Continent to Encounter on one map?

[SolemnSeraph]

Hey everyone. I want to know if there is a way to be able to make maps that, when zoomed out, can display the whole continent and, when zoomed in, shows enough detail to be used as an encounter map, with appropriate hex grids. I want to have four grids based on size. The smallest being 5ft to a space and the grandest being 60 miles to a hex. I'm not sure if MapTool supports this. It could, in theory, using cell loading and LOD, but I'm not too familiar with this. I basically want to use one map for all exteriors, and only create new maps for interiors. This way everything syncs up nicely and seamlessly, and I can add detail to areas as needed.

Thanks for any help. If this is not possible, I will mention the idea to the team. Also, any suggestions are welcome.

[wolph42]

its certainly possible, but not advisable. check out my warhammer map project (should be in user creations). Problem is that things become too slow. What *is* advaisable is to create one big overview map and place teleports there (or macro activated buttons) that opens the 'location map' and moves players there on a new mt map.

[SolemnSeraph]

its certainly possible, but not advisable. check out my warhammer map project (should be in user creations). Problem is that things become too slow. What *is* advaisable is to create one big overview map and place teleports there (or macro activated buttons) that opens the 'location map' and moves players there on a new mt map.

Yeah I kind of figured the MT wouldn't handle it well if at all. I have an I7 and 16 GB of RAM so I can go a long way with MT before it bogs down. Maybe the devs or a contributed will be willing to improve this in the future. Nevertheless, I do want to give it a try. Do you know of any guides or tutorials for doing this?

[wolph42]

had a better look at your OP and I noticed that you asked to 2 different types of grid, right? thats not possible on one map. One map = one grid. You can set it any way you like e.g. 1,5 or 60 but its one value only. So in *that* case I would certainly advise you to use seperate maps as you can switch grids.

Should you still want to go for the 1 size fits all. I would define the small grid so 5 in your case and draw one battle map on that scale. Then based on that map scale up to the large map. You won't see the grid any more but you will see the distances. also If you start from scratch: you have a choice in coordinates, make use of it. Either:
1. start the upper left corner of your big map on the 0,0 coordinate. This is useful if you later want to add macro that move teleport tokens or calculate distances.
BUT if your map coords get too large (millions) this can become inconvenient and MT could start acting strangely. I have no experience with this, but rumours go round that high num coords can bring problems
so
2. start the centre of you map on the 0,0 coordinate. More tricky to create macros but it halves the max used coord.
I personally would go for 1.

Also check out my bag of tricks (link in sig.). It has several tools which you can use to create maps. And as i said before, my warhammer map project.
o and make certain you are using j8x64 bits. (especially the 64 bit part or you'll not have enough memory)

edit: of interest: http://dorpond.rptools.net/demos/Zooming/Zooming.html
http://dorpond.rptools.net/demos/Zoom2/Zoom2.html
http://forums.rptools.net/viewtopic.php ... RP#p200296

[SolemnSeraph]

had a better look at your OP and I noticed that you asked to 2 different types of grid, right? thats not possible on one map. One map = one grid. You can set it any way you like e.g. 1,5 or 60 but its one value only. So in *that* case I would certainly advise you to use seperate maps as you can switch grids.

Should you still want to go for the 1 size fits all. I would define the small grid so 5 in your case and draw one battle map on that scale. Then based on that map scale up to the large map. You won't see the grid any more but you will see the distances. also If you start from scratch: you have a choice in coordinates, make use of it. Either:
1. start the upper left corner of your big map on the 0,0 coordinate. This is useful if you later want to add macro that move teleport tokens or calculate distances.
BUT if your map coords get too large (millions) this can become inconvenient and MT could start acting strangely. I have no experience with this, but rumours go round that high num coords can bring problems
so
2. start the centre of you map on the 0,0 coordinate. More tricky to create macros but it halves the max used coord.
I personally would go for 1.

Also check out my bag of tricks (link in sig.). It has several tools which you can use to create maps. And as i said before, my warhammer map project.
o and make certain you are using j8x64 bits. (especially the 64 bit part or you'll not have enough memory)

Ah I see. I also feel it is important to mention that I will not likely be using MT as my play board, but rather just as a map to define areas. Maybe multiple grids is something to be suggested for future versions? Basically you would define a scale for the grid and a zoom range at which that grid is used.

[aliasmask]

The way MT works is you can get some pretty insane detail, but the logistics and precision may be tough to figure so you end up eye-balling it. Generally speaking you may have a world map where 1 hex is 30 miles. Then you may have an area map where 1 hex = 1 mile. Then you may have a city map where 1 square may be 30 ft and finally you may have your basic combat map where 1 square is 5ft. All these maps can stack on to each other but you'll end up stretching and shrinking the maps to fit in to the area.

I did this recently with a city map. I stretched it out to where it was fairly pixelated at the character token level, but zoomed out looked nice. For combat areas or building, I then put another image over the stretched out background to show better detail.

Here's an example of the city and the very center area.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/700 ... tailed.png
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/700 ... farMap.jpg

... Both Maps Together ...

city and encounter map.jpg (328.76 KiB) Viewed 598 times