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Jan 24, 2010 -- 12:03PM, JohnduBois wrote:

Jan 24, 2010 -- 11:57AM, Mommy_was_an_Orc wrote:

Is there any particular map program that we're supposed to use, or can we just use the images of the tiles?Also, which are the good city tiles sets?

Thanks!

(I see several map making programs, but I could assemble the jpegs in Photoshop much faster than any of the other options...)

For city tiles (especially if you're trying to keep the number of sets and number of different sets used to a minimum), I'd recommend Streets of Shadow.

Thanks, that's the one I was looking at using. 

Jan 24, 2010 -- 1:21PM, Alphastream1 wrote:

Quality is not very important, so there isn't much of an advantage to using direct tile scans vs. the low res of PyMapper.

I've got to disagree here. There's nothing worse than staring at a low-quality print-out of low-res images intended for screen and blown up to paper quality. I took photos of the assembled maps, although next time I'll make sure we do them in black and white instead of full color.

Also, I've been using Scrivener and OmniGraffle for nonlinear writing and outlining, they're great for the tasks.

Jan 25, 2010 -- 10:44PM, Alphastream1 wrote:

Jan 25, 2010 -- 10:23PM, RCanine wrote:

Jan 24, 2010 -- 1:21PM, Alphastream1 wrote:

Quality is not very important, so there isn't much of an advantage to using direct tile scans vs. the low res of PyMapper.

I've got to disagree here. There's nothing worse than staring at a low-quality print-out of low-res images intended for screen and blown up to paper quality. I took photos of the assembled maps, although next time I'll make sure we do them in black and white instead of full color.

What would you define as low quality vs proper quality?

Most common printers print at 300 dots per inch, with newsprint quality being about 150dpi. The resolutions on most screen is usually 72 or 96 pixels / inch. The 1x1 tiles available from the Yahoo! Dungeon Tiles group for use with the map builder are 32 pixels per inch. If you've got a 20x20 room on an 8.5-inch piece of paper with 1-inch margins, the tiles will have to be at about 1/3 scale. Now my math might be off, but at 1/3 scale, those 32-pixel-per-inch will give you 640 pixels/dots stretched over a 1950 pixel canvas.

The "correct" size isn't exact, but ideally your map images would not be scaled up to print. Granted, I understand that not everyone has subject-area expertise in imaging and printing, but I've squinted at enough fuzzy LFR maps to list it as something we can improve.

Jan 26, 2010 -- 1:23AM, RCanine wrote:

Most common printers print at 300 dots per inch, with newsprint quality being about 150dpi. The resolutions on most screen is usually 72 or 96 pixels / inch. The 1x1 tiles available from the Yahoo! Dungeon Tiles group for use with the map builder are 32 pixels per inch. If you've got a 20x20 room on an 8.5-inch piece of paper with 1-inch margins, the tiles will have to be at about 1/3 scale. Now my math might be off, but at 1/3 scale, those 32-pixel-per-inch will give you 640 pixels/dots stretched over a 1950 pixel canvas.

You're mixing up dpis.

300 dpi in terms of image size is what's known as hi-rez - if you're printing professionally, you want this. Most home laser printers can't really handle that level of resolution well. More than 200 dpi is wasted. 240 dpi is more than enough for any color inkjet printers.

The 1x1 tiles seem to be of a range in the yahoo group - the city tiles are mostly 75 pixels per inch.

One of the other issues is that the tiles are not scanned in a way that makes them easy to use in b&w. That's a much larger problem.