A tool to selectively share maps with players over a screen-sharing service like Google Hangouts. Includes single-letter avatars that can move around, in and out of visibility.
Torgwyn, a roguish high elf, and Gearwood, a bardic gnome, enter the inn and see an empty common room laid out before them. The tables still have scraps of food and half-drunk mugs of ale, and are surrounded by tipped-over chairs indicating whomever was here last beat a hasty retreat.
The Dungeon Master, using the window on the right side of the screen, has prepared the view that the players will see. The dim areas are hidden from the player's view, but the blue regions allow the DM to quickly expose new rooms as the players move through the area.
The players are probably watching the map over a screen-sharing video conference service like Google Hangouts or Zoom, although this would also work with an in-person setup, either using an external monitor/TV to display the Player View window, or by switching between windows before showing the screen to the players.
Gearwood, always a bit of an impatient hothead and both hungry and thirsty from the day's travels, walks past the mess without really noticing it and throws open the door to the south. He is startled to see three large orcs waiting to ambush him.
The DM exposes the new room and its contents to the players by hovering over the blue region with the mouse and pressing the space bar.
Torgwyn rushes to Gearwood's aid and quickly dispatches the closest orc, pushing Gearwood to the side before he can get hurt. Little do they know, however, that three more orcs were hiding in an alcove just off of the common room to the east. Drawn by the noise, they rush out to join the battle.
The DM marks the foremost orc dead by hovering over its avatar and pressing the space bar. Then, to avoid exposing to the players where they came from, the DM pauses the Player View by pressing F before dragging the other three orcs into view. By pressing F again, the Player View is updated to show the new enemies.
Gearwood throws a Shatter spell at the back wall of the store room with the two orcs in it, killing both of them. He and Torgwyn then move to counter the remaining three orcs, but are now at a disadvantage because Gearwood is out of spells for the day. Luckily their companion Ragnar, a human fighter, having just finished tying up the horses, entered at that moment and joined the battle.
The DM marks the other two orcs to the south as dead by hovering over them and pressing space bar, and then adds Ragnar by tapping the A key and choosing a symbol and a color for the new character.
Torgwyn hurriedly pulls the door closed behind her in case any of the orcs get back up, and turns to finish the fight.
The DM fogs the room by hovering over it and pressing the spacebar. Now the players are unable to see any avatars in that area, although they can still see a dim image of the map to indicate they know what it looks like.
When you start your screen sharing, make sure to specify that it only shares the Player View window, not your entire screen.
Everything requires hotkeys, and there are no instructions built into the tool, so you'll want to become familiar with this chart. All controls are through the DM view; the Player view can only be resized or closed.
The primary conceptual objects are:
- Regions - These control visibility of the map. Without a Visible or Fogged region, the Player View will just display black. Regions start as Hidden, and become Visible when you tap the Spacebar or V key while your mouse cursor is over the region. Tapping Space on a visible region toggles it to Fogged, which displays a greyed section of the map on the Player View, without any decoration.
- Avatars - These represent your players, NPCs, monsters, etc. Each has a color and a single-character symbol. They can only be seen in the Player View when in a Visible region; they are not shown in Fogged regions (although the map around them is shown), and they are not shown in Hidden regions.
- Areas - These are intended to be used for area-of-effect spells. Each has a color, and displays as a translucent area when in a Visible region. They are not visible in Fogged or Hidden regions.
Don't forget to unpause the Player View with F.
