Virtual Battlemap

I am unsure as to how to review this game. POSITIVES It delivers what it promises. There are many and varied tile sets, so you can make maps for anywhere, and with mixing and matching just about anything can be done. NEGATIVES Each tile set is limited, and repeats useless items and fails to provide useful items. The space dungeon has barely any furniture. Each Tile set needs more. The monsters has great beasts, but lacks the basics, orc, goblin, etc. The User Interface is terrible and cumbersome. The thumnails are often hard to see and can be too dark to decypher. Plus there is no search feature, so when you have all the DLC, remembering where that one obsucre thing you need is hard and unfindable. When creating large maps of dungeon, there is not cut and paste to copy floor areas or buildings. IT requires a proper gaming machine to run, which means you need a good pc, at your gaming table. The bigger map you want, the beefier the PC needed. Overall, I have found use for the game. I ahve built many maps and enjoy it mostly. But I would hope that each tile set is upgraded and the UI is massively overhauled .

Итак,что же я хочу сказать об этом приложении,в первую очередь,покупал я ее для быстрой постройки данжей,и экспорта их в игровой движок. Однако,как оказалось,это приложение,существует для экспорта не моделек(и данжей),а для экспорта картинки карты. Т.е. для чего же нужно данное приложение? Ответ: Что бы вы быстренько накидали данжу, зафоткали ее, и использовали ее в качестве настолки. Экспорта моделек типа fbx,obj и т.д. тут нет (если порыться,найдете в обсуждения вопрос об экспорте,там автор говорит,что программа для этого не предназначена). Для чего она нужна? ( Da her ee znaet,vse mozno takje nakidat' v lybom igrovom dvijke) . Мне это приложение не актуально,возвращаю денежки. Но за работу автора,поставлю хорошую рекомендацию.

Ok - This is a mixed review. I see moments of greatness here, but there are some hurdles to overcome. The short is - I can't recommend this program yet. The authors say they built the software to promote playing, but the User Interface and flow is extremely limited. For a beginner, it is servicable, but the UI is so limited, extremely advanced or complex maps take far longer to make than a normal person has time to do. There are also some BAFFLING decisions about the base content and how to make a few quick dungeon rooms for an evening - in short, you can't. If the User Interface had a few tweaks and additions (like locking, grouping and copying) and the base dungeon walls and floors had some redesign, I would be singing this application's praise. I hope the authors of this program really take some of the following points to heart and revise the core product a bit. I really like what I see, but find the current implementation useless for my time. [h1]The Good[/h1] [list] [*]Beautiful Models - the artwork for the base game and the caverns DLC is very good. There are very nice-looking walls, floors and accessories which will make your map stand out. [*]Camera flexibility - I like being able to take a snapshot at any practical angle as well as the overhead [*]simplified Interface - In general, the interface provides a simplified 3D editing environment that doesn't overwhelm. [*]Good selection of DLC content [*]Nice generation of viewing files [/list] [h1]The Bad[/h1] [list] [*]Most Models are not sized equal to the game grid. Man - talk about walls and floors not being easy to work with. Let's say I want to make a 120x100 room. First off - none of the floor tiles equal the square grid sizes. Additionally, you cannot use the snap function to actually place a tile against the edit grid, It is always a little off. Finally, you have to place 120 individual tiles down to make the floor. [*]Lack of a complete set of similar objects for even a single room. Ouch. I hoped that there would be a basic toolkit of different wall styles that could be combined together in a fashion similar to the Dwarven Forge dungeon system - predefined corner objects, basic walls, walls with doors, etc. If you had about 7-10 different 10x10 objects, you could get a great head-start on nearly any room. Get three different styles, and this would be amazing. With ONE exception, you cannot quickly put together a room with 4 corners and side walls. It is impossible without overlapping models to make a room smaller that 100x100. [*]Floors and walls are not consistently mateable. Try to put a wall next to a floor? the wall starts LOWER than the floor and even leaves a gap. One way to fix this is to add a ring of floors around the room and place the walls on them. Even wall-to-wall placement leaves gaps. I could go on... [*]Lack of Orthographic(Parallel) Projection. I know Unity can do this. My top-down maps must always be 3-D? [*]Light Sources cannot have radius changed [*]Extremely clunky interface - You cannot become a power-user with this interface. You cannot lock objects from being selected. This means you may have to MOVE the camera around to get to an object to select it. This ruins what you were attempting to see from a given angle since you have to CHANGE the angle to select the object. If I could LOCK the column that I keep hitting because the throne is behind the bounding box, then I don't have to change my current camera position to fix what I want. [*]no way to lay out floors randomly or easily. take a 120x100 room, That is 120 floor selections minimum that must be manually selected EACH time, manually rotated EACH time and positioned EACH time. If there was a way to select 5-7 different tiles and have the selection AUTOMATICALLY change (and randomly rotate too), then all that would need to be done would be to click 120 times on the map to make the floor. EVEN better would be a way to select a rectangular area and have it poplulate the end result. [*]no alignment mechanism when stacking items - There is NO help to line objects up to each other [*]No way to group items together and move them as a unit later - must be done immediately. I made this beautiful dais and throne and couldn't group all the items together and DUPLICATE it. I wanted to create a couple of standard groups of barrels and pottery and then replicate them in a treasure room - No way Jose.

