Don’t worry – be Mappy! Our interactive maps have JUST gotten an upgrade. Same great features, now quicker, easier and more streamlined to use 🙂

What’s new in this Interactive Maps Update?

For those of you already familiar with Interactive Maps, you’ll find everything very familiar! What’s changed is the speed and ease of use of creation on interactive maps, particularly when creating new pins. It’s faster than ever to populate a map with your worldbuilding goodness!

 

Creation is faster and easier

It’s quicker and easier to create new pins on your map, and everything happens live, meaning no page refreshes! All pins and labels are now draggable in the EDIT mode of your map, making it quick and simple to rearrange things to your heart’s content! The new multipart pin-creation form lets you go as deep as you like in your creation, or just choose a pin and add a title. And the quick, visual pin-picker makes it faster to find exactly which pin you want.

Polygons and Lines got a huge upgrade

Polygons, circles and lines are so useful for showing routes, boundaries, areas of influence or even just the journey of your characters. We’ve created a super-quick creation process, so you can plot your points in real-time and see them appear right there on the map! We’ve also added a sleek color picker for polygons, circles and lines, so you can get EXACTLY the right shade of red for your Big Bad’s charge across the map.

Easier layers and marker groups

We’ve streamlined the creation of layers and marker groups on World Anvil, making advanced map features easier to use. Layers are quicker to upload directly from the map edit screen, and Marker Groups are also quicker to create, letting you do DOUBLE that mapping in HALF the time.

Better looking maps!

Maps…with no gaps! (Sorry, I can’t resist a rhyme). We’ve eliminated that pesky gap at the top of the screen to give you more space for more screen-real estate. You can also now add a background image for behind your maps – whether that’s a wooden tabletop or textured metal (or even a gif – I’ve used water behind mine!) – to make them feel more like an in-world artifact.
Want the full details for new maps? Check out the guide in the LEARN section!

Here’s what our Alchemists are saying

Our Alchemists are our Beta Testers – they get to play with new features before anyone else, and their feedback is critical for the final release of each new update. (Here’s how to join the Alchemists!)

The new poly marker functionality is absolute 🔥 Overall UI improvements also really clean and I love the simplified look.
-metamancer.
Such a nice overhaul to the interface for maps. It is clean presentation, easy to use and it works on my Android tablet!
-graylion.
If the Developers keep making things so much easier, what will I do with my time?! With this new interface, I was able to get the twice the polygon markers done in half the time. 🙂
-kaixabu
This update is going to make adding pins to maps so much faster, easier, and honestly more fun excited to keep playing with it!
-pomegarnett
Oh, the way lines work is so much nicer – holy cow!
-nat0327

GIVE US FEEDBACK ON THE WORLD ANVIL MAPS UPDATE!

How are you loving the new Interactive Maps? Any feedback to share? Share it here and you’ll earn a badge, too! And/or let us know via Discord in the #development-feedback channel.

How to use World Anvil’s new maps?

Of course, we’ve also released the full tutorial for World Anvil’s maps so you can learn all the ins and outs of these latest quality of life updates.

What about users with pre-existing maps?

For those who already have a map in World Anvil, GOOD NEWS! The only changes we’ve made are to the editing interface, so there’ll be no changes to your maps in view mode, and no need to make any updates on your side.

WHO’S DONE ALL THIS GREAT WORK?

Maps v1.5 (as we’ve been calling it in-house) is thanks to a whole bundle of bright lights in our team! Dimitris for spearheading this initiative based on feedback from our 2022 user survey; Mikolaj and Quentin for the beautiful designs and stellar development and implementation. Then, of course, there’s our in-team user advocates for all the testing and support creation, and the incredible Alchemists Council – our community beta-testers – who have helped us refine and finalize the last touches of interactive maps!

Did a bug squeak through all our tests? Report it here.

What other new upgrades are coming to World Anvil?

We have SO MANY exciting upgrades in the works for World Anvil, so make sure you subscribe to this blog to hear about them first!