A little something I'm working on...

I wanted to show some tests of things I'm working on for use in Roll20. First up, when it comes to VTTs, I really despise looking straight down at what are essentially pogs with faces stamped on them.  I crave a little bit of depth, reminiscent of playing with miniatures on a real table top.  If all my RP group friends lived in the same city... we'd probably just play in person with printed out miniatures.  Since we play online-- we (mostly I) need a solution. So, I started developing a technique for using axonometric tokens and maps stuff.  Axonometric is a special type of non-perspective projection that distorts certain axes to preserve or exaggerate measurements along those axes.  In this case-- I aim to preserve the floor grid while giving the walls some visibility.  It is most comparable to the Ultima 6 and 7 games. For maps, the idea is that I'd paint wall pieces that face either "south" or "east."  They'd consist of a floor "grout" and the wall.  This would allow me to assemble the walls in an orthagonal top-down manner along with various floor puzzle pieces.  Then I can assemble the wall pieces on top of the floor grout, and have them separate from the floor in such a way that I can hide occluding walls by shifting them to the GM layer. Character and Creature tokens would be made by sketching characters and monsters, scaling them, and affixing them to predesigned bases in Photoshop.  I scale them to fit the grid based on their height.  Once in the table top, I rotate them 45 degrees to line them up with the map artwork. Hopefully in the near future, we'll have the ability to control sorting via script-- that is the only draw back to this method is that tokens overlap, and you have to do a little extra work if you want them appear to be properly depth sorted.  So be it.  I prefer the added work if it gets me the depth I crave. With all that said, I wanted to share some test results.  These results use google-farmed artwork for tokens.  I will replace the art with original stuff when I feel I've got the kinks worked out.  The map stuff is crafted in Sketchup using lego-like pieces I built based on Hirst Arts molds.  I skew it in Sketchup, then export it and clean it up in Photoshop.  Eventually these, too, will be replaced with original paint-overs to keep all the styling consistent. Here is what the players might see in a session: Here is what the GM sees: Some Depth testing (pretty!  These room objects are modular pieces and are grouped for ease of selection): Dynamic lighting test (oh well, neat idea... I can live with the wonkiness): Thoughts?  Comments?  I'm aware that I'm showing off a bit ;) but if enough people get into using and making these kinds of assets, devs will be more mindful of accomodating their use.

That's really nice!  I understand the desire to have a less top down view.  We accomplish this with our tokens by taking a picture of painted minis at kind of a 3/4 down view and importing them into the game.  I totally dig your walls!

Might even want to use just the tokens without the walls?

My artist eye will revolt against such an idea, Konrad ;)

The tokens at the very least:)

AWESOME walls. What do you do to make them? find stock images or do you have a method? I agree that topdown is pretty boring and I've been working on some tiles of my own that are a little more interesting but I do not understand the 3rd dimension well so it's more of a 2d walls set off-center and cartoony. Also Dynamic lighting suggestion... go by the top of the walls for DL lines.

@Terratani: The walls, as I think I described, are built up out of pieces in sketchup.  I place them on a big grid that lets me use a consistent top down camera view.  I use a distortion library for Sketchup to skew (it's a little more complicated-- I use a pillar that is a specific size to allow me to create the distortion cage properly.)  The objects are skewed 2 units up and 2 units left based on an 8 unit tall cage. I don't know if any of that makes sense.  It's basically virtual lego sets that I build in sketchup using  Hirst Arts  as inspiration. PS: I wish I could see more of your layout.

Jonathan S. said: My artist eye will revolt against such an idea, Konrad ;) :) I meant more that the tokens could be a good replacement for regular top down for us regular users of top down tokens.  At first I thought they might get in the way to much of tokens next/behind them, but now I think it might not be too bad.  Could you do a mock up of a few different sized figs standing behind each other so we can see how much of the figs get blocked?

Here you go. Typically, I would put some more effects around the characters to help differentiate them-- shadows to tie to them to their base, and an outline or drop shadow to separate them from overlapping.  I already put the transparency in the base just so you can always see what is directly underfoot. One problem with this-- when you get creatures as large as those dragons-- notice the bounding box.  I can't select the dwarf behind the dragon unless I send the dragon to the back. If I can get any dev traction on this style of artwork, I'd want to suggest creating a bounding area for selection in the object properties (script side) and perhaps a manually designated center point for snapping and light sources. Even if the bubbles and meters were dependent on the manual bounding area, I wouldn't mind, as they would cleanly overlap the creature around the base.

You are always end up with some selection problems no matter what you do.  You just move them front and back like you said. If you played grid-less then you could rotate tokens to get them slightly out of the way of each other as you move them from one area to another in combat without having to worry about snapping to the grid wrong.  I've always wanted to adapt Pathfinder to grid-less  I don't think it would be that hard really.  Tokens within 5' are within AoO, bases touching are in melee, etc. No more diagonal movement problems.  And with this style of token it can be easier to find artwork for your tokens since you are just adapting pictures from the front, you don't need to find top down tokens of your favorite figs.

A new iteration of artwork... testing tiling and map building before I go too crazy with detail and stuff... I'm getting a little discouraged-- some of these issues I ran into with other VTTs like MapTools- they are present in Roll20... Selection: with the entire bounding box acting as the selection area, things overlap too much.  I can't grab some things like a 1x1 wall piece just north of an archway. No custom center point: the problem with this is that if I take a 1 x n piece and rotate it 90 degrees, it no long snaps in an expected or useful way. Multi-selection is vary hard to tell what is actually within the selection.  With out the parts getting a highlight, the bounding area could hold any combination of sets of objects within the bounds. So, these limitations make it difficult to create groups for use in hiding and such. My pie in the sky wish-list: I'd love an advanced tab for graphic properties where I can set selection bounding area and origin point manually. Checkbox to enforce preserving original graphic dimensions. The ability to create custom user layers. Groups as objects and an outliner interface with the ability to quickly assign layer and visibility for objects/groups/selectability. Back to the drawing board!  Hopefully I don't have to abandon this avenue of map building.

Cool, Riley.  Incidentally, is there a roadmap published somewhere?  I've been looking, and other than some update threads, I haven't noticed a page that describes what's in the pipeline.

Wow, great idea. unfortunate I haven't come across a dungeon/building heavy scenario yet where having a lot of this sort of thing would be beneficial. Still an excelent idea.

Custom user layers (or just adding a couple more object or effect layers) has been suggested before and I definitely agree on that. Using the mapping style of 3D height and archways like you have make layers like that a necessity to really run with it. Add on top of custom layers the ability to add transparency to layers (like you have some walls, players go beyond those walls and that layer is made transparent or they are added to a transparent layer) And to have layers that can be placed above Dynamic Lighting would also solve your dynamic lighting fail of losing the effect there.

This stuff looks really great. I've run in to some similar issues when trying to create the isometric stuff in the deep dungeons sets.  I'm torn between creating walls that can be seen from the side (so that can show tapestries, portraits, and wall shelves), but at the same time I don't like how they cover up a whole movement square in the next room over, forcing either tokens to get overlapped by walls, or to rest on of them, or simply have that space as some sort of out-of-bounds area :-/

@Zerg: once I get it working, I'd like to make pieces for all manner of interiors and exteriors-- inns, dungeons, crypts, caverns, woodlands, temples, spaceship, modern, etc. @Terratani: The transparency you see in my screengrabs is actually from moving a piece of a room to the GM layer.  But yeah, a transparency slider for a layer would be cool. @Phillip: I've seen your sets!  Cool.  I would actually like to do isometric... but with the snapping issues and lack of an iso grid, it just didn't make sense to spend my energy there.  If we get isometric support-- I will convert all this stuff over.  Iso all the way!

Yeah, without iso support we pretty much have to rely on optical effects to get the feeling right. On the plus side I've managed to create some very cool MC Escher like dungeons with them :p

@ JonathanS: I realized that, but allowing that effect for players to see would be cool. As well as layers being above dynamic lighting.

New stuff! Pardon the crappy edges-- but I hit upon a generic wall design that puzzles together really well.  I'm going to move forward with the design constraints I've developed here.  I'll put together some samples in which detail overlays are demonstrated (like, you've got a plain wall-- why not place a bas relief detail over it?  Or add a column detail.) This is much easier to build with and select through.  Check it out! [[ Any requests for an alternate setting theme to demo? ]]

Nice work!

New approach-- the overlapping was driving me mad.  It's not worth the headache, nor can I expect anyone to be so OCD as to put up with it either-- So, I'm trying something akin to Zelda-Perspective :P The angled pieces below were very difficult to build in 3D.  But I'm glad I did it.  I'm going to do another pass to see how it looks if everything is a sort of north-biased axonometric view-- I didn't do it here, because wasn't sure how I'd prefer the side walls and assets to look.  I think I just need to see it to judge. Also-- no more rotating the tokens!

That looks really good, Jonathan!

@Sarah: Thank you!  I'd like to think the expression on your avatar is due to her gazing at my screenshots. :D ... Well, so quick a turn around!  I went back and redid the assets you see above with a better skewing method and broke them out into puzzle pieces. I really  like this iteration!  No longer do pieces overlap (except vertical walls share a slight overlap at their crown) so assembly is super fast.  Much faster than with any previous iteration.  I had no issues with pieces getting lost under each other. You'll notice that now everything sort of leans back in a northerly fashion, even the side/vertical walls.  I wish doors on the sides could be a little more revealed-- but I was thinking that a special floor piece that has door scrape marks will help to celebrate their locations. Here's the latest: I put a piece out in grout-space so you can see how they mate together.  Also, you can see them in the library pane. You can see that the exterior corners suffer a lot of perspective distortion, but that doesn't seem to bother me at all. I have a bunch of puzzle pieces to break out-- I want to try to make enough puzzle pieces to recreate the Ravenloft Castle maps.  I think that would be a good proof of concept. Any thoughts?  

Looks great. Just needs some texture or color.

Looks sweet!  I like it even better.  Keep up the good work!

@Jonathan, you might be right about the expression!  This looks fantastic and I would be stoked to see some of Ravenloft done with this. 

@Jonathan, I think you've made the right choice in how you've altered the skewing.  This new layout I think will be much more practical for GMs and Players alike in terms of seeing the entirety of the rooms and moving around, and the way you've done the corners looks very convincing in keeping the walls looking neat and properly proportioned. Well done!  You've given me a lot to think about when designing my own sets :)

One last update before turning in for the night... I did another pass... this one has walls diagonal to the grid and varying length walls (so you can mate up odd shaped rooms without having to scale any pieces. Sorry for the quality-- big map, little laptop screen.  I'll have some newbettermore screenshots in a few days' time. I want to do some ploppables like columns, tables, and book cases... or whatever cool stuff is in Ravenloft for now :P  I remember shrines and statues in nooks. Ok-- g'nite.