Bartertown.com

Anyone familiar enough with Photoshop, Publisher, or some other graphics program that can build battlefield maps?

Trying to publish scenarios for my tournament, but I am not having much luck into making maps to put in the scenarios. Just needs to be a graph, deployment zones marked on both sides with sometimes a circle or rectangle to depict zones or objectives. Anyone familiar with Steamroller scenarios has seen them before, I just would like them tweaked a little.

Anyone? Please...

Rich

Hey Rich, when is your tourney? I have to do much the same for my own upcoming tourney, but won't have time until Saturday.

Rich,

For making the type of maps you've described I would suggest Microsoft Excel. I use it to make all my scenario maps. You can do everything you mentioned and more. And I find it quite user friendly.

BTWilliams

@reegsk- My tourney is October 15th, but I have started posting the scenarios on it's FB page recently. I used MS Paint to "erase" the unwanted stuff from a jpeg file...it just looks kind of "meh". So I'm thinking I just need to start from scratch.

@BTW- I tried Excel. I'm not a wizard at it or anything, but I have found it difficult to insert shapes onto the map.

Someone with the knowledge to use Photoshop or something, I think it would be easy. I just don't possess that

Silly question:

Have you tried MS Paint?

You can easily make squares, rectabgles, circles, etc. You can fill large areas of color with a couple clicks... Everything you need.


Eric

Yeah, I have tried it. Just didn't have the "ummmphhh" I needed.

It's a last ditch resort. I'm hoping there is someone here in the Bartertown Community that has some skillz in that department. I could do it with MS Paint (kind of), but I want it to be a little more polished looking than that.

Rich

Would powerpoint converted into a jpg be acceptable? If so, pm me with the info and I will see what I can do.

BTWilliams has stepped up to the plate to help and done two of them for me, just trying to figure out how to save an Excel file to a jpeg, after that, we're golden.

Excel allows you to paste the file into a Word Doc, but if you try to resize it, it distorts quite a bit.

What he did looks great, which I didn't think Excel could pull off, but it did. One last glitch to go.

If it doesn't work, I'll get back to you Ironhide.

Rich

Take a screen shot of it and paste the screen shot into a paint program of some sort.
Save that as your jpg and you're done.


Eric

Yep, that's the general consensus, he just had a computer guru at work that might have another way. If not, that's kind of the fall back plan.

The ideal software would actually be Adobe Illustrator, if you're looking for really super fine detail.
I've never heard of Excel being used; can someone point me to/post a tutorial?

Print the excel to a pdf and save the pdf as a jpeg. It will look way better than screenshotting it.

borthcollective wrote:Print the excel to a pdf and save the pdf as a jpeg. It will look way better than screenshotting it.

Screenshot snob!
lol

Eric

Here's a sample of BTW's work. I agree that illustrator would be cool, but I think this will work.

It kind of distorted in the pic I uploaded, it actually prints out nicely.

If all else fails Rich, let me know. I actually draft at work with ACD systems (Autocad, Canvas, etc) and can assist if needed as well.

cheers,
cody