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Whisper
August 22nd, 2005, 03:09
Elric has an awesome website with an outstanding amount of tokens for use, however, being a noob to online roleplaying of this sort, the maps I've got have a grid system already in place that do not fit most of the tokens.

My question is this...

What program(s) are best to resize a map to fit the tokens or to resize the tokens to fit the map? Any of these programs free? (Guess it's two questions)

It just seems an important aspect of the online game and what my players have the most fun with is the tactical portion of combat in terms of movement, facing, etc. Without scaling a map to fit tokens or the reverse, the functionality of combat is hindered imo. Basically looking to simulate some of the DM/Player interaction that happens face to face with a 5' grid map and minatures.

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

richvalle
August 22nd, 2005, 03:26
Try Gimp. Its a free graphical program.

Here is what I like to do:

Find a picture that you/a player likes for their character and download it. You can now share that picture when introducing the character. Resize it to... 60x60 pixles? to be a portrait (someone else can say for sure). Then resize it again to 50x50 and you can use it as a token.

Note: the 50x50 size fits dundjinni maps perfectly. Someone else has stated they like to use a default size of 100x100. You'll have to see what works best for you.

Hope that helps.

rv

Cantstanzya
August 22nd, 2005, 03:29
From what I've seen 50x50 is pretty much the standard. Works good for me.

Crusader
August 22nd, 2005, 06:57
Resize it to... 60x60 pixles? to be a portrait (someone else can say for sure).

Yeah, I can - it's 63x63 for portraits. :)

kalmarjan
August 22nd, 2005, 18:42
It will be interesting to see what the standard will be once the image zooming comes into effect. Right now I use 25 x 25 px, because the maps that I use are too large for the 50 x 50. If I keep with that standard, I have to break the map into chunks, which sucks when I have to go naming tokens.

Whisper
August 22nd, 2005, 19:50
So basically everyone uses Dunjinni or Gimp to resize pics?

My angle would be to have maps downloaded from .pdf files. I was told you can scan or copy the maps into .jpg files and place them in the images file for use. The problem as I kinda described above is the scaling of the map.

By the recent posts then Dunjinni or Gimp would help me out with the scaling issue then? Gotta remember, I R A NooB when it comes to this stuff!

Ilwan
August 22nd, 2005, 19:54
here is the documentation for scaling in Gimp:

https://docs.gimp.org/en/ch04s04s04.html

Whisper
August 22nd, 2005, 23:33
Awesome. Will have to try it out.

kalmarjan
August 23rd, 2005, 00:09
This one is a little long, but it represents accuracy in Photoshop.

What I do is use the measure tool.
I measure the width of one square (Which is usually 5 ')
I divide the desired pixel size (50 px) by this measurement to get the decimal number. Then I multiply it by 100, CTRL-C the amount and go to image size. (CRTL+ALT+I) I link the two amounts, then plug in the percentage, change the drop down box to percentage, and hit enter.

This will scale your map accurately.

So, Measure tool ->
Calculator 50/number of the measurement X 100
CTRL+C
Switch to photoshop
CTRL+ALT+I
Link the width and height
CNRL+V the calculation
Change the drop down box from pixels to percent.
Hit okay
save the picture.

This will help you if you have this program, as you can cut a JPEG or GIFF from the PDF right into PS if you like, and edit it on the fly.
Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Whisper
August 27th, 2005, 18:27
Thanks for the excellent advice.

First off, Gimp works real well. Suprisingly well and easy to download, install and fairly intuitive to use (at least for me). I spent about 1/2 hour getting familiar and feel comfortable with most applications needed to scale or otherwise modify for Fantasy Grounds.

Kalmarjan's method of scaling works very well even for Gimp and not photoshop. It's tried, tested and works well. A few more tries for practice and I can scale very quickly. THANK YOU Kal!!

As a matter of fact, I was able to start creating my own tokens with Gimp. Simply amazing and fun.

I think my last piece of the puzzle is a dungeon creation system. I know CC2 and Dunjinni are out there. Anyone know of any free versions for simple creation of taverns, houses, etc? I am not looking for 3d or anything too fancy for what I need.

Thanks all for the help to date. You are helping make my campaign a reality.

Ilwan
August 27th, 2005, 19:19
I think my last piece of the puzzle is a dungeon creation system. I know CC2 and Dunjinni are out there. Anyone know of any free versions for simple creation of taverns, houses, etc? I am not looking for 3d or anything too fancy for what I need.

Try out Autorealm
https://autorealm.sourceforge.net/index.php

or Dungeoncrafter
https://www.dungeoncrafter.com

richvalle
August 27th, 2005, 19:22
Do you happen to have Neverwinter Nights? I've never tried using it but I keep hearing how easy it is to make a map/building in it and then take a screen shot and import that in.

I've also heard of people using games like Civ2 to build world maps.

rv

Snikle
August 28th, 2005, 00:48
I used to use Age of Empires to build maps, but that got really old after a while as there are only so many buildings available. I am sure Neverwinter nights might run into this same problem, be pretty good though I would think. I managed to purchase the Morrowind PC RPG a while back, it has a great 3D map editor called The Elder Scrolls Construction Set that I thought would be great to create game maps, but honestly I just never got around to installing it and messing around with it. I think this would be great for making maps and I think you can probably pick it up pretty cheap.

Graiskye
September 6th, 2005, 00:23
Anyone looking into creating 'Dungeon' type maps would do well to chek out DungeonForge. It takes over where DC left off. Allows resising of artwork(easy), and several other useful functions. The main boon of itis that you can use any art you find, ie: all the art available for dunjinni can be used in Dungeonforge. By using the 'Tileset editor', and the 'Objectset editor', one can customise it to your hearts content. Grai



https://www.dungeonforge.com/ DungeonForge site