Looking for a mapping tileset to build Cragmaw Castle

Okay, so I've downloaded a variety of tiles over the years--but I've never done all that much with them. The problem: user-friendliness (or lack thereof).

First you have to find software you can stomach. Currently, I'm just using GIMP with some snap to grid settings, since I haven't found anything with a really simple drag and drop interface that isn't a monster of features that I don't want to navigate and learn how to use. If anyone knows of anything really simple that would do that easier than GIMP and let me export maps, let me know.

But the immediate issue is tilesets that are way too limited in what they can handle. Now, I don't mean limited in the sense that I can't build a big-top circus tent on the rings of Saturn. I mean limited in that they can't build perfectly reasonable D&D dungeons.

For our example, since it's what I was working on when my current frustration ensued, take Cragmaw Castle (Lost Mine of Phandelver, D&D 5e Starter Set). If you don't know what it looks like, look here:

http://mikeschley.zenfolio.com/p856083253/h22CA342B#h22ca342b

Pretty basic looking, right? Apparently not. First of all, I have a hard time finding circular areas that I can use to make those towers out of. Tilesets don't like to give you those. Then I found something amazingly brilliant, with all the circularity I'd need here:

http://forums.rptools.net/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=21380

Man was I excited about that. Unfortunately, it won't work. Why? Because everything is surrounded by black backgrounds instead of transparency. Apparently Maptools needs that for lighting or some such thing that does me no good. As it is now, those nice circular towers cover the surrounding lands in blackness (or are themselves covered in blackness by the floor nearby).
I tried converting black to transparency, but that took out all the black so you could see through the topmost tiles to the tile underneath--not a desired outcome. They would work pretty great if I spent an inordinate amount of time painstakingly using GIMP to manually remove all the black borders. Did I mention painstakingly, and inordinate? Not gonna happen.

So I'm just wondering if anyone happens to have any drag and drop tilesets that you could use to make Cragmaw Castle (assuming you overlap tiles and drop things like doors and small walls on top). I figure any tileset that would allow for that would allow for most of my dungeon mapping needs.

Thanks for any ideas!

Didn't look at the examples; but, if you convert black to alpha simply create a new layer before-hand under the first. Then fill the new layer with black where you don't want the transparency. Make sure your new layer is below the alpha layer...then merge the two. This will eliminate the excess black removed from your black to alpha layer.

Hope that helps.

Sounds like a pretty good idea, and I may have to give it a shot. The concern I have with it is that I'd still have to create the black fill areas. That won't be too bad when we are dealing with circles and rectangles, but with dozens (or hundreds) of files of varying complexity of shapes, it will soon get to be a quite a grind.

Yes. With simple shapes it takes about 20 seconds. You can also just duplicate the layer and erase the difference if you like that better. As for complicated shapes the wand select tool in GIMP is okay...not as good as some other programs...but okay. Remember, when you are dealing with underlays it doesn't have to be an exact science...especially if you are going to reduce the size of the image afterward.

Thanks! That magic wand actually worked better than I expected. Good enough for my needs.

I'm having a really big problem with some of the round and square pieces though. After I remove the black background, there is a white background behind them. I just used color to alpha to get rid of it, and it turns transparent. I export the file, and everything should be fine. Except that white background is still there. If I load the exported image back into GIMP, yep, there's the white! I've played around with it, but the stuff that looks like it should be working isn't. I have no idea why it would "lie" to me by showing it as transparent, when in fact leaving it white.

I know this really isn't the forum for it, but I've uploaded an example of a recalcitrant file. If you have a minute to let me know how to fix it, it would be appreciated.

Sword of Spirit said:

Thanks! That magic wand actually worked better than I expected. Good enough for my needs.

I'm having a really big problem with some of the round and square pieces though. After I remove the black background, there is a white background behind them. I just used color to alpha to get rid of it, and it turns transparent. I export the file, and everything should be fine. Except that white background is still there. If I load the exported image back into GIMP, yep, there's the white! I've played around with it, but the stuff that looks like it should be working isn't. I have no idea why it would "lie" to me by showing it as transparent, when in fact leaving it white.

I know this really isn't the forum for it, but I've uploaded an example of a recalcitrant file. If you have a minute to let me know how to fix it, it would be appreciated.

Click to expand...

If you are cutting or erasing to get a transparency you need to make sure the file has an alpha channel. You will see this option right close to where you chose the color to alpha option. If your transparency disappears after you export the file: you are probably saving the image in a file format that doesn't handle alpha channels...like JPEGs. I tend to use PNG for all of my quick gaming images and buttons for websites. So, when you are exporting the image, check the box that says 'choose extension' and then choose the PNG file format over the JPG format.


That should do the trick.

Yep, that's exactly what I discovered. Some of the files were in jpeg and some were in png. I didn't even think about it when exporting, since I assumed all files in the set were in the same format, and it was exporting to the format I had imported from. It took me quite a while before I noticed that some files weren't in png.