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Incline Grid Cartographer - Best Tool for Drawing Classic RPG Maps

Hidden Asbestos

Grid Cartographer
Developer
Joined
Jun 2, 2013
Messages
503
Location
UK
Hidden Asbestos Finally getting around to upgrading to v3. Sent you the request and just waiting to hear back from you... hope you process these during weekends.
Yup I check for upgrades several times each day including weekends. There's sometimes a little bit more of a delay sat/sun but your upgrade should be with you now, thanks for the patience / support !

Will you be sending a PayPal request for my payment?
Oh, sorry, I processed an upgrade and assumed it was for you. My mistake.

So I think you've filled out the upgrade form on my website? Seems like there's been a problem as I've not received the request e-mail that it generates which is a bit strange (I've just tested it and it seems to be working - it is a mystery). Anyway, if you contact me through my website http://www.davidwaltersdevelopment.com/contact/ (since I have an e-mail for you at msn.com but don't know if it's current) and we can hopefully sort this out :)
 

Hidden Asbestos

Grid Cartographer
Developer
Joined
Jun 2, 2013
Messages
503
Location
UK
Hidden Asbestos sent you a message with my last purchase order number.
Some kind of mysterious thing stopping me getting your e-mail. I 'started a conversation' with you on here to send you the upgrade instructions. Hope that works. It's all supposed to be so much smoother than this ... :negative:


edit: Thanks for the PM service here, managed to get communications going.
 
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Hidden Asbestos

Grid Cartographer
Developer
Joined
Jun 2, 2013
Messages
503
Location
UK
v3.0.3 beta 2 (windows) is now available: here

Changes since beta 1:

* ADDED: Edit > "Mark All" button to select the whole floor (Default shortcut Ctrl+A).
* ADDED: Export .OBJ option to adjust mesh position to match the height of the floor above ground.
* CHANGED: When overwriting an exported .OBJ file, any changes to materials in the .MTL file are now preserved. The .MTL file is only written to if new materials were added.
* CHANGED: Reduced the opacity of the darkness and field effects overlays on the parchment theme.
* FIXED: Prevent Undo and Redo keyboard shortcuts from working during paste or note editing (to match the toolbar behavior).

Dropping regular betas is super quick for me as I do my dev work in Windows, hopefully this isn't too frustrating for mac/linux/android users :(
 

Hidden Asbestos

Grid Cartographer
Developer
Joined
Jun 2, 2013
Messages
503
Location
UK
gc303-arrows.png


v3.0.3 beta 3 (windows) is now available

I expect to have a full release for all platforms ready in ... 'some' days from now.

(Have fun making Street Fighter guide books.)
 
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Hidden Asbestos

Grid Cartographer
Developer
Joined
Jun 2, 2013
Messages
503
Location
UK
Apparently this cold I have is telling my nose I can only breathe when I'm sat up. So instead of sleep I stayed up, finished off the rest of my task list and actual not-beta v3.0.3 is good to go.

Here are the highlights:

* Walled Terrain - every terrain tile now has an alternate version that draws auto-walls.
* Semi-transparent mode for terrain layer - click the eyeball to cycle to it.
* Many new markers: New arrows, stone, pressure plate + stone, boulder
* New/improved terrain: New water (animated), trees, corridor, metal plate
* Export maps as .OBJ meshes for game development usage.
* 'Select All' command

Download link and change log here: http://www.davidwaltersdevelopment.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=1366
 
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Hidden Asbestos

Grid Cartographer
Developer
Joined
Jun 2, 2013
Messages
503
Location
UK
v3.0.4 beta 1 for windows can be downloaded here: http://www.davidwaltersdevelopment.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=1346&p=1791#p1791

* Import custom tiles now supports multiple selections.

* PRO: Snow Terrain.
* PRO: Tree Marker.
* ADDED: Setup > "Current Region" page
* ADDED: Toggle the ground floor on/off for the current region on the 'Current Region' setup page.
* FIXED: Inside and Outside terrain (both open and walled) were incorrectly locked out of the free edition.
* FIXED: Nudge Floor Above/Below issues when there is no ground floor.

enjoy!
 

