A new update of GameMap is ready for release, finally! It was sponsored by the University of Potsdam, Germany!
I would like to tell you why I am at the same time quite proud of this update, and why I am glad I can work on something else now.
I am proud, because
- there are a couple of smaller improvements, but also one huge new feature that makes me happy personally.
- overall, GameMap is probably the most advanced H5P content type there is.
- I had two great beta testers (Gio Fonseca and Samuel Tsiu) who contributed some of their time to hunt bugs and to suggest usability improvements from a user perspective.
I am glad it’s over (fingers crossed), because
- developing editor widgets for H5P was never fun. Again, I had to come up with different workarounds for different issues, some of which I asked to improve quite a while ago.
- I found bugs in other H5P infrastructure components that I fixed and or reported on top of my GameMap work, e.g.
- H5P Editor: List item removal may remove more than one item (this one I could not work around – you can encounter that in GameMap, but it’s an open H5P core bug)
- WordPress plugin: WordPress (7.x) style can bleed into H5P action bar for DIVs
- H5P Core: Missing specification of –h5p-theme-contrast-cta-dark
- H5P CLI can fail to initialize theme controls
- H5P plugin for Moodle may break content due to broken content upgrade procedure
- Moodle’s own H5P integration may break content due to broken content upgrade procedure
- In total, with all the unexpected things I encountered and some things I myself simply underestimated, I have now invested around 80 hours of my own private time (= that I paid out of my own pocket).
⚠️ Warning for Moodle users! ⚠️
As I just mentioned, during development and testing, I found a severe bug in both, the H5P plugin for Moodle and Moodle’s own H5P integration. That means if you install this update of GameMap and then either upload existing content or edit existing content, it will be upgraded to the new version. The bugs will prevent the upgrade procedure from running completely though, and if you save the content, it will be broken! H5P Group and Moodle HQ know about the bugs and are working on a fix as I write these lines. So, please, before using this version of GameMap, be sure to use:
- the H5P plugin for Moodle in version 1.28.2 or higher
- Moodle Core with a fix, with all the different versions I can’t tell what version number that will be. Please consult https://moodle.atlassian.net/browse/MDL-83441 if in doubt.
So, what’s new?
- Added support for all the latest versions of content types.
In theory, this also would cover Branching Scenario now which currently cannot be used as subcontent as it has bugs. I fixed that, but H5P Group would still need to check and release the patches that I have made. That may take a while :-/ See HFP-4332. - Added support for theming.
That’s why you need H5P’s core in version 1.28 to run this version of GameMap. That currently rules out Lumi, for instance :-/ H5P integrations need to update the version of H5P’s core once in a while, nothing I can do here. - Moved the location of some of the options in the editor, e. g.
- declaring a start stage will now be done in the behavioural settings of a stage, not directly in the form, and
- the background image and background color are now inside a settings group for each map (yes, each map, meaning there can be multiple, see below).
- Allowed to override the scoring of exercises in stages.
To be honest, I am not a big fan of that feature (and the implementation), but stages now have a “Score scaling” section where you can decide to change the weighting per exercise within that stage, set the total score that the stage should have, or you can set the total score that each exercise should have. In other words: You can effectively override the maximum score that an exercise yields within the stage. For instance, a multiple choice question with 3 correct answers would normally have a maximum score of 3, but you could set it to be 10.
- Allowed to pick a random exercise from a bundle of stage exercises.
If you have multiple exercises in a stage, you can declare that one as a pool of exercises and one will be drawn randomly. The “Score scaling” has no effect in that case, however. - Allowed to set score percentage based restrictions for stages.
If you are running the version of GameMap that H5P Group still serves, you won’t even know what I am talking about. But since version 1.6 you have been able to set restrictions for a stage to be entered. For instance, the user could be required to have a certain score in a stage and/or not have entered another stage and/or other restriction types … Until now, you could only use the exact score of a stage as a restriction for another, now you can use percentages instead as well, e.g. 50%. - Added support a preview in the editor including cheat options.
You now have a preview option in the editor to see what the GameMap will look like. And on top of that, you have some options for cheating. For instance, you can change the number of lives left, or the score that was achieved in an exercise, so you can test access restrictions more easily.
- Allowed to have multiple maps and teleport between maps.
My favorite! 😃 You can now have multiple maps with individual behavior to some degree, and you can link them. There now is a special stage type of “teleport” which essentially is what the tubes on maps in Super Mario World are used for. You can put them on a map and select what other teleport stage it should be connected with.
Please note that this demo does not (yet) show the new features. If you use GameMap to create some nice demo content demonstrating more feature, please let me know – I may add it here as well.
How to get it?
I requested H5P Group to update GameMap to 1.9 on the H5P Hub to the latest version, but it usually takes a while until that happens (they are still serving 1.5.4 that became outdated in June 2025).
If you want to use the content type right away, look for the Reuse button underneath the content. Use that button to download the demo content, and then upload the .h5p file onto your H5P enabled platform. Please note that you will need to have permission to install H5P libraries. Otherwise, you cannot install the content type this way. In that case, your system admin will need to assist you.
Or maybe you want to use the source…
Do you have any future plans?
Ideas: yes. Plans: no.
One thing that bugs me is that editing the content type has become quite complex. I’d like to find a good way to improve usability and code quality in that regard. I’d much rather do that than add more features — in fact, I’d love to remove some.
I know you want to share your ideas, too. Please keep in mind, though, that I was just the contractor. It’s not my content type. As I mentioned before, I’ve already invested more resources than I should have from an economic perspective.
I may work on GameMap independently. At some point. Definitely not in the near future. As always, I will do general maintenance for free and fix hidden bugs in my spare time. However, I really need to take care of myself. Recently, I have been doing more H5P community work than is healthy.