Slick
*eyeroll*
I've experimented with many different map making tools over the years and found all of them lacking. I've made maps in Photoshop and Illustrator in the past but what I like in a dedicated mapping tool is speed; I'm willing to trade some flexibility for the ability to brainstorm and tweak map designs easily. What I hadn't considered until just recently is a program I've had on my computer for years: Tiled. It's a free map-making tool meant for video game development, but it works just fine for tabletop maps as well.
The benefits of Tiled?
A few tips:
The benefits of Tiled?
- Free
- Open Source
- Simple to use
- Import custom tiles and images of any size
- Supports orthographic, isometric, and hex grids.
- FREE
A few tips:
- Make sure you select the background color to be transparent when you import the tileset.
- For water, make a layer with opacity set very low and just use black. You could also make illusory walls like this. Alternatively, for oddly shaped rooms/corridors you can draw a polygon on an Object layer and set that to whatever fill color/opacity you need.
- To paint tiles on the intersections, make a layer with an offset of 32x32.
- There is a grid setting, but I recommend turning it off and making your own Grid layer filled with the tile I included for it. It makes it easier to see what you're doing when you paint on the intersections.
- Doors are best placed as objects on an Object Layer (not bound to grid, but can snap to it).
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