New Update: Dynamic Lighting System (DLS)
over 5 years ago – Mon, Sep 17, 2018 at 09:02:44 AM

Today we have released our new dynamic lighting system (DLS).  

We are incredibly proud of this new update, because it not only adds a great tool for more atmospheric maps, but with our unique approach to prop shadow rendering, we now can simulate almost realistic shadows out of any two-dimensional prop.

So here’s what our DLS can do: 

New Lighting Tab 

We have grouped all options for DLS into a new tab, which you can find in the lower section of your toolbar. 

By having it there, it is completely up to you, if you want to include light on your map or not. Your interface is not cramped with new toggles and options, but stays focused on what you want to achieve. 

DLS is also another thing that requires additional resources from your PC. So if you are running DUNGEONFOG on a slower system, this gives you the free choice if you want to go that direction or stay on the safe path (in terms of performance). 

There is still space for improvements here, but for an optimal experience when working with lighting, we recommend that you are working on a PC that has at least 8GB RAM and a graphics cards installed.  

Ambient Light 

You now have the option to adjust the ambient lighting of your level by 

• adjusting the ambient stage light 
• adjusting the ambient light for all rooms at once 

We decided to give you an option for all rooms at once, so you don’t have to manually adjust each room one by one, but apply a general lighting for all. You can still adjust each room separately, by selecting them.

Light sources 

Every prop can now act as a light source. It is up to you to decide, which prop should be a light emitter. To help you here, we have already flagged all props, that are intended to be light sources as such, so you don’t have to do that yourself. 

All you need to do is, place that prop on the map and adjust the lighting settings to your needs. 

Wall shadows 

Every wall is automatically detected as a blocker. So as soon a light hits on a wall, it is blocked and thus creates a shadow. 

• We tried to stick as close to the physical equations behind that, so pay attention to the general ambient lighting of your scene. 
• We have added additional options for you, so you can decide if your rooms are blocking light, or not. 

Prop Shadows 

Now, this is something that we are especially proud of. You might have seen prop shadows in other tools. They usually cast a straight, endless shadow based on the range of your light source. 

To have a proper shadow cast, you usually have to know the height of your light source, the height of your prop and - which is the biggest problem - you have to have a 3D model of the prop that is being lit. 

Most 2D map tools simplify that for the sake of their programmers sanity. 

They just say: "Ok, there is a prop - take the outline and block light from there.", causing shadows to be more a conceptual area where no light falls, regardless of the shape of that prop. 

With DUNGEONFOG we have the unique chance to bring change to the market and to challenge other publishers with new ideas. So we tried to solve this problem of 2D-meets-3D. 

And the result is truly one of its kind!
Also, we do not cheat by restricting this to our own props only - it works with all uploaded props as well! 

With this update in place we can proudly announce, that with DUNGEONFOG you have the most realistic lighting system that any 2D map editor offers today. 

To answer some of the questions you might have

How does our DLS affect the viewer?

For now, lighting is only meant to aesthetically enhance your map and to add a new level of visual atmosphere. The viewer does not yet include light into any line of sight mechanics. 

Having line of sight, or a fog of war based on visible light sources is something that we will address very cautiously. We don’t want to end up with a scenario, where you have to move “light tokens” around your map to reveal areas, but to have a simple mechanic for GMs to decide what type of FoW you want to use.  

How does our DLS affect the notes? 

The overview map does include the lighting for the whole level, but since rooms in your notes should have the purpose of giving you a visual representation of the interior of the room, we decided that they are not affected by lighting. 

This is something, where we hope that your feedback will help to form a conclusion to what is best and we will wait until a general consensus is formed. 

How does our DLS affecr the export? 

Lighting is now part of the map that you create and as such also part of the export. 

We have discussed the option to give you another switch to export your map with or without lighting, but we leaving this option open for discussion. 

Some of my props are now casting a weird shadow

Now with all the praise aside, our editor is still a 2D editor, trying to behave like a 3D tool, so there are still limitations. 

One of them is: Chunks, fragments and other small parts that are scattered around the main prop are causing shadows as well. 

We are in the process of going through all props and adjusting them and we also have a new forum thread where you can report such props, so we can fix them. 

What’s next? 

There’s our new monthly prop pack incoming! I will announce more about soon, so keep an eye out to our Facebook and Twitter pages. 

We are also going to start our next improvement cycle for the exporter and our notes before we then start working on the viewer and general workflow improvements of the editor. 

I will keep you posted here and our platform updates. 

As always, have fun testing and 
Let the dice roll! Till  

New Setting released: Modern Age
over 5 years ago – Mon, Aug 27, 2018 at 07:48:04 PM

Today we have released our 4th setting: Modern Age  

With this setting you can now create maps placed in the modern century.

We have also added props for post-apocalyptic settings, so you can build the perfect zombie trap for your party!

 You can find the new props in the editor > Asset Library under the new setting "modern"

Have fun testing - and don't forget to share your new awesome modern age maps with the community!

