As you may have heard, we’re in the process of undertaking our major modernization of the Roll20 virtual tabletop called Project Jumpgate. At the end of this process, we’ll be delivering an overhauled version of Roll20 that’s modern, performant, and a joy to use.
Hello everyone! I’d like to deliver a quick update on where we’re at with Jumpgate and what the team has been working on to get the project ready for Beta testing for Pro Users during our Q1 2024 early access window.
At this stage of the project, we’re really focused on foundational work. We need to get some of the lowest-level functionality of the VTT re-implemented and working in Jumpgate so that we can build on top of it. However, as we check each of these items off of our list, we’re taking the time to examine them and consider how we can add some fun surprises that make the user experience on Roll20 even better going forward. Let’s take a quick look at a few of these and see how they’re changing in Jumpgate for the better.
Beyond the Bounds
The original design of the VTT centered around the page as the primary element on the screen – the area where you have all of the elements of your game such as your map and tokens. When playing on a real table, though, you can easily put things off to the side of the playing area to keep them for later. It’s also a great spot to keep notes, stats, and other items that you might want to reference throughout gameplay.
In Roll20, this was previously only possible if you made an oversized map for your game with extra whitespace. And of course, if the grid was enabled, you had to deal with grid lines in this area as well. It wasn’t nearly as easy or intuitive to carry over this behavior from an in-person table to our virtual one. So let’s fix that!
In Jumpgate, we’re freeing you up to put objects anywhere:
Place enemy tokens along the side of the map and bring them in when you need them. Or allow your players to quickly sketch out a plan of attack for the heist to the side of the map itself. Keep a handy screenshot of the rules for combat next to your Starfinder ship as a quick reference guide. This is such a simple new feature, but the possibilities on how you’ll want to use it are really endless. We’re also having internal conversations on if we want to make this an area that GMs could choose to hide from players, so let us know how you might use it!
Pan Anywhere
Alongside placing objects off of the bounds of the page, the other long-standing annoyance is that you could never pan past the bounds of the page itself. This could be annoying if you wanted something in the top-left of the page to be the center of attention, or if you had a really large screen and a small map and couldn’t pan around at all.
In Jumpgate, pan around to your heart’s content. The bounds of the page no longer have any meaning when it comes to where you can move.
Marquee Selection
This is another great example of a foundational piece. While working on the VTT, you’re often going to need to drag to select multiple things on the tabletop. As part of Jumpgate, we’re making sure that this selection process is always lightning-fast, but we’d also like to make it a little more reliable as well. So now while you are dragging, you’ll get instant feedback on what items will be selected when you complete your selection. Like so:
This is really a small change, but it helps prevent a lot of frustration and mistakes – no chance now of just not quite fitting that token into the selection and having to redo it.
Copying and Pasting
Copying and pasting items on the tabletop is a frequently performed action that you’ll use over and over again as a GM. A common case might be to set up a battle scene where you have several of the same monster ready to ambush the party. Again, while our primary focus here is just to keep it fast and make it work well, we noticed that in the current version of Roll20, when you copy and paste the new copy appears right on top of the old – making it difficult to see if the action succeeded, or to grab and move the new pieces, especially if there were several copies made in rapid succession.
In Jumpgate, when you copy and paste objects, not only will they appear more quickly, for subsequent paste actions in the same spot, we’ll slightly offset the items:
This makes it really easy to see that you’ve actually pasted it (and how many times you’ve done so), as well as allowing you to quickly grab and move them to new spots.
Onward!
These are just a few of the new user experiences that Jumpgate is unlocking for us. I’m excited to continue to share them with you as we march toward early access for the Beta in a few short months! Stay tuned for future blog posts in this series to learn what else the entire VTT team is cooking up for you all.
Keep up with announcements and updates at Roll20 Jumpgate!