0.41 - Project Freyja, Maps for all, and Filters

New Features

Project Freyja – Phase I

We’ve been teasing Project Freyja for a while now on the Kanka Discord server. Today we are super excited and proud to release the first phase! Freyja in norse mythology is a goddess or love and beauty, which we find fitting for the Kanka UI rewrite. I started Kanka close to 3 years ago and used a free online template that I was familiar with. Little did I know that Kanka would become a product that 40’000 users love and use every day.

Luckily for us, a fantastic designer by the name of gluternick has been designing new UIs for Kanka during the summer, and today we are releasing the first focus of his work: the sidebar.

Freyja Sidebar

The new sidebar and campaign switcher
With this change, we’re moving the campaign switcher to be easier to find for new users. Elements have been rearranged into two sections: your “world” and your “campaign”. We’ve also switched around the icons used a bit based off of his recommendations. Another change is that the Quick Links are now always displayed at the top, meaning they are no longer hidden from users, allowing you to better help navigate new users to your campaigns.

The quick creator is now always “stuck” to the bottom of the sidebar, allowing you to quickly find it without having to scroll when you need. The quick creator will get a few more improvements in the upcoming month, so we’re not finished yet!

Maps for all

The new Maps module is now out of early access and available for all campaigns!

Improvements

Something something filters

We’ve added a few filter options. For example, you can now search for characters that are not part of a family, or even show all locations that have no parent location. Another new filter is to be able to filter all entities with or without an image. Most exciting for tag lovers is the ability to filter all entities that don’t have a list of selected tags, or have no tags.

Last but not least, you can finally filter quests by completed status! Huzzah!

Subscriptions

We’ve received feedback from subscribers that the notifications when payment details didn’t work was lacking (only in the app), so we’ve added emails to the mix. If a payment method fails, an email will be send with what to do. In the event that the payment method fails for a third time, a cancellation email is sent with the reason why went wrong.

LFGM Integration

Added info in our FAQ and in the welcome note for new campaigns regarding our LFGM integration options.

Bug fixes

Fixed a bug where deleting a role would try and notify users of that role but failed in the background.

Fixed a bug with text colour wasn’t saved in the new text editor Summernote. Also fixed the bug with the Embed popup disappearing as soon as a single character was typed in.

Timeline elements can now also link to Tags.

Fixed an issue with the breadcrumbs when editing a Reminder not pointing to the correct entities.

Fixed an issue for Timelines for unlogged users.

0.40 - Timelines and new text editor

New Features

Timelines

The long awaited timelines module has been added to the application in early access to Boosted Campaigns. We’ve built this new module to be flexible. A timeline can be split into several eras, and each era can have multiple “elements” that can be linked to entities.

Each entity linked to a timeline element has a new subpage called “Timelines” to quickly find out where the entity is included.

Text Editor

We are introducing a new opt-in text editor to Kanka. You can activate it for your account by going into your Layout Settings. The new editor has a few advantages, the biggest are that is it a lot faster, less buggy, extendable, and supports mentions on mobile browsers. A few features aren’t available from the new editor, notably support for advanced table formatting, but we believe the benefits massively outweigh the problems with the old editor.

Since the editor is such an important feature of Kanka, we hope that by making it opt-in, we can detect any huge missing features and address them. You can switch back to the old editor at any time if the new one isn’t working for you.

Birth/Death of characters

Reminders on characters have a new “type” field that can be Birth or Death. This automatically calculates their age if still alive, years alive if dead, or years since death if only the death field is provided.

Go to a character’s page, and to the Reminders tab. From there, add a new Reminder and select the new “Type” dropdown.

These new values are only displayed on the character page. A character’s age is no longer displayed on character lists, as calculating this value is server intensive. Filtering by the age of a character still works on the old value.

Improvements

Added the tooltip on tags when viewing an entity.

Pinned relations with the same “relation” text are now grouped together.

Added new fields on Maps to control the initial, min and max zoom values.

The name field on Map Markers is no longer required if an entity is provided. The marker will use the entity’s name instead.

Accounts created with Facebook, Twitter or Google can now be deleted without having to switch to a Kanka login first.

The Quick Creator interface has a new “Back” button in case you selected the wrong entity type.

Added a new Relations API to quickly get all the relations of a campaign.

The gender field on characters (both the form and filter) will now suggest previously used values in the campaign.

Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue with large maps not loading in the maps module.

