Map & Scenario

The Map & Scenario Tab hosts a whole set of functions concerning the management of scenarios and the basic settings of the current map.

Map & Scenario Tab on a Legacy Map

Depending on whether a 3D scene, Universal VTT or Legacy Map is currently running, part of the tab will look different. In addition, there is the special layout in 3D View mode.

The Map & Scenario Tab can also be opened by pressing the M hotkey!

Scenario Management

Management
On the left side of the Map & Scenario Tab, the first thing to do is to manage the current scenario. As a reminder, a scenario is a collection of 3D Scenes, Universal VTT and/or Legacy Maps.

The entire scenario can be saved. The name for the save file can be set in the Scenario file field. A click on the dark blue Save button saves the current state in a file. The name in Scenario file can be changed at any time!

The dark green Load button opens the Restore Scenario window, which is described in more detail in the Main Menu tutorial.

By the way - Main Menu, the button to get back there is located directly under Load! Before exiting the scenario, Infinite Realms will ask you if you want to save again.

The light grey Lock Screen button in the bottom left corner is only available in dual screen mode! The second screen is automatically covered in the main menu and while loading a map, but can be veiled at any time with this button.
This way you can prepare some tokens, change visual settings or work on your fog of war without revealing too much to your players!

Within the scenario, you can quickly switch between the individual scenes of the scenario using the Change to Scene dropdown. Unique names for the individual scenes help a lot!

Of course you can manage, add and remove scenes to and from the scenario at any time. This can be done in the Scenario Manager, accessible via the Scenario button.

View Distance & Reset

On the right side of the Map & Scenario Tab there is a slider and a button.

With the View Distance slider the position of the viewer camera on the map can be changed vertically. So basically you can zoom out and in again. The action on the map remains untouched, only the position of the observer changes!

Setting the View Distance moves the camera vertically!

The Reset View button resets the vertical position of the observer camera to the original height. In addition, the camera is also centered again in the absolute middle of the scene!

2D Legacy Map Options

If a Legacy Map is added to the scenario, it will have different controls in the Map & Scenario Tab depending on the file type.

Legacy File Setup
When first accessing Legacy Map scene file, a Setup dialog will be shown. Here you can scale the image or video to fit your Grid and to rotate the image to the right and left by 90° using the buttons with the round arrows.

Infinite Realms automatically scales the image so that it fits exactly on the screen. This is not always ideal, especially with larger maps. Therefore, there are several options to fix this.

First is the Manual Scale slider, which can be used to zoom the map continuously. You can fine tune scaling in this manual mode and all other options with the Detail Scale slider.

Legacy File Setup
There are two other options to scale a Legacy Map that can be very handy in case you have more information on the battle map you want to resize. Maps from the internet often come with a grid size, you can use the Grid Cell Count option in this case. Just type the number of horizontal grid cells on your battle map and it will be scaled to your grid automatically.

The Cell Pixel Size comes into play when you know the dots per inch (dpi) resolution of your battle map. The standard for web images is 72 dpi and in case the map artist has taken care about defining a dpi this option will work.

You can always re-run the setup. But please mind that any Walls and Lights you have placed will be deleted along with any Fog of War and Paint Tool information!

Video Map
What else? There is one special button available for videos - the Pause button.

Universal VTT

Universal VTT files are basically image files that have some more information included. Infinite Realms uses grid size, lighting and wall information.

Grid information is used to automatically scale the battle map to your Grid. Mind that the physical grid size on your player screen depends on your Settings.

UVTT Sliders
Ambient light, point lights and virtual walls are also generated automatically. Ambient Light Intensity, Point Light Intensity and Point Light Range can be influenced to your taste with the appropriate sliders.

Universal VTT maps can be created with various tools like Dungeon Alchemist, Dungeon Fog, Dungeon Draft and others.

Apart from our integrated 3D Scenes Universal VTT files are the most convenient way to get great looking maps on the table.

Unity Scenes

Unity Scenes are 3D Scenes that are not loaded from our cloud servers but from a file. You can find information on how to build your own 3D scenes on our Create page, along with two sample 3D battle maps you can download for free.

Once a Unity Scene is loaded in Infinite Realms it behaves like any other 3D Scene.

3D Scene Options

3D Scene
3D scenes in Infinite Realms really take advantage of the possibilities of three-dimensional space! We do not use orthogonal projection of the camera, which would practically flatten the 3d world. We want our maps to actually look three-dimensional! Therefore it is necessary to work with a perspective camera.
But the nice depth effect brings its own problems - namely when the map has really relevant differences in elevation and the action takes place further down. Everything looks smaller than it actually is due to the distance and the scaling of the grid no longer matches the background.

Setting the Ground Level moves Grid, Tokens and more - basically the whole playing field - vertically!

That’s why we added the Ground Level slider in 3D scenes, which can lower the level of the action by up to 50m!

3D View

But for the flair of an adventure, for which one of our 3D scenes is used, the 3D View button is probably just as important!

After clicking the button, an animation will move the camera into the scene - which the game master can use to really set the atmosphere and the viewpoint of the player characters!

3D Scene
The position of the camera can be controlled in different ways. It is important to know that with any movement the camera always looks to the center of the current map section! With a movement to the right or left, the camera circles figuratively speaking on an orbit around the center and looks at it at all times.

The four Camera Radius buttons are responsible for this orbit style movement. The upper key (hotkey W) moves the camera closer to the center, the lower button (S) moves away. Left (A) and right (D) orbit counterclockwise and clockwise around the center. The two View Level buttons (Z and H) control the viewing angle and the Camera Level buttons (E and Q) control the vertical position of the camera.

Use the 3D View feature to put your players right into the scene!

The relative position of the 3D View is saved, so you can come back any time with confidence to reproduce the exact perspective you created earlier!

Video

Scenarios & Navigation on a Battle Map Play
Scenarios & Navigation on a Battle Map
We have a Map & Scenario tutorial video available on our YouTube channel.

It was recorded some time ago with Infinite Realms version 2021.1.2 and is thus not up to date.
But the basic principles and workflow still apply!

Click the cover picture to watch on YouTube!