I am current considering a new cellphone, either an Iphone, or samsung omnia, and I was wondering if any other players or gms out there use these at their gaming table, and what software/apps do you use?

Salcor

No, not a cellphone, PDA or similar things - because the screen is too small.

I use a 18" laptop to browse materials, run various gaming aids (available at strike-to-stun.net) and depict combats in Excel using the in-built imagery.

It is very useful, to say the least, sir.

My combats have reached a completely new level.

egalor said:

How-what-why?

I am interested in subscribing to your newsletter, Sir!

Darth Smeg said:

Massa, you be such a monster in Excel, not knows about how to depict da bloody kombatz in Excel? Me shocked!!

In fact, it is really easy. I just use standard figures (circles, squares, etc.) to depict the buildings, PCs and NPC upon the Excel grid. It takes no time to draw such a battlefield on the fly, and all the figures could be dragged with a mouse as the fight goes on (the easy way). Or, I can download special .png files and use them instead (the hard way).

Here are examples. The easy way:

The hard way (please note that the white rectangle in the upper left corner serves as a removable "fog of war" - for as long as the territory remains unseen by the PCs):

Voilà , as the English say...

I am most impressed, and shall immediately start to do this!

Perhaps you would care to send me an example file or two? The ones you've pictured in your post, perhaps?

I did mess around with some other apps that claimed to be "easy" and "quick", but found it too much of a hassle. This will do nicely.

Pray tell, do you have a catalouge of .pngs you use for this purpose?

And what aids from sts do you use?

Can't think of any more questions right now

I am most impressed, and shall immediately start to do this!

No problem! In fact, stating it again, my combats have gone up a level, and became exciting again. No later than yesterday, for example, we've been enjoying for half a session a simple combat with a few enemies in a hive.

Perhaps you would care to send me an example file or two? The ones you've pictured in your post, perhaps?

Will do. I will send two .rar files, because the excel graphic files somehow take humongous amounts of space (9 Mb this one).

I did mess around with some other apps that claimed to be "easy" and "quick", but found it too much of a hassle. This will do nicely.

Same here, man. Surprisingly, Excel beats Dundjinni (not even speaking of Campaign Cartographer) in many aspects.

Pray tell, do you have a catalouge of .pngs you use for this purpose?

Yes, I do. There are web resources specifically designed for that (from where I gathered my small collection). I would recommend to start with this one: http://rpgmapshare.com/index.php?q=gallery&g2_itemId=105 . More could be tried out here: http://rpgvirtualtabletop.com/accessories/tokens.html . The maps I've created with these objects took not much time (measured in minutes), and they allowed me to move the characters in real time, and even insert special effects like explosions, blood, bullet holes, etc.

Two more useful tips:

- the unexplored area is easily covered with a removable blank rectangle simply dragged over it;

- Excel allows to establish the order of the objects to be drawn (which over which).

I have tried this out with my crew, and it worked perfectly well.

I still prefer to use the in-built Excel imagery. I'm just too lazy to draw lots of maps. Perhaps later

And what aids from sts do you use?

I use these ones (for WFRP, mostly): http://www.strike-to-stun.net/downloads (under the section Rules and Tools). Especially I would recommend the Inn Generator and Books Generator. They are really masterpieces!

Can't think of any more questions right now

While not available for Dark Heresy...

I use a Sony PRS-505 (last year's father's day gift), and my 15" laptop for ebooks. My preference is for electronic editions, not dead tree. Several games, I have both.

I do my own cheat sheets, and print those and drop them into page protectors in binders.

I suppose you could even scan the various maps from the published scenarioes, and use that as a background for the Excel-map.

Stretching and scaling should be easy, and then just place markers for PCs and enemies over it and move'em around. Nice.

I propose we make some maps/sketchups for generic, common encounter locations. (Bars, factories, construction yards, office spaces, etc), and post'em somewhere. That way we would have some templates available for quick adaption to most needs. Save us both/all a bit of work too

Darth Smeg said:

No, scanning map and pasting them in Excel doesn't seem to work with small scale maps, unfortunately.

For example, if you take a combat with Theodosia (Rojoice For You Are True) at Plaza, it seems fine, as one square = 1m.

But in the next scenario, where there is a fight with Dark Elves in the Black Ship, 1 square = 10m. No amount of stretching/zooming will save the day. Too bad.

That is also aggravated by the fact that Excel cannot use large files as the background (1200+ pixels in my case). So scaling works neither.

Therefore, it's seems that these interactive maps will still have to be assembled by our own hands

As for the generic encounters, I have already tried to map them, but the lack of motivation makes it a very long job. On the other hand, if we did this, we could eventually have a large bank of generic / scenario locations for everybody to use and expand further.

I suggest we discuss it in more detail here, or by email.

egalor said:

My thoughts exactly.

Start with low ambitions: we go with the Easy-mode first. Heck, perhaps we'll get someone interested and others can find .pngs and pretty pictures to redraw the maps if we can make some intresting sketches.

How about we:

a) make a new thread with a blurb about our goals, asking people for ideas, inputs and/or textual descriptions of interesting places to stage a fight.

b) start drawing up simple-versions of these, and posting these for general review. Then re-visist and improve upon these until we're happy

c) pretend we'll get around to re-drawing these in the pretty/hard version sometime in the future

Some obvious starting maps:

- The Alms house from Edge of Darkness

- lower/underhive alleys, the perfect place for an ambush

- Hive manufaktoria: several levels, walkways, barrels and other cover, rooms with doors and windows, etc.

Darth Smeg,

Ok, I agree. I will have to come with some map before next Wednesday (our final Edge of Darkness session) anyway, so I'll have to map something before that time.

However, the best thing to start with would be to depict easier yet highly popular locations, like: bars , hostels , and hive backalleys .

While mapping I suggest to use the following guidelines:

- every map should implement the grid of the same size (I'm still researching the optimum size);

- Excel 2003 compatible and tested (some .png files do not display correctly);

- no tranparency (that terribly overloads the CPU);

- all .png files have to be reduced in an external application before being placed in Excel (to save space).

BTW, do you have any idea, if it's theoretically possible somehow to interconnect the graphical depictions and Excel macros (in order to be able to resolve combats in real-time by selecting the tokens)?

EDIT:

I suggest we set the grid to: axis X=23, Y=20 pixels. The human-sized characters will then have to be scaled down to 23x17. I just tried to place them on my impromptu map and it seemed to look fine.

As for the new thread I think we'd better open it after we make a few maps to interest people with.

I find myself in complete agreement with all your suggestions, Sir.

I was thinking about letting the macros in my combat-sheet automatically create and number tokens for each combattant, but I must admit I have no idea how to do that. Some googleing would be required

Previous floorplans/miniature rules for GW RPGs have had squares the size of the miniatures bases be 4x4 yards. As DH ranges are all in metres, it would be prudent to fudge 1y = 1m, and say each square is 4x4 metres. Does this seem agreeable, or would a finer scale be useeful?

I have run many encounters over a large area, in order to bring out the advantage of some weapons long range values, and I think having a one square = 1 metre scale would be inefficient.

On another note: Somebody on these forums have posted some maps of the Alms house, so we could use those as a starting point. I've also mapped out some encounters in Powerpoint (yes, very sad), and it should be easy enough to redraw these in Excel., stretch to scale and post'em up.

Also, it might be an idea to make some common object in the right scale, and use them as a palette/toolbox for quick copy-pasting. Barrels, pillars, doors, bikes, cars, and other useful things.

I've got a lot of .png metallic barrels I just love them! And also a lot of rubbish to garnish them.

Well, as for making 1sq=4m that might entail the problem of scaling/zooming in Excel. In this case, we will have to ensure that four models are able to be positioned on one square. Even though this is technically possible, they will be less than tiny, as Excel supports only up to 400% of zoom.

Therefore, considering Excel grid is practically infinite, there should be no problem for us to assign 1sq=1m to have a relatively nice depiction (although still a bit too tiny).

One more interesting thing: I have noticed that scaling models in an external application seriously impairs their quality (perhaps I should try Photoshop to do this). So, currently I have to reduce them directly in Excel, instead...

Unfortunately where I play a laptop is a little cumbersome. Thus why I was asking about iphone windows mobile software. So is there anyone with any suggestions?

Salcor

Huhm, sorry for hijacking your thread.

I actually searched the iPhone App store for warhammer apps the other day, but the only ones I could find were for the TT wargame. Sorry

Understandable, trying to find things in the apps store is a pain sometimes. I saw a program that did a generic character sheet, but it did not allow for multiple characters. Wish I knew how to program, the character folio would be a great app program.

I wish I could use a laptop at the table, I have both fractal mapper and dunjinni.

Salcor

egalor said:

Howd'ya do that then? I followed the advice of this article in setting the cells to a square size, and chose 12,75 x 1,71 to fit with a 10pt font size. Seems to work well enough for the "simple mode".

