Hey everyone,

I hope you’re all enjoying Battle Map Studio and having a good autumn, wherever you are. It’s getting cold where I live and we’ll probably see our first snow before too long. ❄⛄🌨😄

Since the last update I continued to refine various interfaces, added dozens of new saguaro cacti, and refined the liquid materials/logic.

Palette Layouts

The palette view, or that panel that sits horizontally on the bottom of the screen, is quite large. I personally find the layout to be readable and great for new players and non-PC platforms.



However, I have lately been more critical of the interfaces. I started playing around with a few alternative layouts that might be more useful to experienced players or those who want a more space-efficient layout. In this update I added two new palette layouts: grid and condensed.



The grid layout slices the palette view into two visible rows of fifteen selectors, which is three times as many selectors as the original layout. When using the grid layout, the view scrolls vertically instead of horizontally.



The condensed layout shrinks the whole palette panel by half, making this view occupy much less screen real estate. The selectors shrink so that sixteen selectors are visible, an increase from ten in the original layout. With the condensed view the scroll direction stays horizontal.

Saguaro Cactus

The art department has been working on desert-themed models for a while now and we’re just about finished with the full set. One of the classic desert plants is the Saguaro Cactus, so I felt that there needed to be lots of variety in shape and size.



In total there are 31 variations to play with, differing on size, shape, flowered/no flower, and grouped/single.

Polish

Liquid Tiles

The lava tile was looking a bit too much like orange soda to me, so I reworked the style to hopefully look more like a fiery liquid and not a tasty carbonated beverage. Additionally, when painting soil tiles over lava or quicksand, the liquid tile will now be removed. For some reason I had only added this logic when painting over water, so now it's consistent.

Default Player Permissions

A player recently reported confusion about joining a multiplayer session and not being able to do anything. This was because the default session permissions are set to “Player”, disabling camera movement and editing tools. This can be confusing and disorienting, so I’ve changed the default player permissions to “Collaborator”. When hosting a session, you can set the default permissions in the hosting window.

If you join as a player and would like edit permissions, have the host update your permissions in the Players window (under Multiplayer). Right-click the player in this window and hit "Edit Permissions" to update player privileges.

Mac Users

One or two players mentioned not being able to open Battle Map Studio on a Mac with silicon. I have changed the export option in Unity to Intel, instead of the Universal option, so your Mac should automatically switch to opening Battle Map Studio with Rosetta instead.

I don’t have a Mac with silicon readily available for me to test with, so if you are a Mac user please let me know if this update is working for you!

Other Polish

• Fixed a visual bug where certain tiles were not visible over liquids.
  
• Hovering over an element in the palette will now display the full name in a tooltip.
  

Thanks so much for your feedback and support! Let me know how you're liking this update, join the Discord, or leave a review.

-Bradley