D&D Dungeon Master Map Maker

    This was my senior project for my bachelor’s degree. It was worked on with five other students and we used the SCRUM agile method for developing this application. D&D Dungeon Master Map Maker is a Unity Application that allows Dungeon Masters (DM) to create 3D representation of their maps and encounters for their players to experience and play. We wanted to focus on improvisation and quick building of maps to improve other products for map building. The DM can create grid-based maps with the various assets and tools for them. There is an asset library that holds all the applications assets that the DM can spawn and place. It is organized into a folder structure that the DM can navigate and find the right asset to spawn.

    They also have many tools they can use to create the map. They can spawn assets by clicking and dragging them from the library to their spot on the map, they can rotate them with the shortcut keys or onscreen UI, and they can delete the selected asset. They also have area and random spawning for an easier time of spawning lots of assets. The area spawning works by selecting a type of asset that supports (floors and walls) and drag the area of where they want to spawn. The selector on the map will expand and retract of the mouse position according to the grid, and when the DM lets go, it spawns that selected asset multiple times across that area. With floors, they spawn normally, with walls they spawn with their rotations set to create a box bordering the area for quickly creating rooms. The random will spawn assets randomly within the selected area. The DM can also select the mode of randomization for different fill densities. There is also an In-Group tool to change the area and random spawn individual assets within it. For instance, a DM area spawns walls to create a room, but wants an opening for players to walk inside. The DM can turn the In-Group mode on select the wall that they want to delete can create an opening. The DM can also change the lighting of the map for different times of the day to give more immersion to their maps and more accuracy to the DMs campaign. The DM can turn a grid visual system to see all the grid squares on the map and turn it off to give a better visual.

    The DM can also save and load their maps. The DM creates a map with all their assets and hits the save button to save their map to be used later for their sessions. The application has a database to hold all spawned assets and writes them into a table of the named map. Then when the DM later open the map for the session, the application goes through the table entries and spawns each asset exactly where they were. DMs can create multiple maps and continue to edit saved maps and re-save.

    The application also has networking support. This allows DMs to host their maps for their players to play. The players join by typing the IP address of the DM and can see the maps that they created. Players can see changes the DMs makes to maps like spawning new assets, moving assets, changing lighting, and deleting assets. Players are unable to mess with the maps but can move their assigned token piece. DMs can spawn special token pieces to represent characters that the DM can assign a player to for them to move it around the map to allow them to play. The DM still has control over player tokens to give them full control of the map.