New to Digital Cartography? Software General Information

[Midgardsormr]

Quick translation: VT or VTT stands for Virtual Table Top. Programs like MapTool, Viewingdale, ScreenMonkey, Fantasy Grounds, and the D&D GameTable that act as virtual battlemats on your computer screen and allow real-time internet play. They can also be used in face-to-face games, as I do with my group, displaying electronic maps on my HDTV.

[bblackmoor]

bblackmoor, I was looking at your software list and I didn't see MapTool. Are you familiar with it?

I am not, but I will check it out.

[RPMiller]

The RPTools forums are a great place to ask questions if you have any, but you can ask here as well if you would like.

[dormouse]

I've read the thread with interest several times now (and a few in the past). I notice very few references to what the maps will be used for (certainly decides what I will use) or the actual workflow used (and many of us go from one prog to another to another and back again etc in doing a single map).

If I were writing a book that needed a lot of maps (I'm not), I'd want my maps to be 'beautiful' and with a clear and consistent style. They would be worth spending a lot of time over.

If I were planning a RPG campaign and wanted a world or regional map, I'd mostly want accuracy of scale and detail (and zoomability would be good). If I were going to let players see it or have a copy, then attractiveness and style would become more important.

Dungeon plans for/by the GM also mostly need accuracy of scale and detail.

If I were designing a battlemap, then atmosphere and usability would be more important. And ease and speed of creating the map would be very important.

And if the battlemap were for use in a VTT, then I would want all or most of the components of the map to be separable because I may well need to apply or change them from within the VTT.

And if designing components for any of the above, the amount of time I'd be prepared to spend depends on how much I would use it (and what is already out there that would do).

Most of my mapmaking is for battlemaps for VTTs. As far as I can see, the cost benefit of the various types of software (and I use virtually all of them for one thing or another) in terms of time spent Vs atmosphere/attractiveness is strongly in favour of the software designed for this use (Dundjinni, Dungeonforge, MapX, DungeonCrafter in the past, CC3?). If someone just wants to do battlemaps, and is not already experienced in use of the other software (or has another use for it) then this is probably the best way for them to go especially since the learning curve for most of them is small (not sure about CC3 for this). Despite these progs not being the most used or recommended on this site, and not producing the most individually styled or 'beautiful' maps (though this is partly dependent on the images used - and the final and/or intermediate stages can be tweaked in other progs). And this probably also stands for battlemaps that will be printed for use (a main reason for the initial popularity of Dundjinni). Because so many battlemaps may be needed, the time taken to do the map is a major issue.

And vector approaches (CC3, Inkscape, Xara etc) have real advantages for the world/regional design maps for the GM. Rasters only compete here by having lots of maps at different scales.

[Redrobes]

And vector approaches (CC3, Inkscape, Xara etc) have real advantages for the world/regional design maps for the GM. Rasters only compete here by having lots of maps at different scales.

Ahh, well I would have to disagree here of course...

[dormouse]

Ahh, well I would have to disagree here of course...

You're saying ViewingDale is Raster?
Or maybe that it takes much more powerful processing than vector or images at different scales would need? (I can't really imagine a raster map with all the very fine level detail still being quick at zooming in and out to continents; I can imagine raster stamps for fine detail on a vector background that will do areas & continents giving that impression.)

I'll admit to not having tried ViewingDale, though I have looked at it.. I'll download the trial and have a closer look. I was always put off by the fact that it did not seem as self-contained as most progs, with an emphasis on networking etc., and it was never obvious how it worked or precisely what it did and I do like to know that.

[Redrobes]

You're saying ViewingDale is Raster?...

Oops - too busy to notice this one. Sorry.

It is raster - at least I would say it is. For certain, it does not take in any vector formats like SVG or has any line or shape drawing abilities. Everything is done using raster bitmaps. It has its own image format but can import BMP, JPG and PNG files and has a batch converter for PNG files to import those libraries of files that you get like the CUSAC.

Imagine painting this bitmap onto some stretchy rubber sheet. You can put the sheet down, rotate it and stretch it. You can put rubber sheets down onto other rubber sheets and so move the base one and all the others on top move as well. Its a hierarchy of them.

Your graphics card can deal with these textured rubber sheets real fast. Your right in that it takes a lot of processing. What it does not need tho is a lot of CPU processing. ViewingDale can run on old machines - ask icohedron ! - BUT it definitely does need a reasonable graphics card, the sort you would use for games. Tho nowadays thats not so much of an issue as when I first released it. Anything with 32Mb or more on board graphics card RAM like the old nVidia AGP ones through to the ultra modern PCIe2 types. Theres a free test utility you can download from my site to test the graphics system speed and tell you what you have running and where this may or may not be a problem for the app.