SVG files are supported in the Map but this information was missing from the image helper text.

Map Markers of polygon shapes with no coordinates will now display a standard Pin instead of being invisible.

The Maps nested view didn’t display properly.

The location families subpage linked to characters instead of families.

0.38 - LFGM integration & Higher Map Upload for Free users

New Features

Maps: free users can now upload 3 MB maps to their locations instead of the previous 1 MB limit.

LookingForGM.com integration: users who manage their game planning on LFGM can now link their calendar to their Kanka campaign. This adds a dashboard widget that will display the GM's upcoming events for that campaign. This is our first collaboration with another platform and we are super excited to build more cool things to make DMing and worldbuilding easier!

Json Exports: every entity can now be exported to the JSON format directly from the entity action bar. The PDF export has also been renamed to make it more clear that it is a PDF export. Behind the scenes, the json export uses the same code as the API.

New languages: Kanka is now available in three new languages. Croatian thanks to Blaze, Hebrew thanks to Beefpotato, and Russian thanks to Ilia!

Improvements

Relations: added a new colour field to relations to help you quickly colour-code your relations. Also added a description for what the attitude field actually does. Lastly, added a better placeholder for the relation field.

Mentions: the entity type in the mentions modal is now shown in parentheses to make it clear where the entity is being mentioned.

Bulk Delete: added a confirmation message when trying to delete many entities at the same time.

Entry Field: added the details and summary html elements as valid. The id and class values are now also valid for img and a elements.

API: the url to a location's map is now the complete url rather than the internal, unsuable url.

Characters: you can now filter the characters list by organisation.

Google Docs Embeding: you can now embed google documents into the Entry field of entities, the same way Spofity and Youtube can be embeded.

Calendars: moons can now have a decimal resolution time. So if you want to mimic the earth's moon, set the full moon phase to 29.53 (note that this isn't exact and will cause differences with how our real moon phases).

Bug Fixes

Fixed issues with Safari and iOS devices not being able to properly load images from our new image server.

Release 0.35 - Subscriptions

New Features

• Subscriptions: you can support Kanka, get Campaign Boosters and other bonuses directly in the app! The new subscription page is available in your Profile page, and a link has been added to the menu bar.
  • Payment Methods and Billing is handled by Stripe. Your credit card information never appears on our servers, be it through logs or database data. We only save the last four digits of your card to remind you visually which card you've currently set up.
  • You can either select USD or EUR as your currency to avoid being hit by stupidly high fees by credit card providers. We will try to add more currency options in the future.
  • You will be billed directly when you subscribe, with your card being charged automatically each month. We will look into providing an option for a yearly subscription in the near future.
  • Subscribing to Kanka will directly give you access to the assigned Discord roles (related to the Third Party App feature).
  • You can cancel your subscription at any time, which will keep your subscription active until the end of the current billing period. As usual, cancelling your subscription doesn't delete any of the data you input in your campaigns, so if you subscribe again in the future, your data will still be there.
  • 3D Secure cards are supported!
• Abilities are now available for all campaigns.
• Third Party App: we've added a Discord integration with Kanka. You can set up your Discord account linking in your Profile > Apps page.
• Community Votes: we've added Community Votes directly into the app. This will allow us to build more complex voting options in the future as our user base grows.
• Newsletters: in your Profile settings, we added a Newsletter segment, where you can now subscribe to our various newsletters! You can also subscribe without being logged in our having an account simply by going to the Releases or Community Votes page and subscribing with your preferred email address.
• RSS Feeds: we've added two RSS feeds for those who wish to stay up to date with Kanka using the RSS protocol. You can add the following urls to your RSS reader:
  • https://kanka.io/feeds/releases.rss
  • https://kanka.io/feeds/community-votes.rss

