Fantasy role-playing battle grid map for use with GMA or standalone.
The current implementation of the mapper is in Tcl/Tk, but is showing a definite need for refactoring at this point. The rest of GMA has already been moved to Python and Go, so the next major revision of the mapper is likely to be rewritten in one or both of those languages.
The GMA toolset (see below) includes facilities to support tracking of initiative in combat and the location of creatures on the game map. If using the full GMA toolset, each player may run a gma-mapper client. These are networked together so each person can move their pieces around and see the same tactical view of the battle.
It may also be used stand-alone to create maps ahead of the game, or for the GM to display the battle map using a large monitor or projector, without the need for any networking at all.
This is part of a larger project called GMA (Game Master's Assistant) which is a suite of tools to facilitate the play of table-top fantasy role-playing games. It provides a GM toolset for planning encounters, tracking character state, and running encounters in a comprehensive way. This includes a multi-user interactive tactical battle map where players can move their tokens around the map, initiative is managed automatically, etc.
While we intend to open source GMA later in 2023 2024, it's not quite ready for
general use (mostly because it needs to be generalized more to be playable
on multiple game systems and less tied to the author's game group).
The manual describing the full GMA product may be downloaded
here (PDF, 61Mb).
In the mean time, we're moving individual parts of GMA (specifically the map server and clients) into their own repositories. This is the client repository.
In the repository you will find manpages which document the usage of the client itself, the file format used for storage of map data, and the network protocol used when networked.
The GMA Game Master's Guide includes full tutorials describing how to use the mapper (in addition to the rest of GMA). Players should refer to Appendices G, H, and I, while the GM would want to read Chapters 4, 5, and possibly 8–10.
In the documentation, the invocation of the mapper client is shown as
gma mapper ... which only makes sense if using the full GMA toolset. The
gma script merely sets up some convenient environment variables and allows
you to avoid having to have all the bits of GMA in your $PATH. When using
mapper on its own, merely execute bin/mapper.tcl as a command by having
it in your $PATH or using the Tcl/Tk wish command (e.g. wish mapper.tcl).
If using with the full GMA toolset, the gma mapper command will use the environment
variable GMA_MAPPER to find the top-level directory of where you cloned this
repository (thus $GMA_MAPPER/bin/mapper.tcl is the executable mapper script).
You may need to set GMA_TCLSH to point to your tclsh interpreter if the gma
script can't find it on its own.
Although intended for use with the GMA software suite, the gma-mapper tool has an independent version number from that project.
Includes Paul Walton's scrollable frame code sframe.tcl, available at http://wiki.tcl.tk/9223.
Also uses a modified version of Silk Icons.
The GMA software and the gma-mapper client in this repository are intended to be game-system-neutral. They are not written specifically for, nor intended specifically for use with, the oldest fantasy role-playing game, nor do they rely upon OGL-licensed intellectual property from Wizards of the Coast. Where any game system was in mind for these tools, it was the Pathfinder role-playing game system from Paizo, Inc.