Exalted Scenes 7.1 (Patreon)

A crazy idea, and a promise first

I just had a crazy idea for Exalted Scenes.

I am not going to tell you what it is yet, because I honestly don't know if I can pull it off. There is a lot I still have to research and learn before I find out. What I do know is that it would change what this module is, and that chasing it is going to take me a while.

And I didn't want you living with known bugs while I chase it.

So before anything else, here is 7.1. It fixes every bug you reported since 7.0.7 went out in May, plus eight I found along the way that nobody had reported, and it delivers a few of the small things you asked for that fit a release like this. No big new systems. This one is about trust: the floor the next version will stand on.

Exalted Scenes 7.1.0 is available now for W&W Adventurer and W&W Arcane Circle members, inside Foundry as usual.

The ones you reported

You filed bugs, posted screenshots, sent console traces and retested hotfixes. One of those reports was a crash I had live for months. Here is what each of them became.

Players moving characters, and nobody else seeing it. The GM's socket handler was crashing on a Foundry utility that doesn't exist, so a player's drag never left their own screen, and the GM's next move overwrote it. Fixed. Thank you Vooren, Evounnamed, RoleCraft, satiric, Tarakanator and Sckaar. Please retest this one on 7.1 with freeform player control on. It is yours.

Narrator's Jukebox playlists not showing up until F5. New, renamed and deleted playlists now refresh immediately, even with the Character Editor open. Thank you Nikkimouse and Sckaar.

Ambience and sound effects carrying into the next scene. Layered ambience is now swept when a scene ends, and the fade-out, which had never actually reached the audio, fades now. Thank you Ed. There is also a behaviour change below that I believe is the rest of your report.

The emotion preview stuck on screen, or flickering. The big preview goes away when you pick, and it steps to the side of a tall picker instead of pulsing on top of it. Thank you Rotti and SpiraledChaos.

The Theater Strip opening behind the sidebar. Its default position landed behind Foundry's panels every single time. It now opens clear of them, and you can still drag it anywhere, including back over the sidebar. Thank you Orion, ZachTheRage, Rotti and RoleCraft. Orion, one question: when it reset on you, was that on a scene you had already moved it on? An untouched scene always fell back to that old default.

Dragging only working near the edges of a character. The hover toolbar's invisible hit area was swallowing the middle of the portrait. The whole character drags now. Thank you Ed, sfield001 and Nikkimouse.

"Can't scroll up" in the Character Editor. Three separate defects, all gone: the list snapped to the top on every edit, the mouse wheel got trapped inside it, and it was decoding every full-size portrait to draw 72-pixel thumbnails (around 285 MB for a single character). It is light now. Thank you Ed.

Clicks going through the broadcast to Monk's Active Tiles. See the behaviour changes below. Thank you Nikkimouse.

The sort mode resetting every time. Remembered now, per tab. Thank you Ed.

The padlock your players kept seeing. GM-only now. Players keep the hover hint and the warning when they try to change a locked character. Thank you Nikkimouse.

GM Panel resizing after selecting a scene. I ran your exact steps on Foundry 13 and 14 and could not reproduce it. Silberhand, if 7.1 still does it for you, tell me whether the panel was popped out and which colour theme you use, and I will go again.

Animated scenes lagging with a detached GM Panel on v14. I fixed a real wrong-window issue in the detached panel (video previews are built from the correct window now, and cards show their first frame), but I could not reproduce the low-FPS broadcast itself. Bridger, if it still happens: is the main Foundry window covered or minimised while you work in the detached one? Browsers throttle rendering in occluded windows, which would match "players are fine".

The ones nobody reported

While I was in there I kept finding things, and I decided this release would not ship until they were gone too.

A change you made as the GM could silently never reach the players. Set an emotion, a player changes it, you set it back to exactly what you had, and that second change was dropped as a "duplicate". Not any more.

