RPTools.net

Long story short, I created 2 separate maps, one for the current half of the campaign and one to be used for the second half, and as my players continue to surprise me, I'll end up needing the maps from the first half well into the second half. So my problem is that I don't want to have to redraw all my maps from the second file, and I don't want to have to recreate my old maps. Is there a way to export a map entirely and paste it somehow into another file or something along these lines? Under the map tab there's an "export map" button but it's never colored in so I can click on it. Please help, anyone who can.

Well.. that feature is not active because no one knows what constitutes a "map" does it include tokens, if yes, does it include ALL tokens or just those one certain layers. Since a token is a token and a token could be a character OR an object, how do you know which to export unless you do them all? Additionally. part of each "map" contains information on what lights are on the map, BUT that information is also contained inside the actual campaign itself, so which takes precedence when "imported" into another campaign, especially if there are conflicts of lights with the same name.

One thing you can do, IF YOU FEEL COMFORTABLE WITH XML and/or TEXT EDITING!!, is to:

Copy your existing campaign(s) and make BACKUPS!!!!
Open the original campaign using a Zip program (the campaign file format is a zip file with some specific content).
Open the content.xml using a plain text editor.
Each "Map" is named Zone inside the content.xsl file.
For each Zone, you would copy the entire zone tag to the closing zone tag and then open the target campaign and past into the appropriate place.
Save the target campaigns content.xml back into the campaign file

Basically, if your not comfortable with editing XML, I would redo the maps or simply open the other campaign during play as needed... it should only take 1-2 minutes or less in most cases to have all players switched to the "new" campaign while you are playing.

In the latest version of the software there is a preference setting to turn on the Export/Import feature. Once turned on you export your map and then import it to another campaign.
I've tried it and it works very well.

Thanks for the feedback.

It'll like stay a Preferences option that is turned off until more people have tried it and it seems stable...

I did a quick test of a map with the following characteristics and it was successful.

-Created from .jpg file (with grasslands background)
-drawings on Background layer
-One object on Object layer
-One token on Token layer
-No vision blocking
-Nothing on hidden layer

I expect I'll use this a fair bit as I develop my campaign. I will test it some more and see if I run into any problems.

There have been mostly positive reports on it, but I do have one bug report sitting in my queue to investigate (I don't remember the details off-hand). The localization stuff needs to be tested/stabilized first but the preference setting will go away within a build or two...

I can honestly say firsthand that the local LFR community would be in a world of hurt without the ability to export and import maps. It would be just too much effort to constantly have to remake modules for all the updates that happen.

As for myself, I've only had one instance happen to me personally where there was an issue with tokens that made the transfer. (I had to remake them.) Another instance involved a DM that had downloaded a copy of one of my campaign files and had trouble using initative. I think both times were issues of tokens from older frameworks going onto the updated version.

Still, I use export/import frequently and almost never have a problem with it. Easily one of the best features of MT, imo.