Start a Map

When Dungeonographer launches, you'll see a screen that asks you how many squares high and wide your map will be as well as each square's width and height and pixels. (Note that no matter what you set a square's width and height, your map can be enlarged and usually will get extra detail.)

You also can select the default tile to fill the map with. You may choose "blank" or "Stone Floor" or whatever. But when I'm building a dungeon I usually set it to "Stone Filled" and my first step in editing the map is to carve out where the rooms and corridors are.

So if you're folllowing these instructions as a tutorial, set the "Select Solid Terrain" to "Stone Filled" and leave the other settings as their defaults.

Select the Floor Tiles

Before I start editing the map, I like to work in the "semi-realistic" (aka "battlemat") mode. Some things are a bit more obvious in that mode. But Dungeonographer starts in the "classic" (aka "simple") mode. Look below the map for radio buttons "Line Art/Classic" and "Semi-realistic/battlemat" and choose the second option.

Your Floor Tiles to the right of the map will now look like stone, wood, earth, and tiled floors. Select a floor style that matches the dungeon you have in mind. In this totorial, I'm picking "Stone Floor (lt)." (Levae your mouse over each of the picture buttons to see the name.) Once you've clicked it, click one the map to make that square match your selected floor tile. Dragging over squares also works.

Draw Walls

Next you can draw in walls. Note that if you're only ever going to use the simple/classic icon set, this step may be unnecessary except to close off corridors.

Go to the "Walls/Lines" tab on the far right and select it. Then choose the "Snap-to-vertex Dark Rock Wall." Again, leaving your mouse over a button will give you the name, but it is a dark gray line that is two straight line segments.

Click on the map where you want the corner of one wall. Click next to the next corner. And the next and so on. Each time you click, a straight line should appear between your last click and your new click. And because we selected a snap-to-vertex line type, the program anchors our click to the nearest of four points across the square and four points up-and-down the square (0%, 25%, 50%, and 75%, with 100% being the beginning of the next square.)

If your line doesn't go exactly where you wnat it, you can always click the "Remove last point" button on the right. You can also edit the line in many more ways by clicking "Select Line" on the right and reading the edit instructions on the bottom of the window, but in breif your slected line will have a small circle added for each point and:

• Right-click a point to remove the point.
• Right-press and drag a point to move it.
• Shift-click to add a point between the closest two points.
• Click either end of the line then drag to add new points.

Add Objects (Doors, tables, beds, chairs, etc.)

Select the "Objects" tab on the far right. Select the "Snap to Grid Quadrant" checkbox. This works like the "Snap to vertex" line mentioned above by anchoring the center of any object you place to the 0%, 25%, 50%, and 75% points across and up-and-down a square.

Place a door by clicking the "Door, Wood" button then clicking the middle of a horizontal wall. Place more horizontal walls. Now go to the "Rotation" spinner on the right and enter "90". This will cause our next object to be rotated 90 degrees. Click where you need a vertical door on the map. Finish your doors.

Click the "Bed, Double" icon. Uncheck the "Snap to Grid Quadrant" checkbox. You probably noticed that a copy of the map object you select attaches itself to your mouse when you move over the map. Now that the "Snap to Grid Quadrant" is off, the object will be placed exactly as it is attached to your mouse when you click. You can also play with the rotation and width and height selectors and see that when you move your mouse over the map. You can set the bed to 150% wide and high in case this is an ogre's bed, for eaxmple.

Experiment with adding other objects.

If you want to resize or rotate an object after it was placed, click the "Select Map Item" button. All the map objects will get little yellow squares in the middle. Click the yellow square of the map object you wish to edit. The yellow square becomes blue when you select it. Changing the settings will now cause that object to change. Delete the object by clicking the "Delete Selected" button.

Finally sometimes you may want to move an object behind/below or in front of/above another object. For example, maybe you placed a table then the chairs, but some chairs are partially over the table. Select the table and click the "Move selected object to front" button to fix this. Or if you need to move something to the back, click the "Move selected object to back" button.

You can also always toggle back to classic/simple mode by going to "Options" and then "Icon Versions." This is helpful to do because sometimes some object details aren't as obvious in one mode or the other.