Project MDMMD (Modern Dungeon Master’s Map Displayer, or 4000 (its Roman neural value)).

This is a quick, poorly coded page to sum up what this project is about. I will replace this page made in Microsoft Word with a real web page later.

Executive Summary: To modernize the way dungeon masters display maps so digital layouts can be utilized to their fullest extent.

Brief description: The software would be designed to display image files on a projector, be able to partially conceal these images and place other markers on the screen. These markers are not designed to replace miniatures; they are designed to mark things that have happened. Dungeon masters will be able to link maps together and use them to form regions or even worlds, all details such as visible parts and icon locations will be persistent so players can return to the area at a later point in time and the dungeon master does not have to note down everything.

Features:

· The ability to display a map based off of a image file

· The ability to partially conceal parts of the maps and uncover them as the players explore this part of the map.

· The ability to place and remove small icons on the map to designate for instance a treasure chest that has been opened or a chest that the players can’t open.

· The ability to organize pathways leading form one map to another in a logical order allowing dungeon masters to have large areas that will always be correlated.

· The ability to save and redistribute these pathways

Future considerations (ideas that have no current plan to be implemented)

· Custom icons

· A central website to upload and share worlds

· Annotation storage (logs of things that have happened, NPCs who live there, ect)

· The ability to show items in 3d using 3d glasses (obviously).

Software Specifics:
While this project was initially planned to be written entirely in VB.NET and be Windows only, early tests have proven .NET to be technically insufficient for this. So as of 3/10/2011 the project is going to be made in C++ and OpenGL and officially support Windows and Linux (KDE).

Licensing:
The planned release license is MIT. Despite my dislike for GNU this project is now in C++ so I may have to make a move towards a GPL compatible license in order to legally use 3^rd party sofrware.

Planned Release Stages
v 0.1: The ability to view an image on a second window
v 0.2: The ability to partially conceal the map
v 0.3: The ability to place icons on the map (non-savable)
v 0.4: The ability to save the aforementioned in a file
v 1.0: The ability to set pathways between maps
v 1.0 Gold: Fix any issues and fully stabilize software.

If the program makes it this far other features will be considered.

Are you looking for developers?
Not at the moment, this program is still subject to a few field-tests to see if the fully developed product is even a good idea. If all the tests work I will be looking for people to compile the program on Mac and perhaps port it to GNOME.