| Key | Description |
|---|---|
| F | Pause/Unpause updates to the Player view. |
| A | Create a new avatar to represent a player or NPC. Opens a dialog to choose a symbol and color. |
| R | Create a new region to control visibility. Click/drag to draw the box. Hold Shift for a square. |
| Shift+R | Like R, but the new region shares visibility with the region that was under the cursor. Useful for masking oddly-shaped rooms. |
| E | Create a new area to represent, for example, a spell's area of effect. Opens a color picker to choose the color of the area, then click/drag to draw. Hold Shift for a square. |
| S | Toggle shape of area: Rectangle <-> Circle. |
| Q | Toggle a circular area's arc span between 46° <-> 360°. 46° (technically, atan(1/2) ~= 46.3647...°) is a cone that is as wide at any point as that point's distance from the apex. |
| Space | Primary state toggle for the region, avatar, or area under the cursor. Regions: Hidden -> Visible <-> Fogged. Avatars: Live <-> Dead. Areas: Invisible <-> Visible. |
| V | Toggle region, avatar, and area visibility. Regions: Fogged -> Hidden <-> Visible. Avatars and Areas: Visible <-> Invisible. |
| D | Duplicate the region, avatar, or area under the cursor. Repeated duplications will surround the original object. |
| Shift+D | Like D, but the new region shares visibility with the region that was under the cursor. For avatars and areas, identical to D. |
| C | Use a color selection dialog to change the color of the avatar or area under the cursor. |
| Alt+Wheel | Adjust area rotation. |
| Alt+Shift+Wheel | Adjust the span of the arc in a circular area. See also Q. |
| Alt+Ctrl+Wheel | Adjust avatar or area brightness. |
| Click & Drag | Move/resize region, avatar, or area. If it is a group-selected avatar, move/resize all selected avatars together. Hold Shift during resize to force perfect squares. |
| Right-Click & Drag | Group-select avatars in the dragged area. |
| Right-Click | Toggle group-selection of an avatar. |
| Off-click during Drag | Cancel operation. For example, while Right-click & Dragging a selection box, a Left-click will cancel the new selection. |
| Escape | Cancel new-region creation and de-select all avatars. |
| Backspace / Delete | Delete the region, avatar, or area under the cursor. |
| Ctrl+N | Open a new image file to start a new map. Pauses the tool before switching to the new image. Clears the active save file. |
| Ctrl+S | Save the image, regions, and avatars to a ".dmap" file. Overwrites the active save, if there is one. |
| Ctrl+Shift+S | Save-As. |
| Ctrl+O | Open a ".dmap" file saved by this tool. |
| Ctrl+Q | Quit. Does not ask for confirmation. |
| Arrow keys | Scroll around the map. |
| Home | Reset zoom and offset. |
| Mouse Wheel | Scroll up/down. |
| Shift+Wheel | Scroll left/right. |
| Ctrl+Wheel | Zoon in/out. |
Open a new image with Ctrl+N and resize your windows (their sizes are locked together) to a comfortable level (see Known Bugs below if the DM view goes blank).
Use R, Shift+R, D, and Shift+D to place regions over the rooms/areas of your map that you will want players to see. Verify visibility looks good by toggling these on/off with Space and V and looking at the Player View.
If you want to pre-place enemies, NPCs, or your expected players, use A and D to create the avatars, then use your mouse to resize and drag them around the map. New avatars are created at the same size as the last avatar you resized, so you can save some time by resizing the first and then creating the rest.
Once you are happy, save the map with Ctrl+S.
Open a saved map with Ctrl+O.
Zoom and scroll around to where you want your players to start. By adjusting the view like this, your players will not be able to guess at the size of the map based on how it looks when it is displayed.
Place your player avatars onto the map with A, if they aren't already there.
Make your players' starting location(s) visible with Space.
Unpause Player View updates with F.
As your players move through the map, drag their avatars around and toggle visibility and fog. You can group select avatars by right-click and drag, and toggle the selection with right-click; deselect everything with Escape.
If the party gets into a battle, mark enemies as dead with Space or by deleting them with Delete or Backspace. If you need to add more NPCs, use A or D. If an enemy goes invisible, use V to hide it from the players.
If you need to make larger changes, pause the Player View with F first to avoid exposing areas or avatars that your players should not see yet. Pausing includes updates to scrolling and zooming, so you are free to make all kinds of adjustments without your players seeing anything, including loading a new map.
I recommend not saving the map after the party has trampled its way through, so it can more easily be reused next time (unless, of course, you need to stop for now and resume later; in that case, use Ctrl+Shift+S to Save-As rather than overwriting your original map).
If you have permission (check the license where you found your map images), share your saved maps with other DMs so they don't need to mark out all of the regions and enemies themselves.
You must have these installed:
- Bazel https://bazel.build/
- A recent Java Development Kit
https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/javase-jdk11-downloads.html
or
apt-get install openjdk-8-jdk
Make sure your JAVA_HOME is set correctly, then run this command from the
root of the repository:
./build_releaseThe resulting jar, bazel-bin/java/DMTool_deploy.jar will contain everything
needed to run the program. You can start it with
java -jar bazel-bin/java/DMTool_deploy.jar, or copy it somewhere else.
In Windows you may encounter an odd issue when sharing the Player View over Google Hangouts; when it is covered by another window, Hangouts may display the uppermost window in the shared area. What seems to work best is half-screening the Player and DM views side-by-side. I have not seen this problem outside of Google Hangouts on Windows.
Sometimes the DM view will be blank after starting the program or resizing the window. Repeatedly try resizing until it works. Usually this only takes one or two tries.