A few suggestions for making PFS scenarios a bit more VTT friendly

[bugleyman]

1. When using flip-tiles to create scenario maps, please cut the gutter off of the individual tiles before piecing them together. May I suggest a bespoke set of files with the gutters already removed be used for PFS scenarios? Right now, if I want the grid to line up correctly, I often have to chop up the composite map, remove the gutters parts, and then piece the map back together.

2. While I appreciate that 2E doesn't exactly have creature templates like 1E did, the "Elite" and "Weak" adjustments seem to get applied to monsters in PFS scenarios rather often. It would be nice if it were explicitly noted when this is the case, as that would make inputting stats into places like Roll20 a bit easier.

Thanks,

Aaron

[NielsenE]

They've done (1) for all scenarios from 1-20 onward it seems. We've been suggesting it for a while and it looks like their workflow finally accomodates it. I doubt they'll go back and fix old ones though.

[andreww]

Eric Nielsen wrote:

They've done (1) for all scenarios from 1-20 onward it seems. We've been suggesting it for a while and it looks like their workflow finally accomodates it. I doubt they'll go back and fix old ones though.

We are still left with cutting and pasting individual tiles though. Mistress of the Maze was particularly egregious.

[BigNorseWolf]

Trimming to the outside squares would be good too. Half a square hanging on the edge can futz with the aligning tool.

[NielsenE]

andreww wrote:

Eric Nielsen wrote:

They've done (1) for all scenarios from 1-20 onward it seems. We've been suggesting it for a while and it looks like their workflow finally accomodates it. I doubt they'll go back and fix old ones though.

We are still left with cutting and pasting individual tiles though. Mistress of the Maze was particularly egregious.

Hm? my Mistress of the maze was fine, no full bleed/no gutters. Easily grid'd.

[andreww]

It wasnt the difficulty of getting them right, it was the sheer number of the damn things and then sorting them all out on to the table. Twenty six separate bits of map is excessive.

[NielsenE]

ahh, I just used the maps from the scenario rather than the tiles from the appendix. They were already assembled properly.

[bugleyman]

BigNorseWolf wrote:

Trimming to the outside squares would be good too. Half a square hanging on the edge can futz with the aligning tool.

Yup. That's what I meant by removing the gutters (at least I assume that is what the dangling bits of square are, either on tiles or flip-mats).

[bugleyman]

Eric Nielsen wrote:

They've done (1) for all scenarios from 1-20 onward it seems. We've been suggesting it for a while and it looks like their workflow finally accomodates it. I doubt they'll go back and fix old ones though.

Ah; thank you. I hadn't noticed. I guess I'm just late to the party (I also only buy scenarios as I commit to running them).

[Xathos of Varisia]

Mistress was a snap with the way they had the tiles in there. Of course, I use a pdf extractor which makes installing the maps in Roll20 pretty effortless.

[TwilightKnight]

It just might be a secret marketing ploy. I have found that recreating a map in Roll20 using the pdf of a map tiles file is easier than a flip map. Since the tiles are perfectly sized, you don’t need to fiddle with the scaling tools. Just drop the image in, don’t active “is drawing” so it’ll snap to the grid and then drag the corner to resize. It’ll snap to the next grid intersectional which will be perfectly aligned with the grid. If you need to, you can move/rotate the resized image where you want it. Virtually a no-brainer. If Paizo is aware of this methodology, it could influence their decision to put perfectly-fitted maps in the scenario. It strongly encourages you to buy the map tiles even if you are a virtual-only GM.

[bugleyman]

TwilightKnight wrote:

It just might be a secret marketing ploy. I have found that recreating a map in Roll20 using the pdf of a map tiles file is easier than a flip map. Since the tiles are perfectly sized, you don’t need to fiddle with the scaling tools. Just drop the image in, don’t active “is drawing” so it’ll snap to the grid and then drag the corner to resize. It’ll snap to the next grid intersectional which will be perfectly aligned with the grid. If you need to, you can move/rotate the resized image where you want it. Virtually a no-brainer. If Paizo is aware of this methodology, it could influence their decision to put perfectly-fitted maps in the scenario. It strongly encourages you to buy the map tiles even if you are a virtual-only GM.

I don't believe Roll20 supports PDFs.

Additionally, last time I looked the images themselves could NOT be extracted from the PDFs due to the security settings (which basically renders the digital flip tiles -- at least in their current form -- all but useless).

Am I mistaken? Or has something changed?

[TwilightKnight]

Sorry, I use a snipping tool to grab the image from the PDF file. Fairly minor intermediary step, but it means I don't have to deal with the partial squares or other oddities that occur in the scenarios. I also find snipping the image from the PDF file of a flip map is better than extracting the same image from inside a scenario. I don't know if one way has better resolution than the other, but I have to fiddle less with the pdf image.

[bugleyman]

TwilightKnight wrote:

Sorry, I use a snipping tool to grab the image from the PDF file. Fairly minor intermediary step, but it means I don't have to deal with the partial squares or other oddities that occur in the scenarios. I also find snipping the image from the PDF file of a flip map is better than extracting the same image from inside a scenario. I don't know if one way has better resolution than the other, but I have to fiddle less with the pdf image.

Gotcha; makes sense. I actually hadn't thought of snipping the tiles. I was honestly hoping something about how the files were authored may have changed.

Personally, I think I'm going to wait for tiles to be offered in a more VTT friendly format before I consider picking them up, but I do appreciate you sharing your work-around.

[Ascalaphus]

bugleyman wrote:

TwilightKnight wrote:

It just might be a secret marketing ploy. I have found that recreating a map in Roll20 using the pdf of a map tiles file is easier than a flip map. Since the tiles are perfectly sized, you don’t need to fiddle with the scaling tools. Just drop the image in, don’t active “is drawing” so it’ll snap to the grid and then drag the corner to resize. It’ll snap to the next grid intersectional which will be perfectly aligned with the grid. If you need to, you can move/rotate the resized image where you want it. Virtually a no-brainer. If Paizo is aware of this methodology, it could influence their decision to put perfectly-fitted maps in the scenario. It strongly encourages you to buy the map tiles even if you are a virtual-only GM.

I don't believe Roll20 supports PDFs.

Additionally, last time I looked the images themselves could NOT be extracted from the PDFs due to the security settings (which basically renders the digital flip tiles -- at least in their current form -- all but useless).

Am I mistaken? Or has something changed?

Security settings on PDFs are conspicuously fickle. I've heard a lot of complaints from windows users that they get hampered by them but using Evince (the default Ubuntu PDF viewer) you never even notice they're there. So I suspect these security settings are more on the scale of "please don't walk on the grass" placards.

[Eric Clingenpeel]

bugleyman wrote:

Additionally, last time I looked the images themselves could NOT be extracted from the PDFs due to the security settings (which basically renders the digital flip tiles -- at least in their current form -- all but useless).

Am I mistaken? Or has something changed?

I use Nitro Reader and it has a tool to extract all images from a pdf and it bypasses the security restrictions that otherwise would keep you from extracting the images.