Hey everyone,
I hope you are all doing well! As I mentioned in the previous post, I’ve been on a little bit of a break while I got married, went on my honeymoon, and moved a couple thousand miles from my original home in Maine. I’m finally back into the swing of things and have my development setup ready to go.
Before I jump into the main subject of this post, here are a few photos of the beautiful views of my honeymoon on the Maine coast and in Acadia National Park:
Okay, back to Battle Map Studio. In this post I wanted to talk about the current state of this project and my plans for its future.
Past & Present Situation
Since its inception, Battle Map Studio has always been a side-project of mine that I’ve self-funded through my work as a contract software developer building in-space construction software. As much as I wish I could spend 100% of my time on this project, it has not been financially successful enough to allow me to work on it full time. While I intend to continue development just as before, the new projects I’ve taken on for funding may take more of my time. Okay, that being said, let’s talk about my plans for the future.
Future
My general goal for Battle Map Studio has been for it to be a fun and simple map editor and RPG facilitator. That is still my goal. In the past, I’ve spent most of my time building tools and features, which is good. But, I haven’t focused much time displaying how to leverage those tools and features to build and play a full encounter, for example. While I have put together a wiki, maps, and video tutorials, there still appears to be considerable friction between players and building a fun map or playing a campaign.
Now that you have a general understanding of the past, present, and future of Battle Map Studio, I’ll briefly touch on some areas I plan to focus on:
- Editing tools: better in-app instructions & tips, voxel editing, and fully-integrated Ultraleap hand tracking.
- RPG play: easier multiplayer setup, improved RPG tools and features for players and DM’s,
- Content: scenario setup and map building videos, more example maps, and new props and characters.
So . . . what’s next?
In the near future, I will be taking a little time to explore pain points, clean up the Battle Map Studio project files, and prepare my implementation plan for the future. I may also push a small patch pretty soon fixing a few bugs and updating a few backend packages.
In the meantime, if you have any questions, thoughts, or feedback about the future of Battle Map Studio, I would love to chat! Your participation in discussions is immensely helpful. I encourage you to send me a DM or chat on the Battle Map Studio Discord server if you’d like to share anything.
Okay, back to work!
Bradley