This is a quick update from the development front. June 2010 has seen a hiatus on any development. This is mostly due to vacation and traveling of the lead developer (Nebulorum). With the return to normal, I hope that new feature development will resume. There are two main goals for the next release: remind DM of save end, ongoing and other effect that happen at end of turns; provide support for the new stat block format.

Version 1.3.0 has been release. It includes a lot of fixed and the greatest re-write of the internal logic since version 0.30. This has been hard work especially since we wish to maintain the high quality of the previous releases. Much of the changes were made to ensure Virtual Combat Cards is made easier to improve and maintain.

This release now allows some much requested features:

• Combatant now can have several entries in the initiative order; which is needed for creatures like Behir and Demogorgon.
• You can re-roll initiative of monsters
• You can roll initiative after combat has started; which is something some published modules suggest.
• Rest and clearing the initiative order can only be done when not in combat.

The last few weeks have seen a lot of work on the next release of Virtual Combat Cards (version 1.3.0). The last builds are looking solid and we hope to have a release soon. However to ensure we have a version that is up to the quality we all grew used to, we need your help testing this version of VCC. We need to make sure we have a stable version and that all key features are working.

Version 1.2.0 is out with some feature changes, but most importantly some important background work to make VCC easier to evolve. The end of 2009 and beginning of 2010 brought important challenges to the core developers of the project. With much of the demand behind us we are now focusing on new things for VCC.

The main goal for the 1.3.0 release is to work on the core logic of the tracker to allow it to do some of the long requested functions. These include: roll initiative in the middle of the battle, remind DM of sustains and save, ongoing damage, and other. The core logic is quite old and need some major work.

This software is licensed under GNU General Public License Version 3.

A new version Virtual Combat Cards has been release to fix a problem that appeared on the capture of data using Firefox 3.6. It also works with older Firefox versions.

On December 18, Virtual Combat Cards was one year old. During this year a lot has changed and the application has evolved a lot. We are really happy with all the progress and community support. Many features are under planning and we will continue to work to make Virtual Combat Cards the best free tracker out there. We would like to thank all the people that use it, those who tried, and mostly those that have posted comments and helped out testing, spreading the news and just saying good things.

In this section we assume you have the sample data (shipped with 1.1.0). If you don’t have that you will have to create a party yourself (see Managing your Parties and Encounters). With the encounter files ready running a battle is a simple task.

Creating a party is a simple activity once you have the compendium entries (the combatant definitions).
When building encounters VCC will show how many XP of your budget you have spent.