Multiverse Designer News

Hi everyone! Today we want to discuss a new feature that may not sound particularly exciting, but that in the long run will surely prove to be portentous: Steam Workshop integration. In a nutshell, this makes sharing Multiverse Designer creations (we’ll expand that later) incredibly easy, automatizing the whole process through Steam.

You won’t even have to close Multiverse Designer to upload or download anything: it will all be stored in the Steam Cloud. So, for example, while you’re creating a map, you can search among all the creations uploaded by the community, find a building that fits your needs, and download it with a click and place it on your map.

You will be able to download all kinds of creations from the community, navigating across different categories to find exactly what you’re looking for

And what exactly can be shared, you ask? Here's the full list:

• 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
  

We want to stop for a second to highlight the last two. To begin with, it means it will be as easy as it gets to download sets of rules. Multiverse Designer will release with some sets of rules already pre-implemented for you to use, but we expect to implement more in the future – and on top of that, we also expect that some users will create sets of rules with Criteria for their games. This is great news for everyone, because we cannot possibly cover every single game in the market; that’s where the community steps in, and why having easy-to-use sharing features is important. Maybe your favorite game is relatively small (compared with titans like D&D) and we haven’t implemented its rules… but there’s someone else who already did, and you can download and use them!

Also, sharing campaigns is a big deal too: an adventure or campaign aren’t just a bunch of maps, but all the NPCs, events, and special rules associated with them. Sharing and downloading ready-to-use full adventures will be a key feature of Multiverse Designer further down the road.

Sharing will be as easy as ticking this box!

All this will be available very soon: we are working right now to have this ready for the next update. 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!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Hi everyone! We're finishing the last touches of the new pre-made map that will be included in the next update: an awe-inspiring city inspired by the Atlantis myth. Watch this video to take the first steps down its streets and avenues and tell us: what would you make out of it? It can be an Elven city, the capital of a magic-powered kingdom, the abandoned ruins of a long lost civilization...

Very soon we'll bring you more news about the next update, which will be one of the most important ones since the release of our first beta. Stay tuned!

That’s all for today; 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: Friendly reminder, 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!

Hi everyone! After our last update, most of our efforts have been focused on the development of the gaming module – the part of Multiverse Designer that allows you to play your tabletop roleplaying games in the 3D environment that you create in the map editor (or using pre-created maps, of course).

And that necessarily means, as we have explained before, working on Criteria. For many people, the point of using a virtual tabletop to play TTRPG is to have it do all the bookkeeping for you – track damage, changes in the stats and inventory, that kind of thing. And that’s what we’ve been working on as of lately.

Good news is, Criteria already works! It’s incomplete, but some of the most important features are implemented: skill check/roll works, you can access abilities (i.e. “what’s my STR bonus?”), you can see dice results and a log journal with details you can see by hovering the mouse on icons…

We’re also implementing a test map feature, for DMs to test their maps in advance (for instance, to see if it’s too small or big for the kind of encounter you’re planning, or to see if you need more escape routes for your Big Bad Evil Guy…). Of course you’ll have to roll for both players and monsters, but we think this will come in handy. Take a look at this new feature in this video!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Now, you may ask why we haven’t implemented the ability of online playing, even if it’s just as an interactive 3D map that only allows you to move characters around. The thing is, without getting into too much technical detail, online playing is tied to Criteria and its possibilities. We don’t create an online environment and then slap Criteria on top of it – that would take twice as long. So we’ve got a lot of moving parts right now – map editor, cutscenes, Criteria… what we have to do (and it’s what we are working on right now) is to glue all these things together for the gaming module to work.

Meanwhile, we never stop putting efforts into adding more assets to Multiverse Designer. We have implemented an assets kit called “Atlantis”, and we’re creating a new map with it for you to use. We’ll talk more about it in our next dev blog – meanwhile, here’s this picture as an appetizer… Beautiful, isn’t it?



That’s all for today; 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: Friendly reminder, 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!

Hi everyone! Today we’re releasing a new update for the Multiverse Designer beta. As we already explained, for this update we focused mostly on working on the assets, both adding new collections and improving the user experience of the ones already implemented. In that previous post we went into detail about the assets included in this update – mostly for modern settings, but also vehicles (cars, trucks, and fantasy vehicles like carriages and chariots).

In this vein, we added highways, military vehicles, and over 100 modern and sci-fi character models, like soldiers. With all these new assets and our Cutscene Editor you can set a scene where, for instance, players are thrown from a jeep into a bombed highway, sieged by tanks, forcing them to run for their lives to the nearest trench. Talk about an exciting in media res beginning!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

On top of that, we have reviewed all our previous assets: we have fixed errors in over 2,000 assets such as positioning problems, windows floating in the air, invisible sides and texture glitches. We have also corrected the size of all the assets so you don’t inadvertently plant streetlights the size of the Empire State Building. The movement algorithm now works correctly, no matter the size of the assets in the map. We reviewed the tags of all the previously implemented objects, and added several new tags, to make it easier for you to find what you’re looking for.

We also included new foliage objects, a fancy way of calling grass, trees, and bushes that you can now add to the map (so you’re not limited by the flora already present in the level when it spawns).There are also new candle lighting assets, all of them now have fire and turn on and off. On top of that, you can create text assets and place them anywhere on the map, useful as notes or even descriptions for you to read as the Game Master. For a better user experience, assets now have names that can seen by clicking the I(nfo) button.



And finally (when it comes to assets), you can now import assets or maps created in Multiverse Designer by other users, importing them in the same place where they were saved. This allows multiple people to work on the same map and then simply import the other person's work and it will be exactly where they put it. Handy, huh?

