map file size

[Nestor]

hey guys,

I have been working on some maps in Gimp and in Maptool for a short campaign that I am thinking about running.

I have a few questions about maps,

what file type is best?
- I have been saving everything as a png

what would you say should be the typical file size for a 60' x 55' map of a house? (its pretty detailed, i used Torstan's maptool's resource pack, in gimp)

the current file size is 1519kb, and it is just the house, not the yard, or other stuff around it. is this to large? if so can it be compressed? the maps look pretty good, and i want to use them if possible

if it matters my upload speed is about 1000kb per/sec (according to speed test)

thanks

[Leonal]

For large files I tend to save as PNG 8-bit. Keeps the detail, but with a bit fewer colors.

If I have a whole lot of images I usually preload them to a second client locally and share the cache.

[damned]

PNG format works best for images that include lots of block colours. It is not so efficient with colour gradients. JPG is the opposite - it works really well with colour gradients but has poor compression of solid colours.
So - a city map or floor plans would often be best in PNG whilst outdoor areas would often be best in JPG. Either way you should try saving in both formats and viewing size/quality for yourself. Often you will find that 70% quality is plenty for JPG and you might be able to go as low as 40% while still retaining pleasing quality.
IMHO 1.6MB will be a pain for your players - although it only has to transfer once....

[phantomwhale]

Ended up squeezing most of my battle maps down to 500Kb or under by going JPEG and around 40% quality.

1-2MB is do-able, but you need players who all login at the start of the sessions, and a good chunk of time to "pre-load" the image during play. If you have players who occasionally turn up a bit late (e.g. just log in before the battle) then I have played an entire battle with one latecomer never able to see the 1.5MB background... which sucked a bit for everyone.

[damned]

i went looking for this resource pack and found one site hosting it but the zip files are broken into multiple files: eg furniture.z01, furniture.z02, furniture.zip
i tried various unzip tools, tried putting them alone in their own folder etc but i cannot seem to unpack... any suggestions?

[Nestor]

let me see if i can find where i downloaded the resource pack and ill post the url

if you have maptool (its free) it will download the resource pack for you, and then you can copy it from the .maptools folder

[damned]

hey i couldnt get the .z0? files working so i grabbed it from a torrent... looking forward to trying it out - lots of good stuff there.
https://www.rptoolstutorials.net/?page_id=23
https://www.rptoolstutorials.net/mapping_objects.torrent

[Fot5]

Like others, I typically save to a png format, and I typically limit the dimensions of the file to about 600x500 pixels so that it easily fits onto the players' screens, leaving room for the CT. A typical map for me is 300-400 Kb in size, so they transfer really quickly to the players.

[El Condoro]

I must admit, I am perplexed by how graphics and figures interact in FGII. IMO, it is intuitive to place a figure on a map and resize it to fit the map scale. It seems in FGII the figure scale can be locked and the scale of the map is resized to fit it. I am struggling with that concept.

So, given that I generally use Dundjinni to create my maps and use top-down figures, what are the best settings for maps and figures in FGII?

Map pixel size and format? (Another post suggests 500-600 pixels. My JPG maps tend to be around 500kb)
Figure size and format? (50x50; 100x100 for 2 square figures?)
Grid scale (50 pixels?)

With these settings I hope to be able to more easily create maps that fit the figure size and place grids more easily.

Cheers

[Moon Wizard]

Here are the different scaling factors that come into play when thinking about maps and tokens:

* Map viewport scaling = Zoom value when viewing maps

* Map token scale lock = When using token scale locking (from token radial menu), the relative size between tokens and the current zoom level of the map is remembered. Then, any tokens on the map are scaled using automatically to match.

* Individual token scale = Each token can be scaled as well. This scaling factor is multiplied by the map token scale lock (if enabled).

Hope that helps,
JPG

[El Condoro]

Thanks JPG. Yes, it helps some but I am wondering what others who create maps use as a standard size (pixels) for maps and figures so that the scaling process is as straight-forward as possible. I am willing to do a trial-and-error series of tests but some specific guidelines would help. Cheers.

[damned]

im not sure of this is what you are after. im pretty new to fantasygrounds and ive been out of gaming for a long time - this is one of my first maps. i have been making my maps at 1024x1024px and using a 32x32px grid. im working on each square being 10x10' and i usually put one token per square and allow adjacenet tokens to attack.

my maps are larger than they need to be for strictly battle maps as I let the players role play their way thru the map - there may be more than one encounter on the map - they may approach the target area from a different direction than i anticipated and they might completely miss a trap i set for them (damn you players).

because the map(s) are heavily wooded i use fog of war / mask so the players dont just charge off to the interesting looking thing over in that direction. sometimes i also dont put the interesting stuff in the middle in case the players just think - map - lets go check out the middle!

https://www.itng.com.au/fg/theKeep1.jpg

[damned]

So, given that I generally use Dundjinni to create my maps...

where did you find Dundjinni? it seems to not be available anymore and I really dont want to shell out for Campain Cartographer 3... I have been using Gimp and Flash.

[El Condoro]

I bought Dundjinni years ago, before their online store broke.
Your map looks very nice - much better than what I've been able to achieve (so far). I would be looking to do 5x5 squares for D&D 4e but your map would allow that easily. The other issue is filesize given they have to be shared through the net - I imagine a 500kb file would be fine, though (even bigger).

[damned]

yeah - its strange dundjinni seems to have a market waiting for it but unfortunately the owner is unwell or something.
so far i have been saving maps at 65% jpg and they have been around 250kb which seems to load fine.

