Maps from tiles - Free account

Hi peeps... I've been using roll20 as a gm with a free account to casr maps n stuff to a TV via a player account to my players in the room. I use it very basically as I'm in my first ever campaign as I was interested but not 100% sure I was going to be any good... I upload maps and remove the grid as I suck at lining up the squares... 😁 I was just wondering... If I created a tile set for a specific scenario  how would it affect roll20 if I had an image per square arranged using approx 6 tiles? I. E. 100 Square map using 6 uploaded tiles Would this work OK or would I be better making a map as a complete image? Was planning to start using fog of war too... Would this cause issues? Thanks

It depends on your computer, apparently. Roll20 will load everything it can at startup. Hence, if you have a lot of individual large assets, this can cause considerable lag, especially on older computers. For best results, you want to minimize everything. This means making a single large map instead of piecing together individual tiles, as well as placing all set dressing (trees, tables, whatever) on the initial image.  Making a map piecemeal, as you suggest, is not recommended, despite it being the default method on Roll20. However, if you and all your players have relatively good computers, you might not even notice any slowdown until you get to the several dozens of images, if then. Roll20 will even give you a warning if you try to make maps as large as 100x100 units. Personally, on my old (Win7) laptop, I can still run a map made of 6-10 tiles, at 12x12 each, on a map of 108x108 units. Multiple items, multiple tokens, and the lag is still bearable. As far as Fog of War, it will add virtually nothing to your problems, and increase player immersion. I highly recommend it. Re: Aligning to Grid, yeah, that... that ain't easy. -Phnord, The Color Animal Inn

Phnord Prephect said: For best results, you want to minimize everything. This means making a single large map instead of piecing together individual tiles, as well as placing all set dressing (trees, tables, whatever) on the initial image.  Making a map piecemeal, as you suggest, is not recommended, despite it being the default method on Roll20. Is this really the case? i thought it was better to have multiple small images than one giant one? I havent used any really big maps yet, and I'm pretty good about keeping file sizes for maps down through compression, but have a fairly big map in mind for a game and dont want to make a mistake in setting it up.

It is better to take all your tiles and build the map as phnord suggests. If you have hundreds of tiles and tokens on a page, the computer has to track each of them which uses memory. If you have one completed map with the static setting tokens/tiles (trees, furniture, etc) that are not going to be moved, the computer only has to track that. There is some tips in the Optimizing Roll20 wiki page .

Thanks for the tips guys.. I thought it may be the case... Might use my main pc with roll20 to design everything then convert it to a full map image afterwards... Thanks again! 😆

I built a map 150 x 150 several years ago that was completely handbuilt with tiles and tokens. Lots of detail work. Very few of my players even noticed the lag (lucky?) and we just waited the 30 or so seconds for the screen to show up for those that did lag a bit. The only downside on that was at times the dynamic lighting would not set properly and the lagging players could see the entire map. On the honor system they would reload the page. Since then, if I need a larger map, I'll create the base image (everything that does not change in the course of the session) and then add the detail work. And don't forget you can make copies of things that overlay the original map. Several marketplace creators have done this: Gabriel Pickard and David Hemenway (sp??) come to mind. They have sets that allow you to add damage, burns, etc to existing large maps they created that fit seamlessly.  The one that I recall using last is David's Hillside Fortress . Used this to great effect with a castle under siege. As parts were damaged I just overlaid the tile showing the damage. Used that map for seven sessions so it was worth the prep.  Other marketplace creators have similar tilesets. Plus you can capture bits and pieces to modify the dungeon to great effect. I find the background as one image with movable details and overlays as needed works well. Once we get more map layers things will be that much easier and I'm sure much more will be created to take advantage of the new layers.