Two GM clients (a co-GM, an assistant, or an OBS browser source logged in with a GM account) were overwriting each other's saves. A theater-mode toggle made on one could quietly revert. Exactly one client saves now. RoleCraft, this is my best explanation for your "portrait style switches back when OBS is active" report.

Changing a character's emotion, hero pose or border while previewing a scene changed it for everyone, including on the scene your players were watching. Preview is honest now (more on that below).

After a reload, the GM's own Exalted Scenes said nothing was live while the players kept watching.

Changes made in the last moment before closing Foundry could be dropped.

Hero Poses thumbnails stayed blank after switching browser tabs.

Visiting the Slideshows tab permanently reset the scenes' custom order.

Scene fade-out had never once run. It was gated on a Narrator's Jukebox method that doesn't exist, so every scene ended as an abrupt cut.

Three small things you asked for

Your screen is yours. You can now take the live scene off your own screen while your players keep watching. It is the Hide from my screen button in the GM Live Dock, or Ctrl+Shift+V (the old "Open Live Player View" shortcut is now a show/hide toggle). The dock keeps a very clear "live for your players, hidden on your screen" button to bring it back, so you always know what the table is seeing. Thank you Hexacus and Maycol for asking for this one.

Preview is an audition. Set the poses for the next scene while you preview it. Nobody sees them, the banner counts them, and they apply the moment you hit Go Live. Leave the preview without going live and they are dropped.

The GM comes back after a reload. Refresh your browser mid-session and you return exactly where things were: the live scene, Cast-Only, a sequence or a slideshow (a playing slideshow even picks its clock back up), and the Live Dock tells the truth.

Two things that change on purpose, with a way back

I don't change behaviour lightly in a fix release, so I want to be very clear about these two.

A scene's audio now stops when the scene ends, for every scene, existing ones included. "Stop audio when scene ends" already existed, but as an unticked box at the bottom of the Audio tab that almost nobody found, so ambience carried over into the next scene and the fade you set never ran. It is on by default now, and it sits next to the fade under When the scene ends in the Scene Editor. Two guard rails: a scene with no audio of its own never stops anything (if you run music by hand in Narrator's Jukebox under purely visual scenes, nothing changes for you), and if you untick it on a scene, it stays unticked.

Clicking on empty parts of a broadcast scene no longer reaches the map underneath. Until now those clicks fell through: you could select tokens or trigger Monk's Active Tiles on a map you could not even see. A full-screen scene now behaves like the screen it looks like. If your setup depends on clicking through (Monk's Common Display, for example), there is a new world setting that turns click-through back on. Foundry's sidebar, hotbar and controls work as before either way.

What is next, honestly

The mismatch Ed reported between a scene's volume and what players actually hear is a contract question between Exalted Scenes and Narrator's Jukebox, and it is next on my list. It is not in this release because I want to get it right rather than patch over it.

The module manual is on its way too.

And the crazy idea is still a crazy idea. When I know whether it is real, you will be the first to hear about it.

Updating

Foundry will offer 7.1.0 inside the app on v13 and v14. Your scenes, characters and settings stay exactly where they are; the only migration is the one that turns "stop audio when the scene ends" on for your existing scenes, as described above.

New around here? Exalted Scenes is part of Foundry's official premium content program: link your Patreon to your Foundry account once (foundryvtt.com, Edit Profile tab), then install it from Foundry's module browser like any other module. Available to W&W Adventurer and W&W Arcane Circle members.

Module page: https://foundryvtt.com/packages/exalted-scenes

Thank you

This release exists because you kept reporting. Vooren, Evounnamed, RoleCraft, satiric, Tarakanator, Sckaar, Nikkimouse, Ed, Rotti, SpiraledChaos, Orion, ZachTheRage, sfield001, Silberhand, Bridger, Hexacus, Maycol, Partyathedreadfort, Gabe and CalielFR: your names are in the changelog next to the things you found. Over the next days I will be replying to each of you personally on Discord.

Thank you for the patience, the reports and the retests. I hope you like it, and I hope the next one is worth the wait.

With love, from one storyteller to another.

Gabú Wand & Widgets