Tale Spire has done a better job at less cost.

I would recommend anyone looking for a battle map making software to steer clear of this. Don't get me wrong, what it does do with the limited assets that it comes with, it does well. It just seems that the developer of this is more concerned with releasing DLC than providing a fully functional map making program with the assets to make it useful. If you buy this, you may find that you are able to make a couple of battle maps, though the style will be repetitive as the base program doesn't have a lot going on in the assets department (different tiles and terrains, objets, etc..) instead you will be nickle and dimed to DEATH trying to accrue enough dlc to keep your map insteresting. My advice would be to avoid this application all together and purchase Illwinter's Floorplan Generator, you will be infinitely happier with your decision (Illwinter's has workshop support with tons of terrains and assets, you can also import your own). Don't waste your money on this. You'll be DLC'ed into bankruptcy. Go get Illwinter's.

Really not very pleasant to use. The export options are not great. Scrolling through the menus is bugged and now I can either see the top of the menu or the bottom of the menu but not the middle. This can't be the best option for making dungeons.

I'll start by saying that even though I wouldn't recommand buying now, it's still a good product that does its job as advertised and that's why I have this many hours on it. But it has too many downsides to be considered worth. I have bought this software in 2016. In 4 years, all we got was themed DLC (to say it simply, more stuff to put on your map). Not a single update was brought to the core software which REALLY needs it. Things it is missing and we ask for since 2016 in the steam discussion page: - No keyboard configuration - No copy paste - No true orthographic view (In your 2D map export, cells on the border will be bigger than cells in the center of your map, which means it's hard to use in stuff lke roll20) - No search function for props - No custom asset import - No shared user-generated-content When I first bought it I was fine with it honestly, it still creates cool looking 3D environment that you can stream in addition to your 2D map. But the state of the soft is WORSE than 4 years ago. First nail on the coffin : In 2016, there was an official website : http://www.virtualbattlemap.com/ It was basic but had a shared folder where everyone could put it's own maps. It saved me a lot of time. Well now this website redirects directly to the steam page and any sort of community assets is forgotten. Second nail : there hasn't been any new content or update since April 2018. Forget this software and chech the competition.

I am really on the fence about whether to give this a positive or a negative. I would like to give it a solid "neutral" and so I will give it a thumbs down FOR NOW until they fix some usability issues. While I am patient and persevere through them, or find work arounds, I shouldn't have to be since they are pretty simple things. Pros: Great textures Great Ideas for it Can make beautiful lighting on the maps. Cons: Expensive as hell (creators justify it, but whether you agree or not, it's still damn expensive) Tedious to the max! I don't mean like "oh, you gotta get things right", I mean like "oh, the things dont stick to each other, don't line up with the tiles, and often clip or create odd angles" because the actual placement of the objects needs a lot of thought and work (one simple improvement: allow floors to "stick" into the grid). Further, the UI is abominable. They REALLY need to think about usability here. The ideas are great, but they need to think about how people actually use programs. This would require more explanation than a simple steam review, but suffice to say, the UI is tedious and nearly unusable.

Virtual Battlemap creates visually appealing battle maps. Unfortunately, it makes you work really hard for it. The first thing you’ll notice is how bad the user interface is. It feels at best random as if the developer was putting things wherever they fit, or at worst like the developer hates you. Picking assets is a consuming chore. And once you find what you want, if you find what you want, then you have to place it. Most of the assets are visually stunning when they’re not glitching out. The attractiveness is the saving grace of the software ruined by the fact that that the variety can be limiting and sometimes disappear when you rotate them. Scale on assets can be strange; especially, between the stock assets and DLC assets. Placing the assets on the grid is annoying at best. The assets try to snap, but they don’t do so in an accurate or consistent manner. The tools for moving them around (moving, rotation, and scaling) are pretty good. And that’s good, because without them the software would be unusable. After a while you’ll get proficient with placing the assets down, but you’ll still have to deal with tweaking them. For example, placing a floor should be a quick and easy matter of plopping one down after another. Unfortunately, they don’t snap perfectly so you’ll be adjusting all of them. Dungeon Painter Studio is a better compromise between being good software and visually appealing battle maps. And at least with it you can lean on the Steam Workshop for assets. You’re stuck paying about $15 a pop for Virtual Battlemap DLC that should include a lot more than it does. I could go on and on about how frustrating the software is to use. And frankly, you shouldn’t buy it or use it if you’re looking for quality designed software. The developer had a great idea, but implemented it poorly. That said, you should use Virtual Battlemap if you can live with all of the problems. You’ll end up with good looking battle maps. I will continue to use it in addition to other software, because I’m already invested in it. There is a cool novelty to designing the maps in 3D. It’s just too bad the developer doesn’t know how to design an interface.

User interface is very bad. The maps this program designs are very high quality, however even after watching the tutorial I find the software hard to use, and have deleted many maps by accident because the software will override work without warning. I really wanted to like this, but I am left very frustrated.