I hadn't even thought of file size! That's another consideration for the map maker*.Quote:
Originally Posted by Griogre
You and drahkar make a good point that I am putting a lot of pressure on myself to provide good quality maps to my players when they might be happy with far less. In my regular table top games I rarely do more than miniatures on my chessex battle map (a more wrinkled and curling beast you have never seen). It might be a bias I have towards games on the computer needing to reach a certain graphical standard, just because that's what I've been playing the last 20 years, and computer games get better looking every year.
Recently I've been teaching my brother and I how to play Savage Worlds on Fantasy Grounds, and after each session (which has been short and frustrating for various reasons), we fire up World of Warcraft to do a little quick leveling. I find myself admiring the beautiful vistas of Don Murogh for a few seconds before we start actually playing, and then I realize that I'm just hitting tab, pressing '1' and then '3', and then hitting tab for the next target, until I've killed all 10 woozles before piloting my way back to the question mark. And then I realize how much I love and appreciate Fantasy Grounds, and wonder why the heck more people and companies aren't interested in real roleplaying online.
Now I'm not saying I want Blizzard quality maps (ok, sure, I would love it), but I'd love to have a regular supply of maps that were half as good as Doctor Zeuss's beautiful creations to use with our living, breathing games. In the meantime I'll keep searching for a decent solution.
*And it reminded me of another factor: split levels. I remember the first encounter in the War of the Burning Sky takes place in a tavern, in which EugeneZ (a hero of mine) had helpfully included a map for both the first and second floor. Of course my players rushed to the second floor immediately when combat commenced (don't ask me why), but as soon as I moved a token from one map to the other, the session went into crash mode. I believe this is something that was fixed in a later version, but I've never had the guts to check.