Our beta has launched! This means that everyone who backed the Adventurer tier or higher will receive a mail in their inbox later today with their personal Steam Key, and will be able to download and test the very first version of Dungeon Alchemist!
This update contains information on the state of Dungeon Alchemist as we going into the beta phase.
The state of Dungeon Alchemist
We're calling this a beta as that's what we called it in the Kickstarter campaign, but in all fairness this is not entirely correct. Theoretically, a beta is a finished product that only needs some more finetuning and bugfixing, but currently Dungeon Alchemist is still in active development.
All the core functionality is in place, but there's still a lot of content and features to be added in the future. It is important to realize this, as we don't want to give you the false impression that this is the finished product with a few bugs in it.
This build of Dungeon Alchemist already features 700+ objects, 5 themes, a fully functional AI, a solid editor and export functionality, but there's a lot of things missing as well. Don't worry: we'll be adding them over the coming months.
Also, please take note that a beta that starts with 25k+ players is not standard. Normally, you start with a small group (10, 20 people) and slowly add more people as you get more confident. However, we didn't feel like this would be fair, since we promised all the Adventurer pledgers the same beta access. That's why we're letting everyone in at once, which means we'll also be dealing with feedback from 25k people on the first day. So please be patient with us as we work through your questions.
YouTube/streaming policy
This beta contains a watermark in the bottom right that makes it obvious that this is a beta version and not the finished product. As long as you keep the watermark in view and state explicitly that you are using a beta version, feel free to use Dungeon Alchemist for streaming or on YouTube. We'd LOVE to see what you come up with!
Commercial license
We have posted our terms of use, and with it the terms for using Dungeon Alchemist commercially. We are super excited to say that we decided to settle on a very lenient commercial license. Here's the relevant part of the terms of use:
"If the User however qualifies as a legal entity (in the broadest sense) and uses the Software for commercial purposes, the current License cannot / no longer be used if the User (or its affiliates in the broadest sense) generate(s) an annual turnover of more than 100,000.00 USD."
In other words, as long as you're not using Dungeon Alchemist in a company that earns more than $100k annually, you're fine to use the app commercially. If you do earn more than $100k, you should contact us for a tailor-made license.
What's next?
We are only at the start of this journey. There's a long road ahead of us, but we plan to see it to the end and make you the best mapmaking software out there, period. We will be continually adding new features to the beta over the coming months.
In order to communicate what we have planned for you, we have set up a roadmap on our site. It contains a list of things we want to focus on in the short term and things we want to accomplish later. We will be updating the roadmap as we release new versions of the app, so check it regularly!
Here's what we'll be working on next:
Implement the outdoors environment (including AI)
Implement the room UI: allow switching the room theme and adding/removing tiles from existing rooms
Improve the AI on all fronts (especially the way lights spawn)
Improve the quality of the export, make sure all objects are recognizable top-down
Create other backgrounds besides the default one (including forest backgrounds)
Add more stairs (especially descending ones)
As the beta progresses, we'll work through the stretch goals and start adding those as well. If you pledged the Dungeon Master tier or higher, you can also expect the customizable flag and exclusive objects to appear during beta. The Grand Master pledgers will see their triptych added at release.
In the meantime, we suggest you start playing around! Let us know what you think about it on our Discord server. Getting your honest feedback is one of the reasons we decided to do a beta, so bring it on! But don't forget to enjoy yourself along the way :).
Yours in cartomancy,
Wim De Hert & Karel Crombecq