Map Making Software

[Phelot]

Anyone here into making maps? I am, though I rarely complete them. I'm a bit of a Cleve when it comes to it: way to lofty goals, never finding them perfect enough...

Anyways, what software do you guys use?

I've tried Campaign Cartographer, though it's very cumbersome at times and, unless you happen to use CAD, it's not very intuitive since they basically do every ass backwards. I've heard that it's the most powerful though it's not particularly pretty. They also seem a bit cheap with their symbols.

Dundjinni, I like better. It's pretty, it's retard proof, it's got a lot of user symbols for it that match everything else. I just don't like that there isn't really an zoomed in village map objects to use, that is, buildings and such for a map of a small village that doesn't call for building symbols that are only a few pixels big, but still it's the map making software I've switched to.

So, any others that you guys know about?

 

[Zed]

Adobe Photoshop

 

[soggie]

Google Maps and then Adobe Photoshop.

 

[Phelot]

Oh you guys! You're just too much!

 

[soggie]

I was being serious. I took the satellite pic from google map, desaturated it, and then added blotches of terrain with healing brush and some cut and paste magic. Blurred the whole thing a little, added some post-processing and then tagged some text to it. And then realized it wasn't that good, trashed it, and started googling for map making softwares.

Regretted trashing it ever since.

 

[Phelot]

Yeah, I'm not really into photoshop as it takes skill... or at least a bit of skill. Like I said, I tend to plan things out a bit too much, make it a bit too big, and lose interest a bit too soon to be able to start doing stuff with photoshop, though that does sounds easy and fast, but with me as soon as I lose a little patience or something doesn't go right, I tend to leave it for later and later normally never comes around. Thanks for the suggestion though.

 

[The Barbarian]

Does Dundjinni handle drawing landmasses well? It seems to be a product primarily aimed at drawing floor plans and dungeons.

 

[laclongquan]

I wonder how Unreal World game engine do the world map terrain generation.

 

[oldmanpaco]

These people know all. Lot's of programs, lots of tutorials.

http://www.cartographersguild.com/

 

[Phelot]

Does Dundjinni handle drawing landmasses well? It seems to be a product primarily aimed at drawing floor plans and dungeons.

I would say Campaign Cartographer is better in that respect. There isn't any clear way of making contour lines in Dundjinni that I've seen and most of the objects are definitely made for a zoomed in floor plan, but the simple drawing tools do work for making coasts and such, but no I haven't seen any "tree" textures that aren't just objects that you have to keep spamming.

But there is a seperate "Campaign" graphic set that you can buy after getting the initial software. Damn DLC...

@oldmanpaco

Yeah I've seen that site. Thanks for the reminder though I haven't been there in awhile.

Anyways, for a mini review and conclusion I would say a beginner should start with Dundjinni since it's very easy to learn and very easy to pump out maps that look good. IF you like photoshop then you can do even more to your completed maps.

Unfortunately, if you switch to CC you'll have to learn something completely different from Dundjinni. Like I said, CC is kind of ugly, somewhat frustrating, but it seems to be much more powerful and professional.

 

[oldschool]

I used AutoCad and Povray to make my map. But I'm too lazy to finish anything. Or think up names and shit...

With just a basic cad program, you can make whatever symbols you want and then a little work in Photoshop or Gimp could make a nice map. I just used povray because I wanted to model and render some objects with it.

Obviously, I'm a little short on artistic talent, but still, not a bad method I think. Terragen is a decent free terrain generator if you want to go that route. Or, you could generate a heightfield in povray and render it. Lots of ways to go with it without being limited by a mapping program.

 

[Jaesun]

not bad oldschool, that looks pretty good.

 

[oldschool]

Thanks Jaesun. I think if I ever get around to making a game for real, I'll use a similar technique for the map. Hopefully though I will be able to get an artist to do the actual map drawing.

Browsing through all these threads is getting the old game-making urge going again. I think I'll make a new half-finished map and call it done.