Here is my first attempt, the Cygnan Martyr from The House of Dust and Ash. See what you think

It looks nice. I'll tweak around with that a bit, and then I'll comeback with praise (and critique!)

Well, here is my opinion.

First, what I like .

1) The drawn furniture (sofas, stairs and tables). They are small, good-looking yet not too distracting. Where did you get them from? I want more, even a whole series of it.

2) Ability to move the tokens along with their names . Could you please detail how you did this? I have Excel 2007 and 2003.

3) General neatness of the map.

Second, what I like less (and questions/suggestions):

1) How much time did it take to draw this map? Is it possible to draw something like that on the fly?

2) Different-sized ovals around tables. I can't understand what they actually mean. Chairs?

3) Each NPC and PC needs a direction . Therefore, circles/explosions wouldn't be the best option here. I suggest we use pentagons, it's top summit indicating the facing.

4) Differentiation between various NPC/PC types should be shown only through colour , without using different geometric figures.

5) While drawing circles, copy-paste them on the field by holding ctrl (to ensure they are of the same form and size).

Thanks for the feedback. I'll get around to fixing it in a bit

The "Like" list:

1. The furniture is actually just squares, rounded squares and circles grouped together. Very simple.

2. Place a Text-box under the token, select both, right click and choose "grouping", then Group. Same procedure as for the furniture.

3. Thank you

The "Don't Like" list:

1.Several hours. Too long, obviously, but that's mostly because I wanted to recreate the map exactly, counting squares, comparing, etc.

By creating a set of furniture groupings, a lovely little catalouge of "clip-art", it should be quite quick.

2. This was the unfortunate effect of re-sizing the cells after the map was drawn. I found out that the dimensions I took from your example were not square when I made the circular templates. I intended all these little things (bar-stools I guess) to be circular.

3. Yes, and unfortunately the rotating of small objects in Excel is not so easy. I think. (The rotate "anchor" is only displayed if the item is large or the zoom level is high). However, turning is a Free Action, so facing doesnt really matter much. When laying down a kill-zone by Overwatch, etc, it's just as well to paste in a template.

Edit: How about making a circle with a little line through one side, like the icons from the maps in Hitman (the computer game)?

4. Why?

5. Yes, the different sizes were due to effects of the re-size. I'll re-draw them, but haven't got around to it yet.

It should be possible to make a simple macro to change one auto-shape to another. That way, we could have one icon representing an alive person, and simply selecting it and clicking the "RIP" button will turn the icon into the dead-person icon. Neat

As for facing . I think this is a very important thing: for example, my rule is that the PC/NPC can see and aim targets inside a 45 degree arc. Plus, it matters, whether the PC/NPC sees anything during his or her turn. It also matters when sneaking behind/around the target. I do remember the great Hitman series (btw, do you know, that the next instalment is in the works already?), and the way the people were depicted there an a radar. I'll try that out in Excel.

Different forms simply don't look good to my view. That makes combats too straightforward, so to say. For example, what if an enemy appears to be an ally during the combat, and vice-versa? If it's just colour - then one click and it's done. If it's a new form - it's more difficult and longer.

As for rotating the small objects. Actually, I've managed to make pentagons turnable by zooming. If a pentagon fits into a square, then a turning anchor appears - and it's quite a nice scale.

It's good to hear that it's so easy to create such nice "clipart" by the in-built means of Excel. In this regard, we might want first to make a bank of these images . One more thing on PC/NPC tokens: I still think that it might be fun to use the top-down views of .png critters found on the web (but critters only, without any other objects).

EDIT: Hitman-like radar depictions work fine. Still, don't forger to consider real top-down view soldiers.

I agree. When we post the thread we could also ask for input on common items to model like this.

Anyway, I've updated the file:

- Re drawn all the wonky circles.

- Added R.I.P and Un-R.I.P buttons. Select a combattant-icon, and click R.I.P to change it to the "dead" symbol", and Un-R.I.P to change it back

- Made an example Hitman icon. Looking forward to the next game

At my current cell size the rotate-anchor appears on zoom level 150% for person-size icons.

Take a look

Wow, I liked the library, and the neatness the objects are created. Really, good design. Cones of fire are also very useful.

Hopefully, with a well-organized library of these forms it'll be possible to make the maps on the fly (that's what I wanted from the start).

Somehow I can't see the RIP/UnRIP button. I'm using Excel 2007, macros are enabled.