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Overlays for Smart Images

Z

zarlor

Well-known member
It would be very helpful to not only have pins (and/or icons as are in the works) for images but also to be able to select overlays like you can do with something like Google Earth. This could be very helpful for having not just a singular location, but an area that otherwise acts like a pin.

I'm thinking particularly here about things like having countries on a world map, states on country maps and so on. Certainly there may be plenty of issues to deal with (how to handle multiple overlays, for example, if you even allow that at all, or setting up drawing tools for it, do you just allow rectangular or maybe circular selections of is it possible to do free-hand area selections, etc.) but I would really find something like this worthwhile on many of the smart images I've been working with.
 
Sort of like districts in a city and so on. Being able to remove the overlay as a GM and or adding parts or all of the overlay would be awesome!!
Can even do a map key with this type of idea!!
Fantastic IDEA!!
+1
 
Especially if it could handle transparent png files. That way, you could over lay coloured hexes for the likes of a Kingmaker campaign.
 
+1 - i'm making very good and complex maps with illustrator and it would be nice to be able to do that.
 
+1 to this.

I was looking for a way to do this on the board. I would love to be able to add cascading maps. Like a map of the Inner Sea Region containing a map of the Lands of the Linnorm Kings that contains a map of Kalsgard.
 
zarlor said:
It would be very helpful ..............for having not just a singular location, but an area that otherwise acts like a pin.
Click to expand...

+1 for this (Great Idea Cajun!) many maps could be customized to define battle line disputes, provences, parish control of churches, hunting areas for apex creature types, etc

DMG said:
Especially if it could handle transparent png files. That way, you could over lay coloured hexes for the likes of a Kingmaker campaign.
Click to expand...
+1 As well
 
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Maybe another approach would be to "copy all pins to another image". That way you could create multiple maps that all share the same information. In particular, I'm thinking of GM, player, gridded, gridless and historical views but I'm sure there are others. It would be great to start from a master set of pins that could be copied and then remove/add those applicable to the new map (must be the same size).
 
These are some great ideas. I would love to be able to have a GM only view of the current overland map I am using for my Kingmaker campaign.
 
As soon as I read this thread, I knew I badly want overlays too, despite not having a clue on how to create one - nor the correct program to do it.

*sigh*.

But a +1 to add this to the dev list. Please.
 
My thought on how overlays might work would be to have the ability to add additional image files with a transparency layer (e.g., PNG). As long as the new image is the same resolution as the base image, it should work to turn that secondary image on or off - at least in theory.

My thought on application would be to use a program like GIMP or Photoshop which allows the creation of layers to make the individual overlays as separate layers, then export each layer as it's own PNG with transparency.

For instance, you could start with the base map with all physical features, then add things like political boarders in a layer. If you export the "Political" layer as a discrete file with the transparency intact, you could add that to the smart image as an overlay, and you'd be able to reveal or hide political borders by turning the overlay on or off.

Obvious caveat - I am not a programmer, so my "simple and straight forward" solution is certainly anything but. However, from a practical application/usability standpoint, I don't think it would be all that convoluted a function to add.
 
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Another aspect to the user of overlays would be to allow the pins to be grouped together (call each group a "layer" if you like). So that I could switch on the pin layer for settlement names separately from the visibility of the geographical region pins.

Writing the above, I just realised you could partially do this with a "filter" based on the type of category for each pin that is linked to a topic. Although it doesn't cover unlinked pins.
 
Pin groups. That sounds useful for world maps for sure. Or to quickly isolate things that can get lost like traps or secret doors.
 
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