1. What we shipped

Just bug fixes because something big is brewing.

2. What we’re working on next

Maps. Maps v4. Maps so mappy you’ve never mapped like this before. Maps are such an important element for many visual worldbuilders and I’m committed to giving them the love they deserve.

I’ve been dropping screenshots over the past few weeks in the Owlbear discord channel for our subscribers. I’m basically rewriting everything – again. But the idea is that when you’re creating a map and placing lots of pins, it should be fast. Blazing fast. It shouldn’t refresh the map for every click. It shouldn’t be a pain to guess how the pin will look before clicking save. That’s the guiding force behind maps v4.

This also directly builds on top of all the knowledge of websockets I built when working on Whiteboards. Markers in this new map tool will be updated to everyone watching live. And you can also share your cursor so you know where your players mean when they say “the mountain looking thing” when they are instead pointing towards the mushroom kingdom.

Also adding “paths” as a new pin type. And polygons are renamed Area because that’s what they are used for. And a bunch of over cool stuff, like the default mode dropping the 1990’s “drop pin” style in exchange for just icons? Hell yeah! (for those who like the old-school look, I’ve added an option in the new maps).

I will also add proper support for 100 MB maps. Currently it works but it’s slooooooooow. I want to be add automatic rasterising of images into tiles so that everything is just snappy and fast, even on your grandparent’s blueberry mobile phone they insist still works for them.

3. Behind the scenes

I didn’t publish a “Q3 objectives” on the blog since for me it was clear from the get go that Q3 will all be about maps. This is a massive endeavour and I want to ace it. I don’t want to ship a half baked solution.