[VenomousFiligree]

I use the attached map in one of my games. Once loaded to all the players, never had a problem. They're still on it after quite a few sessions... (lets hope they don't peak! :D )

[Zeus]

Thanks JPG. Yes, it helps some but I am wondering what others who create maps use as a standard size (pixels) for maps and figures so that the scaling process is as straight-forward as possible. I am willing to do a trial-and-error series of tests but some specific guidelines would help. Cheers.

I am a FGII 4E DM and regularly produce my own maps for the games I run. I typically create my encounter maps in Photoshop and always use a 50x50px grid scale unless I'm a working on town or regional maps in which case 100x100px or greater.

I always use JPG 8bit format for exporting images for use in FGII; this keeps the image file size lower (5-10 times in some cases compared to PNG) whilst bleeding only a negligible amount of quality when zooming in. Unless you are using photo-realistic images I would also use 8bit as opposed to 24 or 32bit formats, again this will significantly reduce the file size of the image.

I reserve using PNG 8bit for tokens only; this as I use 50x50px tokens and prefer to preserve the quality of the token image as we sometimes play at variable zoom levels 30px-75px.

[damned]

nice dungeon MurghBpurn - im pretty sure that will take a few weeks to get thru! what did you make your map with? im just starting some dungeons and im using flash and gimp neither of which make things particularly quick. i use flash because it works really well with grids and with objects and because i have it!

[Zeus]

Indeed a nice dungeon. A pure guess, Maptools + Torstan's Tilesets?

[damned]

hey Doc - where do you download Torstan's Tilesets from? I have been search for the last 2 hours and have trawled so many pages with great looking maps and objects but cannot find the download or purchase option for these... they do look fantastic.

[Leonal]

Top on google search for "Torstan's Tilesets" https://forums.rptools.net/viewtopic.php?t=7418 (which directs you here https://www.fantasticmaps.com/Downloads.html)

If those are the ones you're looking for.

:)

[damned]

apologies - i should have been more clear - i did find that link and did download it but it is over 2 yrs old and even the thread that it is posted in has 34 pages many of which reference updates etc which dont seem to be in the afore-mentioned download.
i was wondering if there was a more up to date file. i did read 18 of the pages on that post a number of which had now defunct links to (possibly) newer versions.

[Leonal]

Aha, and here I thought my search skillz were the awesomest. ;)

Tried looking around cartographer's guild?

His style pack for CC3 in this year's annual is very cool, but that's for overland mapping.
https://sub.profantasy.com/2011/june11.html apparently one for dungeon level coming next month. (not free though)

[damned]

id prolly be happy to pay $100 for a good software tool if it would save me time - but cc3 looks like it will cost me more than double that and i really dont want to spend that much money :(

[VenomousFiligree]

nice dungeon MurghBpurn
Thanks, a copied design.


Indeed a nice dungeon. A pure guess, Maptools + Torstan's Tilesets?
GIMP and Torstans Tileset :)


apologies - i should have been more clear - i did find that link and did download it but it is over 2 yrs old and even the thread that it is posted in has 34 pages many of which reference updates etc which dont seem to be in the afore-mentioned download.
i was wondering if there was a more up to date file. i did read 18 of the pages on that post a number of which had now defunct links to (possibly) newer versions.
This (https://www.fantasticmaps.com/Downloads/Torstan's100pxTiles.zip) is the latest file, if anything is missing I would email (https://www.fantasticmaps.com/Contact.html) Torstan.

[damned]

i did find that one so i shall give it a go.
gimp i have and use so i should just get started i guess :)
the other cool thing i found earlier today was the following random dungeon generator using torstan's tiles.
it only works with firefox 3.5 or 4.x
https://www.happyhikers.ca/temp/mapGenerator/MTMapGen/input.html

[Nestor]

i did find that one so i shall give it a go.
gimp i have and use so i should just get started i guess :)
the other cool thing i found earlier today was the following random dungeon generator using torstan's tiles.
it only works with firefox 3.5 or 4.x
https://www.happyhikers.ca/temp/mapGenerator/MTMapGen/input.html

now that is really cool

[VenomousFiligree]

im pretty sure that will take a few weeks to get thru!
As each player created their PCs I preloaded it. Whilst playing on level one I have preloaded level 2. :)

[El Condoro]

I am a FGII 4E DM and regularly produce my own maps for the games I run. I typically create my encounter maps in Photoshop and always use a 50x50px grid scale unless I'm a working on town or regional maps in which case 100x100px or greater.

I always use JPG 8bit format for exporting images for use in FGII; this keeps the image file size lower (5-10 times in some cases compared to PNG) whilst bleeding only a negligible amount of quality when zooming in. Unless you are using photo-realistic images I would also use 8bit as opposed to 24 or 32bit formats, again this will significantly reduce the file size of the image.

I reserve using PNG 8bit for tokens only; this as I use 50x50px tokens and prefer to preserve the quality of the token image as we sometimes play at variable zoom levels 30px-75px.

Thanks Dr Zeuss - I will be experimenting with map making in the next couple of weeks and this is a very helpful start. Cheers

[damned]

As each player created their PCs I preloaded it. Whilst playing on level one I have preloaded level 2. :)

i was commenting on playing thru the dungeon not on the downloading! it might be a largish file but there is plenty of game time in it too.

[VenomousFiligree]

Ahhh sorry, yes they have been going a long time :)

[demonsbane]

im not sure of this is what you are after. im pretty new to fantasygrounds and ive been out of gaming for a long time - this is one of my first maps.
That is a very good forest map, damned. I like it.


my maps are larger than they need to be for strictly battle maps as I let the players role play their way thru the map - there may be more than one encounter on the map - they may approach the target area from a different direction than i anticipated and they might completely miss a trap i set for them (damn you players).
I agree with that approximation.