Using Large Maps?

[pierce768]

I'm really new to Fantasy Grounds but so far I love the program. It makes my job as DM much easier. However I find it very difficult to navigate a large map, especially a dungeon crawl. Is there any advice you guys have for me?

[damned]

first - if you use really large maps consider saving them pretty low res jpg to speed up loading times and save memory.
next - what issues are you having navigating?
scroll in and out with mouse wheel.
use the shield thingy icon bottom right hand corner - left click and hold mouse button down and move up/down/left/right
set the grid - right click -> layers -> set grid

[Zeus]

I think the answer will really depend upon the type of game your playing and the ruleset your using. I play mainly D&D and for those games I tend to have a large simple map for overland or large areas and smaller tactical maps for each encounter area. The D&D rulesets all support advanced encounter classes which allow a DM to place tokens in advance of actual gameplay thus reducing the overhead of using a larger number of smaller maps.

If you do use larger maps, I would recommend:

- keeping the file size down to under 1MB, especially if you have a small upload channel to the internet. Remember the larger the file, the longer it will take to transfer to all the clients during play.
- make use of the pre-share functionality of FG, in other words begin background sharing of images as soon as possible so as not to disrupt the flow of your game.

[Carthar]

Holding down the middle mouse button/wheel allows you to scroll the map.

I'm still trying to figure out how to do multi-room dungeon crawls properly as well.

FG as far as I know does not have any way for the player's tokens to remove fog of war. So you pretty much have to do it manually as the DM and this slows things down.

Also there is no way I know of, of freezing the character token's placements. Another VTT I used, use to freeze all character tokens in place when an encounter was "called" until all initiatives were rolled and it was someones turn.

[JohnD]

Lock tokens. Forget where it is on the radial, but it is there. Unmask as DM yourself... you want to have that level of control I think.

[Trenloe]

Also there is no way I know of, of freezing the character token's placements. Another VTT I used, use to freeze all character tokens in place when an encounter was "called" until all initiatives were rolled and it was someones turn.
See the "Movement" section here: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/wiki/index.php/Tokens

[Griogre]

Good advice by Zeus, but remember if you preload a map the player *can* open it in a lot of rulesets which can be a big spoiler. Pay attention to your map names and mask the map prior to preloading solves this.

[Carthar]

See the "Movement" section here: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/wiki/index.php/Tokens

I stand corrected.

Is there a shortcut for locking the tokens?

[Griogre]

Its a GM radial menu option on any token on the map. If you are not familiar with radial menus you can right click drag through them very rapidly.

[Trenloe]

Is there a shortcut for locking the tokens?
All you have to do to lock all tokens is right click on a single token on the map and select "Lock Tokens", this locks all tokens on the map. At the end do the same, but select "Unlock Tokens". 2 clicks at the beginning of an encounter and 2 clicks at the end.