Whats going on with 1.6?
Why is the next update taking so long and what is coming with it?
As you may know, a significant update to Quest Map Pro is currently being worked on, and has been in the works since late last year. While previous updates have come quite rapidly, even those adding large features, this update is the largest that Quest Map Pro has received to date and includes most planned features from the roadmap. The goal of this update is to address all community concerns and requests, as well as complete as much of the roadmap as feasible to allow me to start work on some other products more easily. As many of these features are quite substantial, they have been quite large undertakings. Unfortunately this has also been slowed down by other things, so I wanted to put together a single page covering what is coming, why its taking so long, and what you can expect going forward.
So what Is coming with 1.6?
This update is a very big one, and I'm not going to cover absolutely everything here. But I will go over the most notable, requested and important additions, as well as demonstrate them where I can and let you know what state they are in. Please note that some features will not be visually represented here, but this should not be taken as an indicator that they are not implemented. All features listed here are already either complete or in late stages of development, but some do not have viable demonstration content created just yet. For example, Map Zones are fully working, but I do not have a good part of a demo level created to visually represent them in action. Similarly, it is a bit difficult to demonstrate gamepad support in a video, but this feature is entirely complete.
New Off-Screen Indicator
Currently when an objective is set or a quest is active, there is an on-screen indicator. But when that indicator leaves the players field of view, there is no indication that a waypoint or quest is active. Making a really rough off-screen indicator is very simple, but there are a lot of scenarios where that indicator gets stuck in the corner of the screen or doesn't behaviour ideally. As such, I've added a smooth and versatile off-screen indicator (that can, of course, be toggled on and off) to help direct your players to where they should be going!
Full Gamepad Support
Adding gamepad support for a UI system like a map and compass can be a bit of a pain. So I've removed that work by adding a custom gamepad cursor setup to the map and native support for gamepad input. This will allow your players to use their chosen input method to zoom, pan, add waypoints and notes, and so on, opening up accessibility for all.
Native Multimap Support
In the current public build, Quest Map Pro assumes it is going to be used in a large open world with a singular level. This was a pretty big oversight on my part as it made it annoying to setup a function to change what map images were used for projects with multiple playable levels. In 1.6, the map texture parameter, previously on the map component, has been moved to the map helper actor, placed in the game world. This means that its incredibly easy to immediately support any number of levels and have things all just work as expected. This was already the case for tiered grid setups, so now single map image setups also work this way, unifying the experience.
Procedural Map Grid
It is now possible to add a procedural grid to your map, creating cells you would expect to see on a map (think about a map you've seen in real life that has a, b, c, etc. along the top, and 1, 2, 3, etc. along the side). This grid can be customized with colour, you can set its size, and so on - all without having to edit your map images at all!
UI Reset Function
In a lot of setups, especially using marketplace templates, or in persistent multiplayer environments, it is necessary to reset Quest Map Pro at different points. Currently this can be a little finicky as you need to save important data, reset and then load it. As such, I've added a function to reset only the UI portions of the system, not touching the data. This might seem like a small addition, but it greatly expands the system's compatibility out of the box with other projects, frameworks and templates.
Runtime on/off toggle for Navigation Trail
One of the smaller additions, but fairly highly requested, is a native system to turn the navigation trail on and off at runtime.
Map Layers System
One of the more requested features since launch, Quest Map Pro will finally have the ability to show different maps for different layers in your world. One example of this might be a cave system underground that needs its own map separate from the overworld. These layers will be easy to set up and use, and you will be able to determine trigger points for where the layer transition occurs, giving you complete control over what the player has access to at what point. Layers have their own data so landmarks and other markers will not show up on incorrect layers, and map fog is even remembered per-layer!
Map Zones System
Another very highly requested feature, map zones, will allow you to create small localised maps for specific parts in your world. Maybe you want to just have a town show up as a drawn icon on your world map, but when the player gets there they get a detailed street map of the area. Or perhaps you want a separate small map for each level in a skyscraper - these are the sorts of things you can use map zones for. Additionally, if you have an area on the map that requires updating at runtime, map zones can be optionally set to use a live render capture. This does cost a little more runtime resources than a texture-based approach, but by having the option, you have the freedom to handle this how you like. Perhaps you use texture-based maps for everywhere except a player's base where they build structures and said structures appear on the localized map for that zone. Its all up to you and how you use it!
Font-Based Icons
For whatever reason, Unreal Engine seems to have some aliasing issues when rendering transparent textures or materials in UMG. You can see this when using specific shapes and images for icons, for instance, on the compass and world map. Some shapes just don't appear super crisp, even if you are using high resolution textures (which will also eat a lot more memory than is ideal for a UI icon). As such, I've gone through and added support for using a font with your own icons built into it. This not only gives much crisper results (as fonts are vector-based), but it gives the ability to use drop shadows, stroke outlines and font material effects, things that are much more performance intensive and require more work with standard textures and/or materials. Additionally, fonts are actually very performance friendly, so swapping over to using a font for your icons should actually help squeeze a little more out of your project!
Font-based icons are entirely optional, and if you are happy with the results you are getting with textures, or you just don't want to take the time to set up a font, that's still going to be the default setup when you get Quest Map Pro set up in your project. But on launch of the update, I will be putting together a tutorial on how to set up all your icons in fonts to get this up and running to get the most out of Quest Map Pro!
