Roads & Vehicles Artpack

[heruca]

This artpack contains a set of modular road sections that you place on the background of your choice to create a street or highway layout. Also contained are three pavement-only "maps" (depicting light, medium, and dark asphalt) suitable for creating vehicular arena layouts using BRPG's drawing tools. The artpack also contains tokens for pedestrians, vehicles, debris, and more to "populate" the roads and/or arenas with.

Here is a preview pic (click the image to view it at full size):


All the road sections in this artpack are homogeneous (i.e. created in the same style) and designed to tile with each other as seamlessly as possible.

The graphics in this artpack are all high-resolution (122 pixels per cell), so they won't pixelate even at full zoom in BRPG. Note that this is not the usual tactical scale found in other BRPG artpacks; instead, all artwork is designed to be used at a scale of around 15 feet per grid square, with the snap-to-grid feature disabled.

The artpack contains a total of 157 graphics*, broken down into the following categories:
Arenas (3)
Road Sections (7; including straight sections, curves, and intersections)
Pedestrians (9; most of them armed)
Motorcycles (14; including 3 with a sidecar)
Cars (38; in various sizes, from subcompact to luxury)
Station Wagons (5)
Pickups (5)
Campers (4)
Vans (6)
10-Wheelers (6)
Tractors (12)
Trailers (8)
Buses (6; both long and short)
Dropped Weapons (16; including spikes, mines, oil slicks, flaming oil slicks, smoke, and paint sprays)
Obstacles & Debris (9)
Fires & Wrecks (9)

* Note that some graphics are color mods of other graphics, and not entirely unique.

This artpack should prove useful for modern genre RPGs where you need to depict a car chase of some sort, or depict vehicular combat (for example, if you are playing GURPS Autoduel). It should also be useful for boardgames depicting vehicular combat, such as Car Wars, by Steve Jackson Games (but note that this artpack is not endorsed by SJG).

The "Roads & Vehicles" artpack is a free download. Note that players will need to have this artpack installed during sessions where the GM will use it, and everyone must be using BRPG v1.4i or higher.

Download:
Roads & Vehicles (10.2 MB)

Installation and usage instructions are in the ReadMe which is included in the download.

____________________________________________________________________

I wanted to point out a couple of things about this artpack:

1) An internet connection is required in order to use the artpack.

2) This free artpack differs from other free artpacks I've released previously, in that it may not always remain available for download, and even if you already downloaded it, it may cease to work. There is a "kill switch" in place just in case SJ Games has a problem with this artpack (they shouldn't, since this is all-new artwork, and I am not including any SJG IP). Given that the future availability of this artpack is uncertain, no one should purchase the Battlegrounds software with the sole intent of using this artpack, since the artpack may be "pulled" at some later date without prior notice.

[heruca]

About this Unit Palette
I put together this Unit Palette to make the process of creating layouts with the "Roads & Vehicles" artpack much faster and easier. BRPG v1.6m or higher is recommended in order to use this Unit Palette to its full potential.

Installation instructions are included in the zip file. Only the GM/host needs to install these files. Players do not need to download or install the Unit Palette.

Enjoy!



How To Use the Unit Palette
Load the included Encounter file. This will automatically load the relevant Media Asset Bundle (which contains the rendered text labels). The Encounter will present you with a blank map canvas, with the Unit Palette located just above the map. Simply copy a unit from the palette that you wish to place on the map, paste it to the desired spot on the map, and then use the token-swapping hotkeys to select the exact token you wish to use. When you are satisfied with your token selection, select the "Keep Only Current Token" command from the unit's contextual popup menu. After fine-tuning the exact placement of the unit on the map window (and perhaps adjusting the stacking order of the unit using the Unit Manager), you will probably want to select the "Tile" command to lock the unit in place and force it to be drawn underneath the grid overlay.

The Unit Palette also comes in Deployment format, so that you can easily import the Unit Palette into any existing Encounter to continue fleshing it out.

Regardless of whether you use the Encounter or the Deployment, when you no longer need the Unit Palette on the map window (e.g., if you are finished creating your layout), simply select the entire Unit Palette with the selection marquee and delete it from your Encounter.

[heruca]

Here's another preview pic, this time showing how the arena pavement maps are meant to be used in conjunction with BRPG's built-in drawing tools and text labeling tools to create custom arena layouts. The pic shows just a small corner of a much larger arena, of course.

Click on the image to view it at full size.



A lighter and a darker pavement color are also available, if you prefer them for counter "readability" (or just for variety).

Even if you don't play "live" virtual tabletop games, this is a great way to illustrate PBEM or play-by-forum games.

[Kepli]

Very cool stuff

[Kazander]

This is a nice idea, Heruca. I hope the killswitch doesn't need to be used on this one.

I've just been goofing around with it tonight, and one I noticed that could be done to make this more playable is to have a mechanism in BRPG to move units easily along the 15°/30°/45°/60°/75° angles as well. Right now it's hand-wavey; at least on a real table-top you could use a small ruler to help.

[heruca]

The "hand-waviness" is the result of not having the Car Wars turning key, which I had to exclude because of copyright issues.

I may be able to replace it with something of my own creation, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, if you're handy with a graphic editor, you can probably create your own from one of the Turning Key files that you can download from here.

[TRIAD4Evr]

I too agree with the above poster that having degree increments manually input-able would greatly aid in doing something like Car Wars and would probably find uses of other sorts in other games, too. Would be a nice addition to the already very handy side-facing rotation, maybe as a toggle option of some sort, so that by default your mouse wheel rotates 1 facing, but you could switch on an option where it rotates and displays the degrees it is being moved or whatever... would be excellent!

[heruca]

Here's what I came up with. It's a generic turning key that can be used for any game requiring movement angles to be measured.

It is actually a two-token unit. The first token is the full-size version, and with a hotkey press you can "minimize" it (by displaying the alternate tiny token) so that it doesn't obscure the map & any adjacent tokens, yet is still readily available when needed.

You could use just one of these Turning Keys for the entire game (it is owned by everyone, so anyone can use it), or duplicate as many Turning Keys as you need and keep one (minimized) beside each vehicle.

[heruca]

Attached are the files necessary to add this Turning Key to your Encounters. Installation and usage instructions are included in the Zip file.

[heruca]

Anyone using this artpack to play Car Wars will want to download the 1/4" Grid Overlay that I posted in the User Creations subforum (registration required)

[heruca]

I've just been goofing around with it tonight, and one I noticed that could be done to make this more playable is to have a mechanism in BRPG to move units easily along the 15°/30°/45°/60°/75° angles as well. Right now it's hand-wavey; at least on a real table-top you could use a small ruler to help.

Aside from the already-mentioned Turning Key I posted, check out the new "Move Forward" feature in BGE v1.7. It lets you easily move a vehicle a variable amount in the direction it's currently facing. Basically, the turning key will be used far less often, now.