Version 4.39 is out, and five tools in it have been taken apart and built again: Occult Seals, Magic Items (now called Item Forge), the Hex Map, the Town Map and the Map Maker. Each one does more than it did in 4.38.2, and each one shows it better. Around them, every map and picture opens in the same full-screen viewer, the Star Chart's squares roll sci-fi, the inns on the maps open in Taverns & Hubs, and there are a few fixes. This post puts each of the five next to the way it was before.
4.39 at a Glance
- Occult Seals: rebuilt. Every part of a seal now comes from what it is for, what it acts on and by what power, in fantasy, sci-fi or 1920s horror, and a key reads it part by part, with a GM switch for what it truly does. Fifteen looks, a seal that draws itself in, and SVG and GIF exports.
- Item Forge: Magic Items rebuilt as an item builder in three genres, with a lock and a die on every line, cursed and possessed items, and a GM switch.
- The Hex Map: every hex can hold a place, with a sheet you can read, change and write notes on. A world map or a crawl around a home base, named, in a hand-drawn look. A town opens in the Town Map.
- The Town Map: rebuilt, from a camp to a great city, with every place named.
- The Map Maker: two hand-drawn styles, notes on its squares, and Fill in the map, which rolls hills, woods, rivers, towns and roads around what you painted.
- And: one full-screen viewer for every map and picture, zoom on four map screens, inns that open in Taverns & Hubs, sci-fi rolls on the Star Chart, our other games in Settings, and fixes.
Your saves: everything you saved opens exactly as it did.
Occult Seals
In 4.38.2, Occult Seals drew a sigil from a seed: rings, a star, a few signs and a band of letters. It looked the part, but nothing told you what any of it meant. In 4.39 every ring, figure and sign comes from what the seal is for, what it acts on and by what power it works, and the screen reads it to you.
Occult Seals in 4.38.2, and in 4.39.
The key under the seal reads it in tiers. What anyone sees describes the whole seal at a glance. Read part by part goes through it ring by ring. Our first roll in the gilt look was "Bind a person, by the Moon, a great working". At a glance: "A doubled ring, a chain of nine repeated marks, a square ruled into a grid and two tiers of writing." Its frame: "A doubled ring is a closed working: what is inside is meant to stay there." And its writing, read out of its orcish letters: "now keep Shardrug with the one who wanes".
The third tier is For the GM, and it appears when GM is on. It says what the seal truly does, and that is not always what it seems to do. A seal can be a decoy, reversed or borrowed. Another roll, "Ward its drawer, by the Sun, a working", had a star of seven points, and the key had already noticed: "Seven points to the star: one too many or too few for the Sun." With GM on, the seal's truth explained it: "The copy keeps the shape but not the strength, with seven where the Sun asks six." The GM also learns its flaw ("A deliberate cut ruins the figure; nothing it promised holds."), what it truly does, who drew it ("A self-taught reader of grimoires.") and when ("On the high lamp's day, by candlelight.").
The same seal with GM off, and with GM on.
Filters choose the genre and what the seal is for, from twelve purposes (ward, bind, seal shut, conceal, keep, banish, curse, summon, open a way, scry, heal and bless). They also choose what it acts on, by what power, its figure, its strength, its state, its truth, its writing and its look. A seal can also be built on a name, typed in or taken from a favourite. Every line of the key has its own lock and die, so you can keep the frame and roll the writing again.
There are fifteen looks across the three genres. Fantasy has eight: chalk, gilt, ink, an engraved plate, glow, soot on stone, blood on stone and parchment. 1920s horror shares six of those and adds a notebook page, blood on plaster and blood on floorboards. Sci-fi has glow, a hologram, a circuit and two old screens, amber and green. Eight of them have an effect of their own: chalk dust, embers in the soot, a slow glow, a shimmer and a flicker on the hologram, a scan line and a trail on the screens, blood that runs on plaster, candlelight on parchment and a glint on the plate.
One seal in each of the fifteen looks, each one a fresh roll.
The seal draws itself in, part by part in the order its key reads, and then its rings of writing and signs turn. Tap a ring, a sign or the figure to light it and find its line in the key; tap the seal away from every part to see it full screen. Export and Share offer the seal as a picture (PNG or WEBP), as an SVG for a browser or a drawing program, or as a GIF of it drawing itself in.
