Waarom vroegtijdige toegang?

'I think right now, with the state of the world, having a simple option for playing tabletop RPGs online was a priority for me, and I hope a lot of others; as such, I'm developing and releasing Dudes on a pretty tight time-table, although stability is pretty solid these days, there are sure to be some lingering issues exposed by a larger audience, and I may have some work to do on the public hosting side depending how popular this gets.'

Hoelang blijft deze software ongeveer in vroegtijdige toegang?

'I'm hoping to wrap up the polish and detail work I have left to do, and possibly transition to a more sustainable hosting solution before leaving early access. This should be reasonable within 2021 with my current schedule.'

Hoe gaat de volledige versie verschillen van de versie met vroegtijdige toegang?

'The final version of Dudes won't be drastically different from what's on offer today. My goal with this project is to bring a different approach to running an online TTRPG, and going too far with feature creep is something I am vehemently against.

I'm likely to spend a fair amount of time polishing the existing systems in pretty subtle ways, and I plan to expand by offering some subtle features to help improve communication, immersion, and reduce brain-drain for DM's.

Fair warning: I have no intention of adding features that are based in large part on specific systems. Dudes on a Map is designed to be played with books you own, and as such won't be digitizing those dusty tomes full of rules and stats. The cornerstone of Dudes design is that leaving these sorts of features out promotes flexibility for DM's in popular RPGs and makes it much easier to maintain features needed to offer equal support to more niche systems.'

Wat is de huidige staat van de versie met vroegtijdige toegang?

'Dudes on a Map can be used today to play a full RPG campaign today. If you're able to host peer-to-peer game sessions (port forwarding or UPnP), this is likely a nearly complete product. If you're using the public hosting, it's possible that there will be some disruptions to service, as the current solution is not very scalable.'

Zal deze software anders geprijsd worden tijdens en na vroegtijdige toegang?

'The full feature set of Dudes on a Map will be available for free throughout much of early access; this project was a bit of a passion project, and I'd much rather see it help some folks through a difficult time than get rich on it, so I plan to offer the Game-Master DLC as a pay-if-you-want option shortly after launch, and through most of 2021, as I'd like to provide an easy and free option for any who are struggling or just curious but hesitant to invest in trying something new.

Once Dudes leaves early access, the Game Master, and only the Game Master will need a copy of the DLC in order to continue running games, the Game Master DLC will not increase in price after early access.

Players (i.e. not the game master who prepares the game) will always be able to use Dudes on a Map for free.'

Hoe zijn jullie van plan de community te betrekken bij het ontwikkelproces?

'I would love to hear players tricks for keeping a tabletop RPG running smoothly, especially if you think they would fit well into a digital game, or if you've got ideas on how Dudes on a Map could help games run smoothly, then I'm all ears.

Do be mindful that I've got a pretty strong desire to avoid adding complex features that will slow down play (or setup) or are too specific to one game system; there are a lot of cool features in other platforms that I plan to avoid, but some do provide interesting ideas.'