate Scott. All in favor?
;-P

I might be planning something ;)

Scott... we need to remove your "Sheet Author" badge as you are not really creating sheets anymore. You need the "Sheet Author Author" badge because you are / going to be the author behind the technologi that allows other Sheet Authors to build sheets!

From all your recent updates it seems like you spend more time building tools and frameworks, than actually building sheets :D

I very much look forward to see what you bring to the table!

Andrew Searles said:

vÍnce said:

On the surface, the new system sounds like it's primarily geared toward programmers, or rather those people that posses a much deeper understanding of javascript and/or general programming concepts. Curious to see how this will impact new or beginning sheet builders since this will definitely raise the bar on sheet expectations.  ;-)

Although I've edited and created roll20 sheets for (too) many years, I'm not sure I'm qualified for this focus group, but I am looking forward to learning and exploring what Beacon makes available.

Hey Vince,

I'd LOVE your feedback on this. In fact, I need it. In order to better build a system that suits many different skill levels, I think it'll be essential to talk with people of many different skill levels. I encourage you to sign up. We'll talk about how we can make what we're planning easy to use.

I whole heartedly agree with Vince here.

I hope BEACON will be user friendly as in a low bar to entry. I completely understand the want and need to support React / Vue, but for me this is way more than I asked for.

In my day job I am a backend developer that knows basic HTML and CSS, and never really jumped into Javascript. It was only when I started working on sheets, that I actually took the time to learn Javascript better, all for the sake of Roll20.

I have only been able to make what I have, by having a professional team of frontenders at works, where I can ask "How do I copy an object in javascript?" and get a easy to implement answer. (All of this was before the raise of AI)

I have never delved into web technologies and honest do not want to as I know how much the frontenders at my work complain about all the frameworks.

To me vanilla javascript is enough, as it keeps the learning domain limited, while having high functionality. Sheetworkers was the perfect jumping on point for me and I am comfortable staying here.

I hope the BEACON SDK will allow for more powerful usage of basic javascript.

I will definitely signup for a talk so share my views with you directly. I have wanted to do that for so long, so I will not miss this great opportunity!

Peter B. said:

Scott C. said:

vÍnce said:

Scott C. said:

While that might be so. Building a wysiwyg is extraordinarily complicated. Additionally, this actually makes it possible for the community (or roll20) to build such a thing.

I nominate Scott. All in favor?
;-P

I might be planning something ;)

Scott... we need to remove your "Sheet Author" badge as you are not really creating sheets anymore. You need the "Sheet Author Author" badge because you are / going to be the author behind the technologi that allows other Sheet Authors to build sheets!

From all your recent updates it seems like you spend more time building tools and frameworks, than actually building sheets :D

I very much look forward to see what you bring to the table!

Heh, thanks for the compliment! I still publish sheets quite a bit, but I'm mostly doing commissions for publishers.

Andrew Searles said:

This allows you, the Sheet developers, to have full control over how your sheets are built, such as through using Vue, React, or another framework. No longer do you need to rely on sheetworkers to update the sheet’s DOM or to handle character data changes, this can now be handled directly by the sheet.

Well, I've been mostly lurking for the last year or so, since I don't VTT or write Roll20 code anymore, but this sounds extremely cool. Being able to use a Vue/TS environment for developing sheets would remove a huge amount of pain (and enable some very, very cool things). If only I had time to write a character sheet :(

Peter B. said:

To me vanilla javascript is enough, as it keeps the learning domain limited, while having high functionality. Sheetworkers was the perfect jumping on point for me and I am comfortable staying here.

I hope the BEACON SDK will allow for more powerful usage of basic javascript

If the above is true, and sheet authors can go wild with frameworks and custom components.... it'll be pretty great for the community. The ability to develop custom components that other people can throw straight into their code is extremely cool.

Want nested repeating sections? If Beacon is released and Roll20 don't have a native implementation within a week, I promise I'll write you a component that does it, if only to make a point to your front end developers who don't believe in frameworks :D

Of course, you'd need to use Vue to be able to use the custom component.... But hey, these changes aren't going to force you to use a framework, just making it possible. You can still hand-roll every @click event if you want to!

