Power of the Spacebar

The spacebar in MapTool has several features that GMs find useful during games.

New in MapTool 1.5: If you are the GM, Ctl+Shift+Spacebar centers your players to your current map. The clients return to their original positions and zoom percentage once the GM releases the spacebar.

Spacebar changes the mouse cursor to a blue arrow visible on all clients. It helps you point out things on the map. Any player can use the blue arrow functionality.

Ctl+Spacebar to turn the mouse cursor into a speech bubble. You might use this to indicate In-Character speech. The name associated with the connection appears in the bubble.

Shift+Spacebar turns the cursor into a thought bubble. You might use this to indicate Out-Of-Character speech. This is a test to see how far this thing will go to wrap the text over and over again.

Alt+Spacebar brings up the system window dialog which changes based on the operating system being used.

Ctl+Spacebar in the new Macro Editor to perform code completion. You can type a partial function name, hit ctl+spacebar, and be presented with a list of functions matching the first letters with a brief description of what the macro function does. It will also give you the parameter list for the macro. If you don’t have anything typed, you’ll be presented with the full function list.

Note that this is a work in progress and not all the functions are yet fully documented.

Bonus keyboard command: Ctl+Enter toggles the chat window. This one has the interesting side effect of locking your mouse cursor in its current state so you can persist your thought/speech bubble or the blue arrow.

You can find a complete list of keyboard shortcuts on the MapTool Wiki.

Excited about the new functionality? Let’s discuss in the comments below or on one of our many social outlets.

You can download available versions of MapTool from GitHub.

All users running versions prior to 1.8.3 are strongly encouraged to update. See this announcement post on our forum.

A JAR file version may be downloaded as well but is only recommended for developers or other advanced users.

Mac Users are encouraged to use the PKG version of the install. Windows users are encouraged to use the MSI.

If you need interactive help, please join our Discord Server. Or visit our wiki for complete walk-throughs of how to use the tool. Our Community page has more links; see the toolbar at the top of the page.