MapCraft Tool

huhlig · Post by **huhlig** » Fri Nov 03, 2006 1:40 am

I think with the advent of version 1.1 becoming stable and autofow on the table I am curious if a semi-fork/new tool is in order. Maptool currently does a decent job of stamping things onto the background and doing in game stuff very well but some of its creation capabilities are very limited and it doesn't support the multiple layers neccessary for Auto FOW and such.

I was playing around with Dungeon Craft 2 (Now dead) and it has a very simple system for creating maps. An interface designed for maptool to lay down tile by tile or bound or unbound maps, layer things on top of them. Enter walls ahead of time, bundle textures, maps, xml data and everything into a single file(zip or similer) for storage or distrobution would be excellent.

What do people think, eigther a seperate mode or seperate program for this would rock. Take a look at Dungeon Craft 2, it works really slick but I think a RPTools Version would be far better suited in the long run.

Emryys · Post by **Emryys** » Fri Nov 03, 2006 5:37 am

Have you looked at DungeonForge / MapX?

huhlig · Post by **huhlig** » Fri Nov 03, 2006 10:14 am

Yes and I was incredibly unimpressed. They are much more cumbersome and wont support the additional features neccessary for tokens, walls and campaigns that Maptool will eventually use.

Sir Flak · Post by **Sir Flak** » Fri Nov 03, 2006 10:15 am

I never really liked map x i thought it was pretty buggy.

huhlig · Post by **huhlig** » Fri Nov 03, 2006 10:17 am

After playing with all three I have to say I was most impressed with Dungeon crafter 2. Even in its alpha programming status it seemed to be the best thought out of them.

Post by **trevor** » Fri Nov 03, 2006 10:44 am

Over time MapTool will incorporate more map making and environment making. I'd like to keep the two tools the same so that you can insta-change things whenever you need to without having to export, load a different app, tweak, export, then reimport into the main app.

There are two things that will be coming on the shortlist soon:

- Be able to export a map by itself, that can be imported into an existing campaign.
- Take a screencap of the entire map

The first one will let people create fully functioning maps including fow, tokens, stamps, drawings, whatever

The second one will let people construct their maps and export as an image file.