Changelog

November 2024

The escape key can only be used to close a modal when no changes were made. This prevents changes to be lost when you accidentally press the escape key while writing a long text.

June 2024

Fixed a problem where lore updates were not synced in real time to other members of the party, requiring them to refresh the page.
Changed email provider so hopefully the login links should now more reliably get delivered.
Changed the way the backend is deployed, so when we push updates to the server, this should no longer result in downtime.

May 2024

Fixed a problem where extremely long URLs within text could push the text off the screen.

April 2024

Lore with dates are now properly shown on the Timeline.
When editing Lore you can now change the parent Lore.
When creating a new Character, the form now defaults to creating an NPC as requested, but only when at least as many PCs have been created as there are players in the Campaign. So if you have four players and four PCs have been created then the next Character will default to NPC.
Fixed a bug where creating a calendar event would ignore the chosen icon.

February 2024

Added a new user preference to show images above rather than below the main content, as requested.
Added the possibility to lock content so it can only be edited (or deleted) by DMs, as requested.
Characters without an avatar but with an icon set will now show a big icon in the character list, instead of the character’s initials and a small icon.

August 2023

Added a Lore tab, as requested.
Editing content on mobile screens has been improved – by removing some fields. A future bigger forms redesign is needed to make content editing (with all fields) properly usable on mobile.

July 2023

Everybody can now add comments and notes to all content types - excluding Timeline entries (for now). These comments and notes can be visible only to yourself, only to DMs, or to all members of the campaign, as requested here and here. This replaces the old (subscribers-only) DM notes system.
Characters, factions, locations, loot and quests can now have multiple dates added to them, which are then shown on the Timeline, as requested. These can be one-off dates or yearly repeating dates, for example for birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, etc.
Factions can now have sub-factions, as requested.
Locations can now have subtitles, just like the other content types.
All content can now be linked to other content of the same type. For example when creating or editing a character, the linked content is no longer limited to factions, locations, quests and loot. It can now also include other characters.
Holidays that are part of the calendar (chosen when creating a campaign) can now be edited on or removed from the Timeline, including picking a custom icon.
New yearly repeating calendar events can now be added on the Timeline.

June 2023

Support for Markdown tables, as requested.

March 2023

A big behind-the-screens update on image management. You won’t notice anything except faster page loads, due to automatic image resizing and optimizations via imagekit.io. Old media files are also cleaned up now, for example when uploading a new avatar or campaign background image.

December 2022

Added a Frequently Asked Questions section.
Added your join date to the account section.
Added social image cards, so when you share a link to a campaign or character or another type of content you’ll see a nice image with your post (depending on the social network).
Fixed a bug where hidden content could become visible to the player if the DM made changes while the player also had their browser open. The real-time sync code did not deal with the “is hidden” property correctly.
Quests are no longer split into two separate lists for open and completed quests, as that was causing bugs with completed subquests under uncompleted parent quests.
Added a search function to the quest page.

November 2022

Made the subscription page usable on mobile screens.
Made it harder to accidentally delete a campaign by having to type “DELETE” into a text field.
It’s now a lot easier to create new linked content from within all forms.
When using the icon picker in all forms, the rest of the form is hidden to prevent the form to be very big and needing scrollbars within the modal.
Quests can now have custom icons as well.
Subscribers can now upload images to all content items, not just locations, as requested.
Images can also be entered as remote URLs, so you don’t have to first download the image to then re-upload it to Critical Notes.
DM-only Member Notes, as requested.

October 2022

All forms have redesigned input fields, selection boxes, and submit buttons.
Subtle design improvements all over the place: fonts, buttons, margins, colors, etc.
Removed the user theme feature; it was used by less than 1% of users and made the new button styles impossible to implement.
Added subtitles to quests.
All scrollbars have been customized so that the UI looks the same in Windows and macOS. The default scrollbars in Windows are very very ugly and take up a lot of space.
The calendar mode is now the default mode for logged-out users.
The calendar mode got extra navigation buttons to quickly jump to the first or last last entry.
There is a new campaign setting to turn off calendar holidays for everyone.
Added a new “members-only information” field to public campaigns, which is only visible to signed-in members of the campaign. Invite links to D&D Beyond campaigns or Roll20 would be best placed here instead of in the description field, which is visible to anyone.
Added more payment methods; especially users in Euro countries are now able to use more local payment methods such as iDEAL, Bancontact, Sofort and SEPA.

September 2022

You can now add or change your email address. That also means that if you’ve always used Sign In with Apple until now, you can add an email address to your account and sign in using two methods. If you’ve only used sign in via email address you can change your email address, but not remove it.
Improved form validation by showing the error messages inline with the triggering fields.
When creating a new Timeline entry, the default selected date is the next day after the previous entry.
When creating a new Timeline entry, there is better validation that the entered day fits within the chosen month.
Added more toolbar buttons to the text editor for headers and links, plus a link to a Markdown format cheat sheet.
Added a new Calendar mode for the Timeline, which shows entries per single day, as requested. This is experimental; feedback and suggestions are welcome!
The campaign’s current date can now also be edited from the campaign details form.
Custom calendars can now be edited from the campaign details form, as requested.
After creating a new Timeline entry, you’ll automatically be redirected to the page showing the new entry.
Content relations are now also updated on the “other end”: so when you edit or create a character and select a location or faction, then that location or faction is automatically updated to show that character, without having to refresh the browser - as requested.
Removed support for the old legacy IDs for content.
Quests can now have sub-quests, as requested.
Some form styling improvements.
All UI icons have been refreshed with new versions from FontAwesome.
A brand new homepage design, and new fonts throughout the website.
Added a way for the website to send notitications to all users.
The icons in the icon picker are now grouped into categories, and more icons have been added.

