Recommend me a Battlemap creation tool

[Nilbog]

Hi All

I was after a little advice. For my game we use a local VTT on horizontal flat screen TV. I have a PC connected to this which runs Roll20 as a player client, then as a DM I use my Ipad pro to run Roll20 DM client this works ok (with a few little foibles), however the difficult I find is creating the actual maps to use. I've tried the built in creator in Roll20 and its ok, but not brilliant, so the solution I've gone for is to create the maps using the old level editor in the original NWN game, saving the result as a JPG and importing into Roll20

However, I was wondering if there are any good battlemap creation software packages out there, that create good quality results that can be used in Roll20? (I did look at other VTT solutions, but none seem to cheaply support my particular setup, which is a shame as I'd love to use dynamic maps which I don't believe roll20 supports)

 

[AndromedaRPG]

I would recommend Arkenforge, located at Arkenforge – Map making, Audio and Campaign management – Map making, Audio and Campaign management. You may have already checked this out. It offers a lot of creation options (create maps from scratch or import images), works offline, offers fog of war (erase or dynamic), and zooming (independent GM and player screens). It is technically in beta, but I have found it is a solid application (please note, I have not used the audio file section yet).

It does cost $35, so I don't know if this is within your price range.

Edit: you can export the maps if you want. The program supports multiple levels as well.

 

[Nebulous]

I would recommend Arkenforge, located at Arkenforge – Map making, Audio and Campaign management – Map making, Audio and Campaign management. You may have already checked this out. It offers a lot of creation options (create maps from scratch or import images), works offline, offers fog of war (erase or dynamic), and zooming (independent GM and player screens). It is technically in beta, but I have found it is a solid application (please note, I have not used the audio file section yet).

It does cost $35, so I don't know if this is within your price range.

Edit: you can export the maps if you want. The program supports multiple levels as well.

So does it work well also if you want to print physical maps?

 

[AndromedaRPG]

So does it work well also if you want to print physical maps?

I apologize , I am not near my computer to try (won't me for several hours unfortunately). As memory serves me, it can support printed maps as well with the export function. If nothing else, I do know from memory that the built in assessts are at 256 ppi; exported images should be high enough quality for print.

 

[LordEntrails]

My personal favorite, for many years, is Campaign Cartographer by ProFantasy. It is hands down the most powerful cartography tool for fantasy/fictional maps. And, not only is it powerful, but once you learn how to use it, it is very fast because of the numerous symbol catalogs and templates available. But, it is a vector CAD tool, not a bitmap image tool (like Photoshop etc), so it can have a learning curve if you try to use it like an image tool. It also is not free.
EDIT: for battlemaps, get the Dungeon Designer add-on and also the CSUAC2 and Bogie Mapping objects from the forums. Even when you are not doing dungeons, the DD add-on has battlemap/top-down tools you will want (rooms, walls, etc)

Here's a list and discussion of mapping software. Not totally up to date, but still very valid, plus you can check the latest posts for more recent choices; Map Making Software - summary

 

[Zio_the_dark]

The price is a bit high but campaign cartographer is a very good software for this, as said before it has a steep learning curve but very powerful...

 

[AndromedaRPG]

I apologize , I am not near my computer to try (won't me for several hours unfortunately). As memory serves me, it can support printed maps as well with the export function. If nothing else, I do know from memory that the built in assessts are at 256 ppi; exported images should be high enough quality for print.

I just checked Arkenforge: You can set the DPI, and can export as an image or a PDF. For the PDF, you can specify the page size. For image exports, there is a DPI option for Roll20. I haven't used these export options much, as I run my games directly from Arkenforge.

 

[HippyCraig]

Check out dungeon fog and pro fantasy usually has a Black Friday sale so check that out too

 

[Nilbog]

Thanks for the replies.

I've been leaning towards Arkenforge, I wouldn't use any of its VTT functionality as it doesn't run on ipad (as far as I'm aware), however if the map creation side is reasonably powerful and fairly straightforward to use it looks good.

I did consider Campaign Cartographer, but it looked my geared towards creating overland/town maps rather than the sort of 5x5 battlemaps i am after, I could be wrong though?

 

[Zio_the_dark]

Campaign cartographer can create all types of maps you can do overland, dungeons, city, even futuristic maps...just take a look at their website.