RPG grid map program

[Dracos]

Okay, let's lay out some considerations.

A)4E is an intensely tactical game.  It really expects that you're using some kind of grid system and that folks can take that into account.
B)Grid maps in previous games here have really added to the feel of combat.
C)Gridmaps handled in paint or photoshop are horribly slow.  Way too slow for actual combat as far as I've seen.  And I'm not any good with them either!

So, I'd like to get something to help me run a better game here digitally.  I've been hunting but the best I've seen yet is battlefields which is prohibitively (around 120ish for the lot of us) expensive by my eyes and nothing below that's really hit with me.  Yes, there's openRPG.  Last I tried it, and merc will vouch, it was slow, clumsy, and awkward.  Not what I'm going for.

Small Win: Something that'll let me just quickly handle a graph digitally and get it to players.
Big win: An interactive setup where we can all work on the same grid.

Guys, look around and help me out here so we can have a better game. :)

[Dracos]

http://rptools.net/doku.php?id=home these guys.  They look promising.  I will try and whip up a test case.  THen we will test it.  Like fire.

[Dracos]

http://sourceforge.net/projects/gametable alternative...dunno.

[Iron Dragoon]

The RPTools one looks prettier.

[Dracos]

Okay, seems to work kinda nice.  It needs maps generally as input.  ANyone have (Acquire) a decent map creature?  I've seen several, but they all seem along the lines of a hundred buck product, which makes me balk :)

[Dracos]

Okay, we're going with maptool ( available here: http://rptools.net/doku.php?id=home ).  I thank Jon for helping me finish testing it.  I'll be trying to run tutorial in it.  We will be using IRC as our main gaming platform with the maptool providing a virtual tabletop for us to interact with. :)

Everyone needs to download maptool and I will give instructions on connecting each time.  Hopefully, these won't be changing ones.  I suggest everyone download token tool and use it to create their own token.  Jon showed you'll be able to drag and drop them in to use and then use them in the game.  I'll be trying to get up a little level to go through for the tutorial.

[Dracos]

Okay...despite testing, maptool exploded in practice.  Very sucky.

Therefore (crosses fingers) we will try another tutorial, next saturday, 6 pm.

It will be: http://www.rpgtonight.com/

You need an account.  You can load up stuff from your computer so the same minis you had ready for maptool should work.  It's kind of slow, so give it a checkout during the week to learn how to mvoe around (Edward and Iddy already have).

I'll move my whipped up stuff from maptool into it... and then Captain Dyne can give you a training lecture and shit.

[Dracos]

Okay, at this point I have tried:

Campaign Creator 3/Dungeon Designer 2-*FROTH/RAGE*
Dungeon Crafter 1, 2 and 3 - no size control whatsoever. :\
Paint - no grid/layer support to make grid.
Dungeon Forge - almost, but its buggy as hell and destroyed a remake of a map mid draw and post save of it.
Maptool

The tutorial dungeon at this point has been drawn a half dozen times.  All I want is something I can:
set the scale for in a way that it'll translate accurately to being loaded by other programs.
Give me a grid on it to have an idea of proportion when drawing
and provide me some baseline basic tileset or at least a way to make rooms with objects in them.

At this point I'm ready to go pirate photoshop or something to make a god damn map.  I'm horribly frustrated and between the maptool and this we've lost two sessions.  I wanted to be starting the campaign next week but I can't even get a bloody map in a visible fashion for you guys up.  I'm asking for help finding something because I'm going to be horribly inept with a serious art tool and I'm not looking forward to spending a day turning photoshop or corel or paintshop pro into a dungeon crafting tool.

[Iron Dragoon]

Looked around, and I dunno if you've seen these, but here is some stuff I've found. Haven't DL'd anything to look at it, though.

http://www.battlegroundsgames.com/index.html

http://www.rpglibrary.org/software/autorealm/

http://gametable.galactanet.com/#whatis

On the Comercial/Pirate side:

Campaign Cartographer 3: http://www.profantasy.com/

http://www.dundjinni.com/

[Dracos]

Campaign Creator=Campaign Cartographer.  It's what I started with.

[Dracos]

Tried autorealm today for a couple hours.  Looked really promising, until you make a larger map :|.  It's totally designed around producing stuff for the actual table top and therefore isn't designed around keeping a standard 'inch/square to pixel' rate once you go past one screen distance. :|  So instead, it limits the size of the image.  Leaving the only option for larger maps making the scale real small (say 25x25 pixels to the square) or doing them in chunks.

Still better for maps of one window size at least than the others :|

[Dracos]

Tried battlegrounds, but really didn't have much luck getting stuff into it looking alright. :|  Maybe it's the outlay programs.  Man, WotC is really totally sitting on a potential market.

[Trunkyboy]

http://www.angelfire.com/realm3/ggs/creator/products.html  It has creator in the title, but not sure if it is what you used.

What is "battlefields?"  Can it be "acquired?"