May 2023 Progress Update
Updates on May Content
Howdy!
During the month of May and April I’ve been going over basically three aspects of 13 Vaults:
- Design updates
- Monsters
- Developer experience (DX)
Design Updates
If you haven’t visited 13 Vaults since our last update, you’ll maybe have noticed some design changes.
The short version of the story: I’ve been making 13 Vaults more sleek. I don’t claim to be a designer, but I do try to keep 13 Vaults modern and easy to use and access. I also want to keep 13 Vaults looking fresh and easy on the eyes—these small design updates certainly do that, in my opinion.
Monsters
One of the biggest pieces of data lacking in 13 Vaults is monsters. I want all aspects of the open content of 13th Age to live here on 13 Vaults, and that includes monsters. One of the main blockers of that happening has been a fairly simple one: We don’t have a way to display monster statblocks.
Well, with the recent updates, we’ve fixed that!
We’ve not only created a stat block design that is familiar with the design found in the 13th Age books, but also did it in a way that’s very friendly to translators. This is something not visible to most people, but it was certainly an effort to get working and now we have a solid foundation for a final statblock component that we can use in things like the upcoming Druid, Chaos Mage, and Occultist class pages.
Developer Experience (DX)
Open-source culture isn’t something that just happens when you put something out there in the open. It’s not enought to just make something work for the people who use open-source software/content, but also for people who will be developing it. In the past month I’ve been making it really easy to get started with developing for 13 Vaults.
Most any developer already knows about containers. They’re a great way to fix the “It works on my machine” problem. I’ve updated 13 Vaults to work perfectly in a container environment, reducing the initial setup time down to a minimum for every developer out there who wishes to work on 13 Vaults.
Visit the 13 Vaults GitHub if you are interested in contributing!
Closing, and the Future
Most of the work has been under-the-hood and not noticeable.
Next we’ll be updating 13 Vaults to utilize Next.js’s app directory.
This is a more technical thing, but Next.js is the framework we use underneath 13 Vaults.
If you are familiar with D&D Beyond, they use the same exact technology.
All of these changes are to bring about the character builder, which will certainly benefit from all of these updates we are working on!
Til next time!
– Sean, head curator of the 13 Vaults.
Continue the discussion on GitHub!
GitHub Discussions: https://github.com/orgs/13vaults/discussions
Mastodon: @13vaults@dice.camp
The 13th Age Community Discord
Email: admin@13vaults.com