Gaming Mats - Who Uses Them?

[EccentricOwl]

Is there any place one could get them in mousepat-like material?

[Lone_Pathfinder]

Is there any place one could get them in mousepat-like material?

MAS

[Lone_Pathfinder]

[Mob of Blondes]

Is there any place one could get them in mousepat-like material?

MAS

And a print of own design (or downloaded from somewhere), instead of preprinted?

[Errhile]

I guess MAS could arrange for that. Them, or Gamemats.eu.
The primary question would be, though, how much would they charge for one-of-a-kind job...

[Icchan]

Customeeple also does custom designs (as their name implies), but I'm not sure if they have that neopren material in their category. Wouldn't hurt to ask.

[Mob of Blondes]

It says "canvas" for the custom one, too small anyway. And adhesive PVC or outdoor banner for the Infinity tiles. So I guess no.

[EccentricOwl]

I think I'm going to make an order in the near future. Does anyone have any other recommendations for textures?

I remember seeing on DriveThruRPG that you could purchase these massive textures in PDF form that you would somehow print out. I'm curious if anyone's ever bought or seen those. Maybe I"m crazy.

[PworkWargames]

Hi, I would add to the discussion because as a player and I tried them all. I started making traditional tables (my blog: http://agganciamento.blogspot.it/2012/07/tavolo-modulare-w40k.html), then some for fun, some for work, I have created some mats as City Ruins:


and other examples...





and then many others, improving the graphics and I am trying them first. The most striking thing is the fact that a mat is flat, but if it's done right you can not see, but ... a mat with some nice scenery is fantastic to see.

For the convenience of use in the home, the small footprint, the yield and the cost recommend it to everyone. I always use them now, and I'm happy to have two or three different depending of the environment where I want to fight.

Try to look at my website: http://www.pworkwargames.com Here many mats and there will be more and more. Here is a video that suggests comfort and performance of a mat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ovYRqQdp1A

[SgtHulka]

Pwork, just like Eccentric Owl, I've been looking for new mats to print out. I know you offer a printing service yourself, but to be honest I'm so happy with Banners on the Cheap I'd rather just buy a file that I can send to them for printing. I know you offer files, but it seems like they're all tiled. Do you offer the big files for sale that aren't tiled?

Eccentric Owl, I've been looking around for downloadable files for more banners on the cheap style mats. Pwork has some nice looking ones in the post above. Lord ZseZse also has some great ones. The problem I'm finding is that when you buy them they're always tiled, which makes sense because you're supposed to print them out yourself. That's why Michaud's is great -- he took the tiled one from Topo and then re-formatted it into a big file. That's beyond my skill set

Also, now that I've used Banners on the Cheap, I'm getting tons of e-mails from them about specials. They seem to run some sort of special every two weeks or so. I'd wait until one of these specials before ordering from them because I think the savings can be pretty significant.

EDIT: Pworks, what does "1:1" mean? Are those just one big file instead of the tiled sets? Thanks.

[MacAttack001]

I got a mat from Banners On The Cheap...

Great special...right up to the point when it came time for shipping. $28 standard shipping!?!?!?!
Which was twice the price of the banner!

So...I am going to have to give them a thumbs down.

[Michaud]

They normally have a sale running for free shipping. It cycles - give it a few weeks. I paid ~$20 shipped for mine, you just have to be patient and order when the time is right.

[StokieRich]

Had a look at those images but when I open them they don't seem very big and I'm worried about the quality?

Probably doing it wrong but I have a 180kb jpeg when I click the links on the blog and then right click save image.

Anyone can help?

[StokieRich]

OK tried again and have a 1mb file which says it's 1600 pixels squared and 96 dpi.

Is that ok for a 4ft by 4ft mat?

[StokieRich]

Ended up buying one from Pworks chap above, it's only £13.75 from PixartPrinting to the UK so I figure I can always order another one when I figure out how to get this one working.

By contrast the file from Pworks was over 12mb, so implies my 1mb file probably wasn't right.

If you get chance to put me right on it though michaud that'd be great, as I'd like to get another one using your file.

Rich

[MacAttack001]

OK tried again and have a 1mb file which says it's 1600 pixels squared and 96 dpi.

Is that ok for a 4ft by 4ft mat?

No, you are going to want something of at least 150 DPI and 7200 x 7200. At that size you will not have to scale up the image to fit a 48 inch square mat.

While you are working on the image in Photoshop with between 10-30 layers...it will no doubt register as a huge file (probably over 200MB). Just remember that as soon as you convert it to a jpeg it will compress down very nicely (10 to 14MB).