And last, but not least… we have created some new maps for you to use – as inspiration, to copy sections of it for your own maps and games, or directly to place your adventures within its confines. We have created a modern war zone, for military adventures set from the 20th century to present day; as well as a modern city with classic elements (think of a European capital). But our two favorites in this update are the Cyberpunk Waterfall – the largest city we have created so far – and the one we call “A dark and stormy night”: a fantasy/Gothic horror setting that will be the delight of Ravenloft, Call of Cthulhu and other horror games players.



What do you think about all these new assets? When you start using them in Multiverse Designer, please spare a minute to send us your creations through Discord or our social media – we can’t wait to see what you do! Also, friendly reminder to all our backers: please redeem your Steam key as soon as you can, and if you haven’t received yours, send us a DM on Kickstarter or email us to [email protected].

In our next post update, we will discuss in more detail what we are working on for the near future. Stay tuned!

Hi everyone! We hope you had a great Summer and you could enjoy some well-deserved vacation. Here at Toopan Games we’ve been hard at work in Multiverse Designer (we did take a few days off to charge our batteries, but we did it in turns to ensure our work would not stop!) It’s time for an update to let you know how the project is going – but first, we want to tell you something very important…

[h3]Backers, please redeem your Steam keys![/h3]

We have already sent the key to the Multiverse Designer beta to all of you, but roughly only 60% of our backers have redeemed it. We kindly ask you to redeem it on Steam the sooner the better! It’s not just so that you can start unleashing your creativity: for technical reasons due to some limitations on Steam, once Multiverse Designer releases to the general public it would be more complicated to give you access to everything that you are entitled to as a backer. Of course we will honor our part of the deal no matter what and all backers will get their rewards, but there will be less headaches for everyone involved if you redeem your keys asap. We did send keys to all backers, but if you haven’t seen yours it might have gone to your Spam folder – just send us a DM through Kickstarter, or email us to [email protected] from the same email of your Kickstarter login, and we’ll send you your key again.

[h3]Assets! Give me more assets![/h3]

That said, let’s see how work in Multiverse Designer is advancing. We’ve been tirelessly implementing more and more assets into Multiverse Designer (which, as explained here, is not as straightforward as it might seem – we have to make sure they are optimized to Nanite). We are actively working to incorporate assets from as many different settings as possible, not just heroic fantasy: it’s really important for us that Multiverse Designer can be used for any RPG you can think of, or to create scenarios for any story you can devise. With that in mind, over the last couple of months we have implemented a lot of modern-world assets: from city streets and highways to diners, cars, and other vehicles, as well as military outposts and warzones. Here you have a few screenshots as an example, for stories set in the 20th century or even in the present: a good ole’ American diner, like straight from a painting by Edward Hopper.



We're still increasing our collection of fantasy assets, though, with fantasy city elements and enchanted vehicles. See the bottom of this post for a full list of the latest asset collections we've implemented.

[h3]Getting there with Criteria[/h3]

But let’s be real here: the next major step for Multiverse Designer is implementing what we call the gaming module, i.e. the ability to play within the setpieces you create in Multiverse Designer. And for that, Criteria is essential: the multiplayer side of things (just being able to connect to a shared map, with each player having the ability to move their models) is relatively simple; the point is to have Multiverse Designer helping with the bookkeeping, rule-tracking, dice-rolling and all that. Criteria is the script language we use to implement game rules; the whole point of it is to give users the ability to create and implement their own rules, so it’s possible for you to add not just your players’ sheets, but also your own house rules and even whole rulesets from scratch.

During this August we have worked on several new features for Criteria, but the most important one is string parsing: now it can parse (that is, read and interpret) strings from RPG tables, using them to create virtual fields in XLS tables. If you’re not into coding yourself, this probably sounds like Greek to you (it surely did to me!), so let’s see an example. A string can be something relatively simple, like Hit points = 20d8 + 25; now Criteria can read this and understand that it means that a certain creature has 20 8-sided hit dice plus 25, and make that calculation to get to its total hit points. It can be something more complex, like "Longsword +2 melee (1d8+1/19-20) or light crossbow +1 ranged (1d8/19-20)”. Then it can use that information to create its own tables for internal use.

This sounds trivial, but it’s actually very important: pen-and-paper RPG usually have a lot of tables with unformatted written text that needs understanding before using it in rules; with this string parsing feature, Criteria will be able to interpret these tables and convert it into rules it can use, without you having to manually introduce all of them. The next step will be creating action buttons for players and GMs based on these rules.

That’s all for today’s update, but next week we’ll dive deeper into Criteria, how it’s growing and evolving, and the next steps we’re taking for the gaming module. Just before our goodbyes, a final reminder: 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! 

[h2]Full list of the latest assets[/h2]

[h2]From Kitbash3D[/h2]

[h3]"Modern" assets (cities, roads, military, buildings, etc)[/h3]

https://kitbash3d.com/products/city-cars-commercial

https://kitbash3d.com/products/city-cars-essentials

https://kitbash3d.com/products/city-cars-municipal

https://kitbash3d.com/products/americana

https://kitbash3d.com/products/every-city

https://kitbash3d.com/products/props-highways

https://kitbash3d.com/products/city-streets

https://kitbash3d.com/products/props-military-outpost

https://kitbash3d.com/products/warzone-transport-vehicles

https://kitbash3d.com/products/warfare


[h3]Fantasy assets[/h3]

https://kitbash3d.com/products/enchanted-vehicles

https://kitbash3d.com/products/enchanted


[h2]From Unreal Marketplace[/h2]

[h3]Vigilante assets (military - vehicles, weapons, etc)[/h3]

https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/profile/Vigilante?count=20&sortBy=effectiveDate&sortDir=DESC&start=0