Timelines!

Greeting, Gamers!

Welcome back to the Lore Link newsletter. As our small team continues to get pieces together for our game management tool, we’re going to keep gracing your inboxes with our presence once a month, typically around the third or fourth Friday. Some of what we’ll be bringing you will expand on some of the concepts we have shared on social media (do you follow us on Twitter? Link at the bottom of the email if you don’t!), but this will be the place to be kept up to date concerning our private alpha tests, and when we open up public beta testing.

Last month, we mentioned we’d look at what’s on the horizon for Lore Link, and we figure the best place to start would be showing what’s been done so far, in preparation for the next alpha release.

Here’s one of our screens, showing the Campaign Editor and Timeline, along with some more of your options across the top of the screen. If you remember the screen shots we posted on Twitter a year ago, you will see some definite changes and improvements in the UI and the Markdown Editor. However, today, we would like to bring your attention to the Timeline feature.

Timelines are really handy for those GMs who really like to create an elaborate backstory for their campaign. It is also great for those who are running in an existing world known for having epic events occurring over the course of many years. Timelines allow you to keep track of whether an event happens before, after, or even during another event. Plus, Lore Link will support creating one or more Timelines which you can use to sort out your main Timeline, group them together in custom-named intervals, and of course, place your game session on the timeline. You’re also able to keep track of your timeline in game, in case a player wants to know what day it is, or whether your players went to the haunted house before or after getting cursed by an old vampire woman.

While we’re talking about Timelines, let’s talk about Lore Link’s timeline. If you look at the above image, you’ll notice a section for “Alpha Instructions.” This is because we’re getting ready to go into Alpha 1.2 testing. We’re aiming for sometime in November, but we still need to test because we want our Alpha users to have as complete an experience as possible. This is important to us since we’re looking for them to use this in their actual games, and we’re here to make things easier, not harder, for them. Why should you take notice of this? Because when we’re ready, we will open a limited number of testing slots which will only be available to you, our newsletter subscribers. However, you’ll need to be quick, because when they’re filled up, they will be closed until we confirm those users are stable. When we’ve verified, then we’ll open back up and repeat the cycle!

With this exciting news, we’re going to sign off for this month. Next month, we’ll look at more features we’re putting together, or have put together depending on timing, for the Alpha release. We’ll also let you know what’s going to happen after Alpha.

Until then, may your players pay more attention to you than their phones!