Frustrated

I have as DM made a map, I can add players however I can't make it so that they can see the map at all. I revealed parts of the map but all they can see is black. What am I doing wrong?

Do you have "dynamic lighting" and/or "enforce line of sight" checked on your map's page settings by any chance? If those are checked and you have not given the players control of a token, given the token light or put a light source on the map, and checked the "has sight" option for the token settings, they wouldn't see anything. You can learn more about page settings here: <a href="https://wiki.roll20.net/Page_Settings" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.roll20.net/Page_Settings</a>

OK, I'm making some progress but so far the tools available are not always intuitive in their use.

Thanks, I stumbled on the settings I needed.

Definitely check out the wiki. There's loads of information with screenshots to be found there. But please keep asking questions if anything is giving you trouble.

ninjaed by slow internet

Any idea's on how to put a light source on the map.

DXMage, you might find this wiki page useful: <a href="https://wiki.roll20.net/Dynamic_Lighting#Adding_Li" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.roll20.net/Dynamic_Lighting#Adding_Li</a>... There's a setting under the advanced tab for token settings for "emits light." You can drop those tokens on the Map layer, Token layer, OR on the Dynamic lighting layer and they will emit light. Just make sure to check the "all players see light" box for the Map or Dynamic lighting layers. You can't have only certain players see light on those layers. It's all or nothing for those two. Also not that objects on the Dynamic lighting layer will not be visible, though the light they emit will be seen.

Has sight checked on the token? I wouldn't be asking so many nub questions except my son asked me to come out of DM retirement and use this to get the game going just this week and i have to get it working for tomorrow.

I don't think you need to have "has sight" checked for tokens being solely used for lighting, but it must be checked for tokens that your players are controlling or they won't see anything.

Another good tip for the line of sight: as the GM you can select any token and hit Ctrl+L to restrict your view to what that particular token can see.

I also have access to large format scanners so I have scanned all of my Forgotten Realms maps. I'm hoping to get them loaded as well. They are around 35-40 MB in size will that be a problem? Can your system handle the big maps? I have 40 maps scanned so far.

10 MB is the maximum size for a file that can be uploaded. As a mentor, you have a 2GB file quota for your total number of files. My suggestion would be to make some duplicates of those map files and play around with the resolution to decrease the file size. A huge map that's 72dpi is going to take up much less space than one that's huge and 300 dpi, for instance. Another option, if you can't reduce the size enough, would be to use an image program to slice your map into sections and upload them separately, reassembling them on the map page.

mmmm yeah I scanned them at 600 DPI

Then creating some derivative files (so you can keep those high resolution ones in case you need them) and reducing those to 100 or 72 dpi should help get them down to a manageable size. :)

the files are pretty big =) I'll have to do some chopping. Sad really as I have Waterdeep's 10 maps stitched together as one giant map.

The city of sails is best divided up into its many districts as their own maps. Not only will this reduce size, but your sanity as a GM trying to manage such a large area at once. Heck, I would even break up the wards into 2 or 3 maps them selves, they are so large.

DXMage , if you chop the maps up into peices but leave them at 600dpi your players' computers may have problems processing them. Here is a wiki on what makes for good images in Roll20: <a href="https://wiki.roll20.net/Image_Best_Practices_for_R" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.roll20.net/Image_Best_Practices_for_R</a>... In short, the image should be in jpg format (unless you need transparency) and 72dpi.

DXMage said: mmmm yeah I scanned them at 600 DPI That's actually a good practice at the start, but you need to reduce for using them on the web. The DPI you have now is suitable for printing (too high for web screen). Since you scanned on very high resolution, you've got the option of "zooming in" really far and still seeing clarity on your maps. It's for the best to start with that. As stated in the thread, chopping into districts / sections is one likely option, however you can also try reducing the DPI or the pixel dimensions by a lot (same effect, 2 ways of doing it, DPI or dimensions), and upload the much smaller web-sized version (that should turn out something like 2300x1500 would still be quite large on screen, you'd be able to zoom and scroll around on the roll20 desktop with that). What I'm trying to say is before you go through all the "chopping" method, you might want to try putting the whole big map on 1 screen and just see how it functions for you, but do this at about 1/6th the size of your original scans. You will probably end up wanting to "chop" anyway, but you can have 1 page in your Roll20 that is an "overview map", or use this to see how a big map would work. Just not so big as your original scan. :)

I hope to get as much in as possible however I'm pretty sure I'll end up needing more than 2gb. I'm not sure if that is possible. It has been roughly 15 years since I last played so I'm relying on much of my old materials to get going again. Well today is the day lets see how I do with this software.

2gb is a lot of data for images. For all your maps, you should convert them to .jpg format as it compresses the image size down and .png doesn't (for transparency layers) as a rule of thumb, maps and non-transparent objects use jpg, while anything that needs transparency should be png. You are still limited to 10 mb per image file, so your larger maps may end up needing to be tiled.

DXMage , once you drop the DPI from 600 to 72 the file size will drop to manageable levels. Even very large images rarely come in at more than 5mb when you do that.

The game went well. No PCs died as they only went for a 25% lethality ratio. Basically they had a good chance to live if they made creative use of the skills on hand. =)