Well, I first started playing around to see overall performance. That ended up with a pretty advanced campaign file. First I created the mountain pass. That is a mountain that has a cave that leads from one side of the hill to the other. I loaded it up with LBL and overall, it tested fantastic! Performance rocked! Very cool!
So then I decided to make another hill; this time make it with a path around the hill that leads to the top of the hill. To pull this illusion off, I had to use multiple textures and LOTS of back shading to make the hill appear 3D. At the end of the day, that killed my performance even on my Zippy PC. That is too bad becasue I was really looking forward to expanding on this campaign by adding more trees, a couple villages, monster camps, rivers, etc..
I think I will have to stop here however until we can make transparency perform better but I think (I could be wrong) that is going to have to wait for a push to Java 6 which is a while down the road.
Let me know what you think. I would like to know what you think of the artistic effects and more important, how it performs on your PC. Please let me know the latter since it is very important to the developers and I.
http://rptools.net/dorpond/MountainPassV2.cmpgn
NOTES:
1. All trees have LBL
2. Cave is all LBL
3. Watch towers have LBL
4. Hill with path does not have LBL and is in progress.
5. This WHOLE map was created with texture drawing (oops - incorrect; the watch towers are stamps)
Campaign: Mountain Pass
Moderators: dorpond, trevor, Azhrei, Gamerdude
In case someone wants to use Version 1 of the campaign file, you can download it here:
http://rptools.net/dorpond/MountainPassV1.cmpgn
It doesn't have the large hill with the path going up but at least you could use it for a game.
Let me know how they both perform for you.
Thanks!
http://rptools.net/dorpond/MountainPassV1.cmpgn
It doesn't have the large hill with the path going up but at least you could use it for a game.
Let me know how they both perform for you.
Thanks!
LOL - no problem RPTroll - I enjoy doing it! Making these types of maps really puts Maptool in perspective when it comes to its capabilities. My job here has dual purpose; make fun maps for everyone and see how those maps work in the Maptool. The data collected from the latter is great, especially for Trevor.RPTroll wrote:Thanks for your work Dorpond.
You and the other MapTool graphics wiz-kids make life a lot easier for us graphics lamers.
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dLANbandit
- Dragon
- Posts: 636
- Joined: Wed Dec 13, 2006 10:43 pm
I really like that map it is amazing.
Trevor: How is blocky vision supposed to work? I tried setting up a vision named Threat Area with Blocky and a 5 ft radius. It ended up being just the upper left threat area lit up with the bottom right grid squares not shown as in the threat area. If blocky isn't supposed to center on the square and radiate out in touched squares it sure would be useful to create a vision that does that.
I really like being able to name visions.
Another comment on Blocky Round, I thought it would be a more realistic DND type LOS, so I tried setting up 120 ft blocky round vision. I found that it is like the round vision until the outer band where it is blocky. I expected to see blocky vision lines all the way out. I'm not sure how hard that would be to do but it would be useful to show the outline of squares crossed by the ROUND LOS without showing the ROUND LOS vision lines. That would allow me to create a vision and disable it then call it Sneak Range, Full Move Range, Run Range.
Trevor: How is blocky vision supposed to work? I tried setting up a vision named Threat Area with Blocky and a 5 ft radius. It ended up being just the upper left threat area lit up with the bottom right grid squares not shown as in the threat area. If blocky isn't supposed to center on the square and radiate out in touched squares it sure would be useful to create a vision that does that.
I really like being able to name visions.
Another comment on Blocky Round, I thought it would be a more realistic DND type LOS, so I tried setting up 120 ft blocky round vision. I found that it is like the round vision until the outer band where it is blocky. I expected to see blocky vision lines all the way out. I'm not sure how hard that would be to do but it would be useful to show the outline of squares crossed by the ROUND LOS without showing the ROUND LOS vision lines. That would allow me to create a vision and disable it then call it Sneak Range, Full Move Range, Run Range.
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dLANbandit
- Dragon
- Posts: 636
- Joined: Wed Dec 13, 2006 10:43 pm
Well, I found that making the mountains with stamps allows Maptool to perform a hell of a lot better than drawing them out with texture draws and transparencies.
I like creating maps better with texture drawing since it allows more flexibility but I wanted you all to know that doing large things with stamps works very well atm.
Check out the performance here:
http://rptools.net/dorpond/MountainPassV3.cmpgn
I like creating maps better with texture drawing since it allows more flexibility but I wanted you all to know that doing large things with stamps works very well atm.
Check out the performance here:
http://rptools.net/dorpond/MountainPassV3.cmpgn