Hidden Asbestos

Grid Cartographer
Developer
Joined
Jun 2, 2013
Messages
503
Location
UK
v3.0.4 (windows) beta development continues on:

* PRO: Lit / Unlit Wall torch edge style (square grids only)

plus fixes and performance increases for people using lots of custom tiles:

* CHANGED: Brush overlay now places color and monochrome custom tiles in two columns.
* FIXED: Bad graphics when publishing an image with the new corridor terrain tile.
* FIXED: Incorrect auto-wall thickness in published images at the 70px size.
* FIXED: Improved monochrome custom tile rendering performance.
* FIXED: Crash when selecting hundreds of images for custom tile import.
* FIXED: Better performance when using hundreds of custom tiles.

http://www.davidwaltersdevelopment.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=1346&p=1801#p1801


gc304-torch.gif
 
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Hirato

Purse-Owner
Patron
Joined
Oct 16, 2010
Messages
3,935
Location
Australia
Codex 2012 Codex USB, 2014 Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Since we now have a little avatar running about, could it perhaps automatically mark tiles as explored when it walks over them?
 

Hidden Asbestos

Grid Cartographer
Developer
Joined
Jun 2, 2013
Messages
503
Location
UK
Better switches and wall levers are coming. Here's a blog post about it: http://www.davidwaltersdevelopment.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=1346&p=1807#p1807

Plus a terrifying nightmare vision to keep you awake at night:

gc304-switch.gif


Since we now have a little avatar running about, could it perhaps automatically mark tiles as explored when it walks over them?
This is a great idea. I think a 'bulldozer' mode would work well. Need to think about what terrain it should drop, probably just the currently selected one. An auto-mapper may even grow from this :) but there are a lot of steps between the two.
 

Nyast

Cipher
Joined
Jan 12, 2014
Messages
609
Well, switches are supposed to be on walls, not in the middle of a tile :) That's one thing that's always annoyed me. When you place switches on your maps and come back a couple months later, you forgot to which wall they were supposedly associated :P
 

Hidden Asbestos

Grid Cartographer
Developer
Joined
Jun 2, 2013
Messages
503
Location
UK
Edge switching now works too:

gc304-simonsays.gif


You can try it out here in v3.0.4 Beta 6:
http://www.davidwaltersdevelopment.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=1346&p=1808#p1808

Well, switches are supposed to be on walls, not in the middle of a tile :) That's one thing that's always annoyed me. When you place switches on your maps and come back a couple months later, you forgot to which wall they were supposedly associated :P
Yeah, they're not ideal. Luckily you'll be able to replace those big ass train lever switches with wall mounted ones very soon :) (probably in the next beta!)
 

Hidden Asbestos

Grid Cartographer
Developer
Joined
Jun 2, 2013
Messages
503
Location
UK
Here's a sneak preview of a new feature I've been working on: Game Link

It works by a compatible app using a network connection to send position / facing / floor number information to Grid Cartographer.
The result: a remote controlled avatar marker!

gc3-gamelink.gif


Although the Grid Cartographer side is mostly there, this isn't ready to play with yet. Only the test application shown above knows how to talk to GC - so the next step is to look at how to get information out of a game running on DosBox. I'm aware of the project for Eye of the Beholder called "All Seeing Eye" so this will be my next port of call. Hopefully I can end up with something convenient and reliable. Also bear in mind that it will be a unique task to make each RPG work, and each one will take time.

But still, I think it's worth getting excited about: Auto-mapping here we come !
 
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Hidden Asbestos

Grid Cartographer
Developer
Joined
Jun 2, 2013
Messages
503
Location
UK
Game Link progress update. I decided to use "Might and Magic II" as the first supported game. The main reason for this is that it runs in 640kb of RAM which, given that I had no idea where within that space the position of the player would be, seemed like a manageable challenge. The second reason is it was actually the first game I made a map for while making Grid Cartographer 1.0 :)

I've worked with the source code for dosbox before, creating a custom version with a bunch of fixes including partially repairing Wizardry 6's audio. Given that I had this familiarity I decided that my approach would be to work on this custom version again and extend it further with support for Game Link. This means that when I'm done you'll have to use this dosbox instead of the one you're currently using, and it'll only work on Windows (note: Game Link itself will be cross platform, I'm just talking about custom dosbox atm). But as it's a GPL project I'll be releasing full source code of my changes and so hopefully someone will step up and make a Mac or Linux version too.

Anyway, so my hunt for the needle in the haystack began. Inspired by the ZSNES cheat search engine I hacked together a crude equivalent. This engine allowed me to capture the emulated memory, move one step, then compare. Do this enough times, building up an 'ignore list' and you begin to whittle away the unrelated locations until you get a much shorter list. Eventually I was left with just a few values from the million I started with and from there I could check them by eye and it became very easy to spot which one matched the co-ordinates given on the map screen.