Three seals as their GIFs play them: gilt, blood on plaster and the hologram.
A seal you save goes back to Occult Seals with its locks, to be changed. Seals saved before 4.39 keep the drawing they had, and their popup in Favourites offers Make one like it: a new seal in the rebuilt tool, in the old one's look, with the old favourite left as it is.
Item Forge
Magic Items gave you a paragraph: what the thing was, a rumour about it, where it came from and a drawback. Item Forge builds the item line by line. Each one has a name and what it is known as, a rarity from common to mythic with what it is worth, a look and a mark. With GM on you also get its power, its cost, who made it or who had it, and for a possessed thing, what lives in it.
Magic Items in 4.38.2, and Item Forge in 4.39.
Our roll was Gwen's Riposte, known as the Weathervane: "A gold chalice too heavy for one hand", Legendary. Its look is that "The metal has been hammered cold, leaving faint ripples", and its mark is "A smear of old candle wax". With GM on: "A beggar refused every offer for it", and within it is "A court poet's vanity, sharp-tongued and immortal", "Sealed in by a wedding vow, made in the wrong words". Its boon: "It heals its bearer's wounds while they sleep".
Filters choose the genre (fantasy, sci-fi or 1920s horror), what the thing is, its rarity, its magic, its power, a curse or a will of its own, its story and its age. Every line has its own lock and die. A possessed fantasy item can be opened in Bound Relics, and with GM on, an item from Treasure Hoards can be forged as one like it, keeping its name and title. Items saved from Magic Items still open as they were.
The Hex Map
The old Hex Map was terrain: hexes of land and sea, a few dots for settlements, a trail and a legend. In 4.39 every hex can hold a place: a settlement, a dungeon or lair, a dwelling, an inn or a landmark. Roll a whole world map, or a 12 by 12 crawl around a home base. Settlements, regions, rivers and seas have names, and the hexes have numbers.
The Hex Map in 4.38.2, and in 4.39.
Long-press a hex and its sheet opens. Ours was "Hex 0904", "Plains (the Ember Reach), with hills (the Mist Hills). A trail crosses it." It held a town, Northwatch. The sheet lets you roll the place again, write a note, stock the hex with an encounter or an NPC rolled for its land, or clear it. Open in Town Map draws Northwatch itself.
From the Hex Map to the Town Map: hex 0904, then Northwatch, then its east gate.
The Hex Map can be drawn in the new hand-drawn look or in the classic tiles. It has a map for your players and a key that folds away to a tab. An inn on the map opens in Taverns & Hubs.
The Town Map
The Town Map was rebuilt from the ground up. Filters pick its size, from a camp, a hamlet or a village to a town, a city or a great city, and its shape: walled, a sprawl, along a road or on the coast. You can draw it coloured or on parchment, by day or by night. Every district, street and gate is named. Long-press a place to keep notes on it, and rename any place or the whole town.
A town in 4.38.2, and Northwatch in 4.39.
Northwatch has Briar Ward, The Close, Marketstead and New End inside the wall, and East and West Foregate outside it, with fields all around and the East Road leading out. Exported, the picture is 4096 pixels square, enough to see every roof. The map also draws without the white flash it used to have, and a great city builds two to three times faster than before.
The Map Maker
The Map Maker is the one tool you draw with yourself. In 4.39 it has two new styles, Drawn colour and Drawn parchment, which draw your painted grid by hand: coasts, mountain ranges, hills, forests, rivers and towns. Hold a finger on a square to add a note, an NPC or an encounter. Fill in the map does the rest. It rolls hills, woods, rivers, towns and roads around what you painted. Roll again rolls them anew, and keeps whatever you changed since.
To show it, we painted a map step by step: the land first, then a mountain range, forests and a lake, then Fill in the map, then the names, and last the switch from Drawn colour to Drawn parchment. Every frame is the Map Maker's own drawing of the map at that step. The names are realm names the app rolled.
A map painted, filled in and named in the Map Maker.
Here is that same map, with the same land, rivers, roads and towns, as 4.38.2's Map Maker draws it and as 4.39 draws it.
