Battle map sizing

Request changes or additions in functionality.

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robmiracle
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Joined: Mon May 25, 2020 12:04 pm

Battle map sizing

Post by robmiracle » Sat May 30, 2020 10:04 am

I don't know if this is a "small" feature request or not, but it certainly would be a helpful one.

First, I understand that the primary use case for this is making printable, high resolution maps, mostly overland. I however want to make battle maps that have this commonality. It's for D&D 5" which maps 5 foot squares to 1 inch squares, perhaps 25-30 squares to a side. The end goal is to show these on a 32" flatscreen TV embedded into a table and the player's character markers and monsters (we use dice fwiw) position themselves on the projected grid. We are currently using a 720p monitor sitting on top of the table while we finish construction where we will have a 1080p monitor cut into the table.

I can make these maps work through a variety of adjustments in the grid and image size and DPI. But the problem is the "features" that go on them, be it a barrel or table. The artwork is mostly scaled for 300 dpi. 300dpi * 30" ends up being a huge map, and on my 2018 MacBook Pro with 16GB of RAM, the app slows down and really hurts the experience. If I make the map at 72 or 96 dpi the app performs much better but all the features are way too large and I'm slowed down adjusting each thing that I add to the map.

It would be nice if feature art would scale from 300dpi to the selected map dpi so their relative sizes stay the same both speeding up the app performance while reducing the manual adjustments the map maker has to make.

Caveat: I know some of the third-party art I've loaded in isn't consistent in feature item scale and I can't get away completely from resizing them, but this feature would greatly reduce the resizing.

Thanks
Rob

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Kanchou
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Posts: 1021
Joined: Mon Nov 10, 2014 2:23 pm

Re: Battle map sizing

Post by Kanchou » Fri Jun 05, 2020 1:30 pm

robmiracle wrote:
Sat May 30, 2020 10:04 am
I don't know if this is a "small" feature request or not, but it certainly would be a helpful one.

First, I understand that the primary use case for this is making printable, high resolution maps, mostly overland. I however want to make battle maps that have this commonality. It's for D&D 5" which maps 5 foot squares to 1 inch squares, perhaps 25-30 squares to a side. The end goal is to show these on a 32" flatscreen TV embedded into a table and the player's character markers and monsters (we use dice fwiw) position themselves on the projected grid. We are currently using a 720p monitor sitting on top of the table while we finish construction where we will have a 1080p monitor cut into the table.

I can make these maps work through a variety of adjustments in the grid and image size and DPI. But the problem is the "features" that go on them, be it a barrel or table. The artwork is mostly scaled for 300 dpi. 300dpi * 30" ends up being a huge map, and on my 2018 MacBook Pro with 16GB of RAM, the app slows down and really hurts the experience. If I make the map at 72 or 96 dpi the app performs much better but all the features are way too large and I'm slowed down adjusting each thing that I add to the map.

It would be nice if feature art would scale from 300dpi to the selected map dpi so their relative sizes stay the same both speeding up the app performance while reducing the manual adjustments the map maker has to make.

Caveat: I know some of the third-party art I've loaded in isn't consistent in feature item scale and I can't get away completely from resizing them, but this feature would greatly reduce the resizing.

Thanks
Rob
Rob,

The feature "Options" group let you select the scale for the artwork, so you can set the scale for the Feature Tool based on your grid size (i.e. 50%). And, if you need to have a high resolution export later on you can simply upscale export and you won't lose quality (the "upscaling" would just be returning to the actual size).

Let me know if that makes sense/is helpful :)

- Alejandro
Alejandro S. Canosa
Three Minds Software

robmiracle
Posts: 7
Joined: Mon May 25, 2020 12:04 pm

Re: Battle map sizing

Post by robmiracle » Fri Jun 05, 2020 5:33 pm

That might work!

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Kanchou
Site Admin
Posts: 1021
Joined: Mon Nov 10, 2014 2:23 pm

Re: Battle map sizing

Post by Kanchou » Sat Jun 06, 2020 5:48 pm

robmiracle wrote:
Fri Jun 05, 2020 5:33 pm
That might work!
Yay! And if it doesn't let us know :)

- Alejandro
Alejandro S. Canosa
Three Minds Software

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