Trying to gauge interest in new battlemap-making software

Hi folks. I am going to be creating cross-platform map-making software (for Windows and macOS), suitable for creating both print-resolution maps and lower-res maps suitable for use with virtual tabletop software. The program will be sort of a spiritual successor to Dundjinni, but with a greater focus on stitching maps together from pre-existing map tiles and then customizing the resulting map (with additional decorations, etc.) to suit the GM's particular needs.

The program should appeal to GMs of face-to-face game sessions and those using any VTT software, who want to create their own slick-looking battlemaps to visually enrich their RPG sessions, but who find existing mapping programs (including image-editing tools such as Gimp and Photoshop) too intimidating/confusing/expensive.

In late January or early February 2017, I'll be launching a Kickstarter campaign to try to fund the program's development. The software will be priced to be very accessible/affordable, likely in the $20-$25 range (at least during the Kickstarter campaign).

I'm trying to gauge public interest in this, so please let me know if such software would be of interest to you.

Wow, hundreds of views but no one has interest in new map-making software? Have I badly misjudged potential demand? Does existing mapping software already have you covered with all your mapping needs?

heruca said:

Wow, hundreds of views but no one has interest in new map-making software? Have I badly misjudged potential demand? Does existing mapping software already have you covered with all your mapping needs?

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For what I want/need, it needs to be ALL of
1) Mac friendly
2) Windows Friendly
3) Android friendly
4) networking with a direct peer-to-peer option
5) usable offline.
6) user friendly
7) under $20

MapTool is 1,2,4 5, & 7 but NOT 6.

For most of what I do, I use a vector draw program. I just implemented a really bad counters-on-map tool that works (poorly) with any PNG I care to throw at it. My second ever attempt at AJAX programming. Does the absolute minimum I need (moving markers across a map).

What I'd really like is a true vector draw (save as SVG), with tokens, both hex and square grids, and cross platform networking peer-to-peer. It helps to have support for Chromecast.

I AM a programmer, but I'm a poor quality programmer... I'm not good enough to do what I want.

Essentially, Dungeon Sketch is halfway to what I want. It does tokens, Chromecast, vector draw tools (but not saves), but is android only AFAIK. It's good enough I use it FTF.

This will be strictly for map-making, it will NOT be a virtual tabletop app, so that's a No for #4. It also won't be on Android (or iOS, for that matter). Price will likely be $25 during the KS campaign, and $30 afterwards (at least for the first year or two). But the KS will probably offer bundle discounts on art Add-Ons from professional content providers.

Maps created in the app will be usable with any VTT that accepts a 2D bitmap, including MapTool.

I'll throw in my two cents --- I started off with Campaign Cartographer, ran it through its paces, managed to produce some low-grade quality work with it that would have been "good enough" for my own use, but certainly wasn't anywhere near "pro" quality.

Ultimately my problem with the CC programs was that there was no transference of knowledge or skill --- nothing I learned in CC was going to help me in my web and graphic design content skills that I use daily at work.

At that point I realized that the real solution for my fantasy mapping was to simply learn to use actual vector and raster drawing programs. I plunged into Illustrator, Photoshop, Serif DrawPlus, Xara, etc.

Until two months ago, I might have had some interest in a map-making program that A) wasn't Campaign Cartographer, and B) actually worked like a "standard" raster/vector application, but this past December, Serif finally released their new vector and raster drawing "twin" applications, Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo, for Windows. And having used and tested them both extensively while in beta, I doubt I will be in the market for anything new for a long, long time.

The coolest thing about the Affinity apps is that the files you create in either Designer or Photo can be opened natively in the corresponding app. This is a HUUUUUUUGE benefit for mapping, because it means I can start out doing land mass and city shaping in vector, close it in Designer, then immediately open it in Affinity Photo without having to export the file, change it to a different output format, etc., and immediately just keep adding layers and effects, save it, then seamlessly reopen the EXACT SAME FILE in Designer. Affinity Photo is as close as you're going to come to duplicating Photoshop's feature set, but does so at a FRACTION of the cost----a single, $40 purchase for a license vs. $120 a year subscription.

