D&D 5E D&D Beyond Announces Combat Tracker

"We're happy to announce the Alpha release of the Combat Tracker tool to subscribers of D&D Beyond! Try it out in your D&D games and your feedback will be used to make this the best it can be!"

D&D Beyond has just announced the alpha development version of a combat tracker. You can track monsters, initiative, and access quick reference information. This functionality is similar to that offered by Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds.

You can read more about the combat tracker here. The Alpha version is available to DDB subscribers.

"We have been using the Combat Tracker in our home games for a few weeks, and although it is certainly not in a finished state yet, we experienced enough value that we have decided to go ahead and release it now - even in its unfinished state - to both 1) let subscribers gain some of that value and 2) get feedback as early as possible.

Please keep in mind that this is not a finished product, and we invite subscribers to help us make it the best it can be!

Who can use the Combat Tracker?

All D&D Beyond Subscribers. The Combat Tracker is in full active development right now. We will be allowing early access to NEW Combat Tracker features to our Subscribers first, to prove out concepts and new functionality. We took the same approach with the Alpha version of the Encounter Builder with much success. This delivery method allows us to digest feedback in bite sized chunks and perform testing to figure out the best user experience possible.

What is a Development Alpha?

The Development Alpha of the Combat Tracker allows us to test features and user experience.

• Functional but expecting a lot of bugs
  • Should be no core functionality bugs
• Core functionality could change with feedback
• Functionality could appear or disappear at any time

We will be working on validating bug reports and cleaning up the Combat Tracker. Once these tasks have been completed we will release to Beta, essentially meaning the Combat Tracker tool is complete."

 

[Mistwell]

I think in my many years on this board this is the first time I've ever mentioned this kind of thing, but I think my responses in this thread may have gotten the most number of "likes" of any comments I've made before.

I'll let others decide what that might mean, if anything. I did note the people I was responding to...got zero likes for their comments as of the time of this post.

And now I feel dirty for even noticing this, much less mentioning it.

 

[slobster]

It could be that Hasbro is thinking longer-term, wants it done by DDB rather than contracting yet another company to do things, and is prepared for the hiccups.

Could also be that someone bashed together some code for a basic encounter tracker and then showed to someone upstairs, who said "okay fine you can release it, but UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES are you to spend valuable developer time on that. If you have spare time, you should be debugging our online store or coding more microtransactions for Magic Arena; you know, things that make us money!"

 

[Oofta]

...

A lot of folks can't seem to get past how this error just affects them personally, without seeing the larger picture and impacts and implications of what such a error like this means.

Again, mountain meet molehill. What "impact and implications"? Nothing broke other than a functionality clearly marked as beta and some alpha software. A single minor piece of functionality was down for a couple of hours.

Good grief. It's not like when all Target store's software crashed and blocked all purchases or when Facebook went dark. One page went down for maintenance for a couple of hours.

 

[Mistwell]

Again, mountain meet molehill. What "impact and implications"? Nothing broke other than a functionality clearly marked as beta and some alpha software. A single minor piece of functionality was down for a couple of hours.

Good grief. It's not like when all Target store's software crashed and blocked all purchases or when Facebook went dark. One page went down for maintenance for a couple of hours.

No you just don't understand, someone somewhere MADE A MISTAKE!!!!!!!!!!!!


[Edit - and also SOMEONE MIGHT HAVE POSSIBLY USED A TERM WRONG TOO!!!!!!!]

 

[Sacrosanct]

Again, mountain meet molehill. What "impact and implications"? Nothing broke other than a functionality clearly marked as beta and some alpha software. A single minor piece of functionality was down for a couple of hours.

Good grief. It's not like when all Target store's software crashed and blocked all purchases or when Facebook went dark. One page went down for maintenance for a couple of hours.

Again, because apparently it bears repeating. This isn't just a mistake on the surface or a minor piece of functionality. Look at the bigger picture of what this illustrates:

"...(this error not being found, sending alpha code to the public when alpha testing is always done in house, using incorrect designations of beta testing, etc "

It illustrates that they aren't using the term "beta testing" appropriately, they send alpha code to public when that's not what alpha testing is, and it looks like they didn't even do basic regression testing. All you're seeing is a code glitch and you're not seeing what that means, and the greater issue the QA process as a whole.

 

[Oofta]

Again, because apparently it bears repeating. This isn't just a mistake on the surface or a minor piece of functionality. Look at the bigger picture of what this illustrates:

"...(this error not being found, sending alpha code to the public when alpha testing is always done in house, using incorrect designations of beta testing, etc "

It illustrates that they aren't using the term "beta testing" appropriately, they send alpha code to public when that's not what alpha testing is, and it looks like they didn't even do basic regression testing. All you're seeing is a code glitch and you're not seeing what that means, and the greater issue the QA process as a whole.

Web pages for all sorts of companies large and small go down all the time. I would guess that they didn't do adequate load testing.

