From GM Forge

Hotkeys in 'Play Mode'

GM Forge has some powerful tools for building large connected and immersive worlds. This entry should give you some concrete details on how start building your worlds and familiarize yourself with the world editing portion of the tool.

The map editor has two distinct modes, 'play mode' and 'edit mode'.

Play Mode

Creating a Piece

Drawing in GM Forge

Measuring in GM Forge

This mode is for you to actively use the board, which means you can actively move and create new pieces on the board, as well as 'drawing. You can create a new piece by simply right clicking anywhere on the board, and selecting the 'Create Piece' option. If you wish to edit the details of your piece, double click on the piece in 'play mode' and change the desired options.

There are several hotkeys that can be used when working with pieces. You can find them by clicking on the (?) in the editor's option bar.

Linking Assets

The process of linking assets together is rather easy, double click on the piece and enter the 'Edit Piece' menu. Once here you will notice two distinct options 'Target' and 'Notes'.

The 'Target' option is the primary target for the piece, if specified the piece will display the target's image preview as the default image. Once a target is assigned, different interactions are enabled for accessing your information. The general rule of thumb is

Shift + Click = More information

Shift + Alt + Hover = Preview Information

Alt + Hover = Reveal Actions

Alternatively If you want to quickly create a piece from an asset, simply drag and drop the asset onto the board, and a piece will be created that is already linked to that asset. If that asset exists on the board, it will be moved to the new location. If you want to create a duplicate, hold shift when you drag the asset into the board.

Tokens

A token is the image that overrides the piece's default display, which means you can assign different images to a piece depending on your needs. The image is in the format of a 'URL', which you can retrieve by right clicking on an image and clicking 'copy link address'.

Most commonly this option is used for character pieces, where some more combat oriented art is applied to the piece the character is attached to, however you could use it for various other purposes like markers, effects and more!

Rights

The right to move a piece is determined by two factors, whether the user has 'Rights' to the board piece belongs to, or whether or not the player has 'Rights' to the Asset the piece is linked to. If the player has 'Rights' to either the board or the asset, then they are permitted to move the piece. Board rights are move important than piece rights, meaning if a player has rights to the board, they have rights to all pieces on the board.

Drawing

There is limited drawing functionality with GM Forge, you can draw different colored lines (and soon to be shapes) with the 'drawing tools'. This functionality will improve as time goes on.

Cursors

Boards will by default display the cursors of each individual player on the board, but can be configured to display the GM's cursor as well(see Advanced World Building for more details).

A player by default has the option to hide their cursor, which will make it hidden from everybody's view. This option can be disabled(see Advanced World Building for more details)

Measuring

Measuring can be done by clicking down, holding control and dragging your cursor across the board. This will display the number of squares traversed, the world distance of the line((see Advanced World Building)). By default, this measuring is synchronized (except the GM), and is able to be seen by all players. Synchronized measuring requires your cursor to be visible in order to display for other players.

Edit Mode

Entering Edit Mode

This mode is for editing and changing the background and decoration of a map. In this mode you can create and decorate a map with 'tiles' which are subsections of larger images, known as 'Tile Sheets'. Tile sheets can be added through the board editor.

Creating a map from images and tile sheets in edit mode

Tiled Option Example

As seen in the picture above, you can also drag images in from external sources, allowing you create a background rapidly and from existing content. While in edit mode these images are created as tile sheets.

Once a tile sheet is made, you have the option of selecting individual tiles, or creating from a whole selection. You can also modify the tile resolution by editing the tile sheet's options. (Note this will affect all tiles that use this sheet)

All tiles on the board can be modified while in the edit mode, simply double clicking on an individual tile will reveal it's configuration and allow you to change different parts of it.

There are several hotkeys that can be used when working with tiles as well. You can find them by clicking on the (?) in the editor's option bar.

Tiled Mode

Tiled mode is a convenient and efficient way of building a mosaic of the same tiles, when you toggle tiled mode on, individual tiles are stacked to the width and height of original tile's width and height. This becomes especially useful when decorating large backgrounds and images. It is recommended you try to use tiled mode as much as possible, because of tile limits and performance constraints.

Layering/Sorting

Tiles can be sorted on each layer they belong to, which will affect their draw order. See Advanced World Building

Board Options

Hotkeys in Play Mode

Board options can be accessed from both the 'Edit mode' and the 'Play mode'. The board options menu provides basic configurations options for changing the size/grid/weather and filters. The padlock icon is discussed in Rights and Visibility and the cloud icon is discussed in Cloud Storage

Title

This is the name if the board, and will be the title of any tabs, and mentions of this board you will see.

Board Width/Height

This specifies the dimensions of the board, which will determine how far the grid will display. These dimensions are auto-calculated every time you leave 'edit mode'.

Grid

You can specify various options for grids, including the width/height, grid style (grid/hex), and the color of the grid. If you want to disable the grid, simply set the width or height to 0. If you want the grid to be hidden, simply assign the color of the grid to 'rgba(0,0,0,0)'

Weather

There are two distinct weather styles in GM Forge, 'Rain' and 'Snow'. Rain weather will appear as droplets, and can be colorized by changing the 'Weather-style' option, and this is the same case for snow.

Filters

Filters are ways of modifying the 'look and feel' of a board, allowing you set the tone/weather and more

Advanced World Building

The above entry just describes the basics when it comes to World building in GM Forge, if you want to get some more help with the deeper functionality of the tool, see the Advanced World Building page