Mapping Guide: Battle Tiles

Introduction
Welcome to the special
edition of the
Cartographer's Annual
2009. With this free extra-
issue ProFantasy wants to
express its appreciation of Dungeon Designer 3
the creative and helpful
This Annual issue assumes
user community, as well as you have Dungeon Designer
give new users a glimpse 3 installed, as it contains all
of the great material the necessary bitmap
artwork for symbols and fill
published each month in
styles.
the Cartographer’s Annual
subscription. If you do not own DD3, you
can still use the example pdf
The content of this special edition was created by Joseph Sweeney, a tiles that come with this
style pack.
community member well known for his exceptionally useful video tutorials on
the use of Campaign Cartographer 3 and Dungeon Designer 3. It comes as no
surprise then, that this issue is also accompanied by a series of videos on how
to create the titular Battle Tiles. The mapping guide you are reading is only an
alternative or adjunct to those videos – and a chance for the author to try out
Joseph’s amazing tile system himself.

Battle Tiles – What Are They?

Simply said, battle tiles are little pieces of floorplans
that you can connect and arrange in a huge variety
of ways to quickly generate your own dungeon or
outdoor battle maps.
Such tiles are also available commercially, but CC3
and DD3 give you the opportunity to build your
own, and expand those with practically unlimited
variations.

Starting a New Battle Tile

Start out by generating a new
map through the map wizard.
Choose the map type Dungeon
then either use one of the
provided fixed templates or
decide your own settings.
If you do the latter, you can’t set
the tile’s size (that is fixed), and
adding compass roses or scale
bars doesn’t make much sense,

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Battles Tiles and
Symbol Set 2
If you own Symbol Set 2:
Fantasy Floorplans, you can
also create battle tiles based
on its bitmap artwork.
Simply start a new battle
tile, import the SS2 fill styles
found in CC3/System/Fill
Styles/, and set the drawing
style (found in File >
Drawing Properties) to
Dungeon SS2A or Dungeon
SS2B.
By loading the appropriate
Master Filter Setting (right-
click Symbol Style Toggle)
you can also access the SS2
symbols from the catalog
toolbar.
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but you can define the background bitmap you want to use for the tile. You
could set a grass-and-dirt background for outdoor tiles for instance. For this
guide’s example, I’ll just leave the default background.
The Guide Layers
Don’t start drawing right away, but take a look at
the layer dialog for the moment. You’ll notice a
number of hidden and frozen layers labeled with
GUIDES. These contain construction help lines that
make it easy to create tile borders that match
exactly to other tiles. Unhide the layer GUIDE – 10F
CONNECTION. You can leave it frozen, as we don’t
need to change anything on it.
You will see a number of red lines and areas
appear on the tile. These indicate where corridors (or other features) need to
leave the tile to connect to other tiles.
Drawing the Floor
Click the Floor drawing tool button and choose a
floor style. Use the grid or the Endpoint (F5) modifier
to match the polygon you are drawing to the guide
entities. Make sure that you extend the floor beyond
the visible background to cover the guide areas
outside it. The mask surrounding the tile will cover
these areas when you do a Redraw, but it will make
sure that the sheet effects look correct on the tile.
Note that you don’t need to use the guide entities on
all four sides, eg if you just want to do a straight corridor running through the
tile.
Adding Walls
Now click the Walls drawing tool button and
select a wall style you want to use. Make a note
of the style; you can re-use it easily when you
draw other tiles. Also keep to one wall width
across your tiles – at least those extending across
tile borders. I find a width of 1’ matches the tiles
well.
Again make sure to extend the walls beyond the
tile border to the end of the guide areas. While it’s
not as essentials for the floor, it will make sure any bevel effects on the walls
will not be “interrupted” at the tile border.
Also add any interior walls at this point, not only the ones outlining your floor
area. For example you might want to subdivide the area into several rooms, or
close off a corridor with a wall.

Doors and Other Wall Symbols

Click the Wall Features catalog button, which

loads the symbol catalog for doors and other wall
features. Add any doors, torches and windows you
want to the tile. Remember that doors and windows
can be used to break the walls. That way you can
easily create a break in a wall to accommodate a
door without planning it in advance.

More Symbols
Now add any other symbols and features you want
on your map. Traps, monsters, comfortable
furniture, vegetation; everything is fair game as
long as it does not extrude across the tile border.

Sheet Effects
Turn on the sheet effects to see your battle tile in
its full glory. Of course you can add any additional
effects you like, but I recommend against using
extensive drop shadows or wall shadows. As they
have a specific direction in which they fall, using
them will “fix” the orientation of your tile. While of
course you can still rotate it to connect to other tiles,
its shadows will then be differently orientated,
possibly breaking the overall 3d effect.

Printing
Now simply print your tile. The print settings are
prepared to print the tile at a scale of 1 inch to 5’, ie
it will be at a standard scale for miniature games. If you want or need, you can
adjust the scale in the print dialog easily. Trim away the white border around
the print and your battle tile is ready to go!
If you want to preserve printer ink, you can hide the BACKGROUND sheet of
the battle tile. The finished tiles will not look quite as nice, but the unreachable
(at least for dungeon tiles) background floor will not be printed.

Laminating or Mounting
For better usability during the game and so that it holds up longer, I
recommend to either laminate the tile with an A4/letter laminating machine
(nowadays cheaply available in all office stores) or to mount it on some thick
cardboard. You can even do both.

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 Here is an image of my completed and laminated battle tile on the gaming
table.