Drawing dungeon walls with textures...

Phergus · Post by **Phergus** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 2:43 pm

The issue of drawing dungeon walls that have shadows has come up now and again in the discussions of the new texture drawing tools so I thought I would experiment a bit and see what could be done.

After some twiddling in GIMP to make some textures I was able to do this map in MapTool in just a couple minutes:

The walls with shadows were drawn using two different textures:

Here is a 400% enlargement of the vertical wall texture:

The basic technique is:
* Select the line drawing tool
* Pick the appropriate texture for either vertical or horizontal walls as the Draw color
* Turn on the Snap-to-Grid
* Set the Line Width to 21

Note these textures are for 35 pixels/grid or even multiples thereof.

Now draw out your dungeon alternating between the Horizontal and Vertical wall texture as needed.

To make it faster and easier, first draw out the dungeon using 3 pixel colored lines so that you know where all of the horizontal and vertical wall segments go and then go back over the colored lines with your textures. With the snap-to-grid turned on this is pretty trivial.

Anyway I thought it made for an interesting exercise.

Post by **trevor** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 2:54 pm

That's fantastic phergus ! I'm constantly amazed at what you all can do with these tools

Emryys · Post by **Emryys** » Sun Feb 04, 2007 3:35 am

trevor wrote:That's fantastic phergus ! I'm constantly amazed at what you all can do with these tools

Agreed!

Stuff like this needs to go in a "Maptools for Dummies"...

Seriously, a help guide and advanced technigue guide would be handy...

voodoo · Post by **voodoo** » Sun Feb 04, 2007 4:29 am

Call me dumb, but could you tell me how you can have a simple black background for an unbounded map?
The closest thing I got (especially for when I want to show players pictures, portraits...) was "starfield".
I couldn't get a straight "black background" out of the (digital) box.

Post by **dorpond** » Sun Feb 04, 2007 7:05 am

voodoo wrote:Call me dumb, but could you tell me how you can have a simple black background for an unbounded map?
The closest thing I got (especially for when I want to show players pictures, portraits...) was "starfield".
I couldn't get a straight "black background" out of the (digital) box.

Make a small black square in your favorite painting program. Make it small because you are just going to make that black square an unbound map in Maptool

VOILA!

voodoo · Post by **voodoo** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 1:32 am

dorpond wrote:
voodoo wrote:Call me dumb, but could you tell me how you can have a simple black background for an unbounded map?
The closest thing I got (especially for when I want to show players pictures, portraits...) was "starfield".
I couldn't get a straight "black background" out of the (digital) box.
Make a small black square in your favorite painting program. Make it small because you are just going to make that black square an unbound map in Maptool

Small as in "10 pixel small" or as in "100 pixel small" ?
(still think it should belong in the default unbound squares...

dorpond wrote: VOILA!

Merci beaucoup.

Post by **dorpond** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 5:32 am

voodoo wrote: Small as in "10 pixel small" or as in "100 pixel small" ?

Yes

They will both work. Just remember that the unbound map mechanism just tiles whatever you tell it to open. It could be 2X2 pixels and it will tile that too. You usually go smaller since it will leave yo more memory for the rest of the map.

Play around with it. You could in fact have all kinds of different color backgrounds if you get sick of Black

voodoo · Post by **voodoo** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 12:18 pm

dorpond wrote: They will both work. Just remember that the unbound map mechanism just tiles whatever you tell it to open. It could be 2X2 pixels and it will tile that too. You usually go smaller since it will leave yo more memory for the rest of the map.

I hadn't thought about that...

Phergus, could you tell me how you did the map (not the walls but the rooms and corridors), where you found the tiles?

Thanks to both of you.

Phergus · Post by **Phergus** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 4:05 pm

voodoo wrote:Phergus, could you tell me how you did the map (not the walls but the rooms and corridors), where you found the tiles?

That example was all drawn with textures that I created. The wall textures were created in Gimp using one of the included textures. It's called Java as it is a picture of coffee beans.

If anyone wants details on creating the wall textures let me know.

The floor texture was cut out of one of Kristian Richards dungeon tiles. I cut out a 70x70 px area to line up with the 35 px grid I designed the wall texture for.

Go herefor Kristian's awesome dungeon tiles and if you use them let him know that they are being used with MapTool.

The point of the exercise was to build the dungeon with just the texture drawing tools. As the textures used in drawing are "tiled" together when filling an area I just took advantage of that by creating my wall textures at the grid size with mostly empty space in the middle.

Michael Silverbane · Post by **Michael Silverbane** » Tue Feb 06, 2007 2:07 pm

So... Once I find or create a cool texture with which to build my dungeon, how do I go about making it available for use in Maptool?

Thanks for your help
silver

Post by **trevor** » Tue Feb 06, 2007 2:48 pm

You can add directories on your file system directly into the Image Explorer, put all of your images into a directory, or heirarchy of directories, then File->Add Image Explorer Path, navigate to the directory and add it.

Next, find your texture in the image explorer, then right click->Add as paint

It is now available in the paint dialog

Pick a paint tool, right click on the "fill" color in the color panel, then the Texture tab. select your texture and start drawing

You can hold CTRL key down on most tools to snap to grid. Note that there's a precision issue I'm working on so the snap will be Just Off sometimes.

Phergus · Post by **Phergus** » Tue Feb 06, 2007 4:55 pm

And Real Soon Now Trevor is going to give us the ability to:

* Preserve textures in the Texture palette between sessions
* Remove textures from the Texture palette
* Eyedropper selection to select a texture from one already used on the map.

Right?

Post by **trevor** » Tue Feb 06, 2007 5:15 pm

Phergus wrote: * Preserve textures in the Texture palette between sessions

Definitely

Phergus wrote: * Remove textures from the Texture palette

Oh yeah, that would probably be a Good Thing

Phergus wrote: * Eyedropper selection to select a texture from one already used on the map.

My knee jerk reaction was "no way, you can't do that", then it occured to me how trivial that would be. I'll add the tracker

Post by **trevor** » Wed Mar 07, 2007 8:21 pm

Phergus wrote: * Preserve textures in the Texture palette between sessions
* Remove textures from the Texture palette

galneweinhaw has contributed these for 1.2b19

Phergus · Post by **Phergus** » Wed Mar 07, 2007 8:29 pm

trevor wrote:
Phergus wrote: * Preserve textures in the Texture palette between sessions
* Remove textures from the Texture palette
galneweinhaw has contributed these for 1.2b19

Bravo!