New to Digital Cartography? Software General Information

[dormouse]

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.

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.

Thanks for the recommendation - and it is nice to see that you are so keen on it.

But, as I promised Redrobes, I have already tried it. I found it incredibly slow and I can understand why you found personal tutorials helpful. It may be that there was a conflict with something else on my machine, or it may be that it doesn't like lots of other stuff running concurrently, or it may be that it wants a more powerful graphics card to do the zooming - but my machine is reasonably powerful (dual core, plently of RAM) though, as I'm not a gamer, not a very powerful graphics card (does have 512mb RAM though). When I try a new prog and don't get on with it, I nearly always leave it there and might, or might not, revisit it again - but I uninstalled ViewingDale within the hour.

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.

Well, I'm not sure I understand the bit about the DF grid being a cage. You can rescale any object on the map at any time. There's no equivalent zoom (though the VD one was too slow for me to be usable), but you can decide what pixel size the grid runs to when you set the map up (anything from 20x20 to 512x512 - which means it can go much more detailed than nearly all the images available on the net) and obviously it is up to you what scale the grid represents. You do have to set the map size in advance though (but it can be much bigger than most practicable uses).

I didn't really see VD being a tile mapper but more of an image placer (I might be wrong on this though). If that's the case, then the grid has a different function in the two progs. In DF the grid/cell size is primarily set to manage the initial scaling of objects, BUT it's main use is to enable tiling. You can use the grid for maps/battlemaps etc, but you don't have to, and could always overlay a grid of a different size.

I wanted to take advantage of the extra detail VD can handle and wanted to step up from the old tile images.

I don't see how VD can handle extra detail; DF can handle any size/detail image out there, as tiles or objects, at a decent speed (and the maximum cell size could always be upped, if it proved a restriction in the future).

What VD does have though, is the zoom feature. I can see that would be very useful if it works for you. It also seems to work as a campaign/terrain mapper, whereas DF is primarily a battlemap prog (MapX being the one with the campaign/terrain features). DF is also limited in terms of building shapes etc; it is possible to work around this - and can be done fast with some prior preparation - but it doesn't do it 'out of the box'.

DF is free though; VD is $27 (approx). You make your choice and pay, or don't pay, your money.

I'm not intending to be negative about VD generally - it just didn't work well on my system though it clearly does on lots of others, including yours.

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

No need to worry about that
Do remember that I'm just a user; didn't program, couldn't program: I use lots of graphics progs (including Photoshop, GIMP, the Corel progs, Inkscape etc etc) which I use for a lot of things including maps. I agreed to keep DF/MapX available and will do that whatever progs I use, or whether I do any mapping at all; I'll also help people out if they have any problems. I also keep DungeonCrafter 1 & 2 (& image sets) available, though not DC3 as I don't have permission for that; long time since I used DC to actually do a map I wanted to use. I also occasionally visit and contribute to the DC3 forum - rather more than the Crew have done Where possible, I try out all the other progs that seem worth trying as they become available and certainly read feature lists, reviews etc.

Have tried DJ, but found it too slow and 'clunky' for me, and very limited in terms of map size and cell size (though I mostly do small maps now for use in BRPG). Lots of nice features, and DJ2 might have been interesting - if it had ever seen (will see?) the light of day. Certainly better than DF for its feature set, and worse for speed, map and cell size and price.

Haven't actually tried CC3 as there doesn't seem to be a trial and I'm not keen on getting to try it by paying money over first and getting it back if I don't like it. How many of the various packs would I really want? Would I want to buy everything just to see (with the 15% discount) and then get the money back and rebuy those packages I want? Too many decisions for me to get that far. Also put off a bit by complaints abouts its complexity - and I do see that its very long history might have become a bit of an obstacle in development terms - but I've never really had any problems with complex progs or CAD progs so I'd be quite confident of managing it fast enough (ie within the 14 day cashback limit). Some quite attractive symbols and maps though. And the zoom looks good.

Of the commercial RPG mapping progs, the one I'd be mostly likely to hand cash over for is FM8. Really a functioning superset of MapX rather than DF, though I don't remember it doing tiling (I need to have another look). Zoom very good, easy to use (at least I found it easy); might still use DF for some/many of the battlemaps if I were using it. Don't like the look of the symbols as they appear published or in the trial though - but then no real need to use them.

And for a fair few maps, I will use Photoshop et al for all or part of the process as many people here do. But I don't find these progs as fast as these purpose designed RPG mappers for producing 'realistic', atmosphere enhancing battlemaps.

Will probably have another look at MapTools soon. BRPG's own mapping ability has improved over time, and I assume MapTools will have done too, though I don't expect VTTs to compete with mapping progs for basic mapping.

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.

I'll have a look at that - though not to the extent of reinstalling - any extra info on it on a working system will be good to have.

[RPMiller]

dormouse, if you have Java installed you could also give MapTool a try. The link is in my sig. The newest development version was just released and has had a bunch of new features and tweaks added. It is very similar to VD as far as capabilities, but I suspect has lower system requirements.