The same map in 4.38.2 and in 4.39.
The Map Maker also has a new Inn stamp, which opens in Taverns & Hubs as that very inn, as the Town Map's inns do. Stamps are placed at a size that suits what they are: a town or a castle larger, a lone place smaller. The style list marks each style with a pencil if you can edit it or an eye if it is a preview. Maps you saved before 4.39 keep the style they had.
Every Map, Full Screen
Every map and picture in the app now opens in the same full-screen viewer, and the Fantasy Map, TOPO//SCAN, the Hex Map and the Star Chart can be zoomed right on their screens, without opening anything.
On the Star Chart, a square's encounter, detail and NPC now roll sci-fi scenes. Until now they rolled the fantasy wilderness's, on a sci-fi map.
Smaller Things
- Sector Survey: its two Export buttons are told apart: Export for the picture, Share data for the data.
- Settings: at the foot of Settings, More from Windmill Tales lists our two games, Terminal: Stolen Light and The Red Tomorrow, each opening its page on Google Play.
- What's new: the window that shows these notes the first time you open 4.39 has its own tab, beside the notes for 4.38.2 and 4.38.1.
What's new for 4.39, and More from Windmill Tales in Settings.
The Full Notes
Here is the list, word for word as the app shows it.
4.39.0
New
1) Occult Seals: Rebuilt from the ground up, in fantasy, sci-fi and 1920s horror. Every ring, figure and sign now comes from what the seal is for, what it acts on and by what power, its key reads it part by part, and GM shows what is hidden. Pick one of fifteen looks; the seal draws itself in, its rings turn, and you can export or share it as a picture, an SVG or a GIF.
2) Item Forge: Magic Items is now Item Forge, an item builder for fantasy, sci-fi and 1920s horror. Choose what the thing is, its rarity, its power, a curse or a will of its own, its story and its age, then lock or reroll any line. Items you saved before still open as they were.
3) Hex Map: Every hex can now hold a settlement, a dungeon or lair, a dwelling, an inn or a landmark. Roll a world map or a crawl around a home base, long-press a hex to read it, change it or keep notes, and open a settlement in the Town Map or an inn in Taverns & Hubs. Places, rivers and seas are named, with hex numbers, a hand-drawn look, a map for your players and a key.
4) Town Map: Rebuilt, from a camp to a great city, with every place named. Long-press a place for its notes, rename places or the whole town, and try the night look, a town by the sea and the roads out.
5) Map Maker: Two hand-drawn styles, Drawn parchment and Drawn colour, and maps you saved before keep their look. Hold a finger on a square to add notes, NPCs and encounters, and Fill in the map adds hills, woods, rivers, towns and roads around what you painted. A new Inn stamp opens in Taverns & Hubs, as the Town Map's inns do.
6) Maps: Every map and picture opens in the same full-screen viewer, and the Fantasy Map, TOPO//SCAN, the Hex Map and the Star Chart zoom right on their screens.
7) Settings: More from Windmill Tales shows our other games, Terminal: Stolen Light and The Red Tomorrow.
Fixed
1) Star Chart: A square's encounter, detail and NPC now roll sci-fi scenes, not fantasy ones.
2) Sector Survey: Its two Export buttons are now told apart, Export for the picture and Share data for the data.
3) Map Maker: Towns and castles from Generate base terrain, and from the Fantasy Map's Edit in Map Maker, stand on land again, and the full screen of a hand-drawn map no longer lags.
4) Town Map: A town is drawn with no white flash, and a great city builds two to three times faster.
Your Saves Are Safe
Every favourite, preset, note, campaign, map and setting you already have opens and looks the way it did before. Seals saved before 4.39 keep their drawing, and so do the seals on your Bound Relics. Items saved from Magic Items open as they were. Maps saved in the Map Maker keep their style, and towns and hex maps you saved draw as they did. The new tools save new kinds of favourite of their own, so nothing you saved before is read any differently. Wherever a tool now draws or writes differently, the difference shows only in what you make next.
Version 4.39 is free on Google Play now.
Download Fantasy World Generator
Five tools remade, and the same map drawn twice.