Sizing tokens - purchased furniture token set

[IrishBouzouki]

I set up a floorplan map to be reasonably scaled for PC and NPC tokens (I'm using 72 pixels per 5ft grid square as a very low-quality jpeg so it doesn't take forever to load but still looks as sharp as it needs to).
I plan to use the standard FG token scaling to snap the PC and NPC tokens to 80% of the grid.

I noticed my map was kind of plain as just a floorplan so I went and picked up a token pack from drivethru that has a bunch of fantasy furniture and is set up for FG use.
Should look pretty good.

But if I release scale for the furniture tokens it looks like it release scales for *ALL* the tokens including the PC/NPC tokens. Is this right and is there a way to make it just release for selected tokens and not for others?

Might be already asked, I will search around some more this evening but have to head out now.

Thanks.

P.S. Another problem is the tokens in that pack are sized for 180 pixels per 5 foot square (2.5:1 larger than the background map I have).
Obvious solution is to make the background map 2.5x larger, but that will increase the file size for people connecting by a factor of 6-7.
I don't want to go and resize every image in the token pack.
So I guess I will just have to live with a 1 MByte map. What number of bytes should begin to concern me for this? It is the biggest file in the campagin data that I see.

[Mask_of_winter]

If you don't have too many furniture pieces you can resize them individually by holding ctrl and with your cursor over the token mouse wheel up or down.

[Zacchaeus]

You may want also to have a look at this extension (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?20231-Enhanced-Images-%28layers%29-for-FG-3-0-CoreRPG-%28and-rulesets-based-on-CoreRPG%29) so that you can keep your furniture layer separate from the tokens otherwise you're going to get problems selecting and moving PC/NPC tokens without also moving the furniture.


Also, you are correct to keep map size down as well under 1Mb as you can (about 500k is what I usually aim for in a big map).

[Trenloe]

But if I release scale for the furniture tokens it looks like it release scales for *ALL* the tokens including the PC/NPC tokens. Is this right and is there a way to make it just release for selected tokens and not for others?
Lock token scale is not individual tokens, it is for all tokens. It is designed for tokens that are all the same scale, allowing the tokens as a whole to be scaled to different sized maps. Do the scale once with a single token (zoom the map so that the token is the right size on the map), lock the tokens, and additional tokens of the same dimensions will appear as the same, scaled size when added to the map. Info on token scaling here: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/wiki/index.php/Tokens#Scaling

This, obviously, won't help you if you have tokens of differing sizes. The auto sizing also won't help if the tokens you're using for furniture etc. are larger than one square.

So, unless you want to resize all of your token files prior to using your tokens in FG, you will probably have to use the CTRL+mouse-wheel method of individual token sizing once they're on the map.

As mentioned, you may also want to use the layer extension to avoid token stacking issues. This won't assist with sizing (as it is the same across all layers), but it is designed to allow terrain features to be put on lower layers. Just make sure you read all of the instructions for the extension - there are a number of gotchas that might make it inappropriate for your use.

[Tailz Silver Paws]

Hello IrishBouzouki, it sounds like you have picked up one of my Furniture Token packs from RPGnow.com. First up, thank you for your support buying the pack.

Working at a different scale from that which I made the tokens for, can be a bit of a stumbling block if your trying to use different scale art all at once inside Fantasy Grounds itself. Since you will want to scale some tokens at one value, and others at another value. Results in a lot of fussing around.

A trick you might want to try (since your using a different scale from which I made the tokens for) is placing the tokens onto your map inside your graphics program and scaling them on the map inside your graphics program to fit where you want them. Then save the map. With the tokens as a part of the map, you don't have to worry about your players having extra data to download (eg: all the furniture tokens). But this works only if you don't want the furniture to be "movable" by your players.

Or you could do what I do, render the map at 180 pixel scale, and break it up into the main areas. Almost all of the maps I make are broken down versions of bigger maps. I focus in on areas of intrest - for example: places where an encounter will happen - which I render at 180. While the "overall map" is a scaled down overview.

I hope that advice helps.

[damned]

I love Taliz tokens and art but I hate the scale!
I do everything 50px to keep it light weight. I use some of Taliz map tiles with Tiled (https://www.mapeditor.org/) to make stuff pre game.

[IrishBouzouki]

Yeah I haven't seen Taliz other stuff but the furniture tokens are gorgeous and I want to use them. They are a very handy piece of artwork for making a dungeon look a little more interesting, although I *do* remember (barely at this point in life) the blue graph paper days when the players had to draw the maps as they explored.

My thinking the past week or so has been that I would forego moveable tokens and just use Paint.net or GIMP to drop them into the map file then scale everything from a combined master image. The main reason for that is actually that I want to use the monster/npc tokens from the monster manual and I doubt(?) those are the same scale, probably not even the same scale to each other let alone the player tokens. Different size tokens looks like it will not work in FG if you are using the resize to grid on any of them.

