My new DIY portable digital tabletop roleplaying map!

[jbear]

sorry to be dumb, but what is the projector connected to, in order to be able to project the maps? Your computer?

I wonder if you could use a flat screen TV as the tabletop, making a home made wooden base which it could slot in and out of, and place a clear screen over it as a protector. Preferably the clear screen would be compatible with dry erase markers.

The base could have pull out drawers for DM to keep his info and laptop and the players their sheets or a minis drawer. As it would be connected to a laptop it could pull up other images and soun effects to add to the gaming experience.

Anyway, your tablelooks very cool. im going to have a chat with my handyman wife!

 

[rjdafoe]

I just designed and built a portable digital map rig:

Build Your Own Portable Digital Tabletop Map for Roleplaying

I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts! Just for fun, I wrote the rudimentary "howto" page above and included pictures. Most of the time was spent in design, and I built the rig over a weekend. So maybe this will inspire others to build their own rig and post pictorials

Sean

That is a very cool setup. I am thinking about doing something similiar in design, although I have a dedicated game room where the projector can be mounted above the game table.

What software are you using for the maps? (Creation and display)

 

[0-hr]

I have a lot of digital maps that are "poster sized" (24x36), or a little bigger. To increase the size of the image projected onto the table, would you just have to build a bigger rig (to raise the projector up a bit higher and move the legs out), or are there other limitations?

I don't really know anything about projectors, but I'm assuming that you can just raise up the projector (maybe mounting it to the ceiling or something) and project a much bigger area. Is that correct? The "throw distance" is a minimum rather than a maximum distance?


Also, how expensive are the bulbs for that? Using it for a couple game sessions a week, would you be going through bulbs quickly?

 

[weem]

I just designed and built a portable digital map rig:

Build Your Own Portable Digital Tabletop Map for Roleplaying

I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts! Just for fun, I wrote the rudimentary "howto" page above and included pictures. Most of the time was spent in design, and I built the rig over a weekend. So maybe this will inspire others to build their own rig and post pictorials

Sean

Very cool, great info!

I passed this on to a friend of mine who has been working on his own setup. He is skimming it now

 

[0-hr]

sorry to be dumb, but what is the projector connected to, in order to be able to project the maps? Your computer?

It would connect to your computer (most likely a laptop for convenience) and then it displays whatever your monitor displays (though I think many projectors have a "freeze" option where they'll lock the image projected while you mess around with your computer using the normal screen. I've only really only seen such setups in the classroom, but that seems to be the gist of it.

So you'd need digital images of your maps. My group is currently playing through a Pathfinder adventure path so I think the DM could just use the maps from the .pdf. Some things would probably need a little Photoshop (or other image manipulation software) work in order to make them presentable.

 

[seanpecor]

What software are you using for the maps? (Creation and display)

For the photos, I just used some existing scanned maps from some published D&D modules. I'm not actually the DM for our group, but luckily our DM is ready and willing to collaborate on a sensible process to work with maps during game play.

For basic display of the maps during game play, I reviewed all of the virtual tabletop programs out there and I decided that none of them will work for an analog mini - digital map hybrid. They really want to wrest more control out of your hands at the expense of simplicity (in my opinion).

So the process right now is this:

Using The Gimp (free, open source graphics program), load up a scanned map. This is the DM map. Duplicate the map image (Ctrl-D). This becomes the player map. Add a new layer to the new duplicate, and specify a black foreground color when asked. The map disappears behind the black "fog of war". Move the blacked out player map over to the projection "monitor" and full-screen it (F11). Switch to the Eraser tool and pick a huge brush (large enough to erase at least 1 square). Now wherever you hover the cursor on the player map you see the big brush tool, and when you click and hold down the mouse button you can erase the fog of war.

It's not a perfect solution though. I'm a software and web applications developer, so I'm going to write a web-based tool that does JUST a DM and Player window and the fog of war, and nothing else. I'm going to code it so you can upload a map, then pick a bounding rectangle to teach the program how big a 1x1 square is. Then it will create a DM window and a Player window view of the same map. The DM can first erase the fog of war on his laptop window (which is seen as 50% transparent so he/she can see everything) and click an UPDATE button to refresh the Player window. It will also handle scrolling the viewable area of the Player window, etc. I'll write it next week and post it on my web site.

Sean

 

[seanpecor]

I have a lot of digital maps that are "poster sized" (24x36), which looks just a little bit bigger than what your rig projects. To increase the size of the image projected onto the table, would you just have to build a bigger rig (to raise the projector up a bit higher), or are there other limitations?

Actually it can do a 24x36 map at it's current size. You just raise the projector to enlarge the projection. Other than the size of the frame there are no other limitations, really.

I don't really know anything about projectors, but I'm assuming that you can just raise up the projector (maybe mounting it to the ceiling or something) and project a much bigger area. Is that correct?

Yes, many folks do just that - mount it on a ceiling. In that case it's good to have an optical zoom and a standard throw lens.

Also, how expensive are the bulbs for that? Using it for a couple game sessions a week, would you be going through bulbs quickly?

About 2,000 to 3,000 hours. Depends on how long your sessions are and if you use economy mode or not (economy mode is less bright, less taxing on the bulb, and the fan runs more quietly). Ours are about 4 hours, once a week. That works out to 200 hours a year, give or a take. They're about $200 to replace.

Sean

 

[seanpecor]

It would connect to your computer (most likely a laptop for convenience) and then it displays whatever your monitor displays

Close, but in reality, your laptop runs as a "dual monitor" set up, which is ideal for role playing. Only the DM sees what is on his/her laptop, and before combat/etc you "drag" the player map window to the projector "monitor" and full-screen it. So the DM can control the player map, which everyone sees including the DM on the map surface. And the DM can still use whatever software he/she uses to track things on the laptop monitor, which nobody else can see. Our DM has been using the 4e combat tracker tool that someone homebrewed and published and he's been loving it.

Sean

 

[jbear]

This all sounds great. Did i understand correctly, your DM erases the fog of war as you explore the map? If so that's pretty cool... how do you handle light sources? Can you repaint the fog of war?

How do you deal with the scaling of the digital maps to the right size onto your projected table?

 

[seanpecor]

This all sounds great. Did i understand correctly, your DM erases the fog of war as you explore the map? If so that's pretty cool... how do you handle light sources? Can you repaint the fog of war?

The approach is pretty basic at this point. Just an eraser brush about 1.5" in diameter on the screen and erase as needed. You could repaint fog of war with a brush tool. Admittedly, this is where a simple map tool that does nothing but handle the fog of war, light sources, etc would be killer. I'll probably end up writing on next week.

How do you deal with the scaling of the digital maps to the right size onto your projected table?

This is actually a simple process. Once you establish what the "DPI" is for the projector setup - in my case it is 30dpi - you just rescale the image with a paint program so that each square is roughly 30 pixels wide. If you scan a map at 300dpi, then you'd basically rescale the image to 10% of the original size.

Sean