Let the dice roll,
Till

New Update: Colorize Textures & Help
over 5 years ago – Tue, Aug 14, 2018 at 12:48:28 AM

With this update we now finish what we have started with the previous update:

You can now colorize textures

You can now change hue, saturation and lightness of every texture on your map.

This applies to:

• Room: Outer wall
• Room: Inner wall
• Room: Floor textures
• Shapes
• Brushes

This is a very exciting new features, since it gives you the creative freedom to re-modify textures for a completely new purpose:

New Option "ALL" for Asset Library and Quick-Access

In a first step to make our libraries less "click hungry" we have added a new option for the settings-select. 

Instead of switching between the different settings, you can select "ALL" and have all props or textures displayed on one page.

In you tools (like room-tool or prop-tool) you can now also set your select to "ALL" and display all assets in your Quick-Access at once.

Keep in mind, that this can result in a longer initial waiting time until all requested props / textures are loaded and added to the cache.

Help: Shortcuts 

We have also added a new toggle to show shortcuts for each tool. Since we are constantly adding new shortcuts, this is a small yet nifty improvement to keep track of all the shortcuts available.

 New Worldmap Props

We have updated our worldmap props, adding trees, forests and more buildings.
Our "worldmap" setting is still just a playground for experimentation, collecting experience for later improvements, but with those new props, you can produce pretty nice maps for regional maps.

What's next?

Having control over hue, saturation and lightness would now allows us to start with a task, that is somewhat related (and was one of my personally most anticipated stretch-goals during our Kickstarter campaign). Yet, it comes with a risk, that caused a lot of discussion in the past days.

Considering that our launch is only two month away, were are facing the same dilemma that we all know from gaming companies:

Do we want to risk our tidy, well planned schedule for another exciting feature, or play it safe and bring it later?

I'm talking about Dynamic Lighting.

Bringing light sources now instead of later would fit our current point in development and be a giant leap forward in two ways:    

A) Adding lighting would have a big impact on the visual appearance of your maps, giving you even more power over your map design.  

B) Having this feature ready on launch would also help us promoting DUNGEONFOG as the most versatile online map editor out there.  

However, it would also mean that we open up a completely new construction site on top of the other things we are already working on, putting us at the risk of having not enough time to get everything done as planned.

So what are we going to do?

We are still a little ahead of our schedule, so for the next two weeks we are going to start working on dynamic lighting. When it is foreseeable within those two weeks, that we can finish a first version without sacrificing too much of our other tasks, we will make it happen before launch. But if we get the feeling, that it would endanger our timetable, we will put a hold to it and postpone it after our official launch has taken place.

I will keep you posted on the progress!
Until then, have fun testing the new features and as always:
Let the dice roll!
Till

New Update: Advanced Prop Editing
almost 6 years ago – Tue, Jul 31, 2018 at 01:06:18 PM

Today we are releasing our first update of the work package “Advanced Prop Editing”.  

As you might remember we asked you what advanced prop editing features you would like to have implemented.  

So we sat down and started to implement those new features.
To give you the short version first: DONE.  

But we decided that we don’t want to stop just there. 

One feedback we often get is, that there could be more props. And honestly - who am I to disagree? There can always be more props. Moooaaar props! 

And while we are constantly adding more DUNGEONFOG props and textures to the library and are increasing the quota for personal uploads, we figured, that there could be an additional solution to that problem:  

Colorize Props

We have implemented a new feature that allows you to take full control over the colorization of each prop no matter if they are from the DUNGEONFOG library or uploaded by you personally.

If you have ever worked with Photoshop or Gimp you might know how powerful color adjustments can be.

You need a blue merchant cart? Or a red one? Or both?
All curtains should be white? The banners in the mighty clan hall should be green instead of blue?

Now that we have worked this out, we are going to do the same for textures in a future update.  

Advanced Randomizer

We have improved our randomize options and added  

• range settings for rotation & scale  
• random flipping  

as interchangeable options for prop placement.  

Duplicate props

When it comes to quickly filling a room with props, nothing is faster then just taking existing ones from other rooms and duplicate them for the new room - except probably the feature that will be discussed in the next paragraph below.  

By pressing CTRL+D you can now duplicate props including all their settings (like color, scale, rotation and mirror directions).  

We had a long discussion about whether to use Copy/Cut/Paste or Duplicate and we argued that having to press one key-combination (STRG+D) instead of two (STRG+C, STRG+V) should be more efficient in the long run and would ought-weight the minor advantage of "being used to copy/paste". Let us know what you think!

Group props

As with our rooms, you can now create prop groups. Simply create a folder in your layers list and collect your props there.  

You can

• name your groups
• rotate them
• scale them
• and most importantly you can duplicate whole groups.  

We have also implemented, that as long as you are “inside” a group, all new props will be added directly to that group.

We have also addressed the “feature” (yeah ok it was a bug, but it was useful) that a prop is always moved on top of other props as soon as you select & move it. Props now keep their position in their sorting order.  

The only downside is, that this new feature shows how incredibly useful multi-select would be, so we have shifted this task in our tracker up and will address this as soon as we have finished our advanced prop editing features.  

