PDA

View Full Version : Community Map Standards?



msd
January 30th, 2005, 21:37
Already, there have been a couple of questions/issues that have come up about the size of maps and tokens used with those maps.

In an effort to make sure that all tokens work perfectly fine with all maps, I want to make sure that my 5 ft squares are the same fixed pixel size as everyone else's.

Do we have a sense of what the ideal pixel size is for a 5 ft square? I thought I saw 50px, or perhaps 30px, but I just wanted to make sure.

Thanks,
Matt

Ilwan
January 30th, 2005, 22:53
Good initiative to get a community standard. I would prefer 50 pixels. Thats somewhat bigger than the default tokens, but if the tokens has an image it need to be that size to fit most screen resolutions. Goes very well with the dundjinni battleplans also.

Bagpuss2
January 31st, 2005, 00:17
Yeah, I'm moving to 50 pixels is 5ft. Once I've finished the current adventure. You can get a decent sized map to display well, without losing too much detail. It works without needing to resize Ilwan's or Eric's tokens.

Legacy
January 31st, 2005, 01:44
Bagpuss, are you using Dundjinn for your adventure? I was curious as I remember someone posting about its use and I was curious if this results in a default of 50pix per 5ft?

BTS

msd
January 31st, 2005, 01:55
OK...50px it is...I don't know how you guys do things, but I typically go into Dundjinni, first extract a battlemap and then start doing design and things just on the battlemap.

Assuming a vertical-oriented battlemap and a 50px per 5 ft sq, what does the battlemap wind up at? Is that a reasonable size for the FG map window?

Just wondering...thanks!

Matt

heliopolix
January 31st, 2005, 04:01
If you export your map in Dundjinni as a jpeg or png (1600x2000 pixels) or use the 50pixel option on the BMP, then you get a pic with these statistics:


Symbolically, the window represents

<snip>
32 x 40 # of grid squares on the paper

160 x 200 # of feet in D20.
<snip>

In my experience, filling the entire Dundjinni window with map winds up with a jpeg about 650-750kb, about 2200 kb in png, and some-ungodly-amount-that-I-havent-actually-tried-but-will-be-huge-because-its-bmp kb for bmp's

Also, most of my maps are horizontally aligned, so i build them rotated 90degrees in Dundjinni, and then rotate the jpg with mspaint, but thats just me. I have noticed that FG also crashes if i spice together multiple jpegs to a single jpg thats very large. I'm not exactly sure what the threshhold is, but i do know that it will crash on a 2000*3200 but not on a 1600*2000.

Not really sure how much of this info is actually usefull, but what Im attempting to say is that 50 pixels works well, and the full dundjinni page will display in FG.

Later,
Helio

Elric
January 31st, 2005, 04:19
I know that the Dundjinni 'standard' is 40px = 1'. I'm not sure how that translates but I've just been exporting as png, loading the map up and chopping out each section that I want to make into encounter areas. I don't do any resizing and they fit my tokens just fine at 100% - also makes for smaller file sizes since you're not loading the whole map at once for the players.

I never use the full map as the puppy is HUGE and if I ever play with people that still use dial-up, they'll not want to play due to the outrageous download times.

I also create a small reference map that I just use for me to unmask the areas that the PC's have been. It's probably only about 10% of the actual map size, but I'm the only person that uses it.

Bagpuss2
January 31st, 2005, 09:00
I've been exporting as bmp, at 50px, then loading into Photoshop to crop, increase the bightness/contrast (some reason they all look a little dark to me on screen) and add any lables or special stuff not in DJ. And saving as a JPG.

Certainly a full map is too big to be practical in FG. The ones done for Burning Plague were larger than 50 pixels a square and seemed okay, but a little large for the tokens most folks had produced. Going to 50 pixels means you can get a more scaled area than those maps.

Bagpuss2
February 3rd, 2005, 19:16
Just out of interest a 50px square to 5ft, means you can get a grid 13 by 13 on screen (65ft square) before you need to scroll the map.

kalmarjan
February 28th, 2005, 04:24
For me, the 50 pixel thing is cool.
I think that the best way is like Elric said, have a map for you, at 10%, unmask (With all the secret onfo), have one that is for the players, at 10% as well, and have the rooms as seperate JPEGs in case of battle. (Kinda like having a battle mat.) That way, you really only have to use smaller JPEGs for the battles, and you can minimize the others.

Hope this Helps.