From there I quickly hacked together a 'transmitter' for this data based on the console application in my last image. And this happened:

gc3-mm2.gif


Just to be absolutely clear : I drew the map myself - only the avatar position and facing is transmitted !

Next step it to clean up the code I added to dosbox so it can be used for other games (it's hard coded for M&M2 at the moment). Also I haven't got it tracking what floor you're on and it goes a bit haywire in the overworld map.
 

udm

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 14, 2008
Messages
2,752
Make the Codex Great Again!
Have you thought of selling this on GOG or Steam? In conjunction with the past releases of old games, this could sell decently well with their audiences. I mean, you already do have an active presence on the GOG forums, for one.
 

Hidden Asbestos

Grid Cartographer
Developer
Joined
Jun 2, 2013
Messages
503
Location
UK
Okay folks, here's beta 8 with the Game Link feature:
http://www.davidwaltersdevelopment.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=1346&p=1816#p1816

Again just a reminder that this is a really new and experimental feature and inherently a bit technical (but not overly so). It works with Might and Magic II (I've been testing with the GOG.com version) and requires replacing the DOSBOX with a custom one (which I have to distribute separately and provide source code for to adhere to the GPL license). You can find that here: http://www.davidwaltersdevelopment.com/tools/dosbox/

Full instructions can be found here in the new game link forum

I'd love to hear how people get on with setting it all up, and I hope you find it an enjoyable experience!

Have you thought of selling this on GOG or Steam? In conjunction with the past releases of old games, this could sell decently well with their audiences. I mean, you already do have an active presence on the GOG forums, for one.
This is definitely something I've thought about and is a goal of mine. I definitely feel I need to polish things a bit more for new users. Not having professionally made video tutorials is one thing, but the lack of manual is a step too far IMO. But, yeah, it'd be pretty cool to reach more people in different 'circles' so to speak.
 
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Hidden Asbestos

Grid Cartographer
Developer
Joined
Jun 2, 2013
Messages
503
Location
UK
btw, I haven't forgotten about wall levers. In fact, here's a beta with them in:
http://www.davidwaltersdevelopment.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=1346&p=1818#p1818

(don't forget you can use the new 'switch tool' to toggle them up/down)

Well, switches are supposed to be on walls, not in the middle of a tile :) That's one thing that's always annoyed me. When you place switches on your maps and come back a couple months later, you forgot to which wall they were supposedly associated :P

gc304-lever.png
 
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Hidden Asbestos

Grid Cartographer
Developer
Joined
Jun 2, 2013
Messages
503
Location
UK
Still finishing off Game Link with a developer HUD (hopefully someone tries to develop a link for a game without me, one day) and support for arranging worlds like Might and Magic II's overworld map into a contiguous grid.

gc304-mm2cron-540px.png

(click here for big version)

Hope to work on more games soon. I think Pool of Radiance will be next, but after v3.0.4 is released.
 

Hidden Asbestos

Grid Cartographer
Developer
Joined
Jun 2, 2013
Messages
503
Location
UK
An early "Pool of Radiance" profile for Grid Cartographer is now available.

Getting the position / facing information was thankfully quite easy. The map number was a little trickier and the hard part comes because now I need to work out what map number corresponds to which location - that could take a while since it effectively requires a play-through.

Anyway you can download the profile here and tool around in the starting town.
(I've also provided instructions for how to help flesh out the rest of the game here)

pFspAqc.gif



edit: A Wizardry profile is now also available.

edit2: Champions of Krynn now has a preliminary profile. Help needed!
 
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Morkar Left

Guest
Have you thought of selling this on GOG or Steam? In conjunction with the past releases of old games, this could sell decently well with their audiences. I mean, you already do have an active presence on the GOG forums, for one.
This is definitely something I've thought about and is a goal of mine. I definitely feel I need to polish things a bit more for new users. Not having professionally made video tutorials is one thing, but the lack of manual is a step too far IMO. But, yeah, it'd be pretty cool to reach more people in different 'circles' so to speak.

Software like this should get directly implemented addon-like into a goggalaxy overlay.
 

karnak

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jun 14, 2014
Messages
920
Location
Negative Zone
Grab the Codex by the pussy Strap Yourselves In I helped put crap in Monomyth
Can anyone, please, enlighten me wether the latest version - with the "game link" option - now enables automapping of games like Wizardry 6 or Eye of the Beholder?
Or does one have to tweak the DosBox files in order to activate it?

Thanks in advance.
 

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