[StokieRich]

Yea I've no idea how to do that sorry, I was hoping to download one like what Michaud mentioned above.

I bought one for now but if anyone else has any alternative textures I could use that'd be great.

[MacAttack001]

Yea I've no idea how to do that sorry, I was hoping to download one like what Michaud mentioned above.

I bought one for now but if anyone else has any alternative textures I could use that'd be great.

I was talking about creating your own image in photoshop.

[SgtHulka]

Michaud, it looks like someone's selling the mat you re-designed:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Gaming-Mat-Battle-board-FUTURE-CITY-4x4-120cm-x-120-cm-Infinity-/271816498927?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3f49869eef

I guess you can't do anything about it so maybe be flattered instead of annoyed?

[Michaud]

Well that is annoying, considering it isn't even my texture! Oh well. Sucks for the poor person who buys that listing, considering they can print it themselves for $20.

Thanks for the heads up!

[SlickJ]

http://www.data-sphere.net/wp-content/u ... G_0414.jpg

Does anyone know where this mat is from? I can't seem to find it anywhere.

[Darek_CTR]

Its custom made. Only a few copies exist, as far as I know.

[SgtHulka]

Okay, so Banners on the Cheap is offering 15% off and free shipping through November 1st. That means I can get another 4x4 mat for about 19 bucks. I love the mat I made with Michaud's city streets image, but I don't want the same lay-out twice, and I can't find another suitable image.

I found this image of the Toposolitario game mat as a single non-tiled file:
http://blog.25mm.fr/en/aides-de-jeux/

Unfortunately, that map is 23 megabytes at 200 dpi and Banners on the Cheap has a max image upload at 20 megabytes. I thought if I cropped the image so that it's 4x4 instead of 4x6 I'd get to less than 20 megabytes, but for some reason that's doubling the image size to 40 megabytes!

Could someone give me step by step instructions on how to alter the image so that it's 4 feet by 4 feet and less than 20 megabytes? I'd be very grateful.

Secondly, does anyone know of other images suitable for a city street map? I love some of the Pworks images, but they don't have my favorites available for download, and even if they did 15 euros is more than I want to spend. Trouble is I haven't found anything other than the Toposolitario game mat (and a number of X-wing space scape mats).

[Icchan]

You could try downgrading the jpq guality until it's under 20MB. Of free image editing software, at least Irfanview and paint.net are capable of adjusting the quality levels when saving as jpg.

[Mob of Blondes]

The image is advertised as roughly 4*3 feet (120*90 cm). In pixels 9664*7102, divided by 200 48.32*35.51, so not even 3 feet for the 23MB. You need to add a zone, then play with compress settings. Or crop if you don't mind things getting 33% bigger, change DPI to match (without scaling) and check file size.

[SgtHulka]

Okay, well that's a lot smaller than I thought it was, thanks Mob of Blondes and Icchan.

[CoveredInFish]

The toposolitario map is seamless, so you can add tiles to the desired size without any quality loss or rescaling.

I gave it a shot. The tiling was the easy part. For file size I reduced DPI to 150 and upped the jpg compression. Both does reduce the quality. Sadly BannersOnCheap doesnt say what DPI their printer can do. Internet gave me reason to believe that large banner are often printed in 100 to 150 dpi - but then 4x4 isnt necessarily large for a banner.

Anyway, the file is here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1821838/Infinity_120x120_150dpi.jpg

Check out if the quality is good enough for you. I can try even bigger compression but higher DPI too.

[SgtHulka]

That looks outstanding, thanks so much Covered in Fish. I'm sure 150 dpi is more than enough; Michaud's image was 120 dpi and I think that one turned out great.

Unfortunately, though, when I tried to upload it Banners on the Cheap told me "the image is too large for our system to process. Please choose an image less than 50 megapixels."

[CoveredInFish]

I can reduce the pixel count = dpi further but my late night math comes even with 100dpi to 90megapixel.

You already have a printed map from them, right? You can give me an image that worked (or is it upthread?) so i can find out dpi/size/compression and i will have a look tomorrow.

[SgtHulka]

Yes, both of the images Michaud make work perfectly, they're up thread but I'll post the link here again:

http://thereforthenoise.blogspot.com/20 ... -mats.html

I printed out the dark one and I love it but I want the topo slanted streets as an alternative.

EDIT: So I just checked Michaud's file and it's 2640 x 2640 pixels, which would put it at 55 dpi, is that right? I'm trying to figure out why I was under the impression it was 120 dpi...