Well I've officially made myself a table tv for my home group but am finding the .pdf maps to be of such a low quality due to the resolution that they I can't even really use them. I experienced the same problem using them in a VTT but the problem is way worse for the table tv.
My old method was to print the .pdf maps and sticky tack them to table but that was taking forever and I thought this would help the maps look better. Other maps I have from 3rd party companies look fine but the Paizo ones even though the art looks great in the book once it gets put on table and gridded for 1" is just not pleasing to the eye.
Is there any way to get these maps in a higher resolution? Do the artists post somewhere in an art source?? I can't imagine they are actually drawn at this resolution.
The interactive maps are just as bad.
I would be willing to pay more for .pdfs if they had a higher quality map if cost is the issue why they don't have higher res version.
I haven't tried any 2E pdf maps but the ones in Iron Gods that I pulled from the pdf book and use on roll20 are pretty good I zoom in pretty far on my 2k monitor and don't have a any quality issues so I wonder if this is a newer problem.
Thanks James, that’s good to know and I really do hope you guys find something doable. Appreciate the answer.
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This seems like not a bad place to mention that it'd really be nice to have maps that work with a VTT without a lot of fussiness getting the map grid and the VTT grid to line up right. I.e. it'd be really nice to have non-gridded versions of the maps, too.
James Jacobs mentioned that they are looking at ways to improve VTT support.
I don't like the solution being to partner as it means we have to pay twice for some content. I also think there should be way for those of us who make only physical purchases at the LGS to have a way to download maps to use with virtual tables. Maybe this is wishful thinking by me but I know Paizo is a forward thinking company and has always been supporting of the community and their wishes. I have no problem having to enter a serial number or download code to retrieve maps and as someone who purchases all the Pathfinder/Starfinder stuff I think this should have some form of integration. I've bought some .pdfs so I could get the digital maps but was pretty let down with quality.
Maybe I'm in the minority but alot of the GMs and players online have been voicing this on those forums and/or reddit but maybe need to be more vocal here.
What they need it a button that will allow us to export the maps out of the PDF cleanly.
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I think the best solution Paizo could come up with a partnership model with all the VTT companies. That would allow Paizo to offer us option to download maps already in our chosen VTT formats with our digital copies. Or away to tie our VVT accounts to our Paizo account so we can download the VTT version of the map from The VTT stores. That way it shows we actual own the content.
Most of the VTT's offer the content preloaded, creatures and all, but it is basically at the same price or more of the current adventures. So we end up having to buy it twice if we want a clean map. Once from Paizo for the PDF so you can actually read it and run the game, and again from VTT for instant creature placement for the encounters and maybe fog of war, on the maps. That make sense it pay extra for all the extra that the VTT company do. It take a lot of time to build all the creatures and input them in VTT, set up fog of war, and maybe attack scripts. I know, because I am programming all that stuff into D20pro currently for my group. It is hours of work. So it is worth paying for it a 2nd time, but not everyone can afford that. Other GM may want to completely rebuild the encounters in the adventure anyway, So that is a waste of money for them. Provided if it is even available on a VVT market place.
Most of the VTT companies are small. They don't have development force that a video game company has to put this stuff out on market place at the same time it comes out from Paizo or as it is needed. These market place VVT content is often several months or more behind. We as GM's end up having to export the maps and build everything from scratch anyway. We end up with these distorted maps =( or spending hours if Photoshop or some other kind of photo editing software trying to fix them. It would be really nice to have a solution for this.
(emphasis added)
So I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion that Paizo needs to partner when your next paragraph described the exact way they currently partner with VTTs that have official marketplaces.
Calling out that the VTT companies are small is relevant too; personally I use an open-source VTT (MapTool) which has all-volunteer development behind it and no marketplace, so no partnership is really possible.
I don't think that Paizo, as a print publisher, should try to take on the work of converting their maps into all of the different tabletop formats. As you already noted, it's a lot of work, and there's little chance that a company built around writers/editors/artists are going to be better at converting the maps than the folks who make the tools. So then...what would that partnership be? Paizo sending over the maps and rules content for the partners to implement? That sure seems like what they do already, which leads to the current situation.
Like...short of full-on vertical integration (Paizo buys/creates a VTT and releases all of their own content), all roads lead to the current situation, except maybe some VTT company is just better and faster at conversion.
Everything else is just what James Jacobs and a few others have already hinted at - they're going to do a little bit more work in making their default maps a little more VTT-friendly.
What they need it a button that will allow us to export the maps out of the PDF cleanly. I get why they are the way they are in the pdf, for copy right protection. As it stands now the only way to do it is to use Snap shot tool in adobe or windows screen shot program. Which it size and resolution seems to based on how big the window you have open is. Sometimes I think it distorted the pixels. I had random section of the pdf on the one mention above copy at 75x75 and another at 50x50 and it was the just a different map on the same PDF page. This is more then likely another form of copy write protection thing or adobe just sucking.
There *are* better ways to get the images out of Paizo PDFs. I have a long write-up in this thread on the AoA map quality issue where I describe how I use a free software tool called TokenTool to export images from Paizo PDFs with no quality loss (relative to the embedded image). I use it for both maps and monsters and whatnot.
There's also the case of those of us who use a non-service VTT like Maptool. A map that's gated to the services does me absolutely no good. I don't absolutely mind buying maps separately, but I need the images as images and without the grid. Extracting images from a pdf is not difficult with the right tools. But there's still that grid.
I've been successful in exporting maps from the PDF to MapTool and turning off MapTool's grid, using just the grid on Paizo's maps. You have to resize the map to where MapTool's coordinates line up with Paizo's gridlines, but it's absolutely doable; it just takes some fiddling.
If people have access to FG modules they make have MUCH higher resolution player maps.
I have ripped and printed them out many a time, it costs an extra 2-3$ if you already own the pdf :)
If people have access to FG modules they make have MUCH higher resolution player maps.
I have ripped and printed them out many a time, it costs an extra 2-3$ if you already own the pdf :)
Do you screenshot those maps, or is there another way to extract them?
AI upscaling is your friend. Seriously; I've tried it with some older (Mummy's Mask) maps, and it works AMAZINGLY well (to the point where I'd suggest Paizo look into it themselves).