MapTools Tutorial
MapTools Tutorial
I'm finally getting around to doing this...
Tonixx asked me back in October to post some info on how I use MapTool for my PBP games, so here it is. I'll add a bit to it each day over the next week. If anyone has questions post them here and I'll do my best to answer.
EDIT: I'm posting a separate thread for Q&A to avoid clutter. If you have any questions please post them here..
viewtopic.php?f=32&t=1275
What you need...
1. MapTool - Any of the most recent versions will do. You can download it at http://www.rptools.net/index.php?page=downloads
2. TokenTool - Very useful for making monster and PC tokens easily. You can download it at the same site as MapTool.
3. Java 6 (1.6) - Java 7 does not currently work with MapTool, so make sure you get 6. Download it at http://www.java.com/en/download/manual_v6.jsp
4. The RPTools forums can be a helpful resource. http://forums.rptools.net
More tomorrow !
Tonixx asked me back in October to post some info on how I use MapTool for my PBP games, so here it is. I'll add a bit to it each day over the next week. If anyone has questions post them here and I'll do my best to answer.
EDIT: I'm posting a separate thread for Q&A to avoid clutter. If you have any questions please post them here..
viewtopic.php?f=32&t=1275
What you need...
1. MapTool - Any of the most recent versions will do. You can download it at http://www.rptools.net/index.php?page=downloads
2. TokenTool - Very useful for making monster and PC tokens easily. You can download it at the same site as MapTool.
3. Java 6 (1.6) - Java 7 does not currently work with MapTool, so make sure you get 6. Download it at http://www.java.com/en/download/manual_v6.jsp
4. The RPTools forums can be a helpful resource. http://forums.rptools.net
More tomorrow !
Last edited by Bhart on Tue Mar 19, 2013 5:30 am, edited 1 time in total.
Re: MapTools Tutorial plus Q and A
Given my lack of mapping ability, I'm sure my players will greatly appreciate an improvement in this department.
Following!
Following!
Re: MapTools Tutorial plus Q and A
dmw71 wrote:Given my lack of mapping ability, I'm sure my players will greatly appreciate an improvement in this department.
Following!
Yeah, it is pretty nifty. I am enjoying it in the T1 game...
I dont know how to copy and paste the pics, but check out his map of those rooms. Includes light circles items, rubble, etc...
Dandelion - female half-orc beautyqueen in training (The Lone City in the Wildlands) OSRIC
Halfpint - female halfling badgirl wannabe (Lab Lord- The North Marches) LL
Mark'd - charismatic human fighter (Lab Lord- The North Marches) LL
Halfpint - female halfling badgirl wannabe (Lab Lord- The North Marches) LL
Mark'd - charismatic human fighter (Lab Lord- The North Marches) LL
Re: MapTools Tutorial plus Q and A
I always wanted to learn how to use it. Thanks for helping out!
Re: MapTools Tutorial plus Q and A
Glad to help. Real life is in the way again. If I don't get something posted tonight I'll have it up this weekend.
Re: MapTools Tutorial plus Q and A
It's too bad that I'd have to roll back my version of Java in order to use this. I don't imagine you can have two versions of Java on the same computer? Thanks for the post, bhart.
"Sir, our research shows that the bird is equal to or greater than the word."
Re: MapTools Tutorial plus Q and A
ToniXX, you absolutely can have multiple versions of Java installed on the same computer: Multiple Java versions running concurrently under WindowsToniXX wrote:I don't imagine you can have two versions of Java on the same computer?
While the above link has a Windows bent to it, which I'm not sure you're using, it should be applicable in other OS's as well.
Moshe wrote:"It is absolutely possible to install side-by-side several JRE/JDK versions. Moreover, you don't have to do anything special for that to happen, as Sun is creating a different folder for each (under Program Files).
There is no control panel to check which JRE works for each application. Basically, the JRE that will work would be the first in your PATH environment variable. You can change that, or the JAVA_HOME variable, or create specific cmd/bat files to launch the applications you desire, each with a different JRE in path"
Re: MapTools Tutorial plus Q and A
Yep. In my old support position here at work I had to regularly run software in different versions of Java to ensure it would work properly in those versions.
