Welcome to our campaign for Dungeon Builder, a brand new isometric dungeon map maker for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

The map shown in our video is drawn with Dungeon Builder

Dungeon Builder

During the dark winter evenings of January 2014, I got inspired by some of the amazing isometric dungeon maps floating around the Internet, and I decided to try and hand draw my own isometric map. I failed miserably, so I formed an alliance with my artist friend Aage and turned my efforts to what I do know - designing and programming applications.

We've been slowly developing the application in our free time for years, but now that Dungeon Builder is nearing its completion, we hope that you will help us find the funds needed to take time off from our day jobs, in order to finally finish our map maker.

Dungeon Builder lets anyone, regardless of their art skills, make beautiful, isometric, high resolution maps that look hand drawn.

Additionally, if you want to add your own drawings to your maps, all you have to do is drop your drawing and a file with a bit of extra information into Dungeon Builder's Custom folder and you're good to go.

See it in Action

If you're curious, we really recommend downloading our demo and giving it a try. Even though all the features are not in yet, we think you'll be able to see just how amazing Dungeon Builder could be with just a few months of further work.

If you don't feel like downloading the demo, you can check out the the video below for a demonstration of Dungeon Builder.

Project Goal

If you back this project, your pledge will go towards doubling the number of art assets available in Dungeon Builder (compared to the demo), as well as completing the all basic functionality in the application.

In terms of functionality, that covers:

Saving and loading maps

Exporting maps as images

Text placement and editing for notes and descriptions on your maps

Changing map size and orientation

Changing map background textures

Additional selection modes for better editing

Dragging map items to re-position them

As for doubling the amount of art available in Dungeon Builder, here's what we intend to add:

Caves

Cage walls & doors

Beds and other furniture

More building features

Loads of smaller items to make your dungeons look inhabited and unique

A look at what's available in Dungeon Builder's demo

Please note: The floor symbol below the tables in the image above is a reference to the brilliant game series The Longest Journey. To avoid any potential copyright issues, this symbol will be replaced by another similar asset as soon as possible.

Stretch Goals

Our vision goes far beyond the initial funding goal. We want to add much more art, make the editor even better, and add a Play mode to Dungeon Builder as well.

To make all that possible, we have a lot of stretch goals. For each goal met, your map maker will become even better.

We want you to be able to build many different looking dungeons, so when we reach our first stretch goal, we'll add an additional wall type, an additional floor type, and three new door types.

Our current walls are cool, but wouldn't it be great if you could stack walls to create multi storey buildings? If we reach this goal, we'll add at least two wall types that can be stacked.

We'd love to have really cool options for water on our maps, so if we reach this goal, we'll find a way to add "watercolour" rivers and streams to Dungeon Builder's palette. The watercolour effect will be reminiscent of the coloured portals available in the demo.

Maybe we're biased from playing too much Baldur's Gate, but we think it would be awesome to be able to add train tracks, mine carts and large rock faces to Dungeon Builder's art collection.

When we reach this goal, we're going to have a lot of art in Dungeon Builder, so it makes a lot of sense to start adding features that make it easier to find exactly what you want. Adding a way to specify precisely what colour map you want is also a priority, along with adding more background textures.

There are certain dangers in placing all our art in its original form right there in the application folder, for everyone to view and edit. However, if we reach this goal, we'll do just that. In order to give anyone who wants to add their own art to Dungeon Builder as good a foundation as possible, we'll include all the art made for this campaign as "mods" instead of "baking" it into the application.

Dungeons are cool, but dungeons with neat entrances are even better. At this level, we'll add trees, grass, and building roofs to the art collection.

Having a map centrepiece, where the big boss or the amazing treasure is, sounds pretty good. So at this level, we'll add three huge "watercolour" set pieces, including a waterfall for use with our rivers and streams.

What if we could play our games right there in the application? That would be amazing! At this level we'll add a feature to reveal areas as your players explore them. We'll also add ten adventurer tokens and ten monster tokens to the art collection, add a dice rolling function, and allow the game master to hide certain map notes while printing or playing.

If we make it to this level, we'll implement some kind of "fog of war" feature, so only revealed tiles within your adventurer tokens' range of view is visible during Play mode. We'll also add 20 more monster tokens and make token movement more fluent by adding a sliding animation.

