Happy Valentine's Day & February Update - Part 2

Hi everyone and happy Valentine's Day! Or Happy Friend's Day as we say in Finland :) 

Besides wishing happy Valentine's I'd like to give a quick update on what's going on. 

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Short version

I did a few polls about the upcoming content and the results were super-helpful to me. 

There are coming more maps and a new asset pack this week and next week. And a big asset overhaul is slotted for February and March (update releases likely in March). 

There's a known backward compatibility issue with the Foundry VTT scene lighting with the latest modules. The scenes are done with Foundry version 9.x and the lights do not show properly in older versions. Apologies for the inconvenience.  

Also, a new "basic" option for Adventurer-tier Foundry VTT users is coming soon (hopefully by the end of the month). More details about this below.  

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...and the long version:

At the beginning of the month, I did two polls and a third one last week: one about the upcoming deckplans, another about new features/updates, and a third one about the written content for the map packs.

Thank you very much for the feedback. All votes and comments have been very helpful! 

Upcoming Deckplan and Maps

First of all the next deckplan poll was an interesting one. Derelict spaceship drifting in space got clearly the most votes, so I would interpret this so that there's a clear demand for "dungeons" that can be dropped in as space encounters - let me know in the comments, if I’m wrong. (And yes, I know that some of you want badly some mech map love! I haven't forgotten about this :) ) 

Divided second place went to a thrust gravity military cruiser (Hecate-class) and a crashlanded spaceship lost somewhere in an alien jungle. 

For this month I'm planning to have the derelict spaceship, a jungle research outpost, a jungle valley map, and 1-2 Infinite Rocket decks / spin-gravity modules done. 

Next month there will be more deckplans (Hecate and jungle crashland) and I'll have a poll about the maps and assets for March later this month. 

 Asset Updates

I just have the new lab and medical assets done and I'm going to release them as soon as possible. However, there is some prep work I need to do first. When I started making assets a little more than a year ago, I didn't have any previous experience in making props and other assets. As a result, the current selection of assets has some inconsistencies in the sizes and the naming is not the best possible. 

I'm going to reserve some time in February and March to go through all my previous assets, organize them by cell/grid size, and make png and webp versions of the assets. I'm also looking into making versions with and without preset shadows and Foundry VTT modules with all the assets. The Dungeondraft custom asset pack is also going to get reorganized and I'm going to reserve time to make some essential and currently missing textures for Dungeondraft. 

Gladly, most of the update work can be automated or done in batches, but first I need to create the needed renaming macros and Photoshop actions, and this is taking a bit extra time.

Written Content for the Map Packs

Finally, I had a poll about the written content in the map packs that had a very clear message about the desired content. 

At first, I was thinking that I'd include a mini-adventure or encounter with all the map packs (for the Hero tier and higher), but the results are telling me that I'd be mostly wasting my time with that. Instead, map area descriptions, tech, and monster/NPC descriptions (also random tables) are something that you are finding useful. 

So, this is what you'll get with the upcoming releases!

Foundry VTT updates

First of all, I'd like to mention that the latest modules published in January and February are done with Foundry version 9 and I was not aware that the new lighting system was not backward compatible with older Foundry versions (e.g. 0.8.9). So, if you are using the older FVTT version the lights are likely broken for you. I apologize for the inconvenience and trouble. 

But, about the new module release model.

After several experiments and thinking through a bunch of different requirements and scenarios I need to keep in mind when publishing Foundry VTT modules, I have settled with two-tiered Foundry VTT modules: premium modules and basic modules. I'm not going into details here, as there are a ton of different reasons why I ended up with this model. 

The latest releases are "premium modules". Each map pack has its own premium module that has dynamic lighting, audio (sound sources and/or playlists), and written content in the journals. Some have/will have premade actors, items, and roll tables. Premium modules are available to Hero and higher-tier patrons. 

Then there will be the "basic modules". The basic modules include one or two versions of each map and there will be a bunch of maps per module. Maps will have basic dynamic lighting and maybe some weather effects, but nothing more than that. Each module will include likely a few dozen maps. The basic modules are updated at the end of the month and once I get the first of these modules released, they will be available to Adventurer tier patrons.  

More about this once the basic modules are released. 

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This post turned out much much longer than I intended. As you can see, there's a lot of work happening in the background besides drawing maps and assets :) 

Thanks for your support and all the best to you!

- Miska