Suggestion: Erase Tool

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dorpond
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Suggestion: Erase Tool

Post by dorpond »

I know this has been brought up in the past but an erase tool would make making dungeons really easy and fast with dungeon pieces.

Currently I have to make several different room styles for all of the different sized dungeon pieces that I am creating. It would be much much easier to make one dungeon room and have the user erase where they want a hallway or door to be.

This way I could just draw squares, halls and circles for the dungeon pieces - the GM can erase what they need.

Currently I have made 5X5, 10X10 and 10X20 rooms. Completely sealed that makes 3 peices. Making all three have an opening on one side adds another 3. Making that opening in diferent places now increses the amount of objects by another 6 or so. It would be much nicer to have just 3 dungeon pieces instead of 12 or so. Imagine when I start making rooms that are 40X40 or 80X80. There is no way I can make all those different pieces with doorways in them.

My goal is to make the dungeon pieces easy for the GM. They don't have hundred of peices to look through - instead they have 12 or 20 maybe. Let them cut out the doorways. Makes it simple.

So having an erase tool would make this project a reality.

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trevor
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Post by trevor »

This could be solved by vry's solution of putting a floor tile on top of the wall: insta portal.

The erase tool is trick: when you erase, how far down should it erase ? All the way to the ground ? That may not be the affect you are looking for.
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dorpond
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Post by dorpond »

Here is an example of how an erase tool can simply the way we currently build maps.

In this example, I only used 3 different dungeon pieces. Just 3. This map took me 4 minutes to drop down and that was because of the sizing tool wasn't working right after rotation. All I would need to do now as a GM is erase the connection points. Voila! Map made in a quick amount of time AND with these dungeon pieces use very little overhead. My memory in this example is not accurate because I had two maps created. after closing the other map, my memory usage dropped to 19meg.

While making dungeons in this manner isn't the prettiest, it is important to be able to drop down a dungeon in those moments where there is no prep time.

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trevor
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Post by trevor »

At the same time, if the drawing tools supported textures (which is one of my long standing interests), you could just draw the boxes, and don't have to worry about rotation or sizing, you just draw, and then the erase works just as it does now.
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dorpond
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Post by dorpond »

trevor wrote:This could be solved by vry's solution of putting a floor tile on top of the wall: insta portal.

The erase tool is trick: when you erase, how far down should it erase ? All the way to the ground ? That may not be the affect you are looking for.
I have to be completely honest with you. Vyr's tiles are way too complicated to use quickly. While a very great idea, I was looking for something quicker and easier. There are 57 pieces in the Vry Dungeon Pieces. That is a lot of stuff to sift through when you need to make a dungeon on the spot. Trying to find the right piece is difficult.

I want the GM to have 10 pieces - maybe 20 at the most but they will be complete rooms (shapes) - not pieces of rooms so dropping them down will be quick and easy.

To answer your question, we should never be able to erase the base map itself - only the objects that rest on the map. Whatever pointer tool we have selected will be the object that will erase. Simple.

dorpond
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Post by dorpond »

trevor wrote:At the same time, if the drawing tools supported textures (which is one of my long standing interests), you could just draw the boxes, and don't have to worry about rotation or sizing, you just draw, and then the erase works just as it does now.
And that is a great idea too. Loading textures and drawing squares, lines and circles would rock!

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Post by Steel Rat »

And being able to select the fill mode, whethere totally filled (like a floor) or a specific fill thickness from the outer edges or center (maybe either as an option), for walls.
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