Release 12.324

Perhaps the most powerful feature suite included in V12, Scene Regions provide a method for GMs to configure specific areas of a Scene with explicitly defined Behaviors that are triggered by particular Events. Scene Regions add an extremely customizable set of tools which have nearly limitless functionality, and we can't wait to see what unique and interesting automation our community implements using them.

It is important to recognize that a Region is not simply one Shape, but each region is more of a "group" of Shapes which all share the same Behaviors. Each Region can have multiple Behaviors, each triggered by one or more Events.

The available built-in Behaviors can be leveraged to accomplish things that we have often heard users wish for:

Adjust Darkness Level

Have you ever wanted to exclude part of a scene from Global Illumination, so that the light level outside was different from the light level inside? This Behavior delivers that ability and more.

Execute Macro

For those Macro-hoarding GMs who already have all manner of pre-coded scripts ready to go for certain actions and just want them to trigger automatically, the Execute Macro behavior does what it says on the label: when you assign it the UUID of a given Macro (which can be gotten by right-clicking the ID button in the header of a macro), it will trigger that macro under the conditions of the event you assign to trigger it.

Execute Script

If you only need a script to apply to this particular Region, this allows you to craft a bit of JavaScript that will be run under the desired conditions. Those wishing to access the data provided by the triggering event can easily do so by accessing event.data from within the script.

Pause Game

Sick of your players running off like a shot and skipping past your carefully planned traps, having to move them back and clear the fog of war? Just draw a scene region that will pause the game whenever a token enters the region. For convenience, you can also toggle the "Once" option so it doesn't do it every single time a token passes by.

Suppress Weather

Want to keep it from snowing indoors in your arctic hunting lodge, but you don't have a convenient tile to place for a roof? This behavior will stop rendering weather effects inside the Region, whether there's a roof there or not.

Teleport Token

Perhaps one of the most desired features, the Teleport Token behavior allows you to instantaneously transport a token that enters the region from one region to another. Similar to Execute Macro, this behavior requires the UUID of another Scene Region to serve as a destination. The destination region can even be in a different scene!

Toggle Behavior

Have a particular behavior you only want to activate after a certain condition has been met, such as a trap that is only active after a token has stepped on its pressure plate? Toggle behavior allows you to link to the UUID of a different Behavior, enabling or disabling the linked behavior when a certain triggering event occurs.

In the hands of even a completely inexperienced coder, Scene Regions can be leveraged to create truly powerful automations.

If you want to see some of these in action, there will be examples in the Scene Regions article, and we're already racing to add support for Scene Regions to some of our first-party Premium Content. We look forward to adding additional functionality to Scene Regions in the future, but we hope you'll find the toolkit that we've provided to be more than adequate for all of your scene-automating needs!

As part of our efforts to modernize the Foundry VTT user interface, we took the opportunity to lay some groundwork for future changes by implementing Application V2. A few UI elements, such as the User Configuration dialog, have been now been updated to use Application V2 already.

While this is mostly something that is immediately exciting a limited number of community developers, it is an important upgrade because almost every "window" you open within Foundry VTT is an Application. Users can look forward to many upcoming UI improvements which leverage Application V2 in the future!

Additional details: A key feature of Application V2 is that it improves multi-user editing of a single window. As a severe oversimplification, the new Application window can be portioned up into discrete parts, allowing data to be updated on one part of a sheet without losing the state of other parts of the Data. There are many different frameworks (Svelte, Vue, React and many others) which can be used to accomplish this similar goal, so we've made it possible for experienced programmers to define which renderer their Application V2 program will use.

Part of our updates to the canvas brought significant changes for the way scenes appear, introducing new options for Environmental Lighting so content creators and GMs can now customize the appearance of scenes more than they ever could before. Powerful support for mechanical darkness was also added to the vision engine!

Scene Ambience

The goal of the Environmental/Ambience lighting changes is to allow users to modify the color components of a scene, enabling the game master to create a customizable and immersive atmosphere.

For example, users can simulate the ambience of a specific planet with different sun colors, such as a red sun setting a warm, eerie glow over the landscape or a blue sun casting a cool, alien light. Other examples include creating the atmosphere of a haunted house, the bright and cheerful lighting of a sunny meadow, or the harsh, cold lighting of a futuristic spaceship. This flexibility allows for a more dynamic and engaging storytelling environment, tailored to the narrative needs of each session.

Improved Darkness Sources

Representing darkness within scenes has evolved significantly since the early versions of Foundry VTT. First, it was a somewhat secret feature that could be achieved by giving a light source a negative radius. Then, it could be represented with a negative luminosity value.

