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I know not many GMs use this, but it doesn't seem like much to ask, and I'd be willing to pay extra for the product.
I have a digital projector, and project scenario/module maps onto the game table.
While pretty awesome, and expeditious, there are two hangups.
First, I have to copy cut the maps into a image editor, if I want a fog of war effect to cover unexplored parts of the map. Often the original image integrity is not preserved.
Second, if the map is not player friendly (marked up with trap symbols, secret doors, and monster locations), I have to perform some clone square graphic maneuvers which never make the map look as it would from a player perspective. Simple smudges or pixel-off proper location creates disbelief and suspicion.
Is it possible that when the maps are being created as images, when the creation gets to the stage where it looks like what the players would see, can Paizo devs save a "Player Map"? I'm pretty sure the players map is created before the GM map reaches its final stage, full of traps, secret doors and monster locations.
Or have a file with a "PC/GM switch" button, which removes the GM layer?
I don't think this would take much programming, and I'd pay the extra $1-2 per scenario for one that included them.
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I know not many GMs use this, but it doesn't seem like much to ask, and I'd be willing to pay extra for the product.
I have a digital projector, and project scenario/module maps onto the game table.
While pretty awesome, and expeditious, there are two hangups.
First, I have to copy cut the maps into a image editor, if I want a fog of war effect to cover unexplored parts of the map. Often the original image integrity is not preserved.
Second, if the map is not player friendly (marked up with trap symbols, secret doors, and monster locations), I have to perform some clone square graphic maneuvers which never make the map look as it would from a player perspective. Simple smudges or pixel-off proper location creates disbelief and suspicion.
Is it possible that when the maps are being created as images, when the creation gets to the stage where it looks like what the players would see, can Paizo devs save a "Player Map"? I'm pretty sure the players map is created before the GM map reaches its final stage, full of traps, secret doors and monster locations.
Or have a file with a "PC/GM switch" button, which removes the GM layer?
I don't think this would take much programming, and I'd pay the extra $1-2 per scenario for one that included them.
For many scenarios, if you open up the PDF in Adobe Reader, you can simply click on the image itself in the PDF and copy it. This you can paste into any image editor to resize the image. For most maps, the identifiers, trap locations and monster locations are not part of the map images. They're actually layered on top.
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I have had inconsistent results doing this in Acrobat Reader though. You might have to try a few different programs. The security settings are obviously more important than the ease of use, and Adobe's PDF security settings always seem to cause wonkyness.
Really? I've rarely had a problem with it. :) Maybe I've been lucky.
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I've had good results extracting images using the 'pdfimages' tool that's part of the free open source software Xpdf.
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Does it extract them with proper transparency? I still have some trouble with that.
"proper transparency" depends on how they were embedded. Most will have white boarders, but a few will be either transparent or black borders.
The utility puts each picture from the page in a separate file, including the header and footer images.