Improvements

• Abilities: added a new Charge field on abilities. This is to emulate 5e's "usages before a short/long rest" abilities. You can either input a numerical value, or something like "{Level}*{CHA}+{STR}" which will use the attributes of those names the ability is attached to!
• Quick Creator: when other entities with the same name exist, they will now be listed below the warning.
• Campaign: a new "UI" tab has been added to the campaign form, with the option to disable family names from character tooltips on your whole campaign.
• Entity Create/Update: a new "Save & Copy" option was added in the entity workflow actions.
• Entity Create/Update: a new "Ctrl+Shift+S" shortcut was added to trigger the "Save & Update" action.
• Notifications: the way notifications are handled in the browser have changed. Previously each tab went and requested the server individually, which caused a lot of requests during sessions where people have 10-15 Kanka tabs open. Now a single shared process between all tabs is shared to reduce the server load, while increasing the frequency of how often the app checks for new notifications.
• Datagrids: the bulk buttons will now always be shown, and only be clickable when at least one element of the datagrid is selected. Also improved performance on the datagrid page load.
• Improved performance for boosted campaigns.
• Improved performance for the Entity View > Permissions modal.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed some missing "og" meta-tags on various pages like FAQs (this is useful for sharing links on Discord).
• Fixed a bug where someone creating an account, logging out without creating their first campaign, and login in again couldn't properly log in.
• Fixed a bug where deleted entities caused the "mentioned in" modal to not open.
• Fixed negative years for dashboard calendar widgets not displaying the current date properly.
• Fixed a bug where ordering members on an organisation's member page cause a server error.
• Fixed a bug where copying a quest always set the new quest to completed.
• Fixed a bug where quest sub-elements didn't have the "Private" field filled out with the campaign "default visibile" value.
• Fixed a bug for German and Italian where they didn't have the "ignore" option in the bulk permission tool.
• Fixed characters and quests "preview" dashboard widgets not showing the full text when the "full" option is selected.

Release 0.34 - Entity Recovery

New Features

• Entity Recovery
  • When deleting an entity in a boosted campaign, the entity is kept in the system for 30 days before it is permanently removed. This allows boosted campaign to recover entities using the new Recovery in the Campaign > Recovery submenu.
• Character Bulk Edit Age
  • When bulk editing characters, you can now set the age field. If the new age starts with + or -, that value is added or subtracted to each selected character.

Improvements

• Attribute Templates: you can now set Abilities as the target entity type.
• Entity Abilities
  • Adding or removing an ability from an entity now updates the "last modified date" of that entity, useful for your dashboard widgets.
  • The top entity abilities (filters) when viewing the abilities of an entity now sort alphabetically.
  • The displayed entity abilities (after clicking on a filter) now default order by the type field.

Bug fixes

• Patreon images for entities will now display again
• API: the abilities api was adding all attribute templates that were not set to any entity type.
• API: the calendar creation api was missing some boilerplate causing numerous issues when not providing all the available fields.
• Private campaigns were in some cases still visible to any logged in user.

Release 0.32.1 - UI & Bugfixes

Improvements

• Entity Action UI: replaced the "update/move/delete" buttons, the Entity Files buttons, and Permissions button with a new Action UI above each entity that displays the various options.
  ** New "Copy [] Mention" button which copies to the user's clipboard the advanced mention of an entity.
  ** Entity Files is now a clearly visible UI.
  ** New Private toggler directly in the entity view.
• Campaign Roles: massively improved the campaign role manage interface.
• Tag Bulk Actions: ability to bulk edit the colour and parent tag.
• Calendar Form: replaced some of the tab texts with icons when on mobile to make the UI a bit friendlier.
• News: hides the "latest news" panel when on mobile.
• FAQ: added a line about deitites and religions.
• Code: updated the app to the Laravel 6.0 framework.

Bugs

• Copy to campaign: under certain conditions, it was possible to copy to another campaign where the user didn't have permissions to create an entity of that type.
• Menu Link: removed the tags option from bulk editing. Removed the bulk permissions option.
• Tags: "none" coloured tags had a white text on grey background when creating/editing an entity. This was fixed to black.
• Locations: bulk editing the parent location didn't properly work.
• Entity Creation: automaticly applying attribute templates didn't add the attributes in the correct order.
• Searchable Dropdowns: fixed a bug where a request was sent to the server with each typed letter instead of waiting for the user to stop typing before searching, increasing the server load for no good reason.
• Calendar Widget: some calendars with an invalid year caused the whole dashboard to crash.
• Unlogged users can no longer order the various datagrids to avoid overloading the servers by crawlers.
• Conversations which should be visible to a public user always resulted in server errors.
• Dice rolls which should be visible to a public user sometimes resulted in server errors.
• Calendar Reminders: the recurring periodicity (month/year) didn't always properly save.
• Calendar Widget: the "next day" button sometimes resulted in server errors.
• Attributes: the attributes tab was not visible to public users even if they had access to read the entity.
• Themes: fixed various issues with the Dark, Midnight and Future themes.