[dormouse]

I load MapTool periodically. Very good prog, wonderful community, though I'm surprised that you say it is similar to VD for capabilities. Last time I tried MT it had nothing like the zoom in VD, nor the detail facility described by Icosahedron. Very clever idea using the graphics card for the processing in VD and I'm surprised that more of these progs don't do that (or maybe they do?), since that is what a lot of users will have sitting available not doing very much when mapping.

For VTT capabilities I use BRPG and am happy to stick to that for my own campaigns, though also happy to use MT. Not that I have ever been able to keep up with the constant state of change/improvement in MT (or in BRPG if it comes to that).

I do need to look at the mapping capabilities in MT and also to catch up with the current state of play in BRPG. One of the things I like about FM8 is the large number of available layers; very easy to have one/more for the items that would be added/moved in VTT play; can do that in progs that have fewer layers, but mostly that is by saving the base and then doing a map on top with the extra items.

I see you also use FT & presumably CC3. I assume you do the battlemaps mostly in CC3 and then use them in MT?

[RPMiller]

You'll definitely want to check out the most recent version of MT to see the zoom capabilities.

I don't do much of anything currently with regard to mapping. I am in a degree program right now that pretty much sucks up all my time, free or otherwise.

[dormouse]

Have to say, the zoom in MT really is massively impressive.

[trevor]

Have to say, the zoom in MT really is massively impressive.

Thanks. It's not as slick as VD's zooming, but at least it's available

Here are a couple vids Dorpond made a long while back when we first removed the limits on the zoom. Note: they look choppy because of the screencast software, in practice it's much smoother:

http://rptools.net/dorpond/demos/Zooming/Zooming.html
http://rptools.net/dorpond/demos/Zoom2/Zoom2.html

It turns out that it's not really as practical as we originally thought it would be. That is, when you sit down to create an encounter, you typically aren't thinking at the continent level. It's nice to be able to zoom way out in order to get context, or switch between hotspots, but don't generally interact with tokens at that scale.

[dormouse]

Thanks. It's not as slick as VD's zooming, but at least it's available
...
they look choppy because of the screencast software, in practice it's much smoother:

That would make VD's zoom incredibly impressive. For me, the MT one was instantaneous (or at least it seemed able to go faster than I could turn the wheel - and my display managed it without problems) and entirely smooth.

It turns out that it's not really as practical as we originally thought it would be. That is, when you sit down to create an encounter, you typically aren't thinking at the continent level. It's nice to be able to zoom way out in order to get context, or switch between hotspots, but don't generally interact with tokens at that scale.

I had wondered about that
I can see that it would be very useful if drawing a very large map (ie one that is much bigger than the monitor when you are at the resolution level you want), but couldn't see what would be gained in play apart from switching between hotspots. And I prefer everyone in the same place. All the players are in one place (we play f2f) and just use the VTT for mapping etc, so they can all see what any of them sees unless there's a real effort to hide it.
I suppose what it would enable is a very large map which they can move around, rather than lots of smaller maps. So long as MT can handle the very large maps.
I also noticed that you'd taken away the maximum cell size limit that I seem to remember from before (50x50 I think it was), so the maps could be done at 200x200 with no need to rescale the standard sized DJ images.
I haven't had a chance to look at it in massive detail yet, but it seemed to me that the maps would still be done outside of MT primarily.

[dormouse]

I tried it a few more times (4).
Very variable results in terms of frame rate.
Fast enough once, but only once.
No other message. Forced it into software once, but that was slow too.

Generous of you to offer to investigate, but it must be some of the other stuff that's running (though I didn't think I was running anything that was intensive atm) and that's a killer to find out on someone else's system. The good side of it is that it seems to be a very rare problem for you.

[Redrobes]

It wont be other apps running as it does most of the work on the graphics card unless by other stuff that would be a game, benchmark or something - basically you would know.

The test app should be rendering at about 500 frames per second. Not that you would see all those frames but the test app is supposed to say its too slow if its about 50 frames per second or slower. At the end it shows the framerate. On the very top line it says for me...
"OpenGL is successfully running this application with hardware assisted graphics acceleration".

I suspect that it is saying something different for you. Its probably saying that its using the built in software renderer which would be much slower - like 20 frames per second. In the directory that you run the test there is a file called TestResults.txt which you can get at with notepad. The top half of mine says the following...

OpenGL is successfully running this application with hardware
    assisted graphics acceleration.

Card Vendor / Renderer: GeForce 8600 GT/PCI/SSE2

OpenGL Version: 2.1.2

ViewingDale needs at least version 1.1.0 so this looks good.

Frames rendered: 13433

Frames per second: 447.8

Your system is sufficiently fast enough to run ViewingDale effectively.

if your able to post that bit then we can see what is going on with your system.

[dormouse]

OpenGL is successfully running this application with hardware
assisted graphics acceleration.

Card Vendor / Renderer: ATI Radeon HD 3600 Series

OpenGL Version: 2.1.7659 Release

ViewingDale needs at least version 1.1.0 so this looks good.

Frames rendered: 121

Frames per second: 4.0

Your system is too slow to run ViewingDale effectively.