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Best practices for creating modular assets, like dungeon tiles.

1549579022
Kirizaki
Pro
Marketplace Creator
Hi, I'm looking to create my own art set. I am gradually producing, as I need something new I do and add to my "pool" once I have what I judge to be enough to put on a pack I'll try to publish. I'm following the guidelines provided, resolution, keeping as light as possible and etc. but I'm a little confused on how to deal with this, in the last few weeks I made a few floor tiles (140x140px each), intending to build a dungeon entirely from them, but once it was done I realized it got a little slower than some dungeons I had built before with only one large image file. The initial idea was mostly to save storage space, as tiles can be reused and I was on a free account until yesterday. Even a small 25x15 tavern map built this way became a little laggy, but I didn't see any of my players complaining. Is this normal? Shoud I try to create bigger things like rooms and corridors instead?
1549581259
keithcurtis
Forum Champion
Marketplace Creator
API Scripter
I would suggest not just doing 1 square tiles. on a 30 x 30 map, that's 900 tiles. By all means, have a few options, but a good idea would be to anticipate common sizes and produce a few rooms, several lengths of hall and maybe some open floor expanses. Depending on what kind of transitions you need, some floor tiles are perfectly valid subjects for being jpgs, which can further reduce size and overhead.
1549631295
Brian C.
Pro
Marketplace Creator
Compendium Curator
Take a look at some of the modular options already in the marketplace. For example, they will include lengths of hallway at different widths with lengths of 1, 2, 4, and 8 units (or a similar progression like {1,5,10}. This allows a user to create hallways of an arbitrary length with the minimum number of pieces. Another strategy would be to separate the floor and walls, making the walls PNGs. This would make it easier to mix and match floors and walls and increase re-usability. In that case, floors just become big plates (10x10, 20x20, etc.) and the walls are "drawn" (placed) as needed. To snap to the grid, the wall PNGs would need to be 280 pixels (2 squares) wide, with the wall straddling the center. This would make it easy to place the walls, and an added bonus would be that the dynamic lighting lines would be easy to place as well.
1549645739
Dsurion
Pro
Marketplace Creator
In my case (I do pixelart tiles) I usually add a Tileset on the packs, this allows me and others to use an external software to make the map outside of roll20, then export the image and use that. But in any other cases I would suggest doing what others have said here, make several options for floors and walls of different sizes, like a 2x2 floor, 5x5, 10x10, etc.
1549647509
Kirizaki
Pro
Marketplace Creator
Thanks for the help. I tested what you guys said on the tavern map, of course the idea is adding more options, but just adding a 2x2 and 4x4 tiles made it a lot lighter and I could make the same room shape as before.  The idea of adding a tileset for a external software sounds good either, I was using Tiled to build a map with those tiles before deciding to build directly inside roll20, it sure is a lot easier than having to copy-paste tons of tiles.
1549662673
keithcurtis
Forum Champion
Marketplace Creator
API Scripter
It's almost always better to build outside of Roll20 than in. Most tile sets on the Marketplace are downloadable. The only time I use a tileset within Roll20 is when I can do it with less than ten tiles or so, or some parts of the background need to be moveable (animated table, pit trap, etc.).
1549729835
Brian C.
Pro
Marketplace Creator
Compendium Curator
@keithcurtis, what tool do you use to get everything to align quickly to the grid outside of Roll20?
1549729966
Pat S.
Forum Champion
Sheet Author
Not sure what Keith uses but I use gimp with the snap to grid enabled and set at 70x70 grid size. This allows me to get everything lined up from what every asset package I chose to work with.
1549731823
keithcurtis
Forum Champion
Marketplace Creator
API Scripter
I'll either use Photoshop with an appropriate snap-to grid, or believe it or not, Adobe Indesign (I know, hammering in a screw), but it's really adept at bringing in linked assets from libraries, doing transition fades, etc.
1549736842
Kirsty
Pro
Sheet Author
I like to use Dungeon Painter Studio to make my maps. Because of the limitations of that program, the largest tiles I can add are 10 x 10 grid units. The resolution doesn't really matter, DPS will bring everything down to 70 px per grid unit automatically. When I buy assets from the marketplace, I now buy with that particular limitation in mind. If I see larger tiles, I generally don't buy the set.
1549850038

Edited 1549850094
Mark S.
Pro
Marketplace Creator
The fewer pieces on a page will render faster. I have had good success with using tiles on pages no larger than 30X30.&nbsp; If you want to do small piece work, the best bet is&nbsp;to make them downloadable for others to put together on something like Photoshop or GIMP that they can save as one jpeg file.&nbsp; If you do larger tiles, you can create sets that have drag and drop tiles and features similar to the following: <a href="https://marketplace.roll20.net/browse/bundle/38/geomorphic-cave-and-mine-tile-bundle" rel="nofollow">https://marketplace.roll20.net/browse/bundle/38/geomorphic-cave-and-mine-tile-bundle</a> <a href="https://marketplace.roll20.net/browse/bundle/42/geomorphic-dungeon-and-sewer-tile-bundle" rel="nofollow">https://marketplace.roll20.net/browse/bundle/42/geomorphic-dungeon-and-sewer-tile-bundle</a>