RPTools.net

Starting with 1.3b15 you can export your campaign images and put them up on a server for faster access.

To do this:

- Create your campaign
- File->Export->Repository File
- Save the zip file
- Upload the file to your web server
- Unzip the file into a subdirectory of your choosing, must be accessible via a web browser
- find the "index.gz" file with your browser so that it looks something like "http://myhost.com/mycampaign/index.tgz"
- Open Edit->Campaign Properties
- Click on "Repositories"
- Copy-paste the address from your browser into the "Add" text field and click "Add"
- Save your campaign with the repository.
- Start your server, when players connect they will get the images from the webserver

NOTE:

By default all campaigns have the rptools gallery as a remote repository, so if you post your images in the gallery you're clients will pick them up.

** The index update only happens once a day, late at night, so there's a little time gap in between posting and availability.

sweet thanks for the info. Anybody know of another good place to put repositories if we don't already have place.

do we upload the actual pics to the rptools gallery or the encripted looking things from the zip maptool makes?

I guess I'm a little confused. If i do the actual pic how can i be sure i remebered all the ones i used.

Also thinking about this feature could we add a repository folder to the image explorer? That way if i drag it out of that folder and make tokens/objects I know that that image is defninately in the repository already.

Is it me, or does this seem confusing and overly complicated?

I thought it was going to be as easy as:

Exporting the campaign, taking that file and upload it somewhere, and have the players point to that location.

The only additional step is the unzip. What's the complicated part ?

The actual image. The encrypted looking files are actually just the image named with the md5key. Which, as I think about it, doesn't have to do that. I did it to preserve uniqueness in the file, but there are other ways around that.



The primary motivation for the rptools gallery index is so that when people create campaigns from images in the gallery, they are used automatically without any effort from you. If you happen to want to put your own files up to use them that way, that's an option, but there's no way to just upload the exported images. More on this in a bit.



This would be pretty cool. Be able to drop the zip file into the Image Explorer.

MapTool is free, and will always be free.

That being said, an idea we've been kicking around is to create a service where people could have a one-click solution to hosting images.

In short:

- Gm pays a couple bucks a month for some room on the rptools server
- Create or update your campaign
- Click Tools->Export to RPTools, MapTool will create the zip, upload it to the server, and add the repo to your campaign. One click. Simple.

What do you guys think ? Would that kind of service be interesting to you for a couple bucks a month (I'm thinking like $1 per 10m or something)?

Most of my images are taken from Dundjinni.com and RPGMapshare.com. To repost them in our Gallery would be voodoo.

Yes, I'm interested.

This sounds like a good solution to the file-transfer issues and would (I assume) be a repository of images that the players couldn't access.

If this service also had password protection, we could create full maptool adventures and share them directly via rptools. That would be great as currently we have a lot of images being shared but very few campaign files.

My thoughts are this Trevor, paying a dollar or two a month for a place where I can drop my zip files so that my games load up fast and easy for my players, is WELL WORTH IT. For demos alone, this would rock!

Where to I sign up?

Those are all good points, Sir Flak. (Sheesh! I got distracted while typing my response to Sir Flak and when I come back to finish it there are 8 more posts!)

Trevor, why not just put the URL of the ZIP file that MapTool created into the repository? Are you thinking that a GM might have a bunch of campaigns that all share the same images, so by unpacking the ZIP of each campaign into the same place they can share the same repository?

This looks to be very useful. Thanks.

My plan is to put a web server on the laptop that runs DM Genie and put the maps there, then put MapTool on a separate laptop. This will keep the maps off of MapTool (so the chat and token movement can't be interfered with) yet keeps the images on the LAN...

Why a per campaign repository?

If a GM uses a lot of the same assets when building different campaigns there will be a lot of duplicated assets in the different campaign directories on the server.

My thought on this were more:
- GM selects Export to Repository
- MT slows list of currently known repositories with option for New
- GM selects New
- MT prompts for URL, ftp login & password
- MT gets current index at location, if present
- MT compares asset list in active campaign with repository
- MT uploads any missing assets, updates index and uploads that as well
- MT flags active campaign with repository URL

This way a GM could have one repository - if he so chose - for all of his assets and MT would maintain it.

When Trevor first mentioned this functionality, I thought of it in this way (and still hope it goes this direction);

You would be able to add an http:// Image explorer path. You could then instruct your players to do the same.

Each of the RPTools that connects to that path would index? the files locally.

When you came up with a new campaign you would save it locally having built the campaign using images from your http:// Image explorer path so when your players went to connect them only had to get placement and other campaign info from your PC while the images would be obtained from the Image explorer path.

In essence this would be a way of giving folks copies of your local Image Explorer path. Of course I could be misunderstanding the value/processes behind giving folks a copy of your images ahead of time.

This would let the players see all of your maps, tokens and stamp images at will.

The basic point of the repositories is to get the distribution load off of the GMs PC, which is typically on some broadband connection with minimal upload speed, and put the load up on some web server that would be able to deliver the assets to all of the players at a much faster rate.



All the files would have to be downloaded to each client to generate that index. Even the ones that weren't needed.

The concept of a remote Image Explorer path could be interesting though.

I think I like the way its implemented now where you take the repository and upload it somewhere. This makes a nice portable package. It would be nice if it was just uploaded the zip file and maptool did the job of downloading and unzipping it for you. But, as implemented, clients only download the bits they need and not all the images at once which may be easier on bandwidth.