"Quick and Dirty Guide to Using MapTool for What You Need
The following instructions should get you up and running with MapTool to use as an offline, persistent battle mapping /general mapping tool. This assumes a few things: 1. You know how to create or get some map images. The instructions will include how to get a set of digital “dungeon tiles” that you can load into maptool and create cool maps on the fly, but if you can create or download map images, you’re good to go. 2. You can run MapTool on your computer. So here we go. To begin with, the no-brainers: 1. Get MapTool from http://rptools.net. I recommend going to the “Zip Archive” section, and downloading the latest version (1.3.b45). It requires Java to be installed on your machine. Note that these are all technically beta versions, but they are quite stable. 2. Install MapTool and make sure it runs. The built in .bat files set some parameters when you run, like allocated memory and so forth. It will run if you double-click on the .jar file, but it will give you warnings. Now, to get some useful mapping going: 1. Open MapTool 2. Select File -> Add to Resource Library. This will open a standard file dialog, from which you want to select the directory that the map images (or map tiles) are stored in.
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Select the folder where you store images you want to add, and click Open. MapTool will trundle through the images and add a new folder in the Resource Library tree. Afterwards, if you look at the Resource Library, and select a folder in it, you’ll see thumbnails of the images inside it, just below the Resource Library tree window.
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Creating a Map 1. Go to Map -> New Map. This will bring up the New Map dialog.
2. On the left hand side of the New Map dialog, you’ll see several options and text fields.
Name: this is the map’s title. Note that if you select a map image, the title resets itself to the filename of the image. This is stupid, but not yet fixed. I usually title the map last, so this doesn’t happen. Cell Type: hex or square map, or no grid at all. Distance Per Cell: this is how many feet each cell covers (i.e. is each square 5 feet?) Pixels per cell: this is how many pixels each cell should cover – the default is 50. This is most important for scaling to map images you downloaded. Vision Distance: MapTool has vision, fog-of-war, and other functions, so this indicates how far, by default, a character can see on the map. 3
3. Click the Background button. You’ll get a pop-up dialog offering several options.
Swatch: lets you use a uniform color as the map background Hue/RGB: lets you specify colors instead of selecting a color swatch Texture (what I use most often): gives you access to your resource library, where you can select a texture to serve as the background.
Note: the background image is infinitely tiled in all directions. Because I usually create maps separately, in GIMP, I generally just pick a black background. 4. If you have a map image already selected (like a downloaded one, or one created in GIMP), click the Map button. You’ll be taken to a dialog that shows your Resource Library. Here, select the image you want to use. This image will be
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layered above the background you already selected.
When you’re satisfied with the background and map – you’ll be given a preview thumbnail to double check, as shown below - give it a title, and click OK. The map will now be loaded into the main window of MapTool.
MapTool Layers Once you have a map loaded, you’ll see a small box in the map window titled Layer. MapTool maps have four layers: Background: this is the layer for images, background maps, and anything that isn’t going to move. Hidden: for online games, this is a layer only the GM can see. Object: this is a layer for token-like objects, things that might move, or that players might be able to move (lamps, tables, etc.). Token: this layer is the layer that tokens go on (tokens almost always, of course, representing characters or NPCs). Make sure you have the Token layer selected when you’re adding characters and enemies to the map – otherwise, it gets screwy.
If you create multiple maps, you can choose between them by clicking the blue globe icon in the upper right hand side of the MapTool window – this will present a list of possible maps.
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Zooming, Moving, Etc. To zoom the map, you can use the mouse scroll wheel (if you have one) of you can use the equals sign to zoom in, and the hyphen to zoom out. Hitting the plus sign will zoom to 1:1. To move the map, right click on it and move the mouse. This will pan the map in any direction. Placing Tokens Tokens are, like everything else, image files that are stored in your Resource Library. MapTool comes with some default tokens (and they have a great, separate program called TokenTool that lets you make tokens), or you can supply your own. 1. To see the default tokens, go to the Default folder in your Resource Library, and click the + to expand it.
2. Select the Tokens folder. 6
3. In the window below, click and drag a token onto the map. The cursor will change to a hand, and you just need to hold the token over the map somewhere and release the button.
The token will appear on the map
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Once a token is on the map, it can be dragged around using the mouse. You can drop any number of tokens, as far as I know. Tokens will default to the size of one grid square (by default, MapTool’s grid is 50x50 pixels). If you right-click on a token, the menu has a lot of options – one of which is size. You can then set it using the size values there, so you can make large or huge or gargantuan creatures, and so forth.
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Saving the Campaign MapTool saves maps, locations, and so forth in a “.cmpgn” file format. This is actually an XML file, but unless you feel like digging into it, that’s not particularly relevant. Choose File -> Save Campaign, give your campaign a name, and that’s all there is to it. When you save a campaign, MapTool saves the locations of the tokens on all of the maps, so you can use it to track token locations. Exporting Map Images MapTool does not yet have an image export feature – the best bet is to do a screencap of the map, and save that image. Dungeon Tiles WotC had a product – still accessible – called “Dungeon Tiles Mapper.” If you Google for it, you’ll get a URL link to the WotC page with the product. If you download the product, and unzip it, you’ll find a directory called tiles, which contains a LOT of great dungeon tiles in digital form. These tiles can be added to the MapTool Resource Library, just like any set of images, and used to build maps –create a new, blank map, and then drag the tiles into the Background layer, and build up a map that way. One note: while MapTool defaults to a 50x50 pixel cell size, the Dungeon Tile images are 32x32 pixels, so if you have a way to process them in a batch (I use ImageMagick), you can resize them by the appropriate percentage, and then you have dungeon tiles that match MapTool’s default settings. Alternatively, you can set the grid size when creating the map (or use Map->Adjust Grid) to make the map cells the right size.
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