Hail there travellers, and welcome to another devblog update for LoreMaster.io in 2022! Hope everyone came well into the new year! Here at LoreMaster.io we wanted to give everyone an update on what is happening with LoreMaster.io, how we are going to be working on it going forward, and what has happened since the last update!
General Update on Development in 2022
First of let us start with taking a look at the road map. We set up this road map based on the suggestions of our Patrons. Some of the things on this roadmap are taking a bit longer than we have hoped. We started working on the in-line linking, but we ran into a lot of obstacles in how to get that to work properly. Therefore, to get the juices flowing, we also started on workshopping ideas for expanding upon the Story Canvas. I will delve into what will happen to the Story Canvas later in this post. We have also worked on a way to support other game systems than D&D 5th Edition. For now the point of me explaining this is to let you know why there has been silence from us. We did not have anything new to report.
It is important to know that LoreMaster.io is a side project we are working on as a hobby. We are not making money to pay ourselves for working on this. Currently all money from the Patreon goes towards server costs or sponsorships. We are spending money on sponsorships in hopes of growing the LoreMaster.io user base. We hope this will in turn grow the Patreon and allow us to eventually work on LoreMaster.io full-time. While some of you may find it curious that we speak so openly about money on a hobby project, we find it important to be transparent about where your money is going, should you choose to give it to us.
No on to some updates on what is actually happening in LoreMaster.io!
Themes in LoreMaster.io
As I mentioned earlier, we were running into problems with the in-line linking feature. This feature is very much back-end focused, and as a result, our front-end developer had some time on his hands. With that he whipped up a little something fun, you can now customize your themes in LoreMaster.io!
Conceptualized By One of Our Patreons!
Photo by Renato DanyiConceptualized By One of Our Patrons!
Art by liuzishanConceptualized By One of Our Patrons!
Photo by Todd TrapaniPhoto by Dương Nhân Photo by Pixabay
Forest Scene by Pixabay – Wizard in the dark dungeon illustration by liuzishan – Photo of Flames by Dương Nhân – Grey Skulls Piled on Ground by Renato Danyi – Sunray Through Trees by Todd Trapani
Above you see a gallery of themes both in LoreMaster.io and conceptualized by the LoreMaster.io patrons! These themes let you customize how the your world looks. If your world is set in the world of the fey, the green and magical feywild theme might be for you. If you are in the middle of sending your players through the hells of your world, try out the infernal theme.
Themes started out as a fun little experiment, but we plan to add more themes to LoreMaster.io in 2022, and we plan to let the patrons choose what they want!
Block Templates
Right now in LoreMaster.io you can manually insert a preformatted D&D 5th Edition statblock template. This template is made by us and is simply fancy HTML code set up in a text block. We want to expand upon this by adding more templates for you to use so LoreMaster.io becomes even easier to use! This is especially important for us as we wish to support all storytellers and worldbuilders, no matter what game system they use, or whether they use a game system at all!
To that end, the “Block Templates” selector will soon be available in LoreMaster.io! As you can see in the mockup of the template selevtor, there is an insert block button. We want you to be able to set up amazing HTML text blocks and save them for later use, but this will not be initially possible. For this first section of this we are adding a Pathfinder 2nd Edition stat block template, so our Pathfinder game masters also can enjoy LoreMaster.io to its fullest. Keep an eye out for more stat blocks in LoreMaster.io in 2020!
The Story Canvas Evolved
As I mentioned earlier, the in-line linking is giving us some back-end trouble. As such we have started looking torwards what comes next. The planning of evolving the Story Canvas to be more feature rich is still in early stages. But we want to clue you in on what we have found so far.
One of the main things we want to add to the Story Canvas is some sort of drawing ability og line ability inbetween the nodes. This will allow you to use the Story Canvas more versatilely, and allow you to create for example quest flow charts, country hierarchies, or family tress.
Multiple user have also requested the possibility to use their own pictures as icons for the nodes. This is something we want, but we need to find some way to scale those images properly, otherwise it will have a big impact on load times, as large images will have to be loaded, only to be displayed in tiny formats.
The custom images is however just one of the planned improvements we have for the nodes in general. We want to increase the customizational possibilities of the nodes and make using and moving them easier. Group-selection, custom label sizes, and a search function for especially large canvases are all ideas to that end.
When we created the Story Canvas, we wanted it to be an adaptable tool. We plan to double down on that even more so in the future!
That’s it for this update. If you are interested, head over to our Patreon and join now! We hope you look forward to seeing what we have to show you in LoreMaster.io in 2022!
All the best,
The LoreMaster.io Team!