The Mudcaves

[GM's Apprentice]

This is the project I'm working on at the moment: a set of interlocking battlemaps (in d20 scale each of the examples is 24x30 inches)

They're not really mudcaves, but when I reduced the resolution to make thumbnails, they really went to pot, so until I fix the resolution, these are mudcaves.

So the real question is, what sort of maps will benefit you (if you're a GM) the most? What scale and resolution?

[Redrobes]

Why do you think they went to pot and what did you use to shrink them ?

[GM's Apprentice]

I just did a quick resample in Photopaint from 4800 pixels wide down to 500. Obviously, they lost a LOT of the texture details.

I'm sure they will look better if I use Photoshop or a filter to resample the maps. But maybe this will make the final result look more impressive.

[RPMiller]

So the real question is, what sort of maps will benefit you (if you're a GM) the most? What scale and resolution?

Will these be for a VTT? If so, scale is a little irrelevant since that can be set in the VTT based on the resolution. As for the resolution it depends a little on the VTT that is being used. For MapTool, a "unit" is 50 pixels so generally we prefer to see a 200 pixel resolution so that we can still zoom in for details without degradation.

[GM's Apprentice]

RPMiller,

Thanks for the info! These are made at 200 dpi, so they should transfer over to VTT usage fairly well. The only problem might be their size: the originals are 4800x6000.

As long as I'm making the maps, I figured they should support as many options and gamers as possible. I'll also have pdfs of battlemaps available for those that choose to print them out (although with all the black, these may not be the most printer-friendly)

[RPMiller]

RPMiller,

Thanks for the info! These are made at 200 dpi, so they should transfer over to VTT usage fairly well. The only problem might be their size: the originals are 4800x6000.

As long as I'm making the maps, I figured they should support as many options and gamers as possible. I'll also have pdfs of battlemaps available for those that choose to print them out (although with all the black, these may not be the most printer-friendly)

If the black is on a separate layer, I would say offer them without the black layer visible.

[GM's Apprentice]

Doh!

Sometimes the obvious needs to slap you upside the head. The black actually covers up some of the other textures and what-not underneath, but it's a relatively simple step to mask it off.

Thanks! I'm sure there will be several tabletop gamers who save a good bit of ink from your comment

[RPMiller]

Glad to be of assistance.

[Ciderhelm]

They're not really mudcaves, but when I reduced the resolution to make thumbnails, they really went to pot, so until I fix the resolution, these are mudcaves.

Probably my favorite line I've read on the site so far since I started checking it out this morning.

[Ghalev]

It looks like much of the "mud" in these images came but from a very high level of JPEG compression applied to the downsampled image. It may be that your app is set by default to "thrash and mangle" level compression (which makes for much smaller files with heavy JPEG-artifacting).