Multiverse Designer News

Hey everyone! We’re happy to announce that there's a new update coming, and with some very anticipated features. It’s been a very busy month (you’ll see why), but this update is going to be one of the most important in a good while.

The next update implements gameplay – at last, you will be able to play in the maps you create or download! It also comes with the first Criteria rules (so Multiverse Designer automatizes some of the bookkeeping and rules for you), although both things are still limited and a work-in-progress. Basically, we have implemented basic D&D-like rules: rolling dice, HP and initiative tracking, full character sheet editing, basic and special attacks, over 20 common skills (Hide, Spot, and many others) and 3 spells, namely fireball, lightning bolt, and cone of cold. It also includes two ready-to-play encounters – one against a wyvern and a second against humanoid monsters. And of course, if you want to do the bookkeeping and rules-tracking yourself, you can already play on any map you have created or downloaded.



The second new feature that we have implemented is the ability to customize your in-game avatar: that is, you’ll be able to create a character in the Character Forge, customizing its face and body as well as its character sheet tied to a specific set of rules (because obviously a D&D character sheet is quite different from, say, a sheet for Call of Cthulhu). Players can do this offline at their own pace, and it will be shared with their Game Masters when they connect to an online game. Then, when you play your character model will be the avatar you have created.

There’s another new feature coming that is meant to make Game Masters’ life easier. We call it Campaigns: basically, it’s a way for GMs to create an overall script of an adventure (or, well, a whole campaign). When you create a game you decide which ruleset you’ll be using, what maps it will include, what encounters players will face… You can think of it as how a pen-and-paper book presents a campaign: it describes the special rules, the locations, the NPCs… In the case of Multiverse Designer, it can be as simple or as complex as you want – you can set it as a loose guide or as a very detailed script of how the adventure will evolve.

This new update is expected to drop by the end of this month. We’re looking forward to seeing your first games on Multiverse Designer!



[h3]Multiverse Designer comes to the Steam Next Fest![/h3]

As we just said it’s been particularly busy as of lately, because we didn’t just work on all these new features – we’re also taking part in the upcoming Steam Next Fest, so we had to work on creating a demo for Multiverse Designer as well (as you need a free demo to take part in the festival). We didn’t want this opportunity to become a distraction, in the sense of delaying the development and delivery of new features to you backers, so we decided that the easiest course of action would be to make a demo out of the beta version backers have. It will be available for a very short time, though – so if you want to nudge some friends to try Multiverse Designer for free (and who knows, maybe even play a game with them!), do it fast, because in a month or so we’ll take it down! Mind you, if you want to play online with somebody who’s not a backer, both of you will have to use the demo version. Due to how the Steam backend works, there is no crossplay between different “games” – and for Steam, a game and its demo are different applications.

And now that we have announced we’ll take part in the Steam Next Fest, we want to ask for your help just one more time. As you know, we’re a small team developing a very big and ambitious tool. We need every bit of promotion, every opportunity under the spotlight if we want Multiverse Designer to grow for many years, even above the original vision of the Kickstarter campaign – and helping us with that is as easy as important: please share our demo and ask your friends to wishlist us on Steam (if you want to take an extra step or play with some friends, you can download it too!). It’s as simple as that. During the Next Fest, the more people download the demo and wishlist the game, the more publicity Steam gives us; this event can be a make-or-break occasion for any game, much more for a tool such as ours, which let us tell you it’s not easy to promote – there aren’t that many media outlets or influencers who talk about virtual tabletops! So, by spreading the word, you can make a world of a difference – every single download and wishlist counts.



Thanks in advance for your help. See you on our Discordserver, and make sure to share your creations if you have access to the beta or when you download the demo – we can’t wait to see what you can do with Multiverse Designer! You can also follow us on Instagram and now Bluesky. See you in our next update!

PS: Remember that we have sent you the Steam keys that will unlock your Kickstarter exclusive content further down the road. Please check your inbox and spam folders, and send us a DM through Kickstarter if you can't find them, so we can re-send them to you. Have a nice day!

Hey everyone! We're working hard on the next update of Multiverse Designer, which will be arriving very soon -- and with some surprises that we cannot reveal yet! But today we are announcing one thing that will surely change your experience using our tool for the better: we're implementing tutorials explaining how to use every feature of Multiverse Designer. From map to scene creation, hosting or joining a game, and using gameplay features, there will be tutorials available for you to feel the ropes, as you can see in these two screenshots:





Multiverse Designer is a very deep tool, with lots of features and thousands of assets, and we understand that it can be overwhelming at first sight; that's why we think that these tutorials will be very important for new users in the long run. If you have specific requests or feedback about something that you think should definitely be covered in our tutorials, please let us know in the comments! As we mentioned, we're working hard on some interesting things that will be implemented in the near future, and we'll have something very cool to show you next week -- so stay tuned to this page for future announcements.

