In my last post, I talked about creating a set of hex tiles from paintings in the Met collection for use with Hex Kit. It ended on an ominous ellipsis hinting that I was thinking about creating an alternative to Hex Kit, which isn't supported anymore. It wasn't meant entirely seriously. Until, of course, it was...

Some people picked up on that line, and the feedback got me thinking about what it would mean to create such an alternative. Because there are other hex map editors out there, of course. So what is it that makes Hex Kit unique? What's its identity? What would need to stay the same is at least as important a question as what would need to change.

So here are a few quick thoughts on what a new Hex Kit could look like.

What works

Initially, my mind went straight to the fancy stuff that would, theoretically, be possible and kinda neat. Local-first, real-time collaboration, while maintaining full data ownership and privacy for the user(s). Allowing editing the maps in the typical top-down, 2D fashion, but rendering them in 3D, to allow stacking maps vertically à la Tears of the Kingdom's cloud-, over-, and underworld, and then create isometric views that show all layers at once. Stuff like that.

But I quickly realized that the resulting tool would certainly be cool, but it wouldn't be a replacement for Hex Kit. So probably more like something to think about once that's done.

So the following is a list of things I think the current version of Hex Kit does well, and a replacement would need to keep intact:

• Downloadable, installable app

• Offline

• Cross-platform

• Simple. Showing restraint and taste in what tools to add and which aren't strictly necessary to do the job.

• Custom tile sets

• Layers

• Player vs. GM view

• Fog of war

• Support for both hex orientations

• Provide a good default tile set

And here's what I would change, add or remove:

• Make it open source

• Modernize the interface/UX

• Allow uploading a square image and use it as a fill for a hex tile

• Make it way easier to create custom sets in general

• Support for existing tile sets

I'm not entirely sure if I would keep the plugin system though, as that might be a lot of extra complexity for little gain. At least as far as I can tell right now.

The hardest thing is already done

There's a saying that there are only two truly hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things. Since Hex Kit's domain-specific code probably won't need a cache, that leaves us with one hard problem to solve.And toward that end, I'd like to present to you the following screenshot, from a test project I have set up for some explorations...