Release 0.32 - Soft Relaunch

Features

• Front: reworked the front pages, Added tutorial videos, improved the FAQ, reworked a lot of texts for better clarity.
• Patreon: every tier now has an amazing custom artwork done by the incredibly talented Jeff Ross! Tiers have been reworked to better reflect the evolution of Kanka.
• Filters V3: datagrid filters are now shown above the main entity lists, and allow multiple tags to be searched. These new filters also work properly on mobile. More control on tag filtering will be added in the coming weeks.

Improvements

• Profile Settings: the Patreon subpage will now show your bonuses.
• Attributes: using the advanced mention syntax ([entity:123]), you can now link to entities in the value and text attributes. These are also displayed when pinned.
• Campaign Invites: default validity for links is now infinite, and it is no longer possible to directly invite someone to the Admin role of the campaign. To do so, promote a member once they have joined. Also added a button to directly copy the invite link to the clipboard.
• Campaign Members: in the campaign members list as well as on the entities permission tab, members profile pictures are now displayed.
• Entity Entry: the rich text field now allows saving div.class, p.class and table.border-color CSS properties. This will allow boosted campaigns to go crazy with creativity. The default padding for tables has also been set to 2px to make them a bit more pleasing.
• Items: bulk edit of the size property has been added.

Bug fixes

• Location view: removed an extra space between a locations parent locations list (under the image and name).

Bugfixes

• Menu Links: sorting by position now works.
• Menu Links: disabled bulk permissions as menu links aren't entities linked to the permissions engine.
• Entity Move: it is no longer possible to move entities to the menu link type, as they aren't entities.
• Calendar: fixes some css on the Future and Midnight Blue themes that made weather hard to read.
• Calendar: moons with special characters had displaying issues.
• Calendar: fixed a bug where multi-day events stopped displaying in the middle of a month. Also fixed a bug where empty weeks were displayed.
• Quests: fixed a bug where saving a quest that was attached to a calendar caused an error.
• Copy to another campaign: fixed a bug where copying failed if the entity had entity notes or attributes.
• Editor: Ctrl+S shortcut now shown on the correct default function.
• Attribute Templates: fixed a bug where allowing non admins to view attribute templates didn't work.
• Maps: SVG maps didn't properly save map point positions on SVG causing them to render wrongly when loading in other screen resolutions.
• General: clicking on a link to a deleted campaign no longer throws a general error page but a proper 404 page.

More Calendars

New Features

Calendars

• More moon phases (waning, new moon, and waxing) are displayed in the calendar.
• Moons can now have a colour to quickly differentiate them all.
• Option to reset the week at the start of every month or year.
• Named weeks, with the name displayed above the week.
• Month aliases which appear in the month view of a calendar.
• Weather for each day with an icon, precipitation, wind, effect etc.
• Events can now be sorted on mobile and desktop.
• Events can now be recurring on every month instead of every year. This recures on the same "date", so an event that starts on the 3rd will reccur on the 3rd of each month, rather than on the same week day.
• Calendars can be set to increment their date automatically every day at 00:00 UTC.
• Redid the calendar year switcher to also work on mobile and be more user friendly.

Improvements

• API: a character's organisations will now be given back by the API when calling with the "&related=1" option.

Bugs

• Quests and Journals: couldn't set the calendar date if the campaign only had one calendar.
• Moving an entity to another type resulted in duplicate data.
• Dashboard: the calendar widget stoped showing the "Today" helper on upcoming events.

0.30.2 - Onboarding and bugfixes

Improvements

• Onboarding: the first campaign of a user will now include a Note with some help, as well as a default campaign dashboard with said note and the recently modified entities.
• Public Campaigns: added an indicator if the campaign is boosted.

Bugfixes

• Maps: SVGs uploaded from Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator should have less inconsistencies.
• Entities: creating an entity using the "+" button next to a list will populate the list with the new entity again.
• API: setting a tag with a new or updated entity will properly save for all entities, not just characters.
• Bulk Permissions: changed the "User" default dropdown to "Ignore" and fixed Entity Notes permissions not being saved.
• Copy Entity: attributes order is now kept.
• Attributes: applying multiple attribute templates to an entity no longer breaks their order.
• API Docs: fixed the docs for entity notes.
• Quests: the entity can now be copied to other campaigns. This won't copy related entities.
• D&D 5e Monster Block: Fixed damage resistances not showing, senses and languages been swapped, and a few typos.