@Andrew out of interest, are you suggesting R20 might do the build step for popular frameworks? Or a Vue/React project would need to be compiled before being submitted to the sheet repo? I'm assuming the latter... but maybe you've got some super clever pipeline in the works for the more popular frameworks. I'm dreaming here, aren't I? Too many combinations of libraries....

It's nice to see you again, Oosh.

Oosh said:

Want nested repeating sections? If Beacon is released and Roll20 don't have a native implementation within a week, I promise I'll write you a component that does it,

Oosh said: 

Want nested repeating sections? If Beacon is released and Roll20 don't have a native implementation within a week, I promise I'll write you a component that does it, if only to make a point to your front end developers who don't believe in frameworks :D

If you can make nested repeating sections, then I might just learn Vue just to use that! I have been waiting for that for very long! 

Peter B. said:

Oosh said: 

Want nested repeating sections? If Beacon is released and Roll20 don't have a native implementation within a week, I promise I'll write you a component that does it, if only to make a point to your front end developers who don't believe in frameworks :D

If you can make nested repeating sections, then I might just learn Vue just to use that! I have been waiting for that for very long! 

If only Roll20 was able to handle nested repeating sections...
To anyone that appreciates having the option to organize/categorize the repeating elements on their character sheets, please toss a vote and a comment if can;
Nested Repeating Sections (8 years and counting)

Nora C. said:

You can absolutely make your own nested repeating sections in Vue!

What a tease! How long till that's available to us?

GiGs said:

Nora C. said:

You can absolutely make your own nested repeating sections in Vue!

What a tease! How long till that's available to us?

We get the beta keys in April!

Nora C. said:

You can absolutely make your own nested repeating sections in Vue!

Thank you for the update.

Andrew Searles said:

Sorry for the delay, but SUPER excited for the result! 

Not nearly as excited as we are to see it!

Secret rolls here I come! Yippee!

I can Help to create sheet for player but i will not pay for helping, if you give the tool free i will be able to do sheet in french and english (Version of Shadowrun 3th 4th 5th 6th edidition, D20 Chuthu mythos, and other game.

(french explanation:)

Le problème  c'est que j'ai pas le budget pour payer pour créer des outils pour la communauté, je peut traduire des feuilles en créer mais je vaut pas payer pour travailler. J'ai déjà indiqué quelque version que je peut faire.... 

Richard

Créateur du jeu Nexus (en Création D&d compatible 5e)

Andrew Searles said:

I have some good news for you, for the closed beta there is going to be an application form to fill out. In that application form, you'll need to provide the Roll20 user account that you would like to use as your development account. For this account, we'll flag it as a "Sheet Developer" account and that will give you access to the custom sheet sandboxes on both Roll20 Tabletop and in Roll20 Characters. This means that account won't need to be a pro account anymore to develop sheets.

I'll let you all know when we're ready to release the Close Beta.

That's very interesting. Is that just for the closed beta of the new system, or will it be something that you keep around more generally?

GiGs said:

Andrew Searles said:

This means that account won't need to be a pro account anymore to develop sheets.

That's very interesting. Is that just for the closed beta of the new system, or will it be something that you keep around more generally?

Yes will this continue after go-live? I am honestly only paying to develop character sheets so if I can continue to do for free then I would be super happy!

Andrew Searles said:

Hey GiGs and Peter,

Hey Andrew.

A very technical question for you:

The new Pathfinder character sheet can use the <details> html element in its roll templates, which is currently not possible today on Roll20.

Will Jumpgate support this, or will BEACON support it? Or is the usage of <datails> unique to the Roll20 Characters environment?

Details/Summary would be a great addition for roll templates.  Yes please!

I'd like to see those tags available on Mod scripts, for that matter.

