Quest Log: Is there a way to arrange quests within folders or collapsible quest lines?
Hi @Arkangel. Apologies it took me a bit to get around to addressing your question. This is a two part question. Presently, there isn't a way to arrange quests within folders in respect to the Foundry journal sidebar. As things go there is a hidden folder
_fql_quests that you can unhide in the module options. You can't create additional folders or move the quest journal entries around outside of _fql_quests.
I'll certainly consider this when working on the v11 update for FQL. There are no technical reasons why the quest journal entries can not be made visible and freely organized in the journal entries sidebar. I'll add this as a quality of life update in the next release likely out when v11 drops.
As far as collapsible quest lines go this will have to wait for the next-generation quest log. I've been working hard on an underlying modern UI framework that runs on Foundry since Oct '21 that will back this next-gen quest log. It provides many more opportunities to make interactive display of data a pleasure. I do intend to revamp the main quest log UI to have collapsible quest lines along with a lot of other searching / filtering / tagging support. This will have to wait until that completely new continuation / next-gen module is built though. As things go this will be a ~4-5 month full time effort to build it out and I'll be running a crowd-funding campaign to fund development later this year. Hopefully there is enough interest in the larger community. I spent roughly ~1100 hours on the current quest log and just can't complete the next-gen version without raising a minimum amount of funds to cover living costs while I complete the next-gen quest log. I also want to make sure it remains freely available to the larger community.
Do stick around in this server / community and grab the Quest Log role in <id:customize> to get low bandwidth announcements. Let me know if you have any more small quality of life suggestions that could make it into the v11 release for FQL. I'm always curious to try and implement suggestions that make things easier to use.2 Replies
How much do you need to raise and where is your funding site?
I'll answer the how much aspect first...
The minimum off the cuff estimate is ~$45-50k taking into account taxes and other fees (crowdfunding platform); though I haven't done a precise breakdown. It clears out a block of time to work full time+ for 5 months covering rent / cost of living / health insurance, etc. There is no profit involved in that amount just covering the development time.
I have already spent about the same amount on existing FQL specific development. I'm not willing to spend another $50k to put out something for free. Do keep in mind that I'd like to keep the quest log available for free to everyone. For a comparison if I was contracted to do the same development on what I intend for the next-gen quest log I'd charge $160k minimum and that is the rough price for a startup w/ less than $1MM funding; it goes up from there.
By the time of actually moving toward a push to potentially crowdfund a next generation quest log I will have spent a separate ~$120k post tax on the underlying framework; ~2 years living expenses. I'm putting in a lot of work to make the framework work off of Foundry for any web development / app purposes to expand the possibilities for much wider product development.
At that point the basic gambit is that it makes more sense spending my next $50k continuing to expand the framework and offering services around it for general purpose / any web app dev purposes vs throwing more money at a platform (Foundry) that isn't taking any steps to make 3rd party development equitable.
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Where is the funding site?
There is no present funding site for anything that I'm working on as things go. I should probably put up a general Patreon, but I just don't think it will get any traction especially since I have no interest in gating any software access through Patreon or other similar gateway. IMHO Patreon is not a good way to distribute professional quality software. I suppose you could say not trying that gets nothing in the meantime.
I'm not the best when it comes to self-promotion. Though to be frank, I've received "negative feedback" when I even mention the open source / freely available dev framework on the main Foundry Discord from staff members, so I have limited opportunities in that regard. It came across as adversarial IMHO. It's not great at all and further pushes me to look at the off Foundry future for anything that I do.
Presently I spend 99% of my time on engineering. I will be building up significant public informational resources around the underlying tech I've built mainly aimed at the larger use cases off of Foundry likely by the end of the year.
Certainly, I'll create mock ups and try to convey what I'd like to do for a next-gen quest log. Whether that message gets through to any sort of funding; we'll see.
Until then from the Foundry package perspective I'll continue to maintain FQL. Even w/ the v11 update I'll be adding another ~100 hours into FQL. For v11 I'm also releasing an additional useful module to take control of the rich text editor on Foundry fully tricking out TinyMCE and making it possible for folks to choose to use TinyMCE on game systems that are configured for the less capable ProseMirror based editor.