The Beta phase is going well with a lot of valuable feedback from the testers. Several bugs have been squashed and refinements made to the interface to make using Arcane Mapper more intuitive. Of course there is still a lot of work left to do.

On the large scale, several features are still in progress for the intial EA release – the tiled lighting system to improve performance and allow huge maps, door and stair systems, a system to make finding assets to use in your maps easier and of course Steam Workshop support.

However, in addition to fixes and refinements, several smaller features have been implemented recently.

Adjustable Ambient Color and Background Color – using these features it is possible to change the background color for the map and independently change the ambient color – rather than just the intensity. This gives you more control on the coloration of your maps, very useful for setting the right mood.

Here you can see I adjusted the Background Color, making it a saturated and dark blue color while changing the Ambient Color to help integrate the map.

Of course changing the background color isn’t always enough on its own – which is why you can also set a background image. This image has its own Tint Color, offset and scale.

Here you can see I used a Render of a different map as the background and used the Tint Color to darken it and tint is slightly blue to make sure its clear what is background and what is foreground.

Later you will be able to layer maps and choose only to show the background in certain areas – such as holes in the floor or the bottom of pits, allowing you to simulate a multi-level structure with very little work.