As always, we invite you to join our community on Discord, wishlist Multiverse Designer on Steam, and follow us on Instagram and Twitter. See you in our next update!

PS: A few days ago we sent you the Steam keys that will unlock your Kickstarter exclusive content further down the road. Please check your inbox and spam folders, and send us a DM through Kickstarter if you can't find them, so we can re-send them to you. Have a nice day!

Hi everyone! As you know from our second-to-last update, our current focus is on developing the gameplay module – the virtual tabletop that will allow you to play online with your friends in the levels you create with Multiverse Designer. We are advancing well without any major setbacks, so we expect to make it available in the beta very soon.

But that’s not the only news we’ve got for you today. Today we are sending an email to all our backers with a new Steam key that later on will identify each tier, so everyone can get their digital rewards and addons. Eventually, it won’t be possible to access the beta without having one of these keys activated, so check your inbox (and Spam folder if you don’t see our email) and redeem your new keys as soon as possible, so you never lose access to Multiverse Designer!

We can't wait to share with you the gameplay module, and to see you playing your favorite rpgs with your friends. Stay tuned, because we'll announce very soon a new streaming where we will show you how the gameplay module is advancing. Have a great day!

Hi everyone! Not long ago, we announced in a recent update that Multiverse Designer would have full Steam Workshop Integration. Today we want to give you a more detailed view of how it will work and show the sharing process for each item.

When we started talking internally about the integration, we realized we needed a new user interface for saving and loading content, so we could both share and search online content without leaving Multiverse Designer. So we revamped every save and load screen, which are now used to access both the local and online Steam Workshop library.

[h3]The New Load Screen[/h3]

These are screenshots from the load map screen, but the basic layout is the same for all kinds of items. On the left side, we can access the local library; on the right side, the online Steam Workshop library.



[h3]Local Library[/h3]

The item name and the load button, on the inferior section, only appear when an item is selected.



The items displayed in the list are the ones of the current kind (in this case, maps) that exist in the current folder. We can change the current folder by clicking on the “Select folder” button.



We can search/filter the items displayed using the search field (as soon as we type, the list is updated automatically).



[h3]Online Steam Workshop Library[/h3]

The item name and the load button, on the lower section, only appear when an item is selected, as in the local library – but when a Steam Workshop item is selected, a “More information” button is also displayed, which will open the selected item page on Steam in a pop-up screen when clicked.





The items displayed in the list are the ones of the current type (in this case, maps) that exist in the Steam Workshop. The items created by the player are shown in green and the ones created by other players are shown in white. As Steam limits the number of items returned in a search to 50, we need to use the page field to navigate between pages when this limit is reached.



We can search/filter the items displayed by using the search field, but for performance reasons, as the search is made directly on Steam, we need to click on the search button to update the list.



[h3]The New Save Screen[/h3]

The new save screen is used both for saving on the local library as also on the online Steam Workshop library. Remember that these screenshots were taken from the save map screen but, as in the load screen, the basic layout is the same for all kinds of items. The items displayed in the list are the ones of the current kind (in this case, maps) that exist in the current folder in the local library. We can change the current folder by clicking on the “Select folder” button.



We can search/filter the items displayed using the name field (the list is updated automatically as we type). To save the item in the local library, we have to fill in the name field and click on the “Save file” button.



To upload the item to the online Steam Workshop library as well, we just have to check the “Share with the online community” field before clicking on the save file button. Optionally, we can give a description of the item, using the “Description / Change notes” field. If the item already exists in Steam Workshop, we will be asked if we want to update it and the description filled will be stored in the change notes section.





And with that we covered all the basic steps to load and save items in the local library and also in the new online Steam Workshop library.

Remember that this process is essentially the same for all items that we can load and save in Multiverse Designer:

• Maps
  
• Environments (aka textures)
  
• Lights / Map Global Illumination settings
  
• Faces (for the Character forge, like big noses, tatoos, clothing…)
  
• Character sheets
  
• Avatars (the visual representation of a character + their character sheet)
  
• Criteria rules
  
• Campaigns
  
• 
  

Are you guys interested in a step-by-step video to explain all this or is this text-based info enough to get it all? Please let us know! As always, we invite you to join our community on Discord, wishlist Multiverse Designer on Steam(this is very important for us!) and follow us on Instagram and Twitter. See you in our next update!

