Unbound Map: Town
Moderators: dorpond, trevor, Azhrei, Gamerdude
- trevor
- Codeum Arcanum (RPTools Founder)
- Posts: 11311
- Joined: Mon Jan 09, 2006 4:16 pm
- Location: Austin, Tx
- Contact:
On a related feature, we've talked about (and giliath started writing some code a long while back) to suppose image bundles. That is, you can drop a zip file into the image explorer and have it show up as a root. That way you can have a "Western Town" bundle that you can distribute, which would make it a little easier to keep together.
Dreaming of a 1.3 release
That would be nice but I still think it would be nice to go the other way around - to create bundles in Maptool and save them.
Then we can make:
Set Tables (the cups, plates, etc, will all be interactable)
Filled Wagons (All the stuff is inside ready to grab!)
Filled Barrels and Crates (What? it's empty now?)
and a slew of other things!
So to make a map, I can just drag these to the map and voila! That makes me think a moment - it would also be nice to have the bundles established on the tree somehow. This way can find them just as easily as a regular object.
Then we can make:
Set Tables (the cups, plates, etc, will all be interactable)
Filled Wagons (All the stuff is inside ready to grab!)
Filled Barrels and Crates (What? it's empty now?)
and a slew of other things!
So to make a map, I can just drag these to the map and voila! That makes me think a moment - it would also be nice to have the bundles established on the tree somehow. This way can find them just as easily as a regular object.
- trevor
- Codeum Arcanum (RPTools Founder)
- Posts: 11311
- Joined: Mon Jan 09, 2006 4:16 pm
- Location: Austin, Tx
- Contact:
Think of the bundles as being a step above the grouped token save.dorpond wrote:That would be nice but I still think it would be nice to go the other way around - to create bundles in Maptool and save them.
That is, when we talk about creating a loadable bundle, I envision that the image explorer will automatically be able to recognize and handle them directly from the file system. So they show up as a group in the image explorer and can be drag-dropped into the map.
Now take that concept and create an image bundle with the token bundle inside of it
Dreaming of a 1.3 release
Trevor, let's talk.
I need to ask you some technical questions on what will work better as far as memory is considered.
Let's say I want to just create several block stamps and instead of loading one unbound map, the users stamped down blocks to make a city. How will that be handled memory wise?
This is why I ask:
I eventually want to make a city with buildings without roof tops. The buildings will have rooms and such already made. The GM could plop down some roofs to cover the buildings. (You know where I am going with this). The thing is though, the maps will have to be higher quality and I will have to make one block at a time but being a stamp, how would that affect the performace of Maptool if I would stamp 4 city blocks? Is it just as much overhead as if I actually made one map of 4 city blocks in photoshop or does maptool do some kind of magic to lower memory requirements.
Just curious. I am torn - do I go lower detailed unbound map or high detailed blocks as stamps...
I need to ask you some technical questions on what will work better as far as memory is considered.
Let's say I want to just create several block stamps and instead of loading one unbound map, the users stamped down blocks to make a city. How will that be handled memory wise?
This is why I ask:
I eventually want to make a city with buildings without roof tops. The buildings will have rooms and such already made. The GM could plop down some roofs to cover the buildings. (You know where I am going with this). The thing is though, the maps will have to be higher quality and I will have to make one block at a time but being a stamp, how would that affect the performace of Maptool if I would stamp 4 city blocks? Is it just as much overhead as if I actually made one map of 4 city blocks in photoshop or does maptool do some kind of magic to lower memory requirements.
Just curious. I am torn - do I go lower detailed unbound map or high detailed blocks as stamps...
- trevor
- Codeum Arcanum (RPTools Founder)
- Posts: 11311
- Joined: Mon Jan 09, 2006 4:16 pm
- Location: Austin, Tx
- Contact:
Using stamps is basically a type of compression. Compression techniques use repetition to reduce size. The same principle applies here.
For anything that is repeated, and we can ignore rotation and scale, we can reduce to a single instance.
So, if you have four blocks that are all different, then it would be the same as a program like photoshop that has the entire image. On the other hand, if you create a 12 block city using 4 blocks, then you only use the memory for 4 blocks.
For anything that is repeated, and we can ignore rotation and scale, we can reduce to a single instance.
So, if you have four blocks that are all different, then it would be the same as a program like photoshop that has the entire image. On the other hand, if you create a 12 block city using 4 blocks, then you only use the memory for 4 blocks.
Dreaming of a 1.3 release
- trevor
- Codeum Arcanum (RPTools Founder)
- Posts: 11311
- Joined: Mon Jan 09, 2006 4:16 pm
- Location: Austin, Tx
- Contact:
Nope, it's all the same image. Java2D is really quick at rotating and scaling.RPTroll wrote: One question for Trevor (I think you just answered this but I want to make sure): do you create another image instance in memory when you rotate or scale an image to be displayed in maptool?
Dreaming of a 1.3 release
Not a problem at allRPTroll wrote:Thanks for pursuing this Dorpond. This is exactly what I've been looking for.
Since my mind is currently here at the moment - let us talk about physical size.
OK, when I first load Maptool, the grid size defaults to 40. Is that the resolution/size people want when we design building? In other words, should the building be designed around that size token?
It is nice to have a base to work off of.
When I made that cobblestone and such, I used grid 40 to size it against.
Let's start with that.