5 min read

The New Roadmap: A Texas Hackathon Summary

Unified UX, New Editor, Custom Blocks, Content Modules, Mobile, Public Worlds, Importers.

Feature image for The New Roadmap: A Texas Hackathon Summary

The team just finished an entire week of in-person whiteboarding, prioritizing, and talking about the future of LegendKeeper. This edition of the LK Weekly wraps up our most important decisions and design explorations for your enjoyment.

The Roadmap

We have decided what our next big release will contain, and what our roadmap looks like for this year.

Keep in mind that anything further than 2 months out in the roadmap is likely to change. As a small startup we are constantly reacting to feedback from our community and changes in the business landscape.

2022 at a glance

LegendKeeper 2022 Roadmap
LegendKeeper 2022 Roadmap

March & April (Locked in)

  1. Unification of wiki, maps, and boards, along with many UX improvements. This will be released as v0.12.0.0 - Icarus.
  2. New Editor - Parity. This release will replace our current editor technology with a new core, enabling us to start building the editor features of our dreams. This release will not have many new features but will match the current editor and bring several bug fixes. Once the migration process is complete we'll be able to start delivering new features rapidly.
  3. Custom Properties/Blocks. As part of the new UX and Editor, we will allow you to create custom fields to place in the properties bar that appears on the right side of the wiki. We will work towards perfect interop between wiki, maps, boards, and custom blocks. Imagine dragging and dropping beautiful, data-rich, world legoes anywhere you want.

April through December (Could change)

  1. Content Modules. Wrap up any part of your world and share it with others via hyperlinks.
  2. Mobile - Responsive Web. LegendKeeper will look and feel great on any modern web browser, regardless of screen size.
  3. Public Worlds. Share your world with the world.
  4. Timeline. Build and share important events on timelines using our unified UX.

Unified UX - "Icarus"

LegendKeeper founders whiteboarding a major release.
Adam's whiteboard notes on next release. Scope not final.

Ever since we released Boards, we've been feeling like LegendKeeper is too complicated. We see a collection of UX issues come up over and over again:

  • New (and even experienced users) don't understand that you can have more than one map, that you can nest maps, and that they have a 1 to 1 association with wiki pages.
  • Boards seem to live in their own disconnected universe. There are too many differences in how they feel VS maps.
  • You often need to refer to a map or board while in a wiki page. It can be hard to jump to the right map from a wiki page.
  • Navigational paradigm of the Atlas is very different than the wiki.

Our next big release (v0.12.0.0 - codename "Icarus") will address all of this by making a radical change to our UI. We will be moving all the things you can create in LegendKeeper (wikis, maps, and boards) into a unified "Resource Browser" on the left side. We will be removing the 1 to 1 association between wiki pages and maps. We will be removing the top level navbar on the left entirely.

For our experienced subscribers, this may seem strange at first, but we believe you will quickly see the benefits. Imagine:

  • Freely creating maps, boards, and pages anywhere you want.
  • Dragging and dropping anything into anything.
  • Dropping portals to multiple maps or boards from a single wiki page.

We will push LegendKeeper's flexibility to its limits. You are in charge of organizing and creating projects the way that works best for you - we are in charge of making sure it feels and looks amazing to do that.

Sweeping changes like this one are the reason we still call LegendKeeper "Beta" software. We are so happy you are along for the ride!

LegendKeeper maps with custom properties.
Map with unified Resource Browser on the left. Design not final.
LegendKeeper map design.
Map with Resource Browser and Properties collapsed. Design not final.
LegendKeeper Wiki page with focus.
Page with Resource Browser collapsed. Portal to map on the Properties panel. Design not final.

New Editor

After Icarus, we will replace our current editor technology with a new core, allowing us to start building awesome new editing features. This release will not have many new features but will match the current editor and bring several bug fixes.

There will be a lightweight migration process for this release. There are some technical hurdles we will need to jump over due to our collaborative document data layer. We will give more details when the time comes.

Once the migration process is complete, we'll be able to start delivering new editor features rapidly. Imagine new slash commands, new personalization features, and new block types.

Custom Properties

Custom properties will allow you to define and display fields in the sidebar of any page, map, or board. These will open up a whole new palette for you to make your projects look the way you want, and always keep important information at your fingertips.

We also decided to add data types (number, date, etc) to custom properties. In the long term this will give us the ability to let you filter, sort, and query your worlds in powerful ways.

Custom properties will work in sync with the new Editor and Unified UX, allowing you to drag and drop anything anywhere.

LegendKeeper design explorations.
Design explorations for Custom Properties. Design not final.

Errata

We are really excited to get back to building next week, and to have you along for the journey! Let us know your thoughts in the #beta-discussion channel. We'll close with some photos from the Texas Hackathon.

See you next week :)

Co-working space in Texas.
Lobby of the co-working space we rented.
Justin and Braden. LegendKeeper co-founders.
Justin and Braden hacking on stuff.
LegendKeeper importers.
"Import Anything" concept.
LegendKeeper team discusses collaborative worldbuilding.
Collaborative Worldbuilding discussion.
LegendKeeper team.
Out for dinner on the last work day.
Old fashioned occult symbol.
Adam's occult-themed old fashioned.

Published
Written by Adam Waselnuk

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