Walls and Audio

Version 0.0.766 of the Draw Steel Codex is now available!

There are some hot new features this week so put on a hat, sunglasses and sun lotion!

New Features

Walls with Heights & Solid Walls

• Walls can now have heights set on them. You can fly over walls, or even climb over them if they are set as climbable.

• Solid walls have been added. That is, a wall with a floor on top of it. These will be used as building blocks for wall abilities in the future.

Cross-Section Altitude Diagrams

• Whenever you plan a movement and there is anything "interesting" regarding verticality -- you fly over someone or walk under someone who is flying, you climb a wall, or get pushed off one. Anything at all, you get a cross-section diagram helping you to understand what is going on precisely.

Audio Panel Re-design

We have reworked the Audio Panel and added a bunch of new features which we hope will make a significant difference to people that use Audio in their games! Sound Categories & the Mixer

• Every sound now belongs to a category - Music, Ambience, or Effects - each with its own live volume fader under "Levels" (alongside UI Sounds and Anthem).

• Adjust any category mid-session without stopping playback: pull the music down for a dramatic line while your rain loop and combat effects keep going.

• The same Levels faders are available in the dock, the Audio Studio, and the top-bar popover.

Library Management via the Audio Studio

• Search the library by name with matching folders auto-expanding, organise with nested folders, and rename clips inline.

• Set per-clip loop, volume, and mute; upload straight into a category or re-categorise later.

• Preview any clip on your own ears before the table hears it.

Auto-Ducking Under Anthems

• When a hero's anthem plays, the music automatically ducks out of the way and restores when it ends.

• Configurable in "Ducking settings": toggle it, set how far the music dips, and set independent fade-in / fade-out times.

Playlists & Game-Mode Music

• Build playlists in the Audio Studio with Shuffle, a Crossfade time, or "Play all tracks together" to layer them as one bed.

• Pin a playlist to the dock to fire it in a single tap, and skip ahead with the Next track control.

• Bind a playlist to each game mode (Combat, Exploration, Respite, Downtime) so the right music starts automatically when the mode changes

Variant Pools & Looping Ambience

• Group interchangeable clips into a Variant Pool so a repeated sound never sounds identical, with Random pick and Pitch variation.

• Flip "Loop as ambience" to turn a pool into a living background bed that re-fires at random intervals you control (Min/Max gap, or Dense / Sparse presets), with optional Layer sounds and Fade in/out.

• A dock badge shows how many ambient loops are running. [c]Stop ambient loops[/c] clears them all while leaving one-shots alone.

Soundboard

• Redesigned the soundboard to align with our new themes and pulled management into the Audio Studio.

• Edit mode lets you assign clips, clear and reorder pads, and colour-code buttons; a variant pool on a pad plays a fresh variant every tap.

Anthems

• A dedicated Anthems section on the Dock lists every hero's anthem in one place, so you manage them all without hunting through character sheets.

• Preview an anthem on your own ears, and adjust its volume on the fly - the change writes straight to that character and adjusts for everyone at the table.

Map Sounds ("On This Map")

• Manage positional audio emitters for the current map directly from the Audio panel - no object panel required - with per-emitter on/off, volume, falloff distance, and wall penetration.

• Hover a row to see its falloff ring on the map, or double-click to pan the camera to it.

• [c]+ Add map sound[/c] drops a new emitter at the centre of your view and opens the clip picker.

Player Controls & DJ Delegation

• Every player gets their own personal levels and mute - they can quiet the music in their own ears without changing what the table hears.

• The Director can hand a player the DJ role to let them drive the table's music, and take control back at any time.

• The Director's mix can never push a player's audio above that player's own caps.

Top-Bar Audio Control

• A new audio indicator in the title bar shows at a glance whether audio is playing, idle, or muted from anywhere in the app.

• Click it for a quick mixer: Now Playing, personal Master and mute.

• Directors and DJs also get the broadcast Levels, "Mute for everyone", "Stop all audio", and a shortcut to open the Audio Studio.

Accessibility & Hearing Safety

• Audio event log (opt-in, per player): music, mood, anthem, and effect changes appear as muted cards in the action log, so you can see audio you can't hear. This so hard-of-hearing players can get visual feedback and Directors can run audio entirely by sight.

• Loudness normalization evens out music and ambience clip loudness so a loud track doesn't jump-scare the table, with per-clip trim for manual control (effects are intentionally excluded).

• Category and soundboard colours are always paired with a glyph or label.

Send Feedback

Now you can send bug reports and feature requests from right within the Codex! There is a Send Feedback menu option at the top of the screen. It will give you options to easily send a screenshot, your game log, permission for developers to enter your game, and your system specs, allowing us to diagnose your issues as easily as possible.

Other New Features

• Made it so that monsters have their own 'implementation status' which shows how implemented they are.

• Depreciate Game > Respite rest dialog and shift to using Respite Game Mode.

Bug fixes

• Some bug fixes and improvements this week but we don't have an exhaustive list