Today we have released a major update to our Online Battlemap Editor, featuring new tools for brushes and shapes, adding new functionalities to rooms and textures and a lot of features that you have requested. Over the past months we have collected your feedback, your suggestions and your ideas and we have compiled them into a bundle of new features that are now available online.

Introducing V5

For the first time, our updates to the battlemap editor are so massive, that we had to introduce them as a new version instead of an update to the existing version. See all new features in action in our V5 update video:

New Features

⬆️ New: All new brush tool

The completely reworked brush tool gives you brand new creative possibilities to style and personalize your maps. A brush is now much more than just a line. You can now modify a brush layer after drawing by adding or erasing from it. Brush layers now also behave like props. You can now sort them in the layer list and draw over other objects to conceal them.

⬆️ New: All new shape tool

Shapes are mightier than ever before. You can now freehand-draw them like a brush and edit them afterwards by erasing and adding to them. Embrace your creativity and create uniqe stairs, pedestals and any other objects you cannot find in the props library.

⬆️ New: Texture picker

Always find the correct texture! All fill-pickers have now the ability of a picker pipette to quickly copy from an existing fill or border.

⬆️ New: Room improvements

• ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Duplicate Rooms
  You can now duplicate rooms by using the shortcut CTRL+D. 
  
  
• Transform Rooms
  Rotate rooms and groups of rooms by using SHIFT+SCROLLWHEEL or precisely by entering degrees pressing the R-Key.
  Scale rooms and all their contents with SHIFT+CTRL+SCROLLWHEEL.
  
  
• Split walls easily
  Use the circular context menu on a wall to quickly split it.

⬆️ New: Duplicate Levels

The level list now allows to quickly duplicate a level.

⬆️ New: Doors and light

You now can toggle if either doors are blocking light or not. This is independet to the selected door texture.

Bugfixes

✅ Auto patch corrupted maps

Opening a map will now run automatically run safety and corruption checks. This should reduce the number of crashes and unresponsive editors. Note: Maploading takes now a bit longer.

✅ Token loading

Sometimes tokens in the campaign manager didn't load correctly. This should be fixed now.

✅ Other improvements and fixes

Resolved crashes with room groups and undo. New smoother drop shadows. More reliable batch uploads of assets to the asset manager.

Experimental

⚠️ Test: Convert shapes to rooms

We are planing to expand the functionality of the room tool and for that we are bringing this experimental feature to the shapes tool. Simply draw a shape and convert it to a room. You can help us find bugs and describe your experience.

Brushes and shapes have received a major overhaul that is not fully compatible with the old brush and shape mechanics. To make sure that all your existing maps stay accessible and unaffected by the update, we have released the new features as a separate version.

• Opening your existing maps will use the previous version until you decide you want to convert them into V5 (read more about converting maps here).
• New maps will automatically use V5.
• To make sure that the transition is as smooth as possible, we are offering the option to create new maps in the old version as well.

When you create a new map it will automatically use V5, but old maps will still open in the previous version. To bring them into V5 you have to convert the map using the “Convert to V5” in the context menu of your map. Our update script will do its best to convert your old brushes and shapes, but especially for maps with extensive use of brushes, there can be problems converting. To help you with the conversion process we are offering two options:

1. Hide all exisiting brushes. This will keep all brushes, but sets them to “hidden” in your layer list. You can then manually make each brush visible one by one and adjust them to fit your map. Please note that this might be more than your browser can take and can lead to WebGL giving up. 

2. Delete all existing brushes. This will remove all brushes from your map. By this you will have the full performance and stability on your map, but you will have to redo all the brushes.

3. Stay in the old version. If you are unsure whether you should convert your map, you can always stay in the old version.