Joys of software testing. We also had to run some stuff in multiple web browsers to make sure it was compliant with all of them. I was so glad when we FINALLY got to stop testing against Netscape Navigator. What a klunky, buggy piece of kludge THAT was...
Joys of software testing. We also had to run some stuff in multiple web browsers to make sure it was compliant with all of them. I was so glad when we FINALLY got to stop testing against Netscape Navigator. What a klunky, buggy piece of kludge THAT was...
Dragon foot. Bamboo pole. Little mouse. Tiny boy.
Re: MapTools Tutorial plus Q and A
Until two days ago, Adobe had a pretty cool feature service called BrowserLab which easily allowed for testing web content across desktop browsers. I don't really do web design any longer, but I know I used it on the few websites I did develop and it was a pretty cool tool.Alethan wrote:We also had to run some stuff in multiple web browsers to make sure it was compliant with all of them. I was so glad when we FINALLY got to stop testing against Netscape Navigator. What a klunky, buggy piece of kludge THAT was...
Bhart, sorry to hijack this thread!
Re: MapTools Tutorial plus Q and A
No worries.dmw71 wrote:Until two days ago, Adobe had a pretty cool feature service called BrowserLab which easily allowed for testing web content across desktop browsers. I don't really do web design any longer, but I know I used it on the few websites I did develop and it was a pretty cool tool.Alethan wrote:We also had to run some stuff in multiple web browsers to make sure it was compliant with all of them. I was so glad when we FINALLY got to stop testing against Netscape Navigator. What a klunky, buggy piece of kludge THAT was...
Bhart, sorry to hijack this thread!
Re: MapTools Tutorial plus Q and A
PART 2 Getting Set Up.
Once you have MapTool installed and running you may want to hide most of the panels that are shown by default. You don't need most of them unless you are using this app as a virtual table top for live games, but that is another tutorial. My focus here is how to use MapTool for PBP games.
So open the 'window' menu and uncheck everything but Map Explorer and Library. Or...A faster way is to click the little x in the upper right corner of each panel. Map Tools comes with a very basic set of textures and tokens. So, the next thing you will want to do is add some graphic resources to your Library. In the File menu click "Add Resource to Library...". You should see the following dialog... In this tab you can point to any directory you have on your local drive. Any PNG files in that directory will show up under a folder of the same name in your "Resource Library" panel.
The bottom tab contains resources available from RPTools. Fortunately they have a lot of good stuff and make it easy to get started with a healthy collection of tokens. When you are done you should have a resource panel that looks something like this... If you want to create custom tokens for your players and monsters I highly recommend using TokenTool to do this. It is a fairly simple and straight forward program to use. If anyone would needs a tutorial let me know.
Once you have MapTool installed and running you may want to hide most of the panels that are shown by default. You don't need most of them unless you are using this app as a virtual table top for live games, but that is another tutorial. My focus here is how to use MapTool for PBP games.
So open the 'window' menu and uncheck everything but Map Explorer and Library. Or...A faster way is to click the little x in the upper right corner of each panel. Map Tools comes with a very basic set of textures and tokens. So, the next thing you will want to do is add some graphic resources to your Library. In the File menu click "Add Resource to Library...". You should see the following dialog... In this tab you can point to any directory you have on your local drive. Any PNG files in that directory will show up under a folder of the same name in your "Resource Library" panel.
The bottom tab contains resources available from RPTools. Fortunately they have a lot of good stuff and make it easy to get started with a healthy collection of tokens. When you are done you should have a resource panel that looks something like this... If you want to create custom tokens for your players and monsters I highly recommend using TokenTool to do this. It is a fairly simple and straight forward program to use. If anyone would needs a tutorial let me know.
