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Newbie map questions

New to Roll20 and Map Making, so bear with me please.  I have been watching tutorials, going through the wiki's, playing around for a few days, and I cannot get things to work right.  I am hoping that someone can help me.  I am trying to input the maps for the Age of Worms AP, and I am having a lot of trouble.  Since the maps are pictures from old Dungeon magazines, they are not all sized the same, so when I line up some of the grid squares on one side, the other three sides are not aligned.  I have tried altering the grid numerous times on several maps with no luck.  So tonight I decided to try to build the maps in Roll20, and purchased a few packages.  (Munky's Dungeon 2-4, The Dungeon Delve I, and Deep Dungeons: Stone.)  As long as I use the same size items (4x4 for instance) everything works fine.  But if I want to do a (4x4) and join up a (4x1) then they are not snapping together at the right size and I am having trouble aligning things nicely.  That does not even get into the diagonal corridors that I am going to be making either... Since I am new to both Roll20 and mapping, I am really not sure how to make things work.  Anyone have any advice?  Attaching one of the maps in case anyone can offer advice.    
1488860326
Gold
Forum Champion
If using your existing maps (the parchment ones) that already have a "grid" appearing on the graphic, first follow the guidelines&nbsp; for aligning a grid to the extent that you can. However, if this doesn't come out perfectly, a practical tip is to just hide the Roll20 Grid (make it invisible with the opacity slider). Tokens and ruler will still move and measure with the invisible grid. It usually won't matter (in most games) if the Tokens/Characters are standing across a grid line of your background map, and the squares are not in perfect sync. Tokens will be abiding by the hidden grid. If it's close-enough, it works. Measure one of your hallway widths and make sure it is approximately the width you wanted from the map scale, even if it's not exactly accurate. Wiki docs, <a href="https://wiki.roll20.net/Page_Settings#Grid" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.roll20.net/Page_Settings#Grid</a> To turn off snapping, and be able to freely position tiles, hold down your ALT or Option key while moving/placing the tile. &nbsp;OR, turn off the grid on the Page Settings while you're working (re-enable grid later if needed for gameplay). &nbsp;OR, right-click the tiles and set to "Is Drawing". Wiki docs for this, <a href="https://wiki.roll20.net/Manipulating_Graphics#Snap" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.roll20.net/Manipulating_Graphics#Snap</a>... Keep at it, Jai! There are many more tips and tricks for map-making. Other members of the community may join with additional answers and ideas for you.
Thanks for the tips. &nbsp;I have tried the align a grid numerous times. &nbsp;While one part of the map will line up, the other three corners get way off. &nbsp;For instance, if I get the top left part of the map aligned to the grid properly, in the bottom right of the grid may have 2-3 map squares in a single grid square. &nbsp; so even making the grid transparent would lead to problems with the tokens. &nbsp;
1488863027
Tetsuo
Forum Champion
There's also a pretty in-depth write up here that helped me a lot when I first started. &nbsp; Map Alignment and You or 101 Ways to Get Your Grids in a Row
1488870700
B Simon Smith
Marketplace Creator
Back in the day the maps were hand drawn, and thus errors in measurement crept in quite often.
That would definitely explain why none of the tips in any of the tutorials are helping correct it. &nbsp;So any idea about the problems I am having with the map creation tools?
WotC maps also have a bad habit when they're in multiple sections... of not lining up the grids of each section properly. So main floor is fine, but the second floor or separate wing is slightly offset...&nbsp;
1488899800
The Aaron
Pro
API Scripter
Actually, I'd not put them in drawing mode. &nbsp;That disables the bubbles. &nbsp;Turning off the grid is sufficient to let them be placed without snapping.
Jai, if you haven't given up in frustration yet I have a few thoughts that might help. First, let me stress the wisdom of&nbsp;B Simon Smith's post above! I play D&D 2nd Edition, and I have converted at least 100 maps from old sources (including Dungeon magazine), and I can say with 100% confidence that a lot of the grids in the old maps were not accurate! This is from a combination of them being hand drawn, then reproduced and printed in the original format and then scanned in again. All of those steps can, and will, have an impact on the grid in the file that you are attempting to convert into Roll20. With that in mind we come to my second point: keep your eye on the ball!!! It took me a long time to come to this realization, but once I did my Roll20 map making life was a lot better! In this case the "ball" is your finished map, the one that is going to be on the Roll20 page and that your players are going to move around on. In the end, do they care if the map they are using is a 100% perfect recreation of the original printed map? I hope not! Instead, they just want something that allows them to play the game. Therefore you need to focus on getting the original map into something usable. The way that I do this is to take the map into Photoshop and manipulate it in there. Over time I have come up with several tools to help me to size the original map based on knowing that Roll20 uses a 70 pixel grid, and therefore that is the target I am aiming for with the final map. That is critically important! Always remember that you are eventually going to want your grid to be 70 pixels by 70 pixels!!! Therefore you might end up needing to stretch or compress the original map in Photoshop to get the original grid to match the Roll20 grid. Based on personal experience I can almost guarantee that this is the problem that you are having right now: the original is distorted in either the x or y axis and therefore when you Align it to the grid and it works on one axis then it is way off on the other axis! BTW, this doesn't even take into account another very common problem with converting the old maps to work with Roll20: a lot of the maps were made with a scale that is different than Roll20's 70 pixels = 5 feet. In fact, a lot of the maps were made so that 1 grid square equals 10 feet, and therefore you also need to double the size of those maps in order to get them to work with the Roll20 grid! This adds a whole new level of frustration and complexity to the task of recreating those maps. And that brings me to my last point: trying to get those old maps to line up to the grid is usually somewhere between "painful" and "nearly impossible". Therefore, the best way that I have found to deal with them is to recreate the floors and walls in Photoshop and just get rid of all of the original map elements! Once you have resized the original map so that it matches the 70 pixels = 5 feet grid for Roll20 it doesn't really matter whether it matches the original grid. So, how do you go about recreating the map? A good starting point is to look at The Aaron's tutorial on how to use his fantastic Walls API script. Here is the link:&nbsp; <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1337473/script-w" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1337473/script-w</a>... He has some great advice on using the Grid in the GIMP to help you modify the original map file. As a bonus, if you follow his instructions you will also be able to automatically generate the Dynamic Lighting for your map! If you (or anyone else) is interested I also have a very detailed checklist that I have created for myself that details how I convert these old maps using Photoshop. It goes into a lot of detail about how to calculate everything and how to redraw the entire map over the top of the old map so that what the players end up seeing is a complete redo of the original map. In the past I have toyed with the idea of sharing it with the Roll20 community, but I have not wanted to put the time and effort into sharing it if there is no interest. OK, I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions. -John