A “Dummy” Route Planner for Drafting New Tours

Feature Requests and Bug Reports
1

Hi all,

I’m wondering if anyone else would find this useful, or if it’s something the team might consider for the future.

When I’m developing new tours, I often like to experiment with different route ideas before committing to creating a full new tour in my library. It helps me check accessibility, pacing, and roughly how much information I can fit between stops. The trouble is, I tend to work on two or three tours at once, and every time I start a new draft it understandably makes my Editor a bit twitchy — especially if the tour we’re currently polishing isn’t signed off yet.

What I’d really love is some kind of “dummy” or sandbox-style route planner. Something lightweight where I can:

  • test different stop locations
  • check distances and accessibility
  • get a feel for word count and pacing
  • sketch out ideas without creating a “real” tour entry

Basically, a safe space to play around with structure before anything appears in my official list of works‑in‑progress.

Is this something that already exists and I’ve missed it, or could it be considered as a future feature? I imagine it would be helpful for anyone who likes to develop multiple concepts at once without cluttering their main tour library.

Thanks in advance — and thanks as always for the great tools we already have.

2

Hi Steve

We always encourage exploration and playing around when coming up with new routes. Hitting the cobbles early in the process helps to generate route ideas and potential opportunities you might miss when viewing the map from above. You’re welcome to create as many test routes as you like, to play with. It’s useful to give your editor a heads up beforehand and they’ll know that you’re sandboxing some ideas.

You can easily save scripts with text to speech audio and download the tour in the VoiceMap, without the need to submit them to your editor. If yo make a change, just redownload the tour to get the latest iteration.

This section in the tutorial documentation explains the process of creating a test/sandbox tour.

Feel free to reach out to me or your editor if you’d like some feedback or input during this process.