At this level, the simple adventurer and monster tokens are replaced by actual drawings. Do you prefer tokens? We'll find a way to add a configurable token that can be used with your own images. Finally, we'll add multi screen support, so players see a completely different screen than the DM. This will effectively allow the DM to change the map mid-game.

For those groups that can't meet in person to play, we really want to add a network multiplayer mode, enabling all the unlocked Play Mode features to be used over the internet.

You spoke and we listened: if we reach 750.000 DKK, we'll add a feature to export your maps to a Top Down View, allowing you to print battle ready top down maps for use with miniatures or tokens. Please note that this stretch goal was added after delivery was estimated, so to ensure that we do not delay the entire project if we reach this goal, work on the top down view will not start until we have delivered everything else from the Kickstarter campaign. If unlocked, the Top Down View feature will be added gradually during the two to three months after the release of version 1.0.

Project Rewards

Credit

We like to give credit where it's due, so if you help us in any way, we'd like to include you in our application credits. If you're the Batman of Kickstarter and would prefer to remain anonymous, you can opt to have an alias listed instead of your full name (or to not be listed at all).

Dungeon Builder

All pledge levels apart from "A helping hand" include Dungeon Builder, available from our website in May 2017. Dungeon Builder will include everything described in the Project Goal section above, and for every stretch goal we reach, Dungeon Builder will be improved for everyone.

Beta Access

Can't wait to start building Dungeons? All pledges from the Beta Builder level and up includes Beta Access. Backers at these levels will get a login to a special page on our website where they'll be able to download the latest Dungeon Builder releases throughout the development process.

Technically speaking, the beta phase starts when an application is feature complete, so by that definition you'll also get Alpha Access.

The first build available after the demo is planned to release two weeks after the Kickstarter campaign ends.

Specify a Map Item

If you have a great idea for an art asset, and want to make sure it makes it into Dungeon Builder, the Dungeon Carpenter, Stonemason, Planner, Engineer and Architect levels are for you. At these levels you get to specify a map decoration, piece of furniture, building piece or similar. Items made in this way adds to everyone's art collection, so we'll give you credit in the item's tool tip and in the status bar when the item is selected.

Tool tip and status bar credits for backer items

The size of the item depends on the pledge level. To give you an idea of the item sizes, we've made a little illustration.

An illustration of the different sizes of map items

Carpenter (Small): 1 tile

Stonemason (Medium): 2x2 tiles or similar

Engineer (Large): 3x3 tiles or similar

Planner (Huge): 4x4 tiles or similar

Architect (Gigantic): 5x5 tiles or similar

Specify a Creature

Heroes, villains and monsters are similar to ordinary map items, but require a lot more work and attention to detail. Therefore, the pledge amount to size ratio is a bit higher for these types of drawings. As with Map Items, the size of the item depends on the pledge level.

Guard (Small): 1 tile

Commander (Medium): 2x2 tiles or similar

Lady/Lord (Large): 3x3 tiles or similar

Indie and Pro Licences

Indie and Pro versions of Dungeon Builder are identical in to Personal versions in terms of functionality and art. But with these versions, you are allowed to use maps exported from Dungeon Builder in published (print/e-book) material, royalty and attribution free.

Multiple Rewards

If you would like multiple Dungeon Builder licenses, just add the amount listed at the reward level to your pledge amount, and we'll make sure you get your extra copies on release.

To ensure that one rich backer doesn't completely dictate the art direction, the "Specify-rewards" are limited to one per person.

About the currency...

Because we're based in Denmark, we have to define our goals and pledge levels in Danish krone (DKK).This can get a little bit confusing if you're not up to date on conversion rates, so to make things a little easier for you, we've included the price of things in US Dollars, Euro, and British Pounds in our stretch goals and pledge descriptions. Note that the pledge amount in dollars is automatically converted by Kickstarter (and is therefore not included in the descriptions like euro and pound prices are). Also note that stretch goal amounts have been rounded to the nearest hundred.

The converted amounts were all updated right before going live with this campaign, but please note that they may not be accurate at the end of the campaign.