Easy, free combat grid generation for pbp games?

[Scotley]

I'd like some advice on creating grids to post here for play by post games. Nothing fancy needed just numbers and letters down the side and a way to show creatures--just letters or basic symbols would be fine. Walls would nice, but I really just would like to be able to do relative location of combatants. I have MS Office 2k if there are templates are something out there. I'd prefer something that can be done quickly over something high quality as I don't want to hold up combat while I'm making maps. Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

All I use is Excel, with | representing walls or barriers and such, and letters and numbers for the creatures. Simple, easy, and works.

 

[Scotley]

Cool, I'll have to play around with it. Could you post a link to a sample if you have one here somewhere?

 

[Max]

Here are a few other free options:

http://www.dungeoncrafter.com/

http://www.geocities.com/trainz_ca/ID/index.html

Max

 

[Thanee]

If you have some knowledge in programming/java script and probably with a paint program you could use THIS. It's a script-based map, which needs webspace to load it up (you can link to it then). Unfortunately documentation is only available in german, but there isn't really much documentation, anyways. The sample .js shows how it is done, quite simple actually, if you take a little time to get used to it.

HERE and HERE are two maps I made with it for my PbP, the first is rather simple and quickly put together, the second (which is an improvement based on the first) took some more time (also takes more time to load), but looks better, too. Once the initial map is finished (which can take some time, but if you only draw simple maps goes rather quick), changing it to accomodate for the new combat round is rather quickly done (a matter of a few minutes).

Bye
Thanee

 

[Scotley]

Thanks for the great suggestions. Max, either of the links you sent look like they could do the job. Thanee, the samples you linked are very impressive, but I fear my skills are not up to the task. Its been about 17 years since I studyed any German, so I don't think that I can master the help files either.

 

[Firzair]

Thanks for the links Thanee. I'm building a php-based application to do something based on LynaxMap now. When I'm ready to do some testing, I'll post here to let you know.
If you like it perhaps Morrus could integrate it with ENWorld...

Planned features:
- terrain mapping
- objects
- effects (spells etc.)
- lighting (like you do with your maps Thanee, that's way cool)
- creatures (PCs, NPCs, monsters etc.)

Thanee, whom do I have to ask to use the graphics you used in your maps?

Greetings
Firzair