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Here's the thing: I have Paizo's entire library of Map Packs, Flip-Tiles and Flip-Mats in electronic form. If this is Pokemon? I have quite literally caught them all. (I even have this physical product line before Paizo made them, going back to Steel-Squire's versions of them, for that matter.)
I use these products in digital form, not printed form and have for nearly a decade.
The problem I am now running into the past year or three -- and it is a problem now every single time I try and use these map making assets -- is that I find that I no longer can use them digitally, at least when it comes to the map packs/tiles. I just ignore the flip-tiles entirely now when it comes to map making. It's a damned shame.
The problem is simple: there are pre-existing grid lines on these digital map products that I do not want on my finished map image. And I have no way to turn them off. I don't want more than the digital product delivers -- I just need a little less
I appreciate that these products are primarily intended for physical use. Any digital use became an unintentional "bonus". That's entirely fair. And so in that context, a grid make sense.
But as a digital product, the grid is usually not desirable in the finished assembled map when used in a modern VTT. I could get into a lengthy technical discussion of digital map making, resolution independence, and VTT implementation -- but I don't think the specific technical reasons are terribly germane.
Suffice to say that while grids are helpful to help make a map, they are bad -- very bad -- with the finished digital product -in-use.
In the AP line, the interactive map packs exist so as to permit an end user to turn off the grid. This is super helpful to GMs using those maps for VTT play.
Bottom Line: Providing something similar, or simply just another PDF with the map images supplied **without the grid lines** would be greatly appreciated by subscribers who want to use these products for VTT play.
Because these grid lines are interfering with my ability to use what is otherwise an excellent digital product. I don't get any value-in-use out of them. Which is a shame given how awesome they otherwise could be in digital form.
