Quote Originally Posted by RKissane View Post
Michael,

What type of file do you proved for the virtual tabletop? Do you have to do anything special for the tabletop use?

Having never seen a game played on virtual tabletop, I have seen picture which shows a large screen that the players can see. I think I read some where that the software that operates the screen can provide fog of war for the maps. does this affect how you do your maps at all?

Ray
I myself, don't use virtual tabletop rather a printed map with minis played at a live table, but I have regular contact with a number of developers and major users of vt-apps, like MapTools, Fantasy Grounds, Battlegrounds, etc. I generally use JPG for whole maps and PNG files for map objects. The issue with VT, is there are so many apps out there, and many of them use different parameters. Now they all work with JPG maps fine, but its the size requirements that are the issue, it varies from app to app. For example Roll20 allows using 72 x 72 inch at 72 dpi JPGs, but most VT-apps are much smaller map areas, more 24 x 24 inches. I recently did map commissions for Legendary Games, and because their Kickstarter is working closely with one particular phone app VT software, I was required to slice the map into 2048 x 2048 pixel areas. So obviously, my current product isn't optimized for such a small size and wouldn't probably work for that software, however, most software, the sizes I create are appropriate.

Also some VT apps vary in what resolution it uses, somewhere between 50 and 200 pixels per inch is the norm. So I generally create larger mapped areas at 100 ppi which accommodates most software, allowing users to rescale in Photoshop if they require a change in scale or resolution.

Many VT apps have fog of war capability, but that isn't contingent on the map, rather its a software function. The user delineates what blocks for fog of war - walls, trees, etc. As long as I create content with recognizeable points of elevation (through the use of bevels in Xara), the user determines what blocks vision, based on the map. There's nothing inherent in the JPG file that needs to be done to make it VT compatible, except for total map size.