With these tools, plus the assets/textures I already paid for in CC, plus the free Genetica Viewer program for windows which lets me generate my own seamless textures, plus the huge amount of material available in public domain, I pretty much don't need anything else.

Truly, if anyone were to ask me about looking at "map making" software, I'd say "Don't waste your time. Spend the money for Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo, learn them inside and out, then do some tutorials on Cartographer's Guild.com." With the Affinity apps on the market now for both Mac and PC, with how powerful they are, how inexpensive they are, and how much more versatile they are for doing actual graphic design work and not just mapping, I really wouldn't ever recommend anything else to someone interested in mapmaking.

I checked out the Affinity site. It appears that each program costs $50, so that's $100 total (unless there's a bundle deal I'm not aware of). So, not quite the $40 price you mentioned.

In any case, I think it's a bit like comparing apples and oranges.

I completely agree that if you take the time to learn a general-purpose image editing program(s), you will be able to produce maps with a very high level of control and sophistication, and in addition to being able to make nice maps, you'll have a new skillset that's useful in many, many ways.

My app, however, will be targeting folks who, for whatever reason, have decided NOT to invest that sort of time and effort, and just want to create a great-looking map in a matter of minutes or hours.

I see what you're saying about the time/money commitment level. Just from my experience, I'm highly skeptical that there's enough interest in that nebulous "middle ground" between spending $30 for a product, and spending $75-100 on a product to do digital mapping. Someone who's willing to spend $30 on a digital mapping program is probably willing to spend a little bit more than that if they're trying to reach a certain level of quality.

There's three basic reasons to want to do digital mapping:


1. You want to produce products of sufficient quality to sell them professionally and make money off of them.

2. For your own satisfaction. You want to create something beyond simple sketches, something that reaches a certain level of quality that's important to you, even if you don't end up selling your maps for money.

3. You don't particularly care about the quality of drawing / final product, you just want your maps in a digital format to use more efficiently in game.


People in Category 1 aren't going to be in the market for an inexpensive map drawing tool; they're already using professional graphic / drawing programs.

The bottom end of Category 2 is where your market is most likely to reside. This is where I was back in 2009 when I first purchased Campaign Cartographer. The problem I had was, even though the output was "better" than what I was capable of producing by hand, it still didn't meet my desired level of quality, took waaaaaay too long, and none of the skills were transferable. I was awed by the stuff I saw on cartographersguild.com, but to get ANYWHERE NEAR that level of quality, you're going to end up having to use professional drawing tools.

And truthfully, you don't really have to pay a dime if you're in this category either if you're willing to deal with the limitations of the popular open-source graphic programs (Inkscape and GIMP). I personally think GIMP's UI and workflow is a train wreck, so I spent money on tools I knew would do what I needed. I more than made up for the $80 I spent for Affinity Photo and Designer (I got a 20% discount on both apps for being a beta tester) by a factor of 10x-15x in saved time. Once I understood how to set up nozzle brushes in Affinity Photo properly, it made using Campaign Cartographer for city design look like a unicycle compared to my Ferrari. Even if there weren't excellent, relatively inexpensive professional tools available for this category of user, you're also already having to deal with existing competitors for these people's time and money too, with Campaign Cartographer and Fractal Mapper already on the scene. But again---why even go the route of CC or Fractal Mapper or New Product X in the first place when there's excellent professional drawing tools available for not much more?

Category 3 might also be in your market, but there's already lots of free options out there for users who TRULY don't care about quality. Maptool works. GIMP and Inkscape work. Paint.NET works. Microsoft Expression Designer works. Heck, even LibreOffice Draw or Google Drawings could work in a pinch in certain situations. For someone who truly doesn't care about quality AT ALL, but really just wants to create their own maps and have them in some kind of digital format, your value proposition here has to be saving time. If you're not saving someone enough time and they don't care about the quality of output, at what point does even a $25 or $30 investment seem steep?