Arrow keys and more

We have added a ton of new shortcuts and hotkeys to improve the workflow:  

While you have selected a prop:  

• Arrow keys | To move the prop  
• SHIFT+Arrow | To move props by pixels  
• CTRL+D | Duplicate  
• ALT+Click | Select the prop below  

A quick-help to access a list of all hotkeys is already in the making and will be released with our next update.

What’s next  

We still have some cool things up the sleeves that we want to address before we move on to the next work package “Advanced GM-Notes”. We are planning to release some minor things like the quick help and other smaller things within the next week and then have a final major update for our prop package by the end of August.  

Have fun testing and as always,
let the dice roll!
Till

New Update: Repaint Rooms & Create Room Groups
almost 6 years ago – Tue, Jul 10, 2018 at 11:39:53 PM

With this update we are releasing two new features that will help a lot to improve your map making, along with some other enhancements and bugfixes that I will list below.

But first:

Repainting rooms with our new bucket tool

Creating a map is often a fluid process where you don't want to interrupt your current workflow with changing room textures or wall settings for every room you draw.

Therefore we have added a tool that allows you to quickly "repaint" your rooms with a few clicks. I think this will help a lot, since you can now focus on mapping out all rooms in one flow and change their appearance afterwards with a lot less effort than before.

How does the new tool work?
In your toolbar you will find a new paint-roller icon. 

Simply switch to the paint tool and adjust wall type, floor and wall texture the way you want them. Then click on the rooms and apply the new look to every room you click on.

If you want to pick up a paint style from an existing room, activate the pipette and click on the room you want to use as template.

Adding room groups to your layers

With this update we have:

• Introduced the possibility to group rooms.
• We have also shifted the layers & levels panel to the right, so that you have more space.
• We have added a way to directly edit object names in the layers panel
• Layers now keep their position/status to reduce the amount of clicks while editing several rooms at once.

Creating room-groups will help a lot to keep your layers organized, and will help you to create constructs that consist of more than one room (like houses, or dungeon sections).

Resolving the previous room-in-room dilemma in our previous update was a big improvement. But it removed the possibility to create objects that contained more than just one room.

So here is part two of that optimization: The room groups.

You can now group rooms into folders to:

• Organize your layers and keep them neat and clean.
• Move grouped rooms together as one object on your map.
• Display grouped rooms as one object in your notes.

To do so, click on the new folder icon in the top right of your layers panel to create a new folder. Then simply drag all the rooms that should be grouped onto that folder.
If you want to remove a room from a folder, drag it to the yellow header (the breadcrumb navigation) to send the room back to the stage.

This also comes with a pretty cool new feature for your GM-Notes:
Groups can have their own description and are now displayed as one image in your notes. All rooms are then listed as a collection of tables below. This not only reduces your effort on creating notes, but also gives you a pretty neat visual for your notes:

If you want to see more about the things you can now do with room groups watch our recent tutorial showcasing all the features that came with this update:

Please note: The video was made shortly before the update and there are minor changes (like the position of the paint tool) that were changed after the video was shot.

Your feedback is AWESOME!

It is beautiful to see how the community is growing together. I was always hoping, that DUNGEONFOG would inspire people to work with us on the creation of this tool. And the past weeks have shown that this wish is becoming more and more reality.

Thanks to your active participation we were not only able to remove bugs (which we are always happy to eXterminate), but you actively came with new suggestions and ideas to improve the tool. I am happy to announce that some of those are now implemented:

• The whole repositioning of the layers was thanks to your active participation.
• You can now rename objects directly in your layers.
• You can now hold the SHIFT Key to bypass the snap-to-grid in all tools.
• Thanks to your feedback we were able to improve the way our select tool works.
• We have added a lot of new props (like ladders, fire or the new rounded stairs) based on your suggestions.
• There is so much more I could name....

So thanks a lot and keep coming with your ideas - we can't promise that we will be able to add them all (at least not immediately) but we love to see how our tool inspires you and your active participation is a great inspiration for us as well.

Closing the work package advanced room handling (for now)

I know. I know. Having all those cool new features IS arousing the need for more.

• What about room groups IN room groups?
• What about copy/pasting rooms or room groups?
• What about rotating rooms or groups?
• Where is multi-select to add several rooms to one group instantaneously?
• I want to cut/paste rooms or groups to different layers!
  
• ...

Patience you must have my young padawan! 
For the next sweep of new room features it is easier for us to first start with some advanced prop features. A lot of prop mechanics are similar for both types, rooms as well as props, but are way better to start of with props. This will allow us to test and improve our scripts as well as start to dish out the first improvements to prop handling.

So before we return to improving room features we are now closing the door on our work package "Advanced Editor Features - Rooms" but leave it ajar for more updates later. And we will now switch over to the next work package "Advanced Editor Features - Rooms".

 What's next

For the rest of the week we will fix whatever nasty bugs you will find, that slipped through our watch. Beginning with next week we will then start working on the next work package:

 So have fun testing and let us know what you think on Discord or our forum!

Let the dice roll!
Till