Newsletter - Battle Train and Custom Assets (Patreon)

We're super excited about this month's spotlight - a map for next month made using alternative processes and some asset experimentation!

Normally, our go-to program for battlemap-making is Dungeondraft (not a sponsor), but Pierce was feeling a bit claustrophobic this month and decided to work on paper and in Photoshop instead. The result is what you see above! (note: it's only 1/3 the whole map)

One of the reasons Dungeondraft is so great is that it provides TONS of assets that you can use to detail maps, so the most significant challenge in this process was not only making the assets from scratch but deciding which assets to even make! Normally we make the floorplan of the map, then place objects as we see fit in order to tell a story. However, without the ability to scroll through an extensive asset library it was completely up to the story to determine what items to create. As Pierce tells it, he was already pushing his creative limits by switching up his mapping process, so he went with a pretty simple story (so simple it's more of a concept): It's a train and it makes things go boom.

With the story in place, we knew we needed some rather militant assets, so we opted for the blue arcane cannons you can see mounted to the train, along with some simple armor, weapons, and weapons rack. Overall, the process seems to have worked fairly well! We're really happy with how the assets turned out and it's nice to have some stylistic variation in our artwork.

By the way - this map is still a work in progress!! We would LOVE to hear what you think of it, and what you might like to see done differently! Are there other assets you think would be appropriate (besides light sources, we have a plan for those)? What do you think of the style? Are custom assets something you would like to see more of?

Just as a final note, if you happen to like the assets we've included them for download below! Feel free to use them in any project and for any purpose.

We hope you have a ~cosmic~ month, and we're looking forward to October ;)