Wednesday Ben's Day News #29 - Beneos 2.0 and the Search Engine

There are some major reworks, updates and improvements coming and they are coming fast. Let's take a detailed look at what to expect from the flashy title Beneos 2.0.

Beneos 2.0 - What is happening?

Beneos 2.0 is the complete integration of Beneos Battlemaps into Moulinette. Rollout is immediate and I'll try to convey how much of an upgrade this is going to be. Moulinette Patrons can already see the first Beta packages and are able to download them as well. What does that mean? 

1. One click will be enough to download the whole pack.
2. A Beneos module will no longer be necessary.
3. There will be no more cumbersome unpacking stuff.
4. There will be no more mistakes and errors happening during unpacking stuff.
5. It is absolutely foolproof.

Let me expand on that a bit further.
We have asked for a lot of feedback over the past months and we received a ton of it. Something became crystal clear: While you love the look, feel, atmosphere and quality of our maps and sceneries, the process of unpacking and getting everything up and running was prone to errors, mistakes and really, really complicated. Too complicated for some and that's a problem. As soon as we noticed this trend in your feedback we started with coming up with solutions and working our way towards what we are now calling Beneos 2.0 and what is the culmination of several months of work dedicated to make things smoother, simpler and more intuitive. 

There has been some testing happening and feedback has been extremely positive!
Thank you for your testing and for your feedback - it has been so valuable!
We've written about it once or twice, but here is one more detailed look at what's going to happen.

After uploading all packs with the new and advanced Moulinette integration (which have been extensively tested during the last weeks!), Beneos Battlemaps will switch to a 100% complete cloud based model.
This means that every Beneos Battlemaps TIER 4 Patron will automatically count as a fully fledged Moulinette Patron. You will get COMPLETE access to everything Moulinette and Beneos 2.0. That's the first step.

To pay for the server upkeep and the increased traffic, the costs for TIER 4 will increase by 1$. This is not us raising prices just because we got greedy - this does not increase our profits.

It will however free us from the massive headache that is the constant troubleshooting, because everything is so god damn complicated. It gives us space for more content and more innovation, the things that we really want to spend our time on. 

Those of you already subscribing to both Moulinette and Beneos Battlemaps even save money, as you won't need both subscriptions anymore after the changes.
If you already have access via Moulinette, you can get an impression right now: Every pack labeled with BETA is packaged via the new system. Just one click. 

Try it out and then feel free to head over to our Scene Packer discord channel to give us feedback! 

You can see down left how you can install a complete pack - all maps, sceneries, player handouts and teleporters with just one click.  

If we seem disproportionately hyped about this, its because we are. To really get a sense of the changes, indulge me with this example:

What you needed to do to get a release up and running until now:
1. Install or update the Beneos Battlemap module
2. Zip the beneos_battlemaps_asset folder on Gdrive
3. Download and unpack the beneos_battlemaps_asset folder
4. Create a new folder structure within FoundryVTT for scenes and handouts
5. Search the compendium within FoundryVTT for new maps and drag them manually into the scene browser
6. Unpack each map manually or use the unpack macro
7. Are you a Forge user? Then upload everything to the Forge!
8. You're done!

What you need to do to get a release up and running with Beneos 2.0:
1. Choose the release in Moulinette
2. Click Import
3. You're done!

There is a lot that can and did go wrong using the old method - thats a thing of the past!

IMPORTANT NOTE: This changes nothing for TIER 1-3 Patrons! Everything's just staying as is! 

We're done with annoying errors, confusing folder structures and the frustrating feeling of having to deal with way too much stuff to just get a good game running. You're done with that. Phew.
You might get the feeling that this is really important to us and you'd be right. We are proud of what we do, we love doing it and it pains us to have had a barrier between our content and you, those we make our content for. But alas, no more!

Thank you for reading this far! That'd be enough for a regular Wednesday night, but we're not done yet.

The Search Engine
We've also started development for an overarching search engine for both Beneos Battlemaps and Tokens, so you can search and browse for the right assets at the right time - and fast! You need a forest road? The engine will show you all maps containing forest roads and additionally every Token-Creature that can be found in this biome. And you won't need to leave Foundry for that! There'll also be a website where you can leisurely look through all of our content. This is particularly important for Beneos Tokens, as it lets you easily keep tabs on our ever growing menagerie of creatures. We also currently have over 250 unique battlemaps and even more sceneries and there will be more environmental packs in the future, so establishing a system to keep everything sorted and ready to switch on a dime will be more and more important. Keep your eyes peeled for more infos regarding the engine and let us know if there are some key categories you'd like to see that we might miss!

Thank you so much for reading all of this, thank you for your patience and thank you for your continued support! Feel free to let us know how you feel in the comments or reach out to us via our Discord! Have a great week and you'll hear from us soon!