PS: Friendly reminder to all backers, please redeem your Steam keys, and if you haven’t seen yours in your inbox, send us a DM through Kickstarter so we can send it to you. Have a nice day!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

NOTE: This text is the same that we read in the video, but we figured that, for those of you less video-inclined or who cannot watch with the sound on, it would be useful to post the script as well.

Hi everyone! As you know, we’ve spent the last couple of months working hard on what we call the gameplay module: basically, developing and implementing all the features needed for you to play your favorite tabletop RPGs in Multiverse Designer. We are very excited to announce that work is going at a steady pace without any unpleasant surprises; we are starting to do internal test, and we expect we’ll be able to release it to our beta testers very soon.

And by “internal tests” we mean we are playing ourselves, of course! This video is basically a summary of a 1 hour-long session in which our team of brave adventurers (composed of a tiefling rogue, a dwarf warrior and a human templar) faced some fearsome enemies – namely two dark templars, a necromancer, and a skeleton. As you know, the core members of the dev team are Brazilian, so the whole exchange is in Portuguese. But in this summary we will explain what’s going on, so you can see how things are advancing. You’ll miss the friendly banter, but we promise that we’ll arrange English sessions in the future!

First thing you’ll surely notice is that this video features a split screen. What you can see here is everyone’s point of view: the big screen is the Game Master’s, while the smaller ones are from the three players in this test. This way you can see how every player can have a different point of view, moving the camera freely to get a good sense of their surroundings.

There are different user interface items that you can see on these screens. The line of portraits in the upper section of the screen represent the order of initiative. Then, the icons in the lower section of the screen are the basic User Interface. The GM has more options available than the players; the first icon allows you to move the camera around, while the exclamation mark shows the properties of the selected character or asset, as well as the character sheet editor – because, yes, you can change things and assets on the fly while you are playing. The scroll opens the campaign edit window, where you can add or remove players and maps to the campaign, also in real time.

Then you have a button for Dashing, another for Attack, and a final one for Basic Movement – these are available to players as well. Obviously there will be more actions in the future – everything you can think of: produce or use an item, sneak attacks… this is just a work in progress! In the lower right corner you can see the button for ending your turn, and in the upper right, the time tracker, which can be used to track any unit of time – assaults, minutes, days, or even years.

The key thing here is that you will be able to create or adapt the UI of Multiverse Designer using Crieria. Each ruleset we implement will have its own icons and UI, but you can create new action buttons from scratch, choosing an icon from a big library and linking it to a specific action; or create a new input, like which spell, weapon or skill that button will use, including area spells. Imagine, for instance, that in your campaign the evil guys are a sect of necromancers, and it’s very common to fight against enemies that raise the undead: you can create an icon that automatically makes a bunch of skeletons appear in the map to make your encounters faster. We will also include a basic, rules-agnostic UI with only the most basic things you need to run a game, like rolling dice, track initiative and HP, and move things around in the map.

In this video you'll see how to move a character or NPC you only need to click the point in the map where you want to go; you can see each enemy’s zone of control (where moving around can cause an attack of opportunity in games such as D&D). Then when you choose the Attack Action a menu lets you choose your weapon, should you have more than one. It throws the dice, calculates if it hits or miss for you, and then roll damage and deducts it from the character’s total HP. You can also open a log that shows every action in detail.

You can also see an attack of opportunity in play: since a character is crossing an enemy’s zone of control, it automatically gives the option to do an attack of opportunity. You’ll be able to set different things that trigger a reaction – it is, after all, the same underlying logic that operates traps.

A word of warning: everything you see is a work in progress. Your input will be invaluable for us to improve, especially when it comes to user interface – so if you have any comments, feel free to drop your feedback here, or join us in our Discord server. Many animations aren’t implemented yet, either, so everything looks a bit static as of yet. A second thing we want to stress: the point of the gameplay module is for Multiverse Designer to do all the bookkeeping for you using Criteria, the scripting language we have created to implement and handle game rules.

It’s relatively easy to have a rules-agnostic system where you can just move character models around and throw dice – and you will definitely have the ability to play like that on Multiverse Designer. But what we want is to make the most out of the capabilities of Criteria, so Multiverse Designer handles character and NPC sheets, changes in stats, damage, temporary status… everything that you can do in advanced virtual tabletops, like Foundry, with a more powerful system to implement new rules of all kinds, from characters to items, spells, weapons or anything you might think of.

That’s all for today; as always, we invite you to join our community on Discord, wishlist Multiverse Designer on Steam(this is very important for us!) and follow us on Instagram and Twitter. See you in our next update!

PS: Friendly reminder to all backers, please redeem your Steam keys, and if you haven’t seen yours in your inbox, send us a DM through Kickstarter so we can send it to you. Have a nice day!