So the CPU gathers together all the icons and works out how to place them down then sends that to the graphics card for rendering. Since most apps use 90%+ of the time rendering then you get a big speed increase when using the graphics card to do it. So ViewingDale is a graphics card hardware assisted bitmap compositing engine. It is a lot like DungeonForge as we have mentioned before but the layout is held in discreet icons instead of one big map file and that the images for it are held on HDD instead of in the file like DF was claimed to do. Which as we have said previously has some advantages and some disadvantages.

The VTT side of things in a nutshell is just that the prog will also transfer and update those images and icons when logged in as a server or as a client to one. Somebody moves their character is just the same as moving any icon in the hierarchy. Those changes are transmitted and all clients refresh the screen and show the move. Since the app is fast, it can update that refresh in real time in exactly the same process as if you had zoomed or panned or edited it yourself.

So since the app has no base bitmap and everything is on stretchy rubber then there are no virtually no borders and no limits to the extents or zoom factor. The res of all icons shown is still limited to that of the images making up the icons tho so you might need a world, some regions, a town and a floor plan maps all done to zoom between outer space and crack in the floor. The apps job is to take care of the scaling of the images and blending between them to pick the right one at the right time and deliver the seamless experience.

[dormouse]

BUT it definitely does need a reasonable graphics card, the sort you would use for games. Tho nowadays thats not so much of an issue as when I first released it. Anything with 32Mb or more on board graphics card RAM like the old nVidia AGP ones through to the ultra modern PCIe2 types. Theres a free test utility you can download from my site to test the graphics system speed and tell you what you have running and where this may or may not be a problem for the app.

Hmmm, I replied to Icosahedron before seeing this

I just tried the test utility and it says my system is too slow
That explains the problems I had, though I would have expected my graphics card to be good enough though it was chosen for resolution not gaming.
Radeon 3650 with 768MB RAM, now that I have checked. But I do run lots of progs and 2 monitors (one 24" and one 22").

It is raster - at least I would say it is. For certain, it does not take in any vector formats like SVG or has any line or shape drawing abilities. Everything is done using raster bitmaps.
...

So since the app has no base bitmap and everything is on stretchy rubber then there are no virtually no borders and no limits to the extents or zoom factor. The res of all icons shown is still limited to that of the images making up the icons tho so you might need a world, some regions, a town and a floor plan maps all done to zoom between outer space and crack in the floor. The apps job is to take care of the scaling of the images and blending between them to pick the right one at the right time and deliver the seamless experience.

Yes, this is what I thought. The zoom feature is very good (at least on systems that can handle it), but will be limited by the detail available on the image whereas vectors just have descriptions that zoom at all scales precisely - but there's a limit to the complexity of an image that this can be done with.

It sounds like a very good way of doing what it does, though I don't see it as being like DF - or indeed any of the other progs out there. I'm not convinced that FM8 or CC3 are good for fast, good battlemaps - though I'll investigate more - I think that DF and DJ can do this - and I suspect that VD does too. And VD adds the option to zoom regionally etc which would be good in lots of situations, especially if using it like a VTT.

[PeaceHeather]

Paint.NET. 'Cause I'm cheap.
I've worked with some other stuff now and then, but not enough to say that I'm even close to proficient in them - a little Paintshop Pro, a teeeeny bit of GIMP, that kind of thing. I wouldn't really even call myself "proficient" in Paint.NET except that I can usually get the results I'm looking for in it.

[icosahedron]

PeaceHeather: Isn't that what 'proficient' means?

Dormouse: Viewingdale sounds ideal for your needs. I'm a convert. Basically it's a tile mapper with analogue tiles. I haven't even used the networking VTT aspect yet; as a DF substitute it's completely self-contained.

It does pretty much what Dungeonforge does - or what it would have done if the promised new version had materialised, except that there is no fixed cell size and (near) infinite zoom. You can vary the size/scale of any imported image and perform a continuous zoom from a solar system down to a keyboard.

Unlike DF, where a bed is always (say) two cells by one, you can use the same bed image in VD for a giant or a dwarf simply by scaling it on the map. The grid is a guide, not a cage.

You don't need to set your map extents in advance, either, you can add more whenever you want.

The only problem I have with VD is amassing an image library. Although it's capable of using the DF images, I wanted to take advantage of the extra detail VD can handle and wanted to step up from the old tile images. The software has a good stock of fantasy images included, and more are readily available on the net, but SF images are sadly lacking throughout cyberspace.

One thing worries me though - If you try out Viewingdale, I fear for the continued existance of Dungeonforge...

If you give it a go, check out the blog in my signature, Redrobes gave me some personal tutorials there when I hit problems and misunderstandings. There's some useful help info there.