Calling all Sheet Developers

More and more games are coming out each year and this year is no different. Last year alone, you, the sheet developer community, created 48 sheets that were published on Roll20 VTT but the industry as a whole brought over 2,000 games to market. We recognize that you all are an essential part of our mission to support more games and diversify the games that people play. Last year, we worked on developing a Software Development Kit (SDK) that will make it easier for sheet developers to make more high-powered sheets.  Currently in order to build a sheet, Sheet Developers are expected to work with sheet workers that, not only, restrict how they structure character data but also restrict how much of the sheet’s DOM with which they can interact. This restrictive sandbox enforces a specific way of building/using sheets that is not very intuitive or beginner-friendly. The Beacon SDK, on the other hand, allows us to decouple the sheets from relying on this restrictive sandbox. With the Beacon SDK, you can now allow sheets to run as self-contained applications. 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.  The Beacon SDK also introduces a new format for character data that better structures and groups attributes together, so no need to prepend `repeating_`  to attribute names to properly track repeating sections. The Beacon SDK will now allow you much more control over how your data is structured so it better fits your sheet’s game. You can see how we’ve used the Beacon SDK so far in our previous releases over the last year. Coyote & Crow, Marvel, Candela Obscura, and the Community Preview: Pathfinder Second Edition Remaster sheets were all created as Vue applications running the Beacon SDK. These, along with some other changes to come will open up a wide range of possibilities that were previously unavailable with character sheets.  This year, we’re ready to start the next phase of the Beacon SDK; that’s where you come in. We want to hear from you about what’s not working today with the current system and what you’d like to see when we release Beacon SDK to everyone. If you’re interested, use the sign-up link to find a time to talk with us directly about what you would like to see. Closed Beta We know that some of the best feedback you can give will only come after you’ve had a chance to play around with the Beacon SDK. So, we’re looking to move quickly to get Beacon SDK out to you all. In the next month, look for the Closed Beta announcement where you will be able to get early access to the tool kit. If you sign up for an early feedback session now you will also be added to the closed beta list to be considered for closed beta testing. After we’ve worked through the feedback provided during the Closed Beta, we’ll release the full SDK along with documentation, tutorials, and other helpful resources that will make creating sheets on Roll20 much easier than it is today. There’s More to Come We have a lot of plans for the future of the Beacon SDK and other developer tools. That future is shaped by you and your feedback. Thank you for being a part of our community by improving the product with us. We couldn’t do it without you. Sign up for a focus group

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.

vÍnce said: 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) You can absolutely make your own nested repeating sections in Vue!

Hey GiGs, GiGs said: What a tease! How long till that's available to us? I just wanted to provide an update here. Our original target was to give access to the Closed Beta for Beacon starting at the beginning of April however, we've gotten some initial feedback that has confirmed we need more time to get a few more things right before we release this for Closed Beta. Those things include better documentation, security testing, and simpler example sheets for all different skill levels. Fortunately, we've already started work on that stuff and have been making progress in March. Unfortunately, we didn't meet our goal for the beginning of April. We're still targeting the end of April (to meet our promise of "in April"), but it's going to be close. I'll keep you all updated with how it's going. If this delay negatively affects any of your current planned projects, PLEASE get with me ASAP and we'll work something out.&nbsp;<a href="https://calendly.com/acsearles/beacon-sdk-feedback-session" rel="nofollow">https://calendly.com/acsearles/beacon-sdk-feedback-session</a> Sorry for the delay, but SUPER excited for the result! &nbsp;

Hey Richard, Richard L said: 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&nbsp; 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....&nbsp; Richard Créateur du jeu Nexus (en Création D&amp;d compatible 5e) 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.

Hey GiGs and Peter, We're hoping to test the idea during Closed Beta to see if that's an acceptable solution. Basically, this could look like a permanent application to sign up to be a sheet developer. I mean we won't take it out of the Pro tier so it will still be a benefit for that tier. This application process does have a few drawbacks internally for us that we want to experiment with, BUT I can say we don't want to continue to charge sheet developers to help us in our mission to support all roleplaying games digitally so if this doesn't work, we'll try something else.&nbsp; Ultimately, no promises, just good intentions but making things better.

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.