I've been playing with taking the maps from the supplements and using just paint and Word, cutting them and enlarging them to combat tile scale and printing them out.
My questions are as follows:
1. Can copies of these maps be provided without area numbers, traps, or secret doors marked so that they may be made into combat tiles for people who are inclined to do so?
2. Anybody know how to simply enlarge these maps and keep a level of clarity to them? I'm talking about using PC software that comes with the PC, not specialized photo editing stuff.
ASEO out
I've been playing with taking the maps from the supplements and using just paint and Word, cutting them and enlarging them to combat tile scale and printing them out.
My questions are as follows:
1. Can copies of these maps be provided without area numbers, traps, or secret doors marked so that they may be made into combat tiles for people who are inclined to do so?
2. Anybody know how to simply enlarge these maps and keep a level of clarity to them? I'm talking about using PC software that comes with the PC, not specialized photo editing stuff.
ASEO out
I've extracted images from the PDFs using Acrobat, which results in some o the layered items such as doors and text to be excluded. Enlarging those images will always prove to be somewhat distorting. You can always scale down, but you can never increase resolution when scaling up.
I always use Acrobat 7 to extract the images, then, using Photoshop, you can scale the squares up to be exaqctly once inch each...
Editing out the room numbers and secret doors by hand is a slight pain, though.
I REALLY like using the maps from the supplement as Battlemaps though, and have been wishing they'd do that in the online supplement for a while.
I don't know what the internal process is, but it seems like it would be pretty easy to do. I imagine they already have they map as a layered vector graphic, so if you just turn off the secret doors and room numbers, you could save a .jpg in a much large size, maybe as an alternate download?
I'd love it!
Creative Director
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It's unfortunately a lot more complicated than simply "turning off the "DM info and Room tag" layer to generate a player version or battlemat version of a map. We'd either have to have the cartographer provide two different versions of the map when he turns over the work, or plan ahead of time to put all the number tags and secret doors and traps and whatnot on a different layer. Some of the cartographers we use do this already, but some don't. In any case, one of us editors would need to spend a lot of time with each map to decide what goes on the "secret" layer, which adds a fairly complex step to an already complex process (also introducing a fantastic opportunity for errors to creep in to the maps).
The alternate (having someone on staff photoshop out all the secret stuff) is even worse, since no one at Paizo has the time to do this for every map in the magazine every month.
In any case, we barely have time as it is to produce those web supplements. Adding the fairly complex step of a player-friendly battlemat would make the art-side of the Dragon/Dungeon office mutiny, and without them, the magazines would be morbidly ugly.
So unfortunately, the answer is that we won't be able to provide untagged player-friendly maps in the downloads. I know this is disapointing (I know I'd love to have those maps for precisely the same reason), but that's just the way it is for now.
If I or Tigycho would provide such an edited map, would it be possible to host these maps on the Paizo servers for other players? Basically... if someone does the work none of the others needs to do it...
Hrmm... almost guarantee there is a legal issue in there. Not because of copyright but I seem to remember something about AOL not paying volunteer moderators or some such. I dunno, not a lawyer.
That being said, I think it is a great idea and would be happy to clean up one map an issue and send back to a central person. They could hand out assignments, message volunteers, and such?...
I certainly would do it for free as well. Seems like a great idea. I normally only do the ones I need but would be happy to have two files for each issue, one with numbers and one without. If you need volunteers you can count me in for a share of the pie. I don't have enormous amount of time remaining between DnD group, Wife/Family, Everquest 2, and *ugg*...*shudder*...*hiss*--work, but would happy to help at least one an issue. ;)
Regards,
--An Old Man
Done!
124 and all subsequent issues will contain tagged and untagged versions of all the maps that appear in the magazine. :)
Mike
Also, I've created higher resolution versions of the downloads for issues 118-121 in case you want to blow them up. All future supplements will be available in low (150dpi) and high(300dpi) resolution formats.The new hi-res download are now available at:
http://paizo.com/dungeon/resources/downloads
The crew at Paizo proves, yet again, how damn cool they are!
If, as James Jacobs implies, this process ends up being impossible to maintain, I volunteer to edit and submit a fan-edited version of the maps. Just post the need, and I'm there.