Other World Mapper

[Kyete]

Other World Mapper is a new program in development by Three Minds Software, LLC and the Kickstarter for it will be starting soon. It is designed so that detailed maps can be made quickly and easily.

Map Elements
All map elements are created on their own separate layer, so they are easy to move and manipulate.

There are 5 drawing tools:

• Lands
• Rivers
• Bodies of Water
• Regions
• Roads

These tools are vector based so that the map elements can be rotated and scaled without losing resolution, and all of them have their own customizable settings and options (pen type, amplitude, line thickness, opacity, color, texture, etc.). Lands, rivers and bodies of water can automatically generate shorelines, and regions can "follow" the outline of any drawn element.

Art for features, such as mountains and castles, can be imported to create a specific look to the map.


Here is an example map created entirely in Other World Mapper (alpha version) in less than 30 minutes.


Here are the links to the official website, Facebook and Kickstarter.
Official Site
Facebook
Kickstarter

[Chick]

It looks in concept a lot like ProFantasy's system. How does it improve on that?

[Mark Oliva]

Your sample map and your web site plus the following quote from your web site:

Vector based tools for all map elements so that they can be scaled, rotated and modified without losing resolution.

Lead me to conclude - perhaps wrongly - that you plan to introduce a new mapping software product that will generate about the same output as Fractal Mapper 7, Campaign Cartographer 2 and Campaign Cartographer 2 Plus once did ... in other words, a program that generates 20th Century maps in the 21st Century.

If that was my marketing concept, I'd be worried. If you look around the guild entries here or in current RPG products, I think you might find that the great majority of maps being made today are raster graphics, not vector graphics.

So ... good luck.

[Kyete]

What ProFantasy did is really cool, we wanted to add our approach as another option. Here are some of the points we think we approached differently:

GUI
Modern GUI for easy access to tools and object options. What you see is what you get; select objects to change properties, and see map change real time. Properties and objects are map centric (i.e. selecting a region will bring up properties of a region). All object properