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very large maps

I was planning an undermountain style campaign. Huge underground map. What sort of limitations am i going to run up against for map size? I can tonally break it up into chunks but what is the max mail size that i can expect to run without issues?
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It seems to be fairly wide variables depending on some factors. There isn't a strict limit. More of a possible "slow down" and poor performance once you get to a certain point, and it's likely that the poor performance would creep in on lesser computers first, so if you have any players with an "old laptop" or possibly with a "slow connection" then you would want to be more conservative with maps. It will be advised that you break up the maps. That's just a general good idea on this site. Although personally I'm very fond of large maps and not flipping pages, so I can understand the desire to put a large portion of Underdark on one map. One of the big factors that will lead to the slow-downs involves the number of objects on top of your map, and also the number of PNG-file-format images. The choice that will allow you to make a larger map (as large as possible) is: to build your entire map in a graphics program and merge all the layers into one large JPEG file; save that JPEG file at a reasonable compression/file size. The choice that would make your map appear to cause slowdowns sooner would be: making a background map and then placing a lot of PNG objects on top in Roll20 like lots of treasure chests and trees and tokens. Hope this helps. I think other people will come along to add to this answer.
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Hi Robert. How big is too big? No one knows because each computer has it's own memory constraints... If you have a player with an older computer (more than 3-4yrs), they will be the first to start experiencing the sluggishness or outright browser failure first. It's probably best practice to split large maps into smaller more manageable sub-maps. Adding lots of token "enhancements" to a map can also slow things down. Most token are png files and they are notorious for eating up memory on roll20 when used on abundance. You can use external graphics editing program like Gimp or Photoshop and "merge/flatten" large complicated maps and export as a single image to a roll20 map layer. Hope this helps. Have fun. edit: sniped by Gold... :-)
A suggestion I've used before is to have a basic "line map" of your overall dungeon and then make separate maps with more detail keyed to the areas on the line map, or index map if you want to call it that. Then you have a good idea where you are in the maps at all times based on what tagging information you put in.
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Forum Champion
Vince said: edit: sniped by Gold... :-) It's always welcome to have answers re-stated a different way. It's preferable the way you said the answers with fewer words than I did. Please do follow-up or race me anytime. Ha. Kidding. It's not a race. Just having clear answers and different perspectives/experiences is valuable for the forum.
The game is being run in person and most players are working off of tablet or Chromebooks so not skit of system resources. I do the design on my workstation though with 32g ram so I won't see any performance issues during design. I an test on my tablet but that is fairly high end as well nexus10. Sounds like trial and error will be my friend here. The map will all be flat file but the furnishings will all be sperate tokens my players have a tenancy to try to move and/or loot anything that isn't nailed down... And a few things that are.
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Edited 1420666083
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Forum Champion
Cool. Please report back on your findings. It's those moveable furnishings that will eventually add-up to cause problems starting on lower machines. At some point it's a matter of --- wouldn't be a problem for the map to grow in square feet but-for the fact it makes so many more rooms to furnish. To the extent you can use JPEG furnishings, that's better for this.. the more PNG furnishings (using transparency), that's going to eat up resources many-times worse than the JPG's. To the extent you can burn the furnishings into the background map and not have them moveable (in a graphics program / ahead of roll20), that's going to save you overhead too. Dynamic light is another one that's going to use a bit of graphics display resources. Theoretically if you don't use Dynamic light, that might allow you to go 'even larger' on the map, though I doubt this will be the limiting factor if you reach some ceiling. Still, the question remains, how large! Note that Roll20 has a feature where it recalculates and loads only 'the section of the map that a player is zoomed into looking at'. That's not a perfect description of the feature, but basically Roll20 automatically sub-divides your large map, and makes up littler sub-sections of the map to load when you're zoomed in. And also I believe it makes a lower resolution version of the overall huge map, for when people are zoomed way out and viewing the whole map but in low detail. Roll20 actually added this feature about a year ago, and much larger maps have been more useable since then.
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Will your players be loading the roll20 editor/map on their tablets and chromebook? That would be "weak" link if so. Your workstation will be fine. I'm curious to hear the results of what you can get away with. Might have to break out my Forgotten Realms Underdark Halls of Undermountain map... edit: Sniper
It's all about the map for us. As we are meeting in person we will be using physically dice. We are essentially just using the map. The feature that loads only zoomed in areas is that default or need to be enabled. At any given time we are only ever looking at a small section of the map. I will be using .jpg for furnishings and definitely be using dynamic lighting.
1420667615
Gold
Forum Champion
The feature that only loads the zoomed in area is automatic. Nothing to enable for it. Note you can Hide the chatroom with a button in the interface. You can actually hide everything that's not the map using a special URL code that has been posted on the forum, in one of the threads about using Roll20 for in-person gaming with a TV or monitor. In case you didn't know about that.
I Knew about hiding the side chat bar. Thy the plan is to pass around the tablet and their the display to a TV with a Chromecast. With gm on a
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robert g. said: I Knew about hiding the side chat bar. Thy the plan is to pass around the tablet and their the display to a TV with a Chromecast. With gm on a Cliff Hanger...
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The art of good storytelling is always leave them wanting more... Laptop.
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Vince, off-topic is the android/iOS app that they talked about for the next release available for mentors at this time?
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Look on this thread, robert, for an extra special trick for hiding almost everything that's not the map, <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1174957/hide-ui#" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1174957/hide-ui#</a>...
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robert g. said: Vince, off-topic is the android/iOS app that they talked about for the next release available for mentors at this time? Yes. There was a sign-up list for alpha testing, so I'm not sure if it's closed for applications by now. There is chatter in the Mentor's Forum daily about the test. Can't talk about that or I would have to kill you... Anyhow, you could send Riley a PM and inquire about it if you are interested. Mentor status has it's perks. :-)