Kobold/Scalegloom Hall (from 4E DMG)

[Xorne]

Greetings, everyone. I've been lurking here for ages and finally decided to post a map I'm working on. I've been running the Kobold Hall adventure on Fantasy Grounds II a lot lately (demo games for people; I have an ultimate license), and something that annoyed me about the map I scanned from the DMG is I just couldn't quite get the map sized to 50 pixel squares. Decided it would be a good map for me to really start to explore CC3/DD3 with, and attached is my current progress with the map. I really learned a whole lot while making this map, starting with the cutout wall style (thanks, NeonKnight) to the lighting effects (which I daresay I completely get, now). I did the ledges/stairs by drawing lines on sheets that cast shadows in different directions. Art and textures are from DD3, CSUAC, and a few things snagged from DJ forums. I'm still working on this map, trying to decide if I want to stay very simple or fill it with symbols and make it look more realistic, lived-in.

Scalegloom Hall.JPG

I'd be happy to hear comments, critiques, or questions about how I did anything.

[tilt]

looking very nice, good lighting - have some rep for your first upload

[NeonKnight]

Looks good. Put a slight glow around the objects to make them stand out that much more.

[Jaxilon]

Nice map - I enjoyed the lighting and the detail items.

The 4 SE-ernish stairs have what look like raised floors above them or something? I'm guessing they are areas for lookouts? If not I'm not sure if those are just rooms you can't get to or something. For example the Green room: Are those 2 areas looking down into the Green area or are they on the level below the green area?

I'm not sure how best to solve this but maybe creating lighter or darker shadows on those rooms might help to indicate them being higher or lower? If that doesn't work you might want to look at how some others have handled this in their maps.

Other than that I think this is a good looking map and thank you for sharing with us.

/* Rep Slapped */

[Xorne]

Scalegloom Hall.JPG

Thanks for the comments (and rep)! So I looked up and realized I've been tinkering with a map all day--whoops! I added a very faint glow to the symbols to help then stand out a little, and dropped some various shadow casting objects about the rooms, added some lights in a few spots, and put a rocky texture I found over the floor to help break it up a bit. Changed the ice fill in the dragon's lair to something a little harder looking, and applied a little frost to the walls for good measure. Spent a bit of time adding a faded out texture where a boulder trap rolls in the southeast room. My hope is the players don't really notice it till the boulder is rolling along it. I scrapped the stairs I was using and just made my own transparent rubber stamp shadow to create rough steps, and used stacked floors for ledges.

That room with the coffins, skulls, and slime (the Skull-skull! playing field), the upper ledges are reachable, and I think the shadow is distinct enough to serve it's purpose in my battlemap. I could probably strengthen the glow a little to make it more obvious, though.

[Xorne]

sh-ng.jpg

Copied the wall layer, changed it to solid black, and applied the edge fade. Drastically cut the file size for VTT usage. Tinkered with the grid a little, but at 50 px/sq changes the changed aren't reflected very well, decided to remove the grid (and just put a guide square for dropping the grid in the VTT).

[Jaxilon]

I notice you have some nice looking shadows and lighting which leads me to a question. Is it better to leave that stuff off (except for natural lighting) or put it in? I know with Maptool you can set up line of sight stuff depending on light sources and as the player moves the areas he can't see are hidden from view. thus the torch he carries will put light upon the correct things and shroud other in black. I haven't decided myself which is better.

I admit that leaving out the lighting makes an image look less fantastic but when you can drop objects that are light sources into it within VTT does this create any problems?

[Xorne]

Unfortunately, FG2 does not have fog of war lighting. CC3/DD3 has some very cool lighting effects in it, but what I do when setting it up is make sure that the darkest shadow cast by the lighting is still visible to my players. In FG2 you just unmask the map as you go when using a full map. I've also notice this map is losing a LOT of detail at 50 px/sq (since most of the graphics are 200 px/sq scale). For instance, my latest grid is actually a chiseled line in the floor to make it look tiled. But it just looks like a faded line at 50 px/sq. Speaking of lighting, I really don't know where else to put this, I was just dorking around with the CC3/DD3 lighting effect and made this room:

lt.jpg

It didn't exactly require a lot of work to do the lighting, mind you. I just specify how long the shadow for object on different sheets should be (WALLS blocks light, SYMBOLS LOW casts a 2 foot shadow, etc) and then specify the blur and darkness of the shadows on unlit areas. But when I move a light, CC3/DD3 does all the lighting changes for me. (Which is good because I move the lighting around a LOT.)