Your market then is those who fluctuate between Categories 2 and 3. How much does someone in the market for a map drawing program really care about the quality of output? Even if they buy your program, are they still going to have to buy a professional drawing program anyway to get the end results they want? If so, does it make sense to spend $25 or $30 to add your program to their toolbox, rather than just going straight to the "professional" tools? Because to get anything above a certain level of quality, they're going to have to go there anyway.

You have to convince people that your program is a better value at $30, and will produce a "good enough" quality of output, and do so faster and more easily, than taking that $30 and applying it toward purchasing Affinity Photo (I keep using Affinity Photo as the standard because it is hands down the best-in-class software of its kind at its price point; nothing else even comes close).

If you can build a product at that price point that actually can do all that, great! I'm not trying to rain on your parade, I'm just saying that like our current RPG market, you're trying to enter a market that is already exceptionally well-served. Your proposed product would truly have to be mind-blowingly awesome to make a dent in this market.

When you talk about stitching existing map tiles together, I get weary.

I use CC (and 3D MCAD professionally) so my basis is for something vector based at it's core.

If all I can do is place existing images (tiles) side by side and then maybe overlay tokens/symbols on top (like chairs etc) then not really interested.

If I can take a grasslands background, and then drop things on top and "layer" them up. Better. If I can then add edge effects, I'm interested.

Also, all of the elements/objects/parts that go into making the final map, I have to be able to create my own.

I'd say that back in it's day, Dundjinni had a fairly sizeable userbase, despite the fact that it wasn't particularly fast, nor super-easy to get up to speed on. DJ is, sadly, no longer viable to use on modern computers, and nothing much has really come since to replace DJ. My app, if it's to be compared to other mapping apps, probably resembles DJ the most (in concept, not in execution).

CC3 (and CC2 before it) has sold a lot of copies, but I suspect a good percentage of the people who bought it were overwhelmed by its complexity and underwhelmed by its output. Perhaps people who got burned will never invest in another mapping app. That's unfortunate, but there's little I can do about that. I plan to offer a downloadable demo for prospective customers to try the app out and see if it fits their needs and meets their expectations. They'll be able to judge for themselves if it's worth the $25 or $30 investment. For a lot of folks, if the app saves them several hours of grief and frustration, it will have been well worth the (minor) investment. Think of all the people who didn't buy CC3 because of the high cost or the complexity. I think that number is far greater than those who did buy it. And perhaps some of them are waiting for the right app to come along.

I suspect a fair number of people buy Paizo battlemaps, and/or geomorphic map tiles sold by numerous content providers. These people want nice visuals in their games, something to match the minis they've invested in and took the time to paint. But Paizo battlemaps are "set in stone". You can't really customize them much, if at all. And geomorphic map tiles look great, but are a major hassle to put a layout together in Gimp or the like. It can take hours, and isn't particularly fun. So if my app can help serve that market by letting GMs create great layouts in mere minutes (and have a blast doing it), I think it could prove quite popular.

LordEntrails, please don't get hung up on the fact that my app can stitch map tiles together. That's just one of the features, not the only thing it does. It can also be used to populate a generic terrain, as you describe. It will have filter-like effects, so you can draw walls using textures, and the walls can cast a shadow, have beveled edges, etc.

2¢:

I am a perennial DM with a penchant for game-enhancing fluff, and I'm not interested in customizing and printing out battlemaps.

I've already found a cheap/fast/easy solution (wet erase markers) and an impressive/expensive/slow solution (Dwarven Forge), and I'm not looking for something in between. Maybe it's because I prefer games that don't devote a ton of table-time to individual encounters, so I don't want to spend a lot of my pregame time on enhancing the graphics for a battlemap. I'd rather spend that time writing the scenario, or cementing it in my head so I can convey it verbally to the players.

Also, I don't have a color printer, and even if I did, it would be pretty expensive to print that sort of thing on a regular basis.

Also, as a dude who does care about making good graphics, I already have Photoshop.

In other words, I have a lot of reasons to not be interested in this product, and not many reasons to be interested in it.

In other other words, you're targeting a niche within a niche within a niche, and other products are already filling that niche.