Simple dungeon-drawing software

[wenoc]

Hello.

I'm looking for a simple piece of software that would allow me to interactively draw simple dungeon maps preferrably with a java servlet so other parties could see and edit it too over the net.

Why?
We're playing The worlds largest dungeon, which is one hell of a map and one of our players is abroad playing with webcam. The maps are really huge and to be honest, quite boring and slow down our gameplay.

A program with an infinite grid where you could "walk" with the cursor to create corridors and rooms would be quite enough. Dungeon designer programs like Dunjinni and the like tend to be more for designing than acually playing, which requires a really fast method to draw maps. I could not care less about fancy graphics. We need lines here, accomodating at least as many squares as an A3 with 5mm gridsize = 5000 squares.

So the criteria are:
- It has to be at least as fast as drawing by hand, preferrably faster.
- Online support would be nice although that could be done via remote connection to the local PC.
- Inexpensive or free of charge.

Another option would be an overhead and the DM draws the maps directly on that but the size of the maps makes it difficult. It's hard to draw on an overhead on anything less than 7mm squares, and that would require at least four sheets of A4 for a dungeon floor. Not a good option.

Any suggestions?

 

[wenoc]

I was actually thinking about coding a program myself that would draw the following when moving along the grid with cursor keys:
- Draw a corridor (erase all walls but the ones in the direction you're moving to and from) while holding a button.
- Draw a room while holding another button (i.e. erase walls like corridor mode but including walls between adjoining squares while drawing).
- Draw doors (press key and direction).
- Draw a wall by holding key and direction.

Walls would be just lines without depth of course.

Gridsize would increase as you go (no need for turning pages / glue&tape pages together etc).

This would be a really really fast way to draw simple maps, but it has some drawbacks of course like half-squares and diagonal walls. We're just looking for something that would speed up gameplay for now though. Doesn't have to be fancy.

Additionaly it serves as a near perfect tactical map (you would be able to write into the squares of course).

 

[Redrobes]

I think what you need to take a look at are virtual table top applications a.k.a VTT's. I write one but its not a free one (see my sig). But there are many with various different amounts of features and capabilities - some better than others of course.

I cant comment for anyone else's application but I would say that I can map faster with it than drawing by hand. Its certainly neater and you can place pre-made icons onto the map. You can group icons together so you can dump down a whole village in a few clicks etc.

Here are a few screen shots and movies to look over :-
http://www.viewing.ltd.uk/cgi-bin/viewingdale.pl?category=screen_shots

The idea of any graphical VTT is to be able to move characters and monsters around on the map over the internet. Some allow you to draw the map as part of the application and others expect a map image to be imported. Some have the ability to do 'Fog of war' where you reveal bits of a previously drawn map to players as they explore.

We had a convention of VTTs a short while back and here is a chart showing some of them and their features.

http://iconvention.org/vgtcomp.php

Run through each of the web sites from the vendors and check out all of their features and costs by clicking on the icons at the top.

 

[wenoc]

Problem is really that all VTT:s I've looked at require mouse input, which can never be faster than your fingers on the keyboard or in my experience - a pencil. If you draw corridors by choosing a rectangle with your mouse it's too slow.

All VTT:s I've looked at also sport fancy graphics and village-designing etc. All that is redundant gold-plating in my book

Your app looks nice but it isn't what I'm looking for - at least at first glance. I'm looking for something for player use during play, not for designing campaigns. Boulder dash with everything but the sand removed would be super!

Thanks a lot for the pointers though!

 

[DaveMage]

Dungeon Crafter is free, but not interractive:

http://www.dungeoncrafter3.com/

...also it may not have a large enough capability - you'll have to check.


Are you playing or DMing the WLD?

 

[trevorscroft]

Have you tried MapTool yet ( http://rptools.net ), it handles that kind of on-the-fly mapping. Specifically there is an infinite space map that you can draw onto with freehand drawing with either colors or textures, along with pretty much all the common drawing tools you find in paint programs. It also does networking.

In fact one of the groups that use it simply uses an infinite space map (called unbounded) and just draws lines as they go. There are also two (well, three) layers so that you can draw the map, then draw indicators like area of effects on top of it, then you can erase the aoe without erasing the drawn map.

Here are a couple screencasts to show it in use, take a look at the Quick Map one (which only uses the rectangle tool, but using the line or freehand tool is just as easy):

http://forums.rptools.net/viewtopic.php?t=1714

 

[thpr]

I'm looking for a simple piece of software that would allow me to interactively draw simple dungeon maps preferrably with a java servlet so other parties could see and edit it too over the net.

So the criteria are:
- It has to be at least as fast as drawing by hand, preferrably faster.
- Online support would be nice although that could be done via remote connection to the local PC.
- Inexpensive or free of charge.

So let me understand a bit more here. Can you define whether you are building the dungeon interactively (if the PCs are going along and you need a room, you draw a room?) Or are you designing the dungeon up-front and then playing with the PCs off a pre-defined Map and you want to control exposure to the players?

The reason I ask is that I wrote something that provides a player view of a map for my random map generator (which also allows you to draw maps by hand, although that's a bit of a burden at times)

It isn't perfectly what you're looking for (and I can't say it will be faster than doing it by hand) but take a look at RPG-MapGen on SourceForge. It does allow a "player view" (but you as the GM specify where the players are, and their visibility is calculated by the program).

Unfortunately, it doesn't work remotely at the moment, so you would have to use some form of screen sharing (and somehow control your GM view so the players can't see it).

Let me know what you think.

TP.
--
Tom Parker
PCGen Architecture Second
Developer, RPG-MapGen

 

[heruca]

I seem to recall that d20Pro (one of the virtual tabletop apps) has a feature that allows you to quickly sketch out walls and doors. Not with super-fancy graphics, but perfectly functional. You might want to check out their free 2-week demo to see if that works for you.