Update of OWM?

[evildmguy]

Greetings!

It saddens me to have to post this but what is the status of OWM development?

I only saw two posts in 2024 in the forums and nothing on new development.

Thanks.

[Balmung]

Perhaps a little more marketing would help, because in the last Youtube videos I saw in which map making tools were presented, OWM was never mentioned.

[nDervish]

Agreed on marketing. While I don't follow such things on youtube, I see posts every now and then in RPG-related online forums asking for recommendations of mapping tools. I always respond to suggest OWM, but I can't recall the last time anyone else seemed to have even heard of it, never mind someone else recommending it.

[Kanchou]

We are still here! We have to juggle our other work with Other World Mapper as unfortunately cannot be our only project. That means we've also prioritized spending our time with dev for OWM rather than marketing, which is a problem too.

We used to have an easier time reaching people directly via social media but with the algorithm changes a few years ago it became a lot harder as most of that seems to want to be done via an influencer/personality showing the product/talking about it.

We'll do a dev update soon and we'll look into better out reach.

Thank you!

- Alejandro

[Balmung]

We used to have an easier time reaching people directly via social media but with the algorithm changes a few years ago it became a lot harder as most of that seems to want to be done via an influencer/personality showing the product/talking about it.

Of course people want to see an application in action before buying it. If JP Coovert or WASD20 would at least mention OWM it could build up awareness.

But the most impact to make people aware of OWM would be actual maps in r/mapmaking. When a map is looking good and it's not hand-drawn, users are going to ask which software has been used. Of course, I don't always read through all the comments, but when I do, I've never read about OWM.

Am I talking about someone from the development team releasing a map every week? No. But at least one new map per quarter would be great. Not only for potential new users, but also for existing customers to see what's possible and what they may have overlooked so far. In my opinion, it would also be completely sufficient if you took hand-drawn maps from there as a template and simply showed what they would have looked like with OWM. As the icing on the cake, offer the original creators of the maps that they will receive the OWM file for free if they buy OWM ;)

But before too much excitement arises: there hasn't been a single update this year. Not a single issue has been fixed.

[ORtrail]

You (the OWM developers) could create a free map pack on DriveThruRPG and other places where RPGs are sold. A free pack of 4-5 cool maps, that you can create in OWM, would be great advertising for the software.

Note that there is a free demo to try out. I think the main issue is that most people are not aware that OWM exists.