Re: MapTools Tutorial plus Q and A
PART 3 Your First Map
Map Tool will open with a default map filled with a grass texture. This is usually not what I want, so I open the Map menu and click "New Map..." which gives me this dialog... Click on the Background button to choose a background color or texture.
You'll get this dialog below, where you can pick colors or any images from your resource library to use in the background. Note that any image you pick from the resource library shown on the Texture tab will be treated like a texture and tiled (repeated) infinitely across the whole map. For purposes of this demo I'm going to pick a medium gray and change the name to My First Map. You'll get a blank gray area, to show the grid you can press Ctrl (Command) + G, or go to the View menu and click 'Show Grid". You should get the following... NEXT...Drawing the dungeon
Map Tool will open with a default map filled with a grass texture. This is usually not what I want, so I open the Map menu and click "New Map..." which gives me this dialog... Click on the Background button to choose a background color or texture.
You'll get this dialog below, where you can pick colors or any images from your resource library to use in the background. Note that any image you pick from the resource library shown on the Texture tab will be treated like a texture and tiled (repeated) infinitely across the whole map. For purposes of this demo I'm going to pick a medium gray and change the name to My First Map. You'll get a blank gray area, to show the grid you can press Ctrl (Command) + G, or go to the View menu and click 'Show Grid". You should get the following... NEXT...Drawing the dungeon
Last edited by Bhart on Tue Mar 19, 2013 5:33 am, edited 1 time in total.
Re: MapTools Tutorial
POST MOVED BELOW
Last edited by Bhart on Tue Apr 02, 2013 3:19 am, edited 2 times in total.
Re: MapTools Tutorial
I just came across a great site that could help everyone out. The site has a set of video tutorials put together by Brad Staeben. He does a much better job of explaining the details than I could do here with text and images. You can find them at...
http://www.rptoolstutorials.net
I will continue to add to this thread with some of my own comments and tips that are specific to PBP games, but I won't get into the gory details of the app since Brad does a better job of it. Not to mention you all could be waiting until 2020 for me to finish considering the rate I'm going.
If anyone has questions or needs help please post them in the MapTool Q&A forum. I'd be glad to answer with all the details that you require.
http://www.rptoolstutorials.net
I will continue to add to this thread with some of my own comments and tips that are specific to PBP games, but I won't get into the gory details of the app since Brad does a better job of it. Not to mention you all could be waiting until 2020 for me to finish considering the rate I'm going.
If anyone has questions or needs help please post them in the MapTool Q&A forum. I'd be glad to answer with all the details that you require.
Re: MapTools Tutorial
I think you've been fantastic and really get a lot out of your threads. I'll take your word though that Brad is pretty good too.
Thanks Bill
Thanks Bill
This is a game about killing things and taking their stuff so you can become more powerful in order to kill bigger things and take even better stuff.
Re: MapTools Tutorial
Thanks Ron.
PART 4: Drawing the Dungeon
There are 3 ways to make a map.
1. You can paint a complete map in another program like Campaign Cartographer, Dunjinni, etc. Then import the map image into MapTool and place it on the background layer. The basics of how to do this are covered in the following video by Brad Staeben.
http://www.rptoolstutorials.net/videos/ ... ewMap.html
2. You can add a folder full of "dungeon tiles" to your resources and assemble the map by dragging and dropping pieces onto the background layer. I will cover this later.
3. You can create the map using the drawing tools in MapTool. I find this to be the fastest method and it's the one I use most frequently. However they are not the most user friendly tools and do require some practice to get used to.
To get the basics of how the drawing tools work watch these 2 videos.
http://www.rptoolstutorials.net/videos/ ... ayers.html
http://www.rptoolstutorials.net/videos/ ... Intro.html
Note: In the drawing intro movie notice that there is a "snap to grid" button in the quick palette (the button to the left of the eraser). When drawing dungeons on a square grid I prefer to leave snap to grid toggled on. It makes drawing faster and makes things line up nicely. I always draw on the background layer unless it is something I know I want to erase or move later.