New Quest ID System
To make management of quest markers easier, a new system has been added to allow for a unique ID to be used to add and remove markers. This means you no longer need to manage quest marker indices, and can instead tell QMP to add and remove a quest marker for any quest you want, giving that quest a unique ID.
Performance Optimisations
While Quest Map Pro already uses very little runtime resources, a large effort has been made to improve the memory usage of maps and to squeeze as much performance out of things as possible. Additionally, adding the option to use font-based icons and many other smaller optimisations all add up to make 1.6 the most performant version of Quest Map Pro to date.
Better Save System
The current save system in Quest Map Pro is a little basic. It is intended mainly to show how to set up saving and loading, with the intent for users to take that and expand it into their own system. Through covering integration with systems like Easy Multi Save and others, it has become clear that a better approach was possible, and as such a new setup has been added to facilitate this. Saving and loading data for Quest Map Pro will be much easier, and the work required to integrate it into projects and systems should be much simpler once 1.6 is released.
Support For World Map In Menus
A lot of people have been wanting to put their world map into an in-game menu, rather than a floating HUD widget. While this is already possible in the currently available version of Quest Map Pro, it is a little awkward and requires having references to a widget from one menu inside of another widget in your HUD. In 1.6, this has been streamlined and is much easier to have the world map separate from the rest of Quest Map Pro's widgets.
Native Tooltip Support
A toggleable option, you can now easily turn on widget-based tooltips for Quest Map Pro map markers, to make displaying information about your world to the player much more visually interesting and accessible.
And even more!
There's a bunch of other smaller changes, fixes and features as well. A full list of everything will not be made available until launch of the update, but as you can see above, this update is very large, and will be shipping a huge list of additions. But don't worry - everything will be easy to turn on and off, and a great deal of care has been taken to ensure that no feature is going to eat any additional resources if its not being used.
So why is it taking so long?
The 1.6 update was planned to be released by the end of 2023. Unfortunately, this did not happen. There are several reasons for this.
Feature Expansion
As it became clear this update was going to be quite massive, and as it addressed almost all the desired items on the roadmap, I made the decision to expand the feature list of it to cross off those last few items. While feature creep is often a bad thing in game development, when dealing with marketplace products it can be somewhat annoying for users to have to update files with new updates as any changes they make have to be reapplied. As such, addressing as many of these items in a single big update is a much more end-user-friendly approach. This way when 1.6 comes out, you can do a single update (there will be a detailed tutorial covering the few steps required for this) and know that you have everything you need covered, rather than having to update then, and then repeating the process another month or two down the line.
Support Commitments
In recent months, I have not had quite as much time to spend in the engine. This has meant that I have had to prioritize a lot of the time I do have available to cover support requests. I pride myself on giving as much support to my customers as possible, so sometimes this can take a day or two of time to help someone out with a particularly unique project integration or something along those lines.
Focus on Quality
Hopefully, if you have spent a little time in Quest Map Pro you will see that I take a lot of pride in my products and try to give them as much love and care as possible. This does mean that implementing new features does take a little longer as I need to consider as many use cases as possible and try to ensure that things "just work" in those scenarios also. This leads to a much improved product, but does slow things down.
Health Issues
In mid December of last year, I unfortunately got COVID. It was quite bad - much worse than I had expected - and I was completely out of action for several weeks. Following the infection, I had a lot of post-covid symptoms that hung around for 2-3 months. During this time I was severely limited with the amount of time I could spend using my PC as it was giving me quite severe migraines and nausea. This has only recently cleared up entirely. Unfortunately my wife has now been going through some of her own health issues and, for those unaware, I am a full time carer for her so this has also limited my time as of recent. I'm hopeful that this will ease up soon (for more reasons than just the update) and work will be back into full swing. In the meantime, I am chipping away at the update whenever I am able.
Wedding
And finally, during February, my now wife and I got married. Anyone who has gone through a marriage knows it takes quite a lot of time so that also has contributed to the delay on this update.
What now? When is it coming?
I do not currently have a date, or even an estimated date. I'd love to say its not far away, and the bulk of the work IS done, but there are still a number of hurdles to work through so for now I'm just going to say its in progress and it will be done the moment I am satisfied with the quality of it all. If you are considering purchasing Quest Map Pro and the features listed in this update are the reason why, please wait until this page changes to say that 1.6 has been released. When you purchase a marketplace product, you are buying it in the state at which it is when you purchase it. While I completely intend to finish and release this update, marketplace products are sold, as per Epic's marketplace license, "as is". This means that updates like this are done out of courtesy and because I care about my product.
For the most up-to-date status on Quest Map Pro, I'd recommend joining the Dapper Raptor Development discord server. This will be the first place to get any notice of 1.6 being released (followed shortly by this documentation). In the meantime, Quest Map Pro is a fully featured product that is ready to use in your project if you are happy with the current feature set. Additionally, I will have a tutorial covering the process of upgrading from the current version to 1.6 before 1.6 even becomes publicly available via the Epic Games Launcher. So if you want to get started and make the upgrade later, then that is absolutely a possibility. But I cannot offer a set timeline for a release on 1.6 so please do keep that in mind. The last few months have shown that best intentions do not matter and that sometimes, unfortunately, life outside of development has to take priority.
If you have any questions, concerns, feedback, etc. about Quest Map Pro, the 1.6 update, or anything else related to my products, please reach out (the discord is the best place, but email also works if you prefer!) and I'll get back to you as soon as I can!
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