Up to this point, however, "darkness" sources could never do anything other more than apply visual "dimness" to an area. Mechanically, the area was still fully "lit". That is to say, Tokens could still "see" within their radius, exactly like they could with any other light source.

For the first time, V12 introduces a new "Darkness Source" toggle which makes a light source not only visually "dim", but also mechanically dark. These Darkness Sources also impact token vision, making it impossible for Tokens to see through them to the other side without some sort of special vision mode. If a token should be foolish enough to step within the darkness source, the distance of their vision is sharply decreased, preventing them from seeing outside the darkness from within it.

A method for creating "true," vision-blocking darkness is something that the community has often requested so we're very proud to be able to deliver on that request!

Regional Darkness

A powerful existing feature of Foundry VTT is the ability to easily use the same Scene for a visit during the night or day. This is accomplished by automatically disabling Global Illumination (think daylight) when the Darkness Level of a scene exceeds a specified value (called the Global Illumination Threshold). For instance, if you have a threshold set and you click the existing "Transition to Darkness" button within the Lighting tools, Global Illumination is automatically disabled for the Scene and it becomes mechanically "unlit." This means that Tokens would then need to bring their own light source or vision mode if they wish to see.

But what if your Scene contains both dark, "indoor" areas and bright "outdoor" areas at the same time? This challenge can now be met with one of V12's powerful new Scene Region features: the "Adjust Darkness Level" behavior. If you use this feature to make a part of your map darker than the threshold value, the area doesn't doesn't just become visually dark, it becomes mechanically unlit as well. Your players without supernatural senses will need to bring a torch with them to explore that cave!

Choose Your Own Method of Randomness

With the release of several competing Bluetooth-based dice products, we've heard the community's desire to have a way to be able to use those dice with official Foundry VTT integration.

V12 introduces a new Configure Dice section in our Game Settings to allow users to determine their randomness method.

• Foundry VTT Digital Roll - This new method gives priority to any module which would change the dice rolling method (such as one for a specific set of Bluetooth dice, for example).
• The Digital Roll (Mersenne Twister) - This option is the standard method Foundry has always used to produce your dice rolls.
• Manual Rolls - Foundry prompts the user to enter a number to serve as the result of their roll. This is typically the number that they rolled on a physical die. The Manual method is primarily geared towards GMs who want to run their tables in person but still want to take advantage of the automation features of Foundry VTT.

By default, the dice method is unchanged: the Digital Roll (Mersenne Twister) option is used.

Roll Parsing and Peggy

We have also further refined our parsing of roll formulae by introducing a new library called Peggy. While most users may not even notice a difference, switching to using Peggy as our parser allows us to finally correct some very obscure cases which could occasionally return inaccurate or unexpected results on very complex roll expressions. As a result of this change, our dice rolling is now more robust than ever before.

Over the course of V12 development, we ended up adding several important improvements to Foundry's audio system.

Dynamic Ambient Sounds

Placeable sounds have new options to add powerful effects filters. For example, this allows Walls to audibly muffle sounds as they pass through! These new options come in the form of the new Special Effects section which can be found in the configuration window of placed Ambient Sounds.

At present, Ambient Sounds support the following effects:

• Low Pass - Frequently used to emulate a dense surface softening the higher frequency sounds, Low Pass filters make a sound more 'rich', 'warm', and most importantly 'muffled'. If you want to make something sound like it is muffled behind a door or wall, you would apply a Low Pass filter.
• High Pass - Often in outdoor environments, the bass frequency of the sound falls off while higher frequencies remain clear. You might use a High Pass filter to simulate a sound crossing a large open space, such as a grassy field.
• Reverb - Primarily used in cases where you want to make the environment of a sound 'echo' a little more, so that the sound emulates an environment such as hard stone walls that reflect the sound back at the listener.

There are two different ways these effect can be applied:

• Base Effects - Apply to the sound regardless of whether a wall is between the listener and the sound source
• Muffled Effects - Only apply in cases where a wall between the source and the listener would alter the sounds. Importantly, if the sound doesn't have the "Constrained by Walls" option toggled to false (allowing it to be heard through walls at all), this effect never has the opportunity to be applied.

Musical Permissions

Players can now be assigned ownership permissions over playlists. This allows them to control which sounds are playing, make changes to any part of the playlist, and to trigger sounds on demand exactly the way a GM can. The GM still has control, though... these permissions function exactly the same as permissions for other kinds of Documents. If a player wants to play DJ, however, this allows GMs to offload some of the burden of keeping the ambience of their games flowing.

Audio Mixing Channels

GMs and users alike have long been able to control the volume of music, ambient effects, and interface sounds separately. In V12, each piece of audio played throughout the Foundry VTT ecosystem can designate which channel it most appropriately belongs to. This allows all 3 channels to have separate volume control and timing.