After drawing the rooms or area I will add objects like furniture, statues, pillars, etc. by dragging images from my library to the map. By doing this I can easily remove or move elements around if the PC's interact with them. The basics of how to do this are covered in this video...
http://www.rptoolstutorials.net/videos/ ... Intro.html
PART 4: Drawing the Dungeon
There are 3 ways to make a map.
1. You can paint a complete map in another program like Campaign Cartographer, Dunjinni, etc. Then import the map image into MapTool and place it on the background layer. The basics of how to do this are covered in the following video by Brad Staeben.
http://www.rptoolstutorials.net/videos/ ... ewMap.html
2. You can add a folder full of "dungeon tiles" to your resources and assemble the map by dragging and dropping pieces onto the background layer. I will cover this later.
3. You can create the map using the drawing tools in MapTool. I find this to be the fastest method and it's the one I use most frequently. However they are not the most user friendly tools and do require some practice to get used to.
To get the basics of how the drawing tools work watch these 2 videos.
http://www.rptoolstutorials.net/videos/ ... ayers.html
http://www.rptoolstutorials.net/videos/ ... Intro.html
Note: In the drawing intro movie notice that there is a "snap to grid" button in the quick palette (the button to the left of the eraser). When drawing dungeons on a square grid I prefer to leave snap to grid toggled on. It makes drawing faster and makes things line up nicely. I always draw on the background layer unless it is something I know I want to erase or move later.
After drawing the rooms or area I will add objects like furniture, statues, pillars, etc. by dragging images from my library to the map. By doing this I can easily remove or move elements around if the PC's interact with them. The basics of how to do this are covered in this video...
http://www.rptoolstutorials.net/videos/ ... Intro.html
Last edited by Bhart on Tue Apr 02, 2013 3:42 am, edited 1 time in total.
Re: MapTools Tutorial
PART 5: Adding tokens to your map
Next you will want to add the PC tokens as well as monsters when needed. You may also need to create your own tokens at times. I keep a growing directory full of tokens for monsters and PCs.
This video by Brad Staeben covers how to create the tokens add them and control their various states on the map.
http://www.rptoolstutorials.net/videos/ ... Intro.html
Next you will want to add the PC tokens as well as monsters when needed. You may also need to create your own tokens at times. I keep a growing directory full of tokens for monsters and PCs.
This video by Brad Staeben covers how to create the tokens add them and control their various states on the map.
http://www.rptoolstutorials.net/videos/ ... Intro.html
Re: MapTools Tutorial
PART 6: Fog of War, Vision, and Light.
I will add my own comments on this soon.
In the mean time here is the video by Brad on vision and light. He goes into a lot of detail that may not be needed for a PBP game, but it is very informative.
http://www.rptoolstutorials.net/videos/ ... ight1.html
I will add my own comments on this soon.
In the mean time here is the video by Brad on vision and light. He goes into a lot of detail that may not be needed for a PBP game, but it is very informative.
http://www.rptoolstutorials.net/videos/ ... ight1.html
Re: MapTools Tutorial
Step 7: Exporting your map
When you have your map set up and you are ready to post it to Unseen Servant you need to export it to an image file. MapTool will export as a PNG file which will work fine for this website.
First resize the MapTool window to the desired size. What is showing in your window is what comes out in the PNG file.
Go to File > Export > Screenshot as... You should get this dialog... Make sure the options are set as shown above and set a file location that is easy to remember. I like to use my desktop.
Click Export and you are good to go!
When you have your map set up and you are ready to post it to Unseen Servant you need to export it to an image file. MapTool will export as a PNG file which will work fine for this website.
First resize the MapTool window to the desired size. What is showing in your window is what comes out in the PNG file.
Go to File > Export > Screenshot as... You should get this dialog... Make sure the options are set as shown above and set a file location that is easy to remember. I like to use my desktop.
Click Export and you are good to go!
Re: MapTools Tutorial
We very much appreciate you taking the time to detail this process, and also for finding and sharing the other videos. It's a great reference that will undoubtedly improve the game quality of those that begin using it.