Hot off the presses (clicked the Deploy to Live just an hour ago)!!
Have you moved your DnD-sessions online but miss moving your figures around on the map to play out battles and dungeon exploration?
We missed it sorely so I built BattleMap to help out.
Add your party members, let the DM load a few maps for you and off you go. As you move your character around the map it’s all updated in bubble-realtime for everyone in the group.
At first all you see is fog - but your DM opens the fog of war as you progress further and further into the dungeon.
As your party encounters monsters and creatures on the map the DM drags them onto the map so you can see where they’re at (and vanquish them as needed). During battle you can keep track of whose turn it is with the handy-dandy initiative tracker (also updated in bubble-realtime).
There is a playground available to test things with.
Hi,
Just stumbled upon your app. It looks like it has a lot of potential to fulfill the needs I have for my online campaign!
A few bugs (or user errors) I found while using it:
I can’t seem to put any of the tokens onto the map, whether monster or character.
Adjusting the square size of the fog would be awesome.
When I select a character to upload an image, I can’t dismiss that window (or any window).
Just some thoughts. I don’t know if you’re still working on it.
Thanks for the input.
My gaming group is using the app all the time still and I’m continuing to work on it.
Basically you just drag your token onto the map and that should be all there is to it.
I’ll post some screens or video.
I do know the character screen can’t be closed - my gaming group felt that was less of a problem in the short term so I pushed it back and focused on other things (like initiative tracker, HP, AC).
It’s a minor fix so I’ll sort it asap.
The rest of the windows are supposed to be there all the time but I can do what I’ve done for the DM side - make it possible to minimize them.
The grid behind it all is what governs the fog and it’s been a pain to make it work smoothly, but I’ll see if something can be done.
Again, thanks for the input and for trying it out!
/Anders
Interesting. Maybe the problem is on my end. To be clear, the tokens are the colored circles next to each character, yes? When I try to drag them onto the map they immediately drag back.
Thanks for explaining further @vaughannr, that gives me an idea of what the issue is.
Our DM recently asked for the ability to turn the fog of war on and off and I believe your problem is related to that new functionality I built there.
I will get that fixed as soon as I possibly can - hopefully today.
I love this! I’d love to make something like this, not for DnD but for something I am working on for my community. I don’t suppose you have any tutorials or would be willing to share the backend of this master piece? Awesome work none the less
@vaughannr - just pushed an update and you can now close the character details window and minimize all the windows (handouts, player list, initiative tracker) as a player to make it a bit cleaner depending on your game situation.
The purpose in building BattleMap was to help my gaming group, so I’ve not created any tutorials.
My main challenge when building the app was (and is) the character grid. I feel it takes a bit too long to generate it when starting up (several seconds) but I’ve not found any way to speed it up yet.
Even though it has a bit of a fantasy feel to it w the little dragons, the app is not specific to DnD or a fantasy setting. You can use it for sci-fi or any other setting you like where you want to show handouts, maps and have your team move around on the map.
Come to think of it you could even load up a picture of a board game like Ludo and move your pieces around as you play.
If you want to build something similar and get stuck just drop me a note and I’ll be happy to help.
Update:
The new version of BattleMap features a tagged Map Gallery where you can find lots of maps for your gaming needs. (available only to the DM, so set your role accordingly)
You can expand the Map Gallery yourself, just link to the map asset and add it to the mix.
Make it public to share with the community or private to keep it within your gaming group.
Note: If you upload (instead of linking) a map it can only be private and thus visible only to your group.
Hi @asdica,
Your battlemap group is still in the database, but since it’s all done without creating users there’s really no possibility of password recovery.
It might be time to rethink and rework that part of it.
@asdica, this one’s for you
I just deployed an update to the BattleMap so it now includes account mgmt.
Group creation/entry is still the same, but you can now use your e-mail to take ownership of your group and use that for both faster entry and also to cast the almighty spell ‘Power Word Reset’ if you have lost your magic entry code or password.
Happy gaming!
/Anders
Hi Jeppe,
At the moment it’s 20x20 but I’m actually deploying an update today that makes it 30x30 as the new standard.
Going from 400 cells in the 20x20 grid to 900 in the 30x30 had a negative impact performance-wise so I’ve been trying quite a few different ways to do it and still keep performance acceptable.
Deploy is happening within an hour from the time I’m posting this.
Just before the new year BattleMap hit a landmark 600 gaming groups created! (translates to roughly 1800 users)
What started out as a hobby project just for me and my DnD gaming group has grown up quite a bit
Thanks so much to everyone on this forum (@jamesmeeds , @asdica, @vaughannr, @J805 and others) and of course the Bubble team who made it possible to create the app at all.
Just before the new year BattleMap hit a landmark 600 gaming groups created! (translates to roughly 1800 users) 