High resolution maps?

[Tobold]

I bought the Zeitgeist campaign in both printed and pdf form and plan on playing that campaign with my group next year. So I started to prepare things like battle maps for the combat encounters using the images from the pdf and some from http://zeitgeistadventurepath.com/maps/ . But it turns out that not all of those maps are high resolution. So when I print them in a standard battlemap scale of 1 inch per square, some of the maps look decidedly low res and ugly.

When I heard the news that the "premium handouts" for Act One are now available, I thought that would solve my problem. But no such luck, the premium handout pdf doesn't have much higher resolution images than what I already had.

So I was wondering if higher resolution maps, especially battlemaps, are available somewhere else. Anybody know?

 

[RangerWickett]

We did not commission the maps at high enough resolution to be printed at 1 square : 1 inch scale, unfortunately. Both for budget reasons and because it never occurred to me that people would print them out (I just draw on a whiteboard), we mostly commissioned maps large enough to show details so you could draw them yourself.

Later on we have some of the maps at higher-res. In particular, the ship maps and the top of Cauldron Hill (at least in the hardcover) are high-res. And most of them in adventure 6+.

[MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION], could we host these maps?

 

[Evil Midnight Lurker]

I plan to run the game on roll20.net; it would be nice to have high-res tactical maps.

 

[eamon]

We did not commission the maps at high enough resolution to be printed at 1 square : 1 inch scale, unfortunately.

Actually, I do print maps at a 1:1 scale, even the low-res maps provided. Yes, the resolution is terrible - but honestly, a battlemap doesn't need to have a brilliant resolution; it's just a sketch, after all. It's still prettier than a whiteboard sketch.

My process is as follows right now:

- extract all images (maps) from the act1 compilations (4e+PF) using pdfimages
- select all the maps (lots of duplicates here, and at least one in each of 4e/PF)
- remove obviously terribly resolution files just by sorting by resolution
- remove duplicate maps, picking the highest res. Alas the res. in the 4e compilation is often better, but not always, so I go over both.
- upscale using ImageResizer (XBR 4x seems to give decent results)
- change the DPI using Paint.NET to whatever is approx. 1:1
- print.

It would be very nice to have the maximum resolution maps with a high jpeg quality, because the upscaling really emphasizes jpg artifacts, so even if you don't have truly high-res originals, whatever is available would be lovely!

 

[eamon]

Sample output from upscaling process:



Obviously the quality isn't great; but it's good enough to have an idea of the surroundings, which means it's good enough to play on for our group.

And of course, it's a fun moment, unrolling a huge map...

 

[Morrus]

For a battlemap, that looks just fine to me. It's gonna have miniatures and soda and coffee and crumbs on it anyway. And a lot of folks aren't exactly using top end industrial printing technology at home!

 

[RangerWickett]

Oh, well, for the Coaltongue we actually do have a high-res version, about 30 MB. One of our Kickstarter backers got a poster map of it. Mind you, it cost about $40 to print the thing.

 

[eamon]

Oh, well, for the Coaltongue we actually do have a high-res version, about 30 MB. One of our Kickstarter backers got a poster map of it. Mind you, it cost about $40 to print the thing.

In general, are versions of maps without jpg artifacts available? The resolution in the pdf is clearly better than the downloads on the site, and even just the raw maps in whatever res you do have would be a lot more practical than printing enlarged versions out of the pdf, especially if those versions wouldn't have artifacts...

 

[RangerWickett]

I'll look into it. Right now my focus is finishing up the shipping of PF hardcovers and getting adventure 9 ready for release.

 

[eamon]

Thanks, and good luck with the rest of Zeitgeist - we've only just started, but so far my group's really enjoying it !