Cartosmith

What's coming.

Cartosmith is a Windows battle map program for the DM. It is at version 0.9.47 and heading for 1.0. Here is what has just been built, what is being built now, and what comes next.

There are no release dates yet, and the order can change. Updated October 2026.

  • Built, in testing
  • Being built
  • On the list
  • Being considered
Join the waitlist Jump to online play

Built, in testing.

These are built into the current version. They have automated tests, and are still being checked on Windows before they are announced as released.

  • Soundboard

    Play music, ambience, environment loops and one-shot sound effects from the DM dock. Set volume per channel and per sound, fade in and out, crossfade between music tracks, loop, pause and pin your favourites.

    Add your own sound files from your PC; for now they need to be added again each session. A small set of placeholder sounds is built in. Optional automatic audio changes the ambience when you move between floors and switches to combat music when combat starts, then back when it ends. For now it plays for you at the table.

  • Import a Universal VTT map

    Home gets an import for .dd2vtt and .uvtt files from Dungeondraft and other Universal VTT tools. Choose what to bring in: walls, doors, lighting and the background picture. You get a correctly aligned map with line of sight already working.

    A summary lists what came across, what did not and any warnings. Windows are never guessed, and ambient light is not imported.

  • Token portraits

    Give any saved character a portrait. Pick a PNG, JPEG or WebP image, drag the square crop into place and use it. The image is shrunk once and reused on the DM map, the Player Display, saved projects and character library backups.

    Portraits sit inside the token ring, so selection, active turn, conditions and team colour stay readable. Characters without a portrait look exactly as before.

Play online with your table.

You still run the game from your PC. Players open a link on a phone, tablet or laptop, type a name and wait for you to let them in. They install nothing.

Your PC

Cartosmith runs the game here. The secrets, the rules and every move are decided on your machine.

The relay

A small switchboard that passes messages along. It keeps no game data.

Players' browsers

Up to 12 players per session, each seeing their own view of the game.

Player 1's view on the Player Display: only the room Mira stands in and a slice of the next room are visible. Everything else is dark. Player 2's view on the Player Display: Rowan's room and the lines of sight through its doors and windows are visible. Everything else is dark.
Two heroes in one encounter, as they see it on the Player Display today. Online play is built to give each player a view like this on their own device.
  • Hidden enemies, secret doors, traps and DM notes stay on your PC. They are left out of what players receive, not just covered up.
  • Players ask to move. Your PC checks every move before it happens.
  • Offline play does not change. Nothing goes online until you choose to start a session.

How it gets built

  1. The relayDone

    Sessions, join codes, join approval, reconnecting and safety limits. Built and covered by 46 automated tests.

  2. The player view in the browser

    A web page that shows players the rooms you have revealed, with tokens, doors and the turn order.

  3. Character Vision in the browser

    Fog that follows what each character can actually see, worked out on your PC so a browser never holds the parts of the map a player has not seen.

  4. Assigning tokens

    Choose which tokens each player can move.

  5. Players move their own tokens

    Moves arrive as requests. Walls, speed and whose turn it is are checked before anything changes.

  6. Rejoin after a refresh

    Reload the page, lose signal or close the laptop and pick up where you left off.

  7. Long-session testing

    Stress and endurance runs before it opens to everyone.

On the list.

Planned work that is not in the app yet. Some of it may land before 1.0 and some after.

  • Session and encounter notes

    A place to keep notes for your sessions and encounters.

  • A guided tour

    A hands-on tour that points at the controls as you use them, to go with the Quick Start walkthrough.

  • Hex grids

    Hex grids as an option next to the square grid.

  • More ways to build maps

    Dungeon Brush, Areas and Sections, portals and other map tools. Bring a Universal VTT map in as one floor of a building, and save your maps back out as Universal VTT.

  • Spells with more life

    Summon placement, so creatures and objects made by spells land on the map. Animated casts with projectiles, beams, bursts and pulses. Glows and markers on tokens for status spells such as Faerie Fire.

  • Sound at the table

    Players hear the Soundboard on their own devices once online play is live. After that, sounds that start when the party enters a room, effects tied to doors and traps, and sounds that ship with Cartosmith.

  • Tokens with more character

    Choose a portrait on a token that is already in an encounter, show when a creature is bloodied, and offer a square token style.

Being considered.

  • A tilted tabletop view

    An optional angled view of the battle map, as if you were looking at the table from a seat instead of from above. Top-down stays the default.

    It is being evaluated first, with frame rate checks on a real Windows PC, before anyone commits to building it. A full 3D view with raised walls is a much larger job and is not planned for now.

Hear when it lands.

Leave your email and we'll let you know when Cartosmith opens.