October has come and gone, and with it, our first month of the RPG Author beta. We’ve had roughly 40 issues and feedback logged to our github page from the application.
I’ve also had the pleasure to meet with a number of you in person and over skype / hangout sessions. It’s been amazing to see how get excited about using some of the new features. It’s been equally rewarding to hear your pain points and slot them into our road map. If something is a frustrating of inefficient for you let us us know and we’ll get it fixed.
What have we been up to?
The short is answer is quite a lot. To start we redesigned the website to scale better as a user experience platform. This redesign took about half the month, but the improvements we can roll out will scale so much more quickly in the months to come.
Full Page Image Components
Sometimes you need an image to fill an entire page. Usually this is because the image is large that it’s hard to clearly read any of the details in a default two-column layout.
To help you display those pesky large images we’ve added a display mode option to the storyboard image component.
This update will allow you to show an image as an entire page of content. Showing full page images works wonders for large maps with tons of tiny print details.
Storyboard Location Mapping
Next we added location mapping to the storyboard. This means that whenever you update a location from the storyboard it will stay in sync with the data in the system.
This is a big win for keeping you focused in the storyboard area. We want the storyboard to be 100% content focused and this will help on that front.
Custom race, gender, and classes
We knew that the initial defaults for character classes and races were too limiting. We ran out of time initially and had to punt the enhancement, but found time after the redesign to add them in. Now when you create your characters you aren’t limited to only use 5e SRD.
You can still use the default 5e SRD values, but typing in your custom “Plague Doctor” or “Iron Chef” class will be saved as well. This same customization works for a character’s race and gender as well.
Wizard Steps for Adventure Creation
This is a small feature, but goes a long way towards our commitment in making a simple, intuitive product. Now when you create a new adventure we will give you the context of your current step.
You may also notice “2. Genres”, this step used to be called “Theme”, but we change the name due to some confusion.
Full Page Covers
A cover should be as epic as your adventure. That’s why we went into the plumbing of the adventure download and redesigned the cover page to show your adventure image in all it’s glory.
Not only will a large enough image look beautiful as your cover, but we added a better looking title and author section to it as well.
Lastly, there is an RPG Author watermark. This is not a permanent aspect of the cover and will be removable in the future. Likely the removal only matters to those wanted to share their adventure as an “intellectual property” and we can wrap it up into the premium feature bundle.
We liked this image so much it’s now on our marketing splash page.
November Roadmap
If October is any indication of our progress you can expect a ton more features in November.
Midwest GameFest
The first announcement we should make is that we will be at Midwest GameFest. We’ve created some showcase materials and a big ole sign for the booth. Take a few minutes to stop by and chat if you’ll be around this weekend.
Planned Features
- Ability to crop any image
- 5E SRD enemy integration and storyboard stat blocks
- Random encounter table components
- Sync character and location updates to the brainstorm web
- More flexibility in brainstorm node styles (change color and shape)
- More control over brainstorm webs and the ability to create multiple webs
- Free image artwork and maps courtesy of Dyson Logos. Their work is pretty amazing and thanks to their patreon users they are release a number of work under the CC by 4.0 license
Top Secret Update
We have a “secret” update coming from the business side. We can’t yet provide the details on what is happening, but it will be game changing for our vision of the product and how we can build a better experience for you. Stay tuned for an update in the coming weeks.
Until next we meet, traveller
That’s all our content updates for now. We have a ton of work planned and hope that you are as excited as we are. You can check out any of the new features by logging into the application.
