TFT Map Maker

[Shadekeep]

Originally Posted by kenfoote

https://www.megahex.me/

That's seriously cool. Do let me know how that progresses and I'll work on a linking to it from the Shamat page. Thanks!

[kenfoote]

Thanks! Will do. Took all weekend, but I finally got the maps (arenas, really) shareable between clients. With the possible exception of some stuff in the game engine I'm using, I *think* the worst coding challenges are over. :)

[Shadekeep]

Originally Posted by kenfoote

I *think* the worst coding challenges are over. :)

Famous last words. ;)

Seriously, congratulations, and keep us posted!

[hcobb]

What I'm lacking are outdoors and city mapping tools.

[ParadoxGames]

There are some terrain devices for outdoor mapmaking.

[Shadekeep]

Thanks to prodding by David Pulver and other Shamat users, I've finally added a new feature - Annotation Pairs. If you found one character per hex limit insufficient to plotting out all your map encounters and items, now you can have two characters in each hex. Any two, so you can have AB, or #5, or X?, or whatever else combination from the glyph pool.

This change shouldn't break existing maps, just know that older versions of the program will show the characters overlapping instead of nicely spaced. There are also some minor code improvements and updates which should make Shamat that little bit better.

Please let me know if you experience any issues with the update. I recommend using copies of your most precious maps when initially experimenting with the new version, and if nothing messes up on saving and reloading them then you should be fine.

Hope you like the new feature!

[JohnPaulB]

Shadekeep,

Did you ever include the ability to import a graphic so you can use a satellite photo of land to use as a Base, then you could add your layers above it?

[Shadekeep]

Originally Posted by JohnPaulB

Did you ever include the ability to import a graphic so you can use a satellite photo of land to use as a Base, then you could add your layers above it?

I did not, but I will take a look at that. I have some import code from when I was playing the SVG version, so I expect that could be leveraged to load an image from the home computer. Would have to figure out how to save that in the map file, probably convert it to Base64 or some such. And would need to include tools for positioning/resizing the image.

I'll take a look and see how much of a lift it is. It would be nice to have.

[Shadekeep]

Added the Backdrop feature to Shamat now, pushing it up to version 1.7. There is a whole tab dedicated to the new feature, with tools that also give you control over the size and placement of the image.

The update also adds onionskin settings to make the map translucent, so that you can see the backdrop through it. Should make tracing your hand-drawn maps with the paint tools a lot easier. You can adjust the degree of transparency as well.

The backdrop image is saved as part of the map file, so you don't need to maintain a separate file once it's imported. PNG and JPEG backdrops are supported.

As always, be sure to use copies of your existing maps when loading them into a new Shamat release, just in case something breaks. I don't want anyone to lose their work here! And let me know what you think of the new features.

[Celjabba]

Even more awesome !

Thanks for this update, it will be very useful, either for satellite map as suggested or just to update/redo existing rpg maps !