Hi,

I'm not really sure to understand the "self-contained application" concept. Does it means that if we want to build Beacon sheets, these won't be included as is in the VTT but in a different tab on our browser? If so, how sheets will be displayed on the VTT, especially for the GM? Sheets will be open in a new tab, like when we detach sheets currently? I suppose then that every rolls will be synchronized with the VTT? I do like the rolls history by the way, just for the player, pretty cool!

To be fair, I think having the option to build kind of sheet applications is pretty cool, even if it requires developer skills, it allow more creativity for people who have time and desire to involve. As long as older sheets are still available in long term. I don't think people will recreate, at least at the beginning, as many as sheets with the Beacon SDK, so if the plan is, at some point, to remove the current system, you might lose a lot of "games support".

I don't know what's your ultimate plan, but making a Beacon sheet creator to help people create Vue/React (or whatever) awesome sheets seems quite ambitious. The best start would probably be as mentioned a documentation with basic examples, exactly like it exists currently. For sure, develop with a javascript framework will be something interesting for actual devs or for those who want to learn a framework because they are attracted with the job.

You will probably lose people that only makes custom sheets (not published) and don't really have a knowledge and skills in development. I have a friend of mine that I helped to make a custom sheet for a custom rpg, and I can tell that he probably won't commit in a Beacon sheet creation. He does not have big problems to make HTML/CSS content (although he doesn't have that much good practises), but he struggles a little bit on sheet workers. He manages to achieve his goals with examples and help, but learning a javascript framework is on another level.

In the end, I really suggest to "never" get rid off the current way of making character sheets until you are able to really give a user friendly app to create a complete sheet. I mean, like having a complete app with options which create the code in background. I think this is pretty huge, I'm not really sure that is the thing I would love to see released prior to other improvements/features at the moment.

However, I'm really excited to test the SDK and will probably sign for the closed beta, even if the game I cover is not that much famous :D

By the way, thank you for all the work done there and thank you, the community, because I think the community contribute a lot to make roll20 a very good VTT for everyone!

I am curious how Beacon-based sheets are going to be handled in regards to the existing 1200+ sheets made and maintained over the last 11+ years?  Will we be allowed to created a Beacon-based sheet alongside the existing sheet(s) or are we aiming for a replacement?

vÍnce said:

I am curious how Beacon-based sheets are going to be handled in regards to the existing 1200+ sheets made and maintained over the last 11+ years?  Will we be allowed to created a Beacon-based sheet alongside the existing sheet(s) or are we aiming for a replacement?

As far as I have been told, BEACON will have its own repository and be completely independent from the existing sheets.

Since I wasn't very active these days, I missed the Characters Vault release. I guess it answers some questions, concerning rolls sync, etc...

Do the Beacon SDK will allow to create sheets only there or do the app will be kind of iframed in the VTT?

Peter B. said:

vÍnce said:

I am curious how Beacon-based sheets are going to be handled in regards to the existing 1200+ sheets made and maintained over the last 11+ years?  Will we be allowed to created a Beacon-based sheet alongside the existing sheet(s) or are we aiming for a replacement?

As far as I have been told, BEACON will have its own repository and be completely independent from the existing sheets.

Interesting, that was my concern, I maintain the GURPS 4E sheet, and it has a lot of data points, users are not going to use the new sheet if there's no way to port over their data. Right now, I started on converting the sheet from using legacy CSS to using CSE and all the benefits from the update, which include redoing all the html and css. I'm keeping all the processes and fieldnames the same so users don't have to worry about losing data. However, with Beacon, it sounds like users will have to start from scratch. TBH I would love to use vue or react, so now I'm debating if I should dump the html/css update and wait for Beacon and start work with that, but then we face the issue having no way to migrate from the old sheet to Beacon. 

MadCoder said:

Interesting, that was my concern, I maintain the GURPS 4E sheet, and it has a lot of data points, users are not going to use the new sheet if there's no way to port over their data. Right now, I started on converting the sheet from using legacy CSS to using CSE and all the benefits from the update, which include redoing all the html and css. I'm keeping all the processes and fieldnames the same so users don't have to worry about losing data. However, with Beacon, it sounds like users will have to start from scratch. TBH I would love to use vue or react, so now I'm debating if I should dump the html/css update and wait for Beacon and start work with that, but then we face the issue having no way to migrate from the old sheet to Beacon. 

