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Hex grid suggestion

Hey guys, I just realized that fantastic toolbox that is roll20 could also allow making wargames... I don't know yet to what extent it is possible but it should be interesting to be able to rebuild wargame maps with classic hex grids tiles (forest, city road,rough etc...). Automatic numbering (either vertical or horizontal) visible on hexes should be made possible as well... for example 0102, 0103, 0104 etc... Of course, if too difficult to implement, DM can manually type in the hex ref but time consuming... Did anyone try adapting famous wargames ?
I plan to try this with a game of Classic BattleTech. I want to use a mapscan as backgroud drawing and align the Roll20 hexgrid to the one on the map. (I read somewhere that this is possible). Finally put some mech-tokens in and I should be good to go. The only real drawback ist, that I have to track all relevant information (e.g. damage per location, heat, ammo, ...) externally, since Roll20 does not (yet) allow for any character-sheet in the software.
I would suggest using blank character sheets and import them as images on a page. With the draw / write tools you can track relevant info (deactivate gridlock).
A few years ago, me and some friends mutated the Settlers of Catan to have combat. I'm trying to recreate it in Roll20 so we can play states away
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Keith
Pro
Marketplace Creator
I have already started building a campaign for Catalyst Games new Leviathan game of airship combat. If I can figure out how to make the dice work correctly it will be pretty cool.
@Keith What do the dice need to do differently?
BTW I tried out the Battletech map yesterday and it worked fine. I had to adjust the size of the grid and map myself, since the automatic scaling did not produce good results with the hex-map. If anyone is interested how it looks, fell free to drop me a line and I will invite you to the game. Just remember, it is not set up as a real scenario quite yet, but more as a proof of concept.
I recently tried your program out. My history in online software is MapTool and now Fantasy grounds 2. One of the things I like about both programs is the ability to re-size the grid layer. Sometimes a image dropped needs to be re-sized to the grid layer and blown way up. One thing I noted on roll20 is when I drop one of my numerous maps on to the grid I have to blow the image up, a lot to fit the fixed grid layer. I'm losing image quality by doing so. To the programs defense I looked through the help files and played with it in the program and could not find any such tool. If there is one great, but it should be easier to access to the lay person. All just suggestions Thanks, great work so far. Grey
That can be done. What is the size of one square in your map?
1346501860
Gid
Roll20 Team
Grayheon, we have a grid alignment tool that should help getting your map to match Roll20's grid. There's a tutorial here .
Thanks, I have it now
1346612564
Keith
Pro
Marketplace Creator
Riley, The tabletop version of Lev. uses color coded d12s, gree, blue, yellow, red, black. They are numbered differently based on what color. I did the math on them and they approximate the following. Green = 1d4 Blue = 1d6 Yellow = 1d8 Red = 1d10 Black = 1d12 This isn't exact, but it is VERY close. The issue is that when making a roll, sometime you need 2 blue and a green. Sometimes a blue, a green, and a yellow. The dice pool that you are rolling each time changed (depending on whether a ship moved, the range, the quality of the crew, etc. It works by making macros for the die color, etc. It would be easier if there way a way to select which die (or macro) you needed before the roll (kind of like a dice cup) Since I thought I saw that kind of thing being worked on I can wait. If I am wrong, please consider this a request. The ship damage is tracked differently than hitpoints. Locations on the ship get damaged by 'Breaching' them with a damage roll. It is easy to track manually however. The easiest thing to do there is to make each ship card a different MAP and have all the players be GM's (Since one isn't needed anyway) that can then change pages as they desire and come back to the board. I am making token versions of all the ships. I am drawing them myself using GIMP and will make them available to be uploaded to the marketplace for Free when I have them done. Thanks, Keith
I've been Working with the grid resizing tool and I must be missing a few things. I make a map in maptool (because I'm very familiar with the program) and capture the screen as a png file. I then drop the png file onto the game table. The hexes are always too large for the map so I try resizing the hexes to fit my map. However, when I do this the map expands outside the confines of the set map. The map is there in the periphery but I have to grab it and drag it onto the visible area. This really makes things difficult when the tokens are not locked to the map. I must be missing something because I see no other issues like this from users. Numerous maps I have are large dungeons that will not fit in the set screen and will requiring dragging of the map. Any suggestions Thanks Greyheon
@Grayheon When you click on the gear-icon next to your page in the overview you can, as the very first option, change the size of the page and add grid-lines and -columns. I had to play around with this setting myself to fit my Battletech-map on the screen.
Sebastian that was it! Great, thanks Sorry if I moved the discussion away from suggestions to "help Greyheon"
You're welcome. To get back to the original post, it is possible to play map-based wargems with Roll20! For Battletech i use maps generated outside Roll20, complete with numbered hexes, and "sync" the hexgrid of Roll20 with the grid on the maps. After dropping some mech-tokens it works like a charm! And with the ability to resize the individual maps, as described above, I can combine two or more maps without a problem.
1346767024
Keith
Pro
Marketplace Creator
I would think that Battletech could use maps that don't have any grids on them already and just let the tabletop supply the grid. Where are you finding your Battlemech tokens?
I'm working on implementing Hex Grid Labeling (see screenshot) -- is that the correct way to do it? (Letters for Rows, Numbers for Columns)?
Depends on games and the hexes"rotation". When hexes are the other side, you can have the hex ref in small chars next to an hex side. Anyway even for RPGs I guess labeling is necessary to track players on a wilderness map.
As Redwind Mapleleaf is saying, Hex Grid labeling will be useful for RPGs and overland area maps. Riley, Maybe I'm wrong about this, but I guess there are many different ways of labeling hex grids. You can compare your labeling with the one used here for an overland area map, for instance: It's from <a href="http://odd74.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=fanzine&action=display&thread=1362" rel="nofollow">http://odd74.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=fanzine&action=display&thread=1362</a> The author likes these kind of mapping very much.
Also, there is more about overland area maps and hex grid labeling and numbering here, at "The Majestic Wilderlands" author's website: <a href="http://wilderlands.batintheattic.com/" rel="nofollow">http://wilderlands.batintheattic.com/</a>
Hmmm...interesting. Well of course if you have a map that already has lableing you wouldn't be using this anyway (it's actually pretty expensive performance-wise to have Roll20 do it), this would mostly be for people who need hex labeling but don't have a pre-made map, I would think. Maybe we'll start with the letter-based labels for now and then add other options later.
No problem. My idea is, however, to put a map in Roll20 and then enable labeling. But I wouldn't want to suggest an intensive use of computer resources. On the other hand, it's usual to have pre-planned "adventure entries" or "encounters" for labeled hexes in RPG overland area maps, which doesn't match very much with "doing it on the fly."
As an afterthought, having the map -like NPCs, pictures, text- arranged in a Roll20 tab/page with this kind of automatic hex labeling would be a way, for the GM, of making his prep-work for the adventure -like assigning entries or encounters to particular hexes. So, this could be useful even for those not taking an "on-the-fly" approach.
@Keith I used the tokens included in MekWars. I plan to find a way to create my own or find a more complete source. When I do, I will contact you. If you want to see how it looks right now, drop me a line and I'll invite you to my prove of concept campaign. @Riley Battletech uses a four digits-system to number the hexes. Two digits for the x-axis and two for the y-axis (e.g. 0101; 0511; 1913)