I have been giving thought to splitting up the map into separate files to keep it looking nice but make the downloads manageable in smaller chunks. And the idea of having a full map at lower resolution sounds like it will make that play better.

[IrishBouzouki]

Oh, and thanks for pointing out Tiled. I have Campaign Cartographer (and CA and CD), but while I see other people who have done beautiful things with it... I find the user interface for CC/CD/CA excrutiatingly counter-intuitive to me. I am used to OrCAD and EAGLE and Altium Designer and I expect graphical tools to work like circuit schematic tools work, which of course they do not. So I have never been able to attain any kind of competence in using CC3, or really any cartography tools I have tried, and it is just frustrating. I will check Tiled out maybe it will work out better for me. But... that is another subject entirely.

[Tailz Silver Paws]

I love Taliz tokens and art but I hate the scale!
What? What? How can you hate the scale? It gives so much lovely detail!

Such hate! :p

But seriously. I use 180 because it is what I like, and I mainly make tokens for stuff I am working on. I came to the 180 setting as I use 3 pixels for each real world inch. I don't make various sizes because there are so many different sizes used by different folks. I think Heruca the creator of Battlegrounds (https://battlegroundsgames.com/) uses 122 pixels, IrishBouzouki is using 72, your using 50. some others use 100.

If you want to reduce my tokens to 72 pixels scale, that is a reduction to 40% of the original size. If you want to get to 50 pixel scale, that is 27.78% of the original size.


I do everything 50px to keep it light weight. I use some of Taliz map tiles with Tiled (https://www.mapeditor.org/) to make stuff pre game.
How are you doing with the map tiles? I'm always keen to hear how people are doing with the map tiles. Plus I have other sets on the drawing board. Want to do some modern and Sci-fi map tiles.

I do big overview maps at 50 pixel, but as I wrote above, I zoom in to 180 on feature areas. eg: an encounter zone.


Yeah I haven't seen Taliz other stuff but the furniture tokens are gorgeous and I want to use them. They are a very handy piece of artwork for making a dungeon look a little more interesting, although I *do* remember (barely at this point in life) the blue graph paper days when the players had to draw the maps as they explored.
I just released a modern furniture set (https://www.rpgnow.com/product/174550) :)

But if you like adding objects to your maps, you might also like stuff like my Dropped Objects (https://www.wyldfurr.com/index.php/product/dropped-objects-tokens/) set.


My thinking the past week or so has been that I would forego moveable tokens and just use Paint.net or GIMP to drop them into the map file then scale everything from a combined master image. The main reason for that is actually that I want to use the monster/npc tokens from the monster manual and I doubt(?) those are the same scale, probably not even the same scale to each other let alone the player tokens. Different size tokens looks like it will not work in FG if you are using the resize to grid on any of them.
Yeah, different tokens from different sets and different producers are all going to be odd scales and sizes. Personally I only put movable furniture onto maps if I really need too. I save as much as possible into the map art itself.


I have been giving thought to splitting up the map into separate files to keep it looking nice but make the downloads manageable in smaller chunks. And the idea of having a full map at lower resolution sounds like it will make that play better.
That is what I do. A few big overviews, eg: the whole town or dungeon. And use small bullet point tokens to represent ether the whole parties location, or the location of indevidual PC's and NPC's.

Then when you move into a specific area, or to an encounter, then I go to a detailed combat/encounter map which is a higher res and with character tokens for each party member, monster, npc, etc.


Oh, and thanks for pointing out Tiled. I have Campaign Cartographer (and CA and CD), but while I see other people who have done beautiful things with it... I find the user interface for CC/CD/CA excrutiatingly counter-intuitive to me. I am used to OrCAD and EAGLE and Altium Designer and I expect graphical tools to work like circuit schematic tools work, which of course they do not. So I have never been able to attain any kind of competence in using CC3, or really any cartography tools I have tried, and it is just frustrating. I will check Tiled out maybe it will work out better for me. But... that is another subject entirely.
Have you tried GIMP (https://www.gimp.org)? If I didn't already have a Adobe Creative Cloud subscription (which gives me Photoshop) I'd be using Gimp. You should give it a try.

[damned]

Hola Silver Pawed One.

No hate... but if I meet you in a dark alley....
I have both a resized set of your map tiles and I also sometimes use the higher res and then scale the final image down.

[Tailz Silver Paws]

No hate... but if I meet you in a dark alley....
I will be the darkness that consumes you, Mwahahahahaaaa!

[LordEntrails]

... although I *do* remember (barely at this point in life) the blue graph paper days when the players had to draw the maps as they explored.

I still do, at least in a dungeon crawl I run (Undermountain). As a DM I have a complete map, but I only share individual battle/room maps with the players, so they have to map all the hallways and piece together the info they do have. They do have the advantage that all the maps I share have north at the top, but... maybe I'll start mixing that up too...