From the scheduled chats I have participated in, I have been told that you as a sheet developer will be given the tools to migrate from an existing sheet to the new BEACON sheet. You will essentially write a migration script saying: "if value in field X on old sheet -> save value in field Y on new sheet". I assume any modifications to the value will be possible as this will probably all be handled by javascript.

So the task of migration will fall on the shoulders of sheet developers.

I for one I intend to make no migration from my old sheet to the new, as I have radical plans for a completely new UI, new field names, and most importantly, removal of a lot of elements that made its way into the sheet, which are no longer relevant, or needs to be remade from the ground up to support the functionality that I would like to create.

Peter B. said:

MadCoder said:

Interesting, that was my concern, I maintain the GURPS 4E sheet, and it has a lot of data points, users are not going to use the new sheet if there's no way to port over their data. Right now, I started on converting the sheet from using legacy CSS to using CSE and all the benefits from the update, which include redoing all the html and css. I'm keeping all the processes and fieldnames the same so users don't have to worry about losing data. However, with Beacon, it sounds like users will have to start from scratch. TBH I would love to use vue or react, so now I'm debating if I should dump the html/css update and wait for Beacon and start work with that, but then we face the issue having no way to migrate from the old sheet to Beacon. 

From the scheduled chats I have participated in, I have been told that you as a sheet developer will be given the tools to migrate from an existing sheet to the new BEACON sheet. You will essentially write a migration script saying: "if value in field X on old sheet -> save value in field Y on new sheet". I assume any modifications to the value will be possible as this will probably all be handled by javascript.

So the task of migration will fall on the shoulders of sheet developers.

I for one I intend to make no migration from my old sheet to the new, as I have radical plans for a completely new UI, new field names, and most importantly, removal of a lot of elements that made its way into the sheet, which are no longer relevant, or needs to be remade from the ground up to support the functionality that I would like to create.

Thanks Peter B!

We are reaching the end of may and there have no information about the launch of BEACON. I assume development and documentation is taking longer than expected.

Do you have any revised timeline for when BEACON will land in our laps? :)

Just curious if the BEACON character sheets will be capable of supporting any game framework or does Roll20 itself need to have the underlying character infrastructure in place before you can make a sheet to interact with it.

How far out are we from having this available? Weeks? Months? Years?

Andrew Searles said:

Spren said:

How far out are we from having this available? Weeks? Months? Years?

Hey Spren,

I'm sorry about the wait. This is on me! We've been delayed because of some other priorities that have come up as well as responding too feedback we have gotten from the first round of people that have looked at it. We believe everything is in place; we're just finishing up the documentation. We want to make sure that we have clear documentation when we first release it. That being said, I REALLY appreciate your enthusiasm. If you'd like, you can sign up for that focus group and I can give you what you need to access it before we're done with the documentation.

Either way, to directly answer your question, we are weeks not months away. Sorry for the delay.

Thank you Andrew. No need to take any blame I was just trying to get a ball park. I am very much looking forward to getting my hands on it. I'll try to make a focus group, but weeks is great news. Really appreciate the work you and the team have done to make this possible.

Hi. I'm unsure I'm not too late for the party, but still.
If you need more beta-testers for Beacon Sheet framework (including security testing) I will be happy to help.
Also, I will be happy to adapt my VTM v20 sheet to new Beacon Sheet framework (https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/11914993/alternative-vampire-the-masquarade-v20-charsheet-beta/?pageforid=11916236), and maybe more sheets if I will have more time.

I'm JS & nodeJS dev for 10+ years, mostly specialising in React, though familiar with Vue a lot, and professional bug bounty hunter.

Also ex-org of large JS annual conference, was engineering manager/product owner in multiple top-tier companes, now working as CTO of my startup building specialized UI builder similar to plasmic.app