Roadmap

The roadmap splits roughly into four stages:

The MVP stage

Fleshing out the basic tools and building the foundation to expand.

✅ The MVP stage is complete!

Phase 1

Adding auxiliary tools for making Whimsy a solid Bitsy alternative while having an own spin on it.

• Expanding the tile editor (where you draw hero, props and actors):
  • Nice predefined palettes to choose from.
  • Tile animations.
  • A couple tools for tile editor like shifting the drawing/mirroring it.
  • Additional render styles for tiles beyond the regular pixelart. Rounded, spiky sprites. Prototype for that is done, just need to integrate it into UI and runtime.
  • Multiple skins for the Hero character
• More programming blocks:
  • More events (creation, destruction of actors)
  • Playing sounds
  • GUI dialogue choices
  • Changing the hero's skin
• Game player additions:
  • Universal menu, initially only for saving/loading games.
  • Customize a game's banner, which will be shown in place of the current big Whimsy one.
• Perhaps a TTS synthesis/Yapper a la Animal Crossing for characters. Will need to research the options more because the iconic SAM is not OSS and other options are... uncanningly good.
• SFX maker.
• Standalone, offline desktop version of Whimsy.
• UI translations support.
• Music import. (Desktop version only, can't reliably fit and manage music files in browser storage.

Phase 2

More complex tools.

• Further game player customization for you and your players:
  • Customize player's colors;
  • Flippable left/right layout for the player (useful for touch devices);
  • Expand the universal menu with music/sfx and motion settings.
• Moar programming blocks:
  • Nice transitions between stages
  • Variables and conditionals
  • More dialogue options:
    • Ask a player for a numerical value
    • Ask a player for a string value
• TTS/Yapper for sure.
• MIDI-like music sequencer.
• Exporting games as standalone desktop apps as an addition to the web export.

Phase 3+

Polish and horizontal scaling.

• Programming blocks:
  • Timers
  • Move an actor/push an actor/follow an actor with pathfinding.
  • Motion effects on actors.
• ???