Other World Mapper (mapping software), feedback request and future changes
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I just downloaded the test version and I've made notes throughout my use process. I ended up crashing it because I couldn't get what I assume is the guideline for the text to double click to turn off. I had trouble with making the river tool stop rivering, and I literally could not get that text guideline tool to stop until the program crashed. It had an apparent first way of adding text which I was unable to determine how to operate before said program crash.
Prior to that I did make a landmass, figure out how to alter the texture of the landmass (but not how to get my own textures in), how to alter the stroke width, figure out how to add water, and all of that seemed mostly intuitive, although I would expect the water outline echo stroke option to be contained in the stroke panel and it wasn't? Eventually I found it under 'coastline' and was disappointed that I couldn't set the spacing between lines and the amount of opacity trail off, since I have a specific way I like to set mine up. I would also like to be able to add custom waves that either follow around the landmass like a ribbon or are oriented left to right, depending on my preference. I would like a button to go straight to this tool on the 'stroke' section of the sidebar for the coastline, since it would make sense to decide what color and width the land stroke will be and then want to adjust your waves accordingly.
I would also like a couple of more options for outline jaggedness. I'm not convinced it's better than what I can draw by hand. What might help is if you could change the fractalization using the number keys while not losing your "grip". Or a randomization option to increase and decrease how fractalized it is.
I was annoyed that I could make the side panels wider but not narrower, especially since there seemed to be no good reason for the amount of space the left hand panel took up on my monitor. I'd like to be able to make that shrink down to half the size so I can see more of my map work. I'd also like to be able to snap the toolbox into where the mini map is instead of having the mini map there. It moved and faded like it wanted to snap into place but I was never able to find a good place to position it. I would have liked to be able to shrink the tool box down to only 2 squares wide and set it on one of the sides or the top. I found an option to change the sizing and was shocked everything was almost already small by default; I changed what I could and it did not get me any more space in the view of the map.
I rebooted and found the art asset manager and find it very annoying that I can only see two rows of textures that then horizontally scroll. I couldn't figure out how to add my own textures, maybe a limitation of the demo but I got an error message when I tried to add a folder. I then tried to make a railroad and was only able to click once, and any other place on the screen it would not let me click or double click to add another part of the route or escape. I was able to escape by hitting esc though, leaving one slice of rail behind. While I have figured out how to intelligently merge the layers (which is the only feature this has which I might consider buying it for, the one thing I do waste time on while drawing is fixing up overlaps between paths and such) I do expect the tool to actually work to click down several road pieces and then give me a way to escape and leave what I drew intact.
The city wall/tower placing feature worked pretty well, though I was also having trouble figuring out how to make the walls stop, I did at one point run into a pop up that said 'click to merge'. My second attempt to make a wall was much worse. It only stuck when I clicked half the time and I could not figure out a way to make just a straight wall instead of one that went all the way around. I was particularly impressed by the house rooftop placer, that's another thing I could see myself actually using, although the amount of vector rooftops is limited enough that again, I would want a way to import my own assets to use.
The route measurer is neat but I couldn't make it stop routing.
So, the biggest bug which hindered my ability to create art was the way the tools would get stuck on and either not let me click down to end it or delete everything when I would hit escape or right click. I'm using a Macbook Pro.
One thing I did not observe was the ability to put textures on layers set to overlay, hard light, soft light, screen, multiply. I do this with almost every map I make, not just opacity adjustments. I would also want these types of layer interface effects for the terrain coloration effect.
The fact that the terrain objects can only be tinted and not recolored in the same fashion as the houses and walls seems like a lack of foresight. One of the key reasons I use Clip Studio Paint was their advanced brush system. I was able to set up a bunch of black line with white fill trees that the program will pick up and color in with whatever color I choose instead of white. Also the ability to make a brush set full of dozens of different trees scattered, but also had some encoding to shift the tint and lighting, flip randomly horizontally, and shift the size and angle just a little bit, so it looks even more diverse. I usually set my randomization to no more than 5% on all these features, maybe even 2% on the angle. This lets me throw in a forest in like, a couple of minutes, while making it look extremely complex. Never mind brick and tile fills. I also use it for the ribbon brush, but I still have to go and clean up my ribbon roads where they intersect, so your road maker tool is better (especially if there's an obvious key to push to indicate to the program you're done drawing that line), but your vegetation filler isn't.
I would like live preview on colors when I am testing them for a new waterline, background, or foliage, instead of having to click back and forth to get into the colors and out of the colors. I would prefer to not have to click at all to get to a color scroller but I certainly don't want to have to click three times each time I want to change a color. I would like to be able to click anywhere outside of the color pallet box to turn it off at the very least, instead of just the tiny x.
There are a couple of really good ideas in this program that would make it possible for me to consider using, things that make great sense for cartographic use and are more natural and intuitive and allow future editing in a way that my current "paint in a raster program" method does not. Right now I would see myself wanting to draw in features by hand still, though I can see myself using this to set up the base on which I draw if the bugginess with the road tool was gone.
If there's a way to draw elements in using a raster tool that has some decent stabilization (another reason I like Clip so much) that'd be neat.
Update: I was able to add some text on a horizontal line! There is no way to align the stroke to the outside of the text? I would like to be able to echo strokes on text too. Great for comic style text. And I would like to be able to adjust the glow style to screen or linear dodge or multiply for the shadow/glow outside of the text possibility, not just change the opacity. I was not able to intuitively figure out how to make text on a curve.
I also grew frustrated trying to select the text due to everything else being grabbable. I would like an option to "lock everything" and "lock everything except for what I have selected" and "lock everything underneath my current layer". The few times that I've brought myself to use Illustrator, I've definitely used an option something like that to make things easier when managing tons of asset layers.
Welp, that's all the thoughts I have for now, it seems like a great beginning to a program that could be exceptionally useful for many types of maps. Especially since it can integrate gis data and keeps everything vector editable, great ideas, acceptable execution, but it could be better, and would have to be in a few places to pull me away from hand-drawing everything! Still, I don't think it would be an impossible sell on me in the future, well done.
Originally Posted by Tiana
) am I able to install it on both a Windows and a Mac computer for use non-simultanously? I have both available, I've just been testing on the Mac OS since I figured it was likely you would have less feedback about that.
