looking for free program to use with labtop and projector

[Duckforceone]

So in my gaming club, we have this nice gaming room, with a projector.
I have a labtop.

I would love to find a program, which i can use as a battlemap, and move icons of the players around. This would free up the table, and make us have a bit more nice visual stuff.

but it must be free, i have no option of buying on the internet.

All it needs, is to have squares i can paint, icons i can move around, and hopefully a fog of war to disguise what they haven't discovered yet.

and yes, i'm running vista, with dual screen. One main, and the other the projector screen.

[Merkuri]

I've heard that people use Maptool for this sort of thing.

[azhrei_fje]

Originally Posted by Merkuri

I've heard that people use Maptool for this sort of thing.

I don't like "me too" posts, but I just have to say ... "me too!"

I would also suggest MapTool.

[Thanee]

You can also simply use The Gimp with multiple layers, one for the map (background), one for the grid, one for the icons, and one for the fog of war.

But Maptool is probably easier to use, since it is made exactly for such applications.

Bye
Thanee

[Merkuri]

Another thing you can do with Maptool (I think... it's been a while since I used it) is start up a second instance of it as a player instance, so the fog of war is completely blacked out. You set up your projector as an extended part of your desktop (not just a copy of your desktop), put the player instance on that copy and the dm instance on your main desktop. Now you can see through the fog of war but your players can't.

That's something The Gimp can't do.

[heruca]

Gametable is another option for you.

And if you go here and scroll down a bit, you'll see a list of all the free virtual tabletop programs.

[Steel_Wind]

Do you mean that you intend to project the map on to a wall, and not on to the tabletop itself?

If you can possibly manage it - you should be projecting down on the tabletop for your map and continue to use minatures.

Projecting on to the wall is, in my experience, a singularly bad idea and the quality of your game will not be enhanced; on the contrary, it will suffer.