Update 67 - February 2015

New Features:

• Secondary GM aliases (only) can now be hidden from the game by giving the character the "Hidden" tag.
• Added <smallcaps>Small Caps</smallcaps>.
• Different dice sizes can now be added and/or subtracted from each other and presented as one result.
• GMs can now create a template for access requests (a.k.a. requests to join) that appears above the compose screen on new access requests.
• Allowed an anchor point to be placed within messages (GM only) and character sheets/descriptions (anyone) with [anchor name_of_link].  Zoomed to by making <a href=#name_of_link>Zoom</a>.
• Added the Last Unicorn Games system to the dice roller.
• You now receive a warning if a change is made to a character sheet or description while you area also editing it.

Changes:

• Different way of reporting versions and the changes they contain.  How enthralling.
• Updated the Warhammer Test roll to include the actual die rolled.
• Changed some of the logic behind the dice rolling to make it less error prone.  Hopefully didn't make any errors doing so.
• Stopped the compose message screen being so sensitive about excessive use of "quote" in short messages.
• The "View Profile of" drop-down list for GMs is now grouped into player and non-player characters.
• Added last modified parameter to game maps to (try to) stop browsers from displaying out-of-date images from their cache.
• User created external links now have "rel='nofollow'" for search engine optimisation (to ensure there's no unnatural link penalty for the sites we link to).
• Merged the game website and external links to one section; Game Links.
• Tweaked the layout of the game links to allow for a more consistent display plus reduce redundancy.
• New accounts are now required to give a month and year of birth.
• Access to the adult section of RPoL must now be applied for, which is then granted by a moderator.  Once permitted you also must do a (quick and instantly approved) age statement for each adult game you are in.
• If you remove a (non-deleted) game from your stickylist via the main menu, you will now receive a small box allowing you to readd it, plus instructions on how to find missing games that you play in.

Fixes:

• Stopped the language lines messing up characters that were being converted to HTML codes (e.g. < and >) as well as really implement half of the language line fix that I professed to do previously.
• Stopped (game) banned users being listed in some GM screens.
• Fixed the dice roller log not handling email addresses in the "Reason for roll" field, and made it generally more robust.
• Stopped the game info screens sometimes obfuscating the logon time for GMs.
• Fixed message subject sometimes being truncated when replying to private threads.
• Fixed custom themes not removing message colouring in all circumstances.
• Stopped some input fields sometimes being truncated at a single quote.
• Thread filters now survive page changes.
• Stopped unofficial lurkers getting notified of new posts in threads they couldn't see.
• Fixed certain combinations of "pre" causing new lines to vanish.
• Added in missing descriptions for some game categories.
• Wiki - Stopped Creole italics (//) killing hyperlinks (http:italics!).
• Fixed system moderation messages not displaying and grouping correctly in rMail.
• Stopped some GM screens allowing reserved tags to be used.
• Fixed the dice roller returning a result of zero when combining unique rolls with reroll ones.

This message was last edited by the user at 07:03, Sun 19 Apr 2015.

I'll start warning my players in my adult games.  Are we talking a few days, a week, or "sometime around the end of the month" for this to kick in?

Noooooo!

Wait. I mean Yaaaaay!

In reply to Evil Empryss (msg # 2):

Depends how much testing other people do on the beta site, and how much I have to do for myself!

All of these changes are going to be AWESOME!

jase - do you want any issues posted here or over on the beta site ?  :>

I think beta site is best, avoids cluttering the forum here.

Yeah, the last thing we need is clutt...

Oh, dang.

It all looks great. Color me excited.

• Secondary GM aliases (only) can now be hidden from the game by giving the character the "Hidden" tag.

One feature I have been wanting is for GMs to be able to work on their NPC cast of characters without the players being able to see. Does this now mean I am able to hide NPCs by giving them the Hidden tag? Does this work for players or does it have to be linked to a GM account?

EDIT: Just browsed the beta site and that is exactly what it looks to accomplish. If that is the case, good work! Been looking for this feature creep for a long while!
This message was last edited by the user at 00:52, Fri 13 Feb 2015.

A few more points added to the update notes.

While I've had some great help from three members, I'm not satisfied that the upcoming changes have been tested enough, so I'll be waiting for more testing and feedback.  When this gets implemented is up to you!

Does the anchor point allow us to refer directly to a post number? Say, if I were a GM and I had something at post number 5, would it snap directly to that?

Not exactly, it works similar to traditional #anchor tags in html.

So you can insert the <a href=#name_of_link>Zoom</a> at the top of the post, or any post actually then put the [anchor name_of_link] where you want the browser window to jump to.

It will work great if you have a giant scroll of text, or even several posts that you want to make much easier to navigate from the top of the screen, linking to specific information on your Game World for example, or the House Rule post on Combat for another.  The two tags do not even have to be in the same post.  As long as the posts are on the same page it seems to work just fine.

However once the post with the post with the two tags are on different pages, it no longer works, which is Working as Intended from what I can tell.

In reply to steelsmiter (msg # 12):

All posts already have an anchor which is their post number (see your post - Post #12).  The issue with linking to specific messages in threads is you need to figure the page number, and posts can move pages.  Not a problem for this thread at the moment as it has under 25 replies, but once it starts over that then messages start getting pushed to page 2.  Once there's 37 replies your message (#12) will go onto page 2, and my link above will stop working as it'll try to zoom to post 12 on page 1.

The user-creatable anchors were put in place as a result of the request made in the thread Divided or "Jump To" Character Sheets.

Note that anchors, in general, can seem a bit off as it'll be zoomed to the top of the screen, and that can actually be hidden underneath the fixed header (if you've got it enabled), depending upon your browser.

Currently, the workaround is to link to the "all posts" view. This bypasses the page-number issue by making the number of pages "1". It was that trick that allowed me to make the index table on the character-sheet thread in Heaven.

Regardless, enabling anchor tags will be incredibly helpful, as sometimes games I run end up with a wall of text (especially in reference threads), and being able to just name bookmarks will save me a lot of trouble.

Looks like update 67 is live?

Certainly seems that way.

A heads up would have been nice to avoid the moment of panic at seeing the odd warning when composing a post for a game you (temporarily) no longer have approval to participate in though. >.>

Still, I think the changes will be very helpful in the long run. :p

Yes, like an announcement or something.  Oh, wait...  :p

In reply to bigbadron (msg # 18):

Did I miss an announcement saying "Hey everyone, it's happening tomorrow?"  That would have been wonderful so we could get our games settled for the pause while people get approved. Some of us are in nothing BUT adult-rated games and this crashes everything until the approvals are done. I'm all for the changes and thank goodness I keep up on things in this forum so I know what's happening, but just riolling out something with this big an impact on people's games with no warning that it's happening NOW was rude.
This message was last edited by the user at 09:43, Sat 22 Aug 2015.

It took me less than five minutes to get approved.
I'm sometimes a bit obsessive about checking games, but even I don't find that a rude disruption to my gaming.

You lucked out. It took a little over an hour for me. That's not excessive on its own, but it ate up my time to post before I go to work.

Love the updates to the system, but if I had known it was coming today I would have stayed up to submit my request before I went to bed and been able to post this morning.

So imagine how much of my posting time is being eaten up by approving requests for adult membership.  Please exercise a little patience while we work through this process (which was, after all, requested by site users).

Good point!

THANK YOU TEAM RPOL!!!!!!

This message was deleted by a moderator, as it was off-topic, at 13:04, Tue 01 Sept 2015.