The Winding Caverns

[mhorgunn]

Went on a spending spree and bought a few things last night ...among them "The Winding Caverns." Now I'm not trying to break any copyright laws, but the tiles are meant to be inverted and rotated to create ... Well ... winding caverns. So my question is ... is is there a way to access these from the library so I can add dungeon dressing and rotate/ resize? Thanks!

[damned]

If the filename containing this module is in the /modules folder you can crack it open with any zip decompression program. If its in the /vault then the answer is no. Possibly you could contact support and ask them to include 4 versions of the map as you cannot rotate it within FG....

[Zacchaeus]

Yes, you'll find this in your modules folder in the FG Appdata. As damned says you can extract the maps by changing the .mod to .zip and then unzipping the file. You can then (presumably since I wasn't aware that these were tiles that you could fit together) manipulate them in photoshop or something similar.

[mhorgunn]

Thanks ... The description on drive through rpg implies such ... I haven't actually tried it. I think it's original purpose was to be used with the old lead minis ... It takes up way too much realistate in the virtual world. As always ... thanks for the help.

[Trenloe]

For further info, the maps were created as part of this Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1534484023/roleplaying-maps-by-arcknight

[mhorgunn]

Thanks for the background on the maps. I wish I had had these back in the day.

[Trenloe]

I wish I had had these back in the day.
Still available: https://arcknight.squarespace.com/shop

[mhorgunn]

Okay ... Thanks! I was able to open them up in Photoshop. Good thing because if nothing else the tiles need to be resized. One tile alone is almost 24 inches. That's one heck of a cave entrance in Fantasy Grounds. :)

[Trenloe]

They're setup to be 100 pixels per square. It's a good resolution for commercial products as it caters to those who want more details (e.g. if they zoom in) and keeps the file size down somewhat. But, for some, 100 pixels per square might be too much (I usually go with 50 pixels per square) and so you can open the module and reduce the resolution as you require.

[mhorgunn]

So ... if you don't mind me asking ... when mapping ... do you prefer in game play presenting on a level basis (using the masking system) or by room. How big are your maps ... say in inches?

[Trenloe]

So ... if you don't mind me asking ... when mapping ... do you prefer in game play presenting on a level basis (using the masking system) or by room. How big are your maps ... say in inches?
Inches don't really mean anything when VTT gaming. Most RPGs will use a square to represent some distance - e.g. D&D and most d20 based games use 1 square = 5 feet.

For a dungeon crawl type game, I'll usually use a large(ish) map and use the mask feature to reveal room by room. If the game is more abstract, I might use a high level map with a single token indicating where the party are and then bring up more detailed maps as required. It depends on the style of play I'm using and also the maps available to me. If a commercial adventure comes with lots of maps then I'll be using lots of maps, if it doesn't have many then I'll have to find (or make) appropriate maps to use and this might restrict the number/type of maps I use.

Note: do not use very large resolution maps in FG as these take up a lot of valuable memory. Try to keep maps below 2000x2000 pixels (and 1MB in file size - but the file size only affects the time it takes to share with players), if you *need* one large resolution map (say the region the party are adventuring in) then going a bit above this is OK for the odd map, but don't make a habit of using huge maps. FG in it's current architecture is limited on memory (it's a 32-bit app) and displaying large images takes a lot of memory - there are plenty of threads on these forums where GMs have had issues trying to use huge maps.