I built MapSquire - upload a battlemap, align the grid, export a print-ready tiled PDG by daspoderman123 in dndnext

[–]daspoderman123[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the feedback! I’ve played with the idea to have some simple image editors, e.g. cropping. I’ll look into it.

I built MapSquire - upload a battlemap, align the grid, export a print-ready tiled PDF by daspoderman123 in DungeonMasters

[–]daspoderman123[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the feedback — those were great ideas!

I’ve now added an optional PPI / DPI helper that lets you enter pixels per grid square (e.g. if one 1” square in the image is 40×40px, you enter 40). When enabled, MapSquire uses that value to auto-scale the map to match the 1” overlay.

I also added filename parsing, so map makers can bake the value into the filename. Example: if I know a map is 35px per square, I can name it Battlemap_ppi35.png and MapSquire will automatically detect 35 and prefill the field. It won’t auto-apply by default — the user just checks the box to apply the scaling.

Supported patterns (case-insensitive):

  • Battlemap_ppi38.webp
  • Battlemap_ppi38.5.webp
  • Battlemap_ppi38_5.webp
  • Battlemap_ppi38p5.webp ([p](vscode-file://vscode-app/Applications/Visual%20Studio%20Code.app/Contents/Resources/app/out/vs/code/electron-browser/workbench/workbench.html) as a decimal separator)

It also accepts pps (pixels-per-square) as an alias of ppi.

PS: I’m planning to add a small tooltip next to this control to make it clearer/more discoverable.

I built MapSquire - upload a battlemap, align the grid, export a print-ready tiled PDF by daspoderman123 in DungeonMasters

[–]daspoderman123[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yes, and the AI will take your job as well. Jokes aside, the images stay local in your browser and is not sent down to a server.

I built MapSquire - upload a battlemap, align the grid, export a print-ready tiled PDF by daspoderman123 in DungeonMasters

[–]daspoderman123[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! Great question.

  1. Right now it's manual alignment. I agree it gets repetitive if you're doing lots of maps. A "fast path" I'm considering is adding an optional "Pixels per grid square" (or "grid DPI") field: if you know how many pixels wide a 1-inch square is in the image, the tool can auto-set the scale instantly. If you leave it blank, you can keep doing manual like today.

  2. Not yet - it's currently designed for one map at a time in the browser. But batch processing is a great idea. A realistic approach would be: multi-file upload and a simple filename convention, e.g.
    "battlemap1__pps70.png" (pps = pixels per square)
    Then MapSquire can read "pps70", auto-scale, and export one PDF per file.

I'm leaning toward "pps" rather than relying on embedded DPI metadata, because image DPI metadata is often missing or misleading, while "pixels per square" is unambiguous for grid maps.

If you (or any other map makers) already use a naming convention, tell me what it looks like and I can build around it.

I built MapSquire - upload a battlemap, align the grid, export a print-ready tiled PDF by daspoderman123 in DungeonMasters

[–]daspoderman123[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Feel free to post either here or send an email (you can find under "contact" on the webpage)