Other than this one incredibly minor incident that the vast majority of subscribers were not even aware of, DDB has been quite stable and relatively bug free. That's no small task. Certainly miles ahead of the debacle that was the first company to attempt to implement a character builder web site for 5E.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Again, because apparently it bears repeating. This isn't just a mistake on the surface or a minor piece of functionality. Look at the bigger picture of what this illustrates:

It illustrates that they aren't using the term "beta testing" appropriately, they send alpha code to public when that's not what alpha testing is, and it looks like they didn't even do basic regression testing. All you're seeing is a code glitch and you're not seeing what that means, and the greater issue the QA process as a whole.

The big picture says to me a tiny company isn't using and identifying the same processes for QA that a major financial institution with much larger budgets and staff uses for testing their software. And if I thought there should be... if there had to be one true way for running QA on software development... then sure, maybe I'd get annoyed.

Fortunately, I am not that person.

But hey... if the CEO of Hasbro feels the needs to come down out of their tower and fire the team at D&D Beyond over this... then we'll see that indeed it was unacceptable.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Web pages for all sorts of companies large and small go down all the time. I would guess that they didn't do adequate load testing.

A website isn't the same as a software application. As a software developer, I'm sure you know this. This new code completely broke existing functionality to the monster databases. This is something that would have easily been found in regression testing. You're comparing apples to oranges. This isn't a load testing issue, or something that wouldn't have been able to be tested due to environmental limitations (which do exist).

The big picture says to me a tiny company isn't using and identifying the same processes for QA that a major financial institution with much larger budgets and staff uses for testing their software. And if I thought there should be... if there had to be one true way for running QA on software development... then sure, maybe I'd get annoyed.

Not sure how many times I need to repeat this, but they aren't following any established QA methodology. This isn't about maintaining the standard of a financial institution. This is about following any of the industry standards of testing, which are essentially a one true way of how to run QA because regardless of if they use Agile, or waterfall, or whatever, the basic methodology for testing is the same*. And they clearly aren't following it. So good news! Since there is a one true way of doing this, then I guess that means you're annoyed now?


* Requirements design > prototype build > internal QA testing (AKA alpha) > pilot testing (AKA beta) > full prod deploy (edit* many times it's more complex than this with extra steps (like two steps of internal testing like QA and UAT), but this is the general gist).

What they did was inadequate (if any) regression testing to miss this issue, deployed alpha code to the public (which isn't what alpha testing is) and had it broke something they are still calling beta when that's not what beta is (beta testing only lasts a few weeks). So I'd be curious to know what their process is, since clearly they aren't following the universal standard of QA testing.

 

[Umbran]

It illustrates that they aren't using the term "beta testing" appropriately, they send alpha code to public when that's not what alpha testing is, and it looks like they didn't even do basic regression testing. All you're seeing is a code glitch and you're not seeing what that means, and the greater issue the QA process as a whole.

So... they use terms differently than you do. And something got past testing that really shouldn't. We got that.

Is there some other aspect of the complete collapse of civilization that's happening here that we are missing? Because, from where I sit... the world is going to steadfastly carry on, and the Sun is going to rise in the morning.

I feel I should quote the wisdom of Sgt. Hulka - Lighten up, Francis. This is not a disaster. It is an opportunity for them to learn and improve so that no disaster happens.

 

[Larnievc]

"We're happy to announce the Alpha release of the Combat Tracker tool to subscribers of D&D Beyond! Try it out in your D&D games and your feedback will be used to make this the best it can be!"

D&D Beyond has just announced the alpha development version of a combat tracker. You can track monsters, initiative, and access quick reference information. This functionality is similar to that offered by Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds.

View attachment 118771

You can read more about the combat tracker here. The Alpha version is available to DDB subscribers.

"We have been using the Combat Tracker in our home games for a few weeks, and although it is certainly not in a finished state yet, we experienced enough value that we have decided to go ahead and release it now - even in its unfinished state - to both 1) let subscribers gain some of that value and 2) get feedback as early as possible.

Please keep in mind that this is not a finished product, and we invite subscribers to help us make it the best it can be!

Who can use the Combat Tracker?

All D&D Beyond Subscribers. The Combat Tracker is in full active development right now. We will be allowing early access to NEW Combat Tracker features to our Subscribers first, to prove out concepts and new functionality. We took the same approach with the Alpha version of the Encounter Builder with much success. This delivery method allows us to digest feedback in bite sized chunks and perform testing to figure out the best user experience possible.

What is a Development Alpha?

The Development Alpha of the Combat Tracker allows us to test features and user experience.

• Functional but expecting a lot of bugs
  • Should be no core functionality bugs
• Core functionality could change with feedback
• Functionality could appear or disappear at any time

We will be working on validating bug reports and cleaning up the Combat Tracker. Once these tasks have been completed we will release to Beta, essentially meaning the Combat Tracker tool is complete."

I don’t get it. Does it just track initiative?