Dear Kanka users, we’re excited for this new release version 1.35. Today, we’re releasing creatures as a new entity type in your worlds! We’re also releasing the first updates to maps as requested by our latest community vote.
New module – creatures
During our annual survey, our users expressed a desire for a creatures module. This new module is between timelines and races in the sidebar, and enabled by default. The icon we chose is a raven. You can customise it’s icon, name, and position in the campaign sidebar setup.
This new module is nestable (creatures can have a parent creature for categorising), can have multiple locations (similar to races), and the rest is the default fields available in other entity types. With community feedback, we’ll work on making this new module more unique in its features in the near future.
As with all modules in Kanka, it can be deactivated if you don’t have a need for it.
Map improvements
As mentioned in the intro, we’ve started re-working the way maps are setup. The big change is that we’ve moved out the layers, groups, and markers tabs from the map edit form, and move them into their own subpages.
These new subpages allow bulk deleting and editing, and drag-and-drop reordering for groups and layers. They also contain dismissable help boxes at the top with links to the Kanka documentation to help new users.
When adding a new group or layer, the position field is now a clear dropdown rather than a confusing number field. Each form submission button now also has a drop-down to control where you’re going next.
The custom icon field for markers now recommends a list of 10 recently used icons from the campaign. If there are less than 10 results, it will also include up to 10 most popular icons from all of Kanka. Secondly, when pasting a fontawesome icon in this field, it will now automatically strip the HTML and only keep the class name. Meaning pasting <i class="fa-solid fa-gem"></i> will automatically be converted to simply fa-solid fa-gem.
Polygons are now fun!
Drawing polygons was previously a game of chance, with no visual confirmation. This is no longer the case. When adding a new polygon from the map’s “Explore” page, the polygon can be drawn directly on the map. When editing an existing polygon, the preview now also updates.
Changes to the explore page
The explore page of a map no longer opens a new tab when editing a single marker.
Dashboard widget
Lastly regarding maps, the dashboard widget no longer opens the popups on hover, but opens them on click instead.
General improvements
Previously, only the welcome email from Kanka had a unique visual layout. We’re adding that same layout to all emails regarding your subscription.
When parsing attributes, attribute mentions are now parsed before mentions, so that [entity:123|{Attribute}] will render a link to the entity 123, with the value of the Attribute as the name in the link.
When creating or editing a character using the full form, the families and races field have one again the “+” sign next to them to call up the quick creator.
In the list of a campaign’s families and organisations, a new “character” filter is available. This searches for all families or organisations that have the selected character as a member.
In various drop-down fields, the target entity’s image is now visible.
The privacy checkbox of entities is now on the permissions tab instead of the bottom of the entry tab. When an entity is private, a warning is now visible in the form, clearly indicating that permissions are ignored as long as the entity remains private. This source of confusion came up a lot in the annual survey.
On quest elements, timeline elements, and quests, the colour dropdown now includes a preview of each colour.
Advanced permissions on posts
The advanced permissions tab on posts are no longer only visible to admins of the campaign. They are now also visible to users who have the permission to control the permissions of the entity the note is on.
Planned feature removal
A banner is now visible on the old maps module, announcing that it will no longer be available in Kanka starting from January of 2023.
Changes de unboosted campaigns
As communicated during the summer, all unboosted campaigns now have a limit of 3 roles, 10 members, and 3 quick links.
API OAuth Endpoints
We spent time documenting the OAuth authorization endpoints on the Kanka API. The features were previously available, but their existence was never written.
Read about how to setup an OAuth client in our docs.
Bug fixes
Private quick links were still visible to non-admins of the campaign.
Drag and drop elements like attributes, character traits, calendar moons etc are now only draggable when pressing on the left-hand focus area, rather than on the whole field.
Some calendars were rendering with the wrong colours.
Bulk-actions now work on the secondary and more pages of a campaign’s plugins and themes.
Fixed a bug with pinned assets sometimes not showing.
Reordering dashboard widgets is no longer annoying on mobile.
That’s it for this update! If you missed the previous one, you can read it here.
As always, thank you to our amazing subscribers who make these frequent updates possible. Come join us and our community on our Discord server!
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
Finally Creatures!! <3
I comformed myself to use Races with a simple 'Creature' tag as distinction, but I always felt the need for a specific Creature entity type to properly organise them and add different Parameters. Thank you so much for this new addition!
Amazing update! Can’t wait to add my creatures to my wiki.
Just a suggestion, especially as someone who had also been using Races to create creatures: it’d be great to have Creatures crop up when assigning a race to a character, if possible. Especially for things like a player’s pet, familiar, or an otherwise notable creature NPC.