Hi all, new member on board.

[Aylorian]

OK. You already have database containing the information used to the generate the ASCII view. You can take each ASCII representation / database definition and build an image for it. Then you rewrite to substitute the image for the ASCII in your display. As time goes on you can create new image tiles and update your database. You could even start by putting in solid color blocks.

It sounds really easy. What am I overlooking? I don't know what your back-end is written in, but overlaying a monster/character token is easy in all the languages I know.

You're right Jeff, in it's simplest form that is exactly it. That would be the first step to get the graphic driver in place and working (and is partly done). Everything is going to look blocky of course until we get into blending edges etc, but it's a starting point.

However, after seeing some of the fantastic maps here it got me to thinking about it the other way around - maybe we should commission maps of our areas based on the ascii map plus their room descriptions then break those down into the tiles.

After seeing some of the work in the links Redrobes included where he and RobA generated much more realistic looking dungeons and maps using scripts it seems we might be able to have a much more elaborate "auto-generated" starting point.

Thanks to everyone for showing so much interest in this, very impressed with this forum so far!

[Jeff_Wilson63]

However, after seeing some of the fantastic maps here it got me to thinking about it the other way around - maybe we should commission maps of our areas based on the ascii map plus their room descriptions then break those down into the tiles.

OK. I see what you're trying to do now. Keep in mind that players like things to be consistent, and part of the way to part of the way to make them feel at the center of the action is to give the same degree of development to all areas. You probably know all that already, but it means that development can go in two ways. First you build a generic tile set, and then give your mapmakers a call to develop maps with the same look and feel. OR, you could have a map built, and then turn the tiles created from it into your generic images. Keeping the same the same look and feel throughout your tile set is fairly important.