December 2024 - Custom Shapes

December 2024 - Custom Shapes

Alex Dumouchelle

December, 03 2024

Try it out - Install 0.0.5a (ALPHA)

Shapes, shapes, shapes

In my opinion, this is the biggest leap forward OpenMarch has taken to becoming an actual and usable drill designing tool. The feature is nowhere near done with many bugs to kink out, but I’m still over the moon about it. Check out the video to see for yourself.

If you’re curious about their design, shapes are built with SVG paths. There are many decisions I need to make about which SVG commands I should support, but all of this will come with time. SVGs can effectively create any shape as they are the filetype for all scalable vector graphics (hence the name).

Because of this, the only limit to the shapes OpenMarch can create is my ability to create a UI that allows users to draw it. This means users may be able to import their own SVGs at some point for school logos and custom objects.

New website

As is obvious, you’re reading this on a fancy new website built by dukc with the Astro framework! Not only does it look better than our old Jekyll home, but it has much more functionality for guides and other custom things. Plus, it lives in a separate repo from the app now.

I cannot overstate how much mature website factors into the public perception of this project. I’m hoping this is the mark of a new chapter in community visibility.

Plans for the new year

Curves were real hard to do and I’m still not done. I still need to do a good bit of QA.

  • Indoor fields (at least a couple of them)
    • Picture for field backdrop too?
  • Create a roadmap for spring release
  • Clean up curves

Remember, you can always check the GitHub project to see what current issues are in the queue.