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?

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.

About That Previous Update...

Users may have noticed that I changed the "table" tile to be darker and added the option to make it even darker. Aside from saving battery life I originally made the change to save my eyes. I found myself making maps more often at night but it helps provide contrast against the abstract and snow cave backgrounds.

Any comments on the change is welcome.

A Goblin's Abode

"You venture into a cavern chisieled out by element and goblin alike. Their filth fills the air and what little space is between the each bed roll. Clearly, this is the common area."

Diagonal Stairs in Use

This is the screen capture I made after creating my first dungeon with stairs. I really like the way I can rotate the stairs to meet a diagonal corner in a room -- making my own way to a stage or platform. The bold black lines typically represent impassable walls, but I think with the obvious distinction with stairs my players will know they can make their way up there.



Overall, I feel like I've added another dimension to making new dungeons.

New Update

New Detail Tile:
Abstract - Single Stair
New Feature:
Rotate detail tiles by 45 degrees or 90 degrees. (Toggle-able in Options menu). Used for diagonal stairs (See new screenshot)
Bug Fix:
Corner tiles were recalculating their location after being loaded. The result ended up being that corner tiles that were rotated after being placed did not keep their rotation after being loaded.
Fixed detail objects sliding to the center of tiles after saving.
I apologize if either bug had effected you.

Slowly but surely adding the details to improve the functionality of the app. No pun intended.

Bug Fix

Some how during my (admission: brief) testing period with new tiles I had let a tiny bug slip through that caused some pretty devastating effects to the loading process. Simply put, if tiles were after the "four corner" tile in the save file they had a relatively high chance to not load.


This bug has now been fixed, and any save files will work as intended.

The application reads the tile in a human readable format and the save format hasn't changed. However, be aware that if you saved a dungeon with this error, loaded it back up, and tried to fix it by replacing those tiles you may have overlapping tiles. If you did not do this, there's no need to take any action. If you did, either delete those tiles and try again or remove duplicates in the save file (the latter being very unnecessary, but I like to remind people they have the option of editing the save file).

I apologize if this error had negatively impacted anyone's experience.