So yesterday I put up some changes I made to the silvermap.

The silvermap is a tool that allows you to handle tactical battles online through the browser using the Silverlight plugin.    You can upload images to your folder if you have a registered account, move things around with click and drag, and hit save so everyone else can see it.  Additionally, you can insert a jpg version of the map into a forum post (even on another website), as well as insert a smaller version, like I've done below.

As you can see, two oozes fight the party in my 4e scales of war campaign I'm running in the dndorks forums, and there is a mage hand carrying a staff down towards the bottom.  The update I put up last night adds tooltips to a lot of the buttons, also makes some things a bit easier to use, but there is one big feature I'm really a fan of.  The new Shared tab in the token browser.

Below, you can see I've clicked on the token browser (top left button, the little minis with a green arrow up) and I've selected the shared tab.  There we get several categories NPCs, Creatures, Objects, and Party Tokens.  The Party Tokens is a special tab that displays the current party's character tokens.  The rest are shortcuts to the Shared user folder.

Now I've put up all of the monsters I've created, as well as some NPCs, effects, and such.  I'd like to put up more, but I'm hoping for some help, anyone who has photoshop, I can send you the action I use (someone created it for the Fantasy Grounds campaign software), and if you want to clip and create a bunch of tokens with transparent backgrounds to use in the software, I'll give you credit and upload them for everyone to use. 

So, any volunteers?  Not just for tokens, but maps, heck, interface design for the silvermap, I'll be the first to say I want to improve it, but so many ideas bubbling around in my head that it makes it hard to concentrate on just the aesthetics.

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Richard M.
Grimfang
"Whisper"
Xaeraes

 I'd love to help, sounds like an awesome project!

Awesome MD,
I've attached the token creator action for anyone who wants to create things.  Thus far, I've been using Blue for heroes, yellow for noncombatants, and red for villains.  Or at least I've tried to, I switched to the blue for PCs midway through.

There are a number of different things we need to make it the best it can be, so people can contribute more than just photoshop work.

• Organization.  How should we organize things? This isn't just D&D, it can be modern too, or scifi, whatever.  So I'm thinking maybe at the root of each folder should be campaign Type, but then how from there, one big blob, or many subfolders?  If we move things afterward, it'll create broken links, so we should try and get it right the first time.  Here is where the nonphotoshopers can shine with their mad organizational skills.
• Players.  Many people want a good player token, so if we have a good variety, even better. 
• Monsters.  Obviously lots of monsters for different token types would be ideal.
• Effects.  This is the hardest probably, because we're trying to create good effects that look good on the map in a variety of uses.  You have to have a good eye and imagination to picture what it will look like when overlaid on top of the map.
• Maps.  Battle maps, with 5' squares being 50x50, would be great.  I'd love to be able to throw a random encounter together with just a few clicks.
• Props.  Chairs, tables, campfires, etc.  Good props can allow the DM to put together a customized battlepmap quickly and efficiently.
• Void Tracking: What I mean here is that if someone puts together a list of things that should exist that don't, it'll be easier for people with spare time and photoshop skills to know what is likely to be used.  This ideally should be a person with DMing experience and who likes lists and organizing, a little OCD wouldn't hurt. ;)

Everything that will be put on a map should be png 24 bit with an alpha layer of transparency (32 bit total) for best quality, while maps or other large solid images should be JPG to take advantage of its better compression. 

Update->Removed action because I uploaded a newer one further down the thread.

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Richard M.
Grimfang
"Whisper"
Xaeraes

 So apart from the identifying features (ie the border of the picture denoting Character/NPC/Villain) do you want to try to get a common art style? I know that it will be hard to manage, considering the varying levels of people's artistic abilities and so on, but if we could pull it off it would look amazing.

Folder structure I think it would be better to have the subfolders first, then a F_, S_ or M_ at the start of each token name to denote Fantasy, Sci Fi and Modern respectively.
-Root
   -Characters
        -F_human_male_scolar
        -F_orc_male_tough
        -S_human_female_pilot
   -Monsters
   -Effects
   -Placeables

But that's just an idea, having that much detail in a file name might cause problems. 

Well, I only have enough artistic ability to google search and crop images.  So if you and/or more people are willing to invest more time then even better, but I don't know how much I can expect on that front.
Style
My opinion is that if we have to choose between a full collection of images of every possible thing anyone might ever need and a limited selection of images of higher quality but we run out due to time and/or volunteer constraints, I'd rather have the full collection.  But if we can have a full collection of high quality consistent style, then by all means, lets shoot for that.  Are you planning on looking for images to use MD, or are you planning on creating them from scratch?  Jason, are you willing to participate at all?
Organization
I'm not opposed to having that much detail in the file name, and it might help, but I think genre might be better as a folder.  One limitation is that if we had say 4 copies of most monsters in the monster manual (you need more than 1 because using the same image on the silvermap gets confusing, especially for orcs, goblins, hobgoblins, etc) we'd have 450 to 800 files in the same folder, which might be irritating to scroll through, and thats just fantasy and the MM1.  So I was thinking of breaking it into something like.
-Monsters
    -Fantasy
       -Humanoid

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Richard M.
Grimfang
"Whisper"
Xaeraes

I'm certainly willing to help in the manner that I do.