August 2022

All the JavaScript code used in Critical Notes got replaced with TypeScript code. You won’t see any changes in the website because of it, but it gives us a much better basis to build new features. Stay tuned!

July 2022

You can now enter Timeline entries for year zero, and for negative years, as requested.
On the Feature Requests page you can now view the archive of implemented requests.
Fixed a bug where after creating a feature request it didn’t show up on the page and caused a 404 error.
Added the ability to press the + key on your keyboard while on the Character page to bring up the Create Character modal, same as on the other pages.

April 2022

Fixed logging in via Hotmail / Outlook when automatic link previews are enabled.
All users can now add suggestions for new features, and subscribers can vote on these feature requests.

March 2022

Fixed the behavior where creating a location while on another location, creates it as a sub-location.

February 2022

Loot items are now a proper content type with a name, icon, their own page - the whole lot. They can be linked to characters, factions, locations and quests, which in turn can also have loot linked to them. You can also create links to loot items within your text just like you can with other content types.
Fixed a bug where subscribers could only upload a custom campaign background for new campaigns, not for existing campaigns.

January 2022

Added a user setting to hide repeating calendar events from the Timeline.
Improved the theme setting: no longer do you first see the default green color and then a split second later your chosen theme color.
User settings are now stored on the server, so are consistent when you switch to other computers / browsers.

December 2021

Prevent the creation of custom calendars without any months.
Quests can now have a due date and are shown on the Timeline.
Campaigns now have a “current date”, which is shown in the timeline and is used in combination with a quest’s due date to show an overdue warning.
Added more icons to choose from.
Calendars can now contain yearly repeating events, like holidays, which are now shown in the Timeline.
Multiple entries with the same date are now grouped into the Timeline.

November 2021

Characters can now have an icon assigned to them, which can be used to show certain states, likes dead, missing, thief, quest target, etc.

October 2021

The web app has been migrated from Svelte to SvelteKit, which uses Server Side Rendering. This should massively speed up initial page loads.
The backend has been rewritten from scratch: instead of using Firebase’s Firestore, a custom backend written in Python is now powering Critical Notes.
All relations are now many-to-many: a character can now belong to multiple locations and factions for example.
You can now create links to quests inside of text, just like you can for characters, factions and locations.

July 2021

Fixed a bug where if you viewed a public campaign, you couldn’t then join or create a campaign yourself,
wrongly saying you reached your campaign limit as a non-subscriber.

May 2021

A new tab “Factions” has been added. This is the perfect place to organize your characters into factions, families, organizations, guilds, gangs, brotherhoods, adventuring parties, etc etc. This makes it possible to link a character to both a faction and a location.
Added more icons to choose from when creating a Location or a Faction, with a search field as well to more easily find the right icon.
Added a new page showing off featured public campaigns.
There is now a new simpler way of managing which characters are linked to locations and to factions, via the “manage characters” link.
Any piece of content can now be hidden from players by the DM. This is great to, for example, prepare NPCs and locations in advance.
Yearly subscriptions have been reduced in price from $39.99 to $29.99.

April 2021

A brand new design! Critical Notes now uses a three-column layout with sidebars that scroll separarely from the rest of the content, and buttons to create new content that are consistently placed and accessible without first scrolling to the bottom of a long list.
User avatars and character avatars can now be removed: hover over the avatar in the edit form, and a delete icon will appear.
Avatars can now be re-framed as well, to better fit the circle. No more weird headless avatars!
The timeline is now easier to navigate thanks to a new sidebar, which includes a much needed button to jump to the last entry.
After you login, you are now taken to your campaigns instead of the CN homepage.
You can now delete your user account if you so wish.
Did you know that you can press the + key to open the Create sheet on almost any page? If not, you’re not alone, which is why from now on a small hint is shown on the Create sheets, until you use the keyboard shortcut.
Finally, search fields have been added to characters and locations.
You can also search for characters and locations in the pickers belonging to big text fields in edit sheets, as well as quickly create new ones without switching tabs.
All search fields have a handy shortcut: when only one result is shown, pressing enter will select that item.
Two keyboard shortcuts have been added to the big text fields: press @ to open the character picker, or ^ to open the location picker.
The character and location pickers can now be closed by pressing the Escape key, without it closing the entire sheet.
Public campaigns can now be viewed by anyone who has the link to the campaign.

March 2021

Fixed a JavaScript error causing problems for non-DMs on pages that have the recently added DM-only notes feature. Sorry about that one.
You can now create campaigns with a fully custom calendar. So if you use a campaign that isn’t using one of the calendar systems provided by Critical Notes, no problem!
Fixed the button to edit your active subscription, within the Edit Profile sheet. It wasn’t showing up when you did have a subscription.
Huge improvements were made to make the website work better on mobile phone screens. Data entry is still a bit problematic on mobile phones, but it should be pretty much flawless to read all content.
The location list now can now be expanded and collapsed. This really helps when you have a lot of (nested) locations.
You can now choose a custom icon for every location. Over 150 icons are provided, so there’s plenty of choice.
Subscribers can now upload image attachments to Locations. Since the hosting of images isn’t free, it’s only available for subscribers.

February 2021

Improved the invite code flow: you can now share invite links, which when openened prefill the invite code into the form.
Added DM-only notes to Characters, Locations and Quests. This is a subscribers-only feature.

January 2021

Disabled the “click background to close sheet” behavior because it was too easy to accidentally close the sheet, and a lack of auto-save feature meant you lost all changes. You now need to close sheets using the close button in the top left.

June 2020

Public beta launched!