This campaign should interest anyone who wants to make great-looking isometric maps (whether for their tabletop pen-and-paper RPG campaigns, or just as a fun creative outlet) and would like to use existing isometric assets (made by industry pros) to do so.

Did you know that there is a vast treasure trove of high-quality isometric mapping content freely available online, in the form of PNG assets from popular video/computer games? There are assets covering a wide variety of genres: modern day, near future, sci-fi, medieval, fantasy, cyberpunk, and more. 

Anyone with a LOT of time and patience can freely download these assets (they are not behind a paywall), and utilize them to make their own custom isometric maps, using their image editor of choice (Photoshop, GIMP, MapForge, Tiled, etc.).

The problem is that acquiring the assets is incredibly time-consuming and labor-intensive, since it involves manually loading and then downloading each individual asset (which requires manually editing each and every URL to get the full-resolution assets and avoid getting the asset in ".webp" format), and there are tens of thousands of assets.

It's a gargantuan task, and since I can't redistribute the asset collections directly (it's not my art),  I want to create an app that will automate all the asset downloading and store the assets on your hard drive. It will do the boring grunt work for you, saving each backer hundreds of hours of this painstakingly monotonous task.

This $5 app will be able to load Collection files (sold separately) which contain the download links for every asset in a Collection.  It will then proceed to iterate through this list of URLs until all the assets in the Collection have been downloaded, with a progress bar showing how far along it is in this task.

The app will work on Windows and on Macs. Linux users should be able to run the software using WINE or Virtual Box.

The Game Asset Collections offered

Via this Indiegogo campaign, I am offering five Game Asset Collection files (these are essentially databases of URLs pointing to image files) that will allow you to easily and quickly download the assets from the following isometric games, using the software that will be provided to all backers:

•  Imperion (approx. 132 assets, sorted, $2.00)
•  Settlers Online (approx. 1250 assets, sorted, $4.00)
•  Forge of Empires (approx. 1740 assets, $4.00)
•  Cityville (over 8660 assets, sorted, $23.00)
•  Megapolis (over 15300 assets, $38.00)

As a general rule, pricing was determined as follows: $1 for every 400 assets, plus $1 if the collection is sorted (the artwork is organized into folders, for your convenience; this makes finding particular assets much easier and faster when you're making your maps).

Please watch the following videos (preferably in fullscreen mode, which is only possible when viewing on the YouTube site) in order to preview the assets contained in each collection. Because there are so many assets to preview, they go by pretty fast, but feel free to pause the videos anytime to get a better look at particular assets that interest you. Note that some assets will appear pixellated because they've been "upsized" to match the thumbnail size (don't worry, these assets look fine at actual size). Other assets are actually much higher resolution than what the videos show, since I can only show smallish thumbnails due to time constraints.

 Note that this first video covers two collections, Imperion and Settlers Online.

The various collections are available as Add-Ons to your pledge amount. Simply add the collection/s that you would like to your $5 base pledge. This will automatically increase the amount of your pledge by the cost of the Add-On/s you desire. If you would like all the assets from all the games (totaling well over 27000 assets), pledge for the "I Want Everything!" pledge level to receive a discount.

IMPORTANT! All of the assets offered in this campaign are strictly for Personal Use Only. They are not to be used commercially or included in published works (even free ones).

MapForge

Many of you may already have a preferred image editor, such as Photoshop or Gimp, for creating your maps. For those who find such programs to have too high of a learning curve, I suggest that you consider trying out my own MapForge map-making software, which is specifically tailored for map-making, provides a significantly lower learning curve, and offers support for isometric map-making with powerful and time-saving features. A slightly discounted MapForge license is available as an Add-On to your pledge, for those who would like one (but note that these are limited in quantity).

MapForge is map-making software that was successfully funded on Kickstarter in 2017. The program now boasts over 180 (!!!) content Add-Ons available for it from leading mapping-content providers. Twenty-one of these Add-Ons are specifically for isometric map-making.

For those new to MapForge, please visit the above links for more information about the software (it's simply too much information to repeat here). The FAQ for the original KS campaign is also a useful source of information.

The TL/DR version

MapForge is easy-to-use software for Windows and Mac OS that makes high-quality maps for printing, or for use in virtual tabletop software (e.g., Roll20, Fantasy Grounds, etc.).

Can be used for free (no license is required for low resolution output).

There are currently 47 free mapping content Add-Ons for MapForge (~2 GB), and many more free Add-Ons are on the way, thanks to this Patreon campaign.

You can download and try the software out for yourself, to evaluate it and see if the program is what you want/expect it to be.

I'll be posting videos in this campaign's Updates to show examples of the sorts of maps you can make with the assets being offered, and will be using MapForge for this.

Closing Thoughts

Whether or not you choose to make a pledge to this campaign, I would greatly appreciate it if you could mention this project to friends or family members who might be interested. I've made it easy to do so; just click on one of the buttons below. Help spread the word far and wide.

Last but not least, I'd love it if you would follow Battlegrounds Games on any or all of these social media sites, so you can stay apprised of all the latest news and developments. And consider signing up to the MapForge mailing list.

Follow Battlegrounds on                      Facebook             Twitter             Pinterest

Thank you for checking out this campaign!

Risks & Challenges

All rewards for this project are digital downloads, so shipping is neither a factor nor an added expense. Battlegrounds Games has over 17 years of experience developing and distributing software and other digital content. I will be using Google Drive to host/distribute the rewards, which provides a very robust and speedy delivery method with no bandwidth limits. All but one of my many prior crowdfunding campaigns have delivered on time, and in several cases earlier than expected.