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"If you fudge dice rolls, your system is failing you!" -Sons of Kryos

"I genuinely think that some people measure their free will by reading how unhappy their GM is." - TonyLB

Count me in... this noon I'll start the search and select phase...

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Frandal Silvereyes

Sir Finceleb

Laryndar

awesome, maybe you can start on the starwars tokens Frandal?

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Richard M.
Grimfang
"Whisper"
Xaeraes

I'd love to volunteer! I have photoshop, so just tell me what ya' need.
One or two questions though... Are you expecting me to "hand-make" the pictures, or do you want me to rip them from images from various sites? If so, should I keep a list of the sites I snatch them from?

Most of the images I take right now are from the internet, google image search.  I'm not an expert at copyright law but I like to think that because most of the images end up being around 38x38 (50x50 for a medium image minus the trim), they're used for what amounts to be personal games (that happen to be on the internet), and the tool and everything is free, that it won't prove to be a problem, though if anyone wanted me to remove their pic of course I would, if they could even tell what it was.

Creatures are easy that way.  Map Objects are more difficult, because they need to be totally transparent around the edges of the object.  I'm using quite a few I got from various software packages for creating maps, but I'm trying to use http://rpgmapshare.com/ as much as possible because their images are presumably copyright free.

Any map builders around who like putting together maps for combat and such?  It'd be nice to have someone go through rpg mapshare and choose appropriate images then resize them (or get one of the photoshop people to do it)  to the small scale for a 5x5 square = 50x50 pixels. 

Anyways, lets focus on the creatures.  I say take them from whereever, keep a list if you like, but in my experience, a lot of these images are (rightfully or wrongfully) being used all over the net across blogs, websites, etc.

To prevent duplication, I figure I'll ask for some categories, and before taking a category, if you could post here that you're working on it (then again when you've stopped), it'd be awsome, that way people don't waste their time.  You can include the images in a zip file attached to the forum post if you like.

I'm giving examples per category, I'm sure some of you, especially if you've DMed before will be like "Of COURSE everyone needs 8 umberhulks!", if so, just make them and include them, I tend to be kind of vanilla in my creatures, one of the things I like about this project is that the more cooks the better the soup, there isn't a limit to what things we should include.

Animals (snakes, wolves, bears, tigers, wolverines, badgers, rats, giant versions, as well as dire, take into account how many you're likely to fight.  Like wolves come in packs of 4-6, so 4 to 6 different medium wolf images, and probably at least 3 dire wolves.  "Different" can just mean different color even, just something to help the players and DM remember which wolf they did damage to)
Insects (Swarms of ants, spiders,swarms.  Giant spiders, giant wasps, giant ants, etc)
Humanoids: Troglodytes, orcs, kobolds, lizardmen,   This is a tough category, because it'd be nice to have shamans of each race and probably 6 of each type. 
Aberrants: Mind Flayers, aboleths, umber hulks, beholders. Those are the big ones, but there are all kinds of little ones I can't think of offhand.  Probably don't need many of these, like 2 different images of each unless you feel like making more.

If you want a category I didn't mention, just post that you're taking it.

When you use the photoshop action, notice that there are different sizes, so large creatures are 100x100, medium are 50x50, small should be like 40x40 or something, not too tiny, need to be able to click on it!  huge are 150x150, and so on. 
I'm including a new photoshop action and removing the other one, the new one has all the colors set.  I couldn't create a small action, if someone can do it, fantastic.  If you make any such improvements, if you could post the action back up here, we can all update and keep improving it :)

Thanks all!
 

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Richard M.
Grimfang
"Whisper"
Xaeraes

 I think I might put together a set of numbers, maybe 12x12. That way if the map gets too hectic you can just drag a number onto the corner of each monster and easily tell which is which.

I can't see anyone needing more that 5 or 6, but for safety's sake I'll make 0-9

OMG MD!
 
Why don't I just let users choose a label?  I can give a set of numbers 0-99 or colored circles and if chosen it'll put it in the top left corner?

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Richard M.
Grimfang
"Whisper"
Xaeraes

MariachiDevil has the smart!  Git 'im!

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"If you fudge dice rolls, your system is failing you!" -Sons of Kryos

"I genuinely think that some people measure their free will by reading how unhappy their GM is." - TonyLB

Richard, are you saying you could put an option in to label a token as you put it on the map? The main problem I could see with my idea was that you (the GM) would have to drag each number as well as the token whenever you wanted to move someone, but if the number/colour became part of the monster when you put them on the map, that would make things much easier.
I'm not sure how easy that would be to implement but it would certainly make things easier, especially if you had two distinct factions of enemy or some other sort of three-way battle.

OMG, you've done it again MD, I was thinking the interface would allow you to choose a number or a color just by clicking on a token and selecting it, but why not both? That way, you can have team blue numbered 1 through 9, and team red numbered 1 through 9. 

I'm going to do it, hopefully this weekend! I think it'll be easy in silverlight, harder in GDI+ (I have to program everything twice, once for silverlight, once for GDI+ to display in the forums).  Awesome, keep the ideas coming. :)

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Richard M.
Grimfang
"Whisper"
Xaeraes