Small Things That Make Projects Less Scary

This update is not one giant dramatic feature. It is more like I finally went around the workshop and tightened a bunch of screws that were bothering me.

Projects in MapToPlay are starting to hold real work now: terrain, OSM, imagery, editor layers, versions, exports, experiments, mistakes, second attempts, third attempts because the second attempt lied. So the platform needs to be better at helping you keep that work understandable and recoverable.

Backups And Versions

You can now download a project backup as a MapToPlay archive and create a new project from that backup later. It includes the project metadata, source assets, layers, and saved vector feature data. In other words: the important project shape, not just a lonely settings file pretending to be useful.

Project versions use the same idea, but inside the project. Save a named version before a risky edit, then check it out later if you want to go back. Checkout also saves a small safety version first, because apparently I have learned at least one thing from breaking my own work repeatedly.

• Download project backups
• Create projects from backup archives
• Save named project versions
• Restore a version with a safety snapshot first

Assets Are Less Confusing

Assets also got some much-needed clarity. A project can now have multiple DTM, vector, and imagery outputs after reprocessing, but only one selected source per family. The Editor may still be using an older asset through existing layers, so the dashboard now calls that out instead of leaving everyone to guess.

The Assets page shows what is selected by the project and what is used in the Editor. If an asset is neither selected nor used, it can be deleted. If it is still part of the project or editor state, MapToPlay protects it. Very boring. Very necessary.

Archiving Projects

There is also project archiving now. Archived projects are not deleted, but they become read-only and stop counting toward active project limits. That gives people a way to keep old work around without having it sit in the way forever.

Unarchiving needs an available project slot, and there is a 24-hour lock after archiving. That lock is intentionally a little annoying, because archive should be a deliberate storage/workflow action, not a fidget spinner for project limits.

None of this is flashy in the trailer-screenshot sense. But it makes the whole platform feel calmer. Less fear of trying something. Less confusion about which file is actually being used. Less deleting something important because the UI was too mysterious.

That is the kind of update I like more and more: not louder, just kinder to the person doing the work.

Stan, Developer of MapToPlay