Expand Inkarnate to be a VTT
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M
Muse Craft Studios
Big ask, but other VTT's either have poor quality features, image quality, never fix bugs or update wanted features, or are stuck behind some significant paywalls. I'm a pro member, and know people need to be paid, so that's not the issue. Inkarnate already has the best map making (imo) it would be a no brainer to use the maps created here on the same site if it were also a VTT. I'd rather pay for another form of subscription here where I can trust that the art and features are quality and the community is heard and actively responded to than begrudgingly use a free, let alone paid option that does nothing but stress me and my players out.
I could see how using Inkarnate made maps on an Inkarnate VTT would potentially allow for better in real time customization of maps during gameplay like adding and removing assets, depicting the change of lighting, adding filters, adding/editing text, etc. Hiding layers of environments and pathways and revealing them either by toggling the eye icon or for example in the map uploaded here, if I were to remove the roof asset to reveal the upper level.
Example of trying to use a map on a VTT site that lowered the quality, compared to the actual quality from the Inkarnate map.
(Credit: I cloned and edited a Mati map)
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Philipp
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Anonymous
Tabletop in the Inkarnate , with access of the assetes
Philipp
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Ingmar Gagen
Are there any specific flaws that you’d like to see fixed if we did a VTT (aside from the resolution)? And what would the other important features be, or perhaps some features that aren’t important to you that could be skipped.
M
Muse Craft Studios
Ingmar Gagen There's probably dozens of ideas that have come to mind when thinking about this, but to compile some big ones. I don't know how creating things like this works or how difficult it would be to implement them so hopefully these don't sound outrageous and impossible.
Features I think would be neat/useful:
- Map making/Items
a. There's already the typical Token, Lighting, GM, and Map layers.
b. Expanding that for more customization and ease of use. Adding at least one Items layer (or something similar) specifically for objects that players can interact with on the map.
c. More than one Map layer. Maybe this blends into GM layer a bit? The idea is that I could theoretically present a map to players of a house and take away walls/roofs/floors to reveal new areas. These layers would be only managed by the GM, but is not necessarily for say hiding monsters and traps in.
- Accessibility
a. Have things like chat, info, option boxes, etc be able to pop out and be moved around, minimized, toggled view in a similar way to how art program workspaces do.
b. Choose color and transparency of text and background of said boxes.
c. Size and font style options for text and be Text to Voice/Voice to Text/Text Reader compatible
- Dynamic lighting/Filters
a. With some of the new wall features coming out on Inkarnate, they'd be SO useful for dynamic lighting if there was a toggle for specifying walls, doors, or objects to be effected by dynamic lighting.
b. The filters that Inkarnate already has and is likely going to expand on in the future would be awesome to use in games to add a sense of time changing, enemy layer action effects, and more.
Pass or fix:
- Digital dice are cool and all but they tend to be super laggy or obtrusive.
a. Maybe just have small dice that don't bounce all around the page? Like a mini dice tray, they stay in a specific area. Or in a chat.
- Voice Chat/Video Chat
a. I'm pretty sure most people use other platforms like Discord when online gaming. Not sure how necessary this feature is.
- Auto sizing
a. I loathe when my map and tokens are stretched or squished against my wishes and I can't do anything about it.
Thank you for anyone who took the time to read, consider, and vote for this!