Saturday, December 13, 2014

Finally

1.16 is out.

Which means one thing:

CUSTOM TILE SETS!

So get to work. Make sure the images you upload to your tablet are 128x128. Read the instructions in the text file.

If you have an issue with the scroll bar selection on the right after entering in custom tiles it's caused when you told the program to look for a texture and it can't find it. So, check the folder to see if it's there. Check the spelling to make sure it matches completely.

P.s.: I'd love to see your work!

Good night, it's late!

Sunday, October 26, 2014

1.15 In Beta

I have 1.15 in Beta, a first for Dungeon Mapper.

We're testing out custom tile features to make sure everyone is looking good. This means that soon you'll be able to use your own textures to make dungeons.

If you already have Dungeon Mapper please take this survey to further the development: http://goo.gl/forms/8iyYIdizcj

Saturday, October 4, 2014

New update 1.14

The update gives the user the option to turn off screenshots. When screenshots are on, the new screenshots will be five times that of the old screenshots. This will be more taxing for your device, and might take longer, but will be more useful for printing on to paper or posters. Screenshots will turn out to be roughly 15 mb in size per screenshot now.

I would show examples but they blogger wouldn't be able to properly show the differences. Just know that you can zoom much, much more before losing fidelity.

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

A few different dungeons, a few different tile sets

Using the Clean Stone tile set to show off a few of the unusual tiles

Another randomly designed dungeon using the Mud Stone tile set

Mixing the Clean Stone and Mossy Stone tile sets for effect. Careful of mold!

Saturday, August 9, 2014

The Graphics Update

I've already uploaded a new update available to everyone (for free!) that includes five new tile sets to play around with.


As you can see, they're pretty generic fantasy dungeon tiles. Hopefully I did a decent job of balancing the grid overlay for the different tile sets. The "Rough Stone" set has a much darker grid because of the darker background, especially compared to the "Mud Stone" set at the bottom.



It looks good. Curved walls, Diagonal Walls, and all the goodness in between.



As usual, you can still get a tile count if you're using these for a real life build blueprint. I'm afraid that the font may be a little hard to read on some devices. I'm going to have to give this feature an update at some point.

(Known Bug: When you use a lot of tiles the list keeps going down until it goes off screen. Presumably, it keeps going!)



I know this had to be something everyone was looking forward to, and I hope this satisfies many of my customers. Thank you for your support!

Friday, July 25, 2014

Another Example Dungeon

I think it's difficult to explain what exactly you can do with the Dungeon Mapper app. The best way, I think, is to explain by example.

I've created a small dungeon experience that I'm not personally likely to use for any of my games but I've taken steps while making it so that it's a very "real" dungeon. I've gone through the same thought processes I would normally for making a dungeon like, "Start here, end there. Interesting terrain and trap there."

However, this time, I've added a couple more prerequisites to the process: use all of the tiles available currently in the abstract tile set and go crazy with the layout.

As you know, dungeons aren't always boxes connected by rectangles. I'm aware of that and Dungeon Mapper is capable of making dungeons more interesting for your Dungeons and Dragons, GURPS or what ever other square based system you're using.



So let's talk about the dungeon.

Starting from the bottom of the dungeon we head Down (or Up, as the arrows really don't mean anything unless your group has a standard in place). Right away you might notice that the walls are "thicker". This is done by starting the path with a corridor piece and, on both sides, having corners to make the rooms on either side. I could have avoided this by placing just floors on the other side. 

After proceeding down we're met by a fork and mirrored hallways. At the end of these hall ways I placed a "four corners" piece that acts as pillars; this piece fills in gaps left by perpendicular walls and gives the appearance of pillars. It gives a subtle difference in the appearance that in almost all cases will not impact actual game play.

This hallway is met by a door to a small room and another hallway leading up to a grand room. The grand room is 16 (whole) squares wide or 80 feet in D&D measurement. (Remember, the tile setup, 2"x2", was designed after seeing Dwarven Forge 3d gaming tiles because of their versatility.) Additionally, the room is more than 45 feet deep. Quite the room for some epic battles. The room even has a few cubby holes for sneak attacks.

This dungeon's grand room leads to a diagonal stairway down into a final room that would likely hold some plot information. The player(s) fulfilling the role of thief may be lucky enough to find a secret (and trapped) hallway leading to great rewards.


Wrapping this up

I'd imagine that most people expect the app to be able to make simple dungeons. I want them to know it can handle unusual shapes, too.

Please, leave any comments (about this write up, or the app) or questions here at the blog.

As always, don't forget to rate the app itself on the Play store. So far, two people have rated the app (both at 5 stars!). Do you agree with them?

Thursday, July 10, 2014

July 11th Update

At 1 AM I pushed the 1.09 update to Google. Over the next few hours everyone should receive the ability to add text to their dungeon.

Update (as listed on store):

New Feature (As Requested by a User!):

You can now place text on the dungeon map. Placing text is pretty straight forward.

Select the Text icon ("T" button).
Tap where you want to place it.
Change the field as you want (in example: Secret Entrance)
Rotate if desired (Admittedly, if you want to rotate the text it will take some practice!).

Deleting the text works similarly to any other tile (Have "T" and "X" on simultaneously).


I was excited to have time to work on this and just as eager to get out the feature request. I don't foresee any bugs with this but that's the nature of bugs I suppose. I had the idea of setting font size and color (both limited because of touch interface) but I decided to push this out as is to make a splash. If there's still desire for larger/smaller or different colored text I'll definitely look into it.

Please, comments and criticism welcome. Feature requests always taken seriously and will strongly influence what I add next.

I'm leaning on looking at "Fog of War" type stuff and working my way towards an "online" solution with sharing tables live.