Price?

[Scab Reaper]

Just curious, why is this game $65 AUD, but it's in early access? how finished is this product exactly?

[Raveler]

It's pretty much feature-complete and has been in closed beta (with 30k users) for half a year, but it's still missing some content. We already have 1500+ objects so it's not like there's nothing there, but we didn't want to keep people from using the app just because we want 5000 objects instead of 1500 :).

[Euphamia]

I have bought a few of these programs over the years and must say. The price seems a bit high. Maybe a demo would help sell that "higher" price

[lordlethris]

Its quite usable as it is. I will be streaming this later if you want to see it working live.

[EvilDutchrebel]

Originally posted by Euphamia:

I have bought a few of these programs over the years and must say. The price seems a bit high. Maybe a demo would help sell that "higher" price

It might be a high price, but it's worth every single cent, I've been making my maps on it for my sessions and have been a life savor!

[morq-BN]

Speaking of a Mapmaking tool as game...

[Soul Scribbler Kupo]

This is the best map making tool out there and well worth the price if you plan on creating a lot of maps. With the amount of work put into it and all the features, I think the price is fair.

Edit: I forgot to mention that many (most?) early access games don't come out at a lower price than they will when they hit full release. And honestly this tool is pretty much ready for prime time, it's just missing a few promised features.

[Euphamia]

I wouldent say this is the best... I could name a few much better and higher profile ones that have quite a few features.

[morq-BN]

Originally posted by Euphamia:

I wouldent say this is the best... I could name a few much better and higher profile ones that have quite a few features.

so name some...
for me the pricetag is right now to high. but a sale will come, after they released some addons. the features in the first video look quite cool for what it is - a tool to make quickly very nice looking battlemaps... or some kind of heroquest maps ;)

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

I'm fine with the price, assuming that it will continue to develop and more features will be added over time.

Most of all, I'd like to see monsters and character tokens added, and the ability to share a map with other devices (players) in real time with the ability to move their character tokens around and apply line of sight and fog of war to the map (so I can use this as a real time battlemap in an actual game without printing...instead, I just send it to my players devices).

Some more weather effects would be cool as well...fog, snow, smoke (for burning buildings), etc.

And then maybe some love for multi-storey buildings, either by allowing us to see an overlay ghost image of the underlying level (so we can appropriately build atop those levels), or making each map literally multi-level...either way works for me. I just want to be able to make the Wizard's Tower and have all the rooms and stuff line up logically.

I'm super impressed by this software so far, I only want to see it expand and grow and add more and more features over time!

[Gergolot]

You pay for the AI and dungeon generation. Yeah there are other tools that are cheaper, and I have a bunch - but this application is designed to save time, and it does. It takes maybe 2 minutes to make a map from scratch with all rooms filled and upload that to Foundry with walls and lighting and be ready for use. That's really what this program offers.

[Wraith_Magus]

Originally posted by pandariuskairos:

I'm fine with the price, assuming that it will continue to develop and more features will be added over time.

Most of all, I'd like to see monsters and character tokens added, and the ability to share a map with other devices (players) in real time with the ability to move their character tokens around and apply line of sight and fog of war to the map (so I can use this as a real time battlemap in an actual game without printing...instead, I just send it to my players devices).

If you're saying the price is fine on the assumption that there will be an option to put monsters and characters into this software, then you should be aware that the devs have responded to requests for those features by saying that you should just export these maps to VTTs programs to do that, and they don't intend to add creatures or character tokens.

In general, I see a LOT of Steam reviews go negative after having been staunchly positive because buyers seem to presume features are going to be added that never do end up added, and the positive review was based more on hype than fact. If you think a game is going to be great eventually, but isn't today, I always tell players to wait until it's the game they want rather than buy something they don't want hoping it will become something they do later...

That said, Foundry VTT is $50, and I paid that just to get off of Roll20 and appreciate having a pay-once-and-own-it system more than a subscription. I paid $40 for a world mapping system that suited my needs. I paid $7 for Illwinter's Floorplan Generator, meanwhile, but it doesn't have a procedural floorplan generator I actually care for, so I'd actually like Dungeon Alchemist more if I could use it more modularly. Not having the ability to import assets and being bound by what the company itself makes is a serious negative and doesn't make me want to switch from something that works just because this thing can make random maps faster, but would then hobble my ability to add variety.

[DasWulf]

When I saw the price, I had to chuckle a bit.
Let me blunt. Candid. Direct.
This "software" is silly, even as a niche. No professional level designer worth their weight would use this. If you are amateur, then there are still better options that allow you to grow, that are free.

Who exactly is the target audience? D&D Dungeon Masters? Maybe. But even then, there are better solutions out there for free, or even at cost. What this gives you is something pretty, probably for the lazy, but it does not necessarily replace what is needed for quality designs.

I'm not intentionally trying to besmirch the developer, but I have to question what kind of target audience they were considering when making it. I don't think they have good business sense, which is fine. Not everyone does. You often learn through experience.

That said...

The price is high, the audience is small, and even that small fragment might consider more realistic alternatives. Imo it was a bad investment to begin with and when you price it that high you guarantee the target is even smaller. Sometimes you can make far more profit by aiming for quantity.

To anyone this software targets, with all sincere honesty, consider blender, among other things, first for your level/dungeon designs. Hell, I'd even recommend digital painting/drawing software with a grid template.

[Eradan]

The target audience is me, and people like me.

I can do technical drawings, but that's it. Anything else always ends up being unusable. This tool gives me an easy way to make nice-looking maps for my players to play on, instead of the current blue and white ones that I'm using, like this one https://i.imgur.com/4QY5k1i.png

And no, I'm not lazy. I simply don't have the skills needed, nor the time to acquire them.

[Wraith_Magus]

Originally posted by CPCEradan:

The target audience is me, and people like me.

I can do technical drawings, but that's it. Anything else always ends up being unusable. This tool gives me an easy way to make nice-looking maps for my players to play on, instead of the current blue and white ones that I'm using, like this one https://i.imgur.com/4QY5k1i.png

And no, I'm not lazy. I simply don't have the skills needed, nor the time to acquire them.

There are more alternatives to this software than just drawing something completely freehand, however. Just Google "dungeon mapping software", and you'll be bombarded with lists of recommended programs, many of which are free.

The only thing that stands out as actually useful about this software that is unique to it is that it has an algorithm to place props automatically. Even just going to donjon has a push-button-make-random-dungeon system that even adds the encounters and details the traps and even fills in loot tables for you. (It's all low-detail square rooms, but hey, you can then edit the content and draw the rooms in other map-making software yourself...)

The fact that Dungeon Alchemist doesn't allow for encounter generation or take what creatures should be living here into account is a major negative, as is the fact that you can't add your own assets to make any given area unique.

To add to that, Illwinter's Floorplan Generator (which is $7, by the way, if we're talking about price,) has a Steam Workshop page that lets me add tens of thousands of assets just by clicking a button, and I can easily import my own objects or even floor textures, which means I'm not forced to beg the developer to add assets my game needs before I can use them. The 3d modeling is really pretty, but nobody but the DM making the map actually sees them, while I can't imagine the process of making detailed animated 3d models wouldn't add to the amount of delays or project cost compared to simple 2d artwork. Since this program requires you export it to 2d to use it for anything since it doesn't support playing in the program or exporting in any 3d format, there's basically no way to use these 3d assets for anything, anyway. The 3d assets are not there to make your game better, they're there to catch your eye as a customer. (Or as the saying goes, "fishing lures aren't designed to catch fish, they're designed to catch fishermen.") A cheaper (or even free) program may well have more actual utility for your game if you're interested in making your dungeon layout by hand, anyway.

The biggest reason to go for a program like this seems to be to have it make randomized filler content very quickly. Things like making random side houses you put no thought into have content and not seem barren so that it isn't glaringly obvious which house is the one the plot revolves around because it's the only one with detail. The problem is, for that sort of duty, the content this program puts out would need to be able to look like what you make by hand, and it doesn't do that if it doesn't play well with other programs and refuses to use non-proprietary assets, because it then makes your unique assets stand out like a sore thumb if you have to make the plot-relevant stuff in a different program because this program doesn't have the assets you need.

[morq-BN]

Originally posted by Wraith_Magus:

Originally posted by CPCEradan:

The target audience is me, and people like me.

I can do technical drawings, but that's it. Anything else always ends up being unusable. This tool gives me an easy way to make nice-looking maps for my players to play on, instead of the current blue and white ones that I'm using, like this one https://i.imgur.com/4QY5k1i.png

And no, I'm not lazy. I simply don't have the skills needed, nor the time to acquire them.

There are more alternatives to this software than just drawing something completely freehand, however. Just Google "dungeon mapping software", and you'll be bombarded with lists of recommended programs, many of which are free.

The only thing that stands out as actually useful about this software that is unique to it is that it has an algorithm to place props automatically. Even just going to donjon has a push-button-make-random-dungeon system that even adds the encounters and details the traps and even fills in loot tables for you. (It's all low-detail square rooms, but hey, you can then edit the content and draw the rooms in other map-making software yourself...)

The fact that Dungeon Alchemist doesn't allow for encounter generation or take what creatures should be living here into account is a major negative, as is the fact that you can't add your own assets to make any given area unique.

To add to that, Illwinter's Floorplan Generator (which is $7, by the way, if we're talking about price,) has a Steam Workshop page that lets me add tens of thousands of assets just by clicking a button, and I can easily import my own objects or even floor textures, which means I'm not forced to beg the developer to add assets my game needs before I can use them. The 3d modeling is really pretty, but nobody but the DM making the map actually sees them, while I can't imagine the process of making detailed animated 3d models wouldn't add to the amount of delays or project cost compared to simple 2d artwork. Since this program requires you export it to 2d to use it for anything since it doesn't support playing in the program or exporting in any 3d format, there's basically no way to use these 3d assets for anything, anyway. The 3d assets are not there to make your game better, they're there to catch your eye as a customer. (Or as the saying goes, "fishing lures aren't designed to catch fish, they're designed to catch fishermen.") A cheaper (or even free) program may well have more actual utility for your game if you're interested in making your dungeon layout by hand, anyway.

The biggest reason to go for a program like this seems to be to have it make randomized filler content very quickly. Things like making random side houses you put no thought into have content and not seem barren so that it isn't glaringly obvious which house is the one the plot revolves around because it's the only one with detail. The problem is, for that sort of duty, the content this program puts out would need to be able to look like what you make by hand, and it doesn't do that if it doesn't play well with other programs and refuses to use non-proprietary assets, because it then makes your unique assets stand out like a sore thumb if you have to make the plot-relevant stuff in a different program because this program doesn't have the assets you need.

Thein you missed the biggest part - auto lightning/field of view...
importing into foundry with a click. havent´t used it, but right now i´m doing similar things with google search and inserting maps / Image i like to use for an encounter on the fly in Fantsy grounds unity... but fgu always slows down when importing stuff...
and there is NO need at all for an encounter generator inside this maping tool...
illmater is nice and has a great price tag - but the maps are simply ugly compared to dungeon alchemist - and it needs more time than i have on the fly. and then i have to do lightning inside fgu...
no right now i see dungeon alchemist as an great program - but i have to switch to foundry before i test it for 2 hours ... don´t know why people need a demo on steam with the easy refund...
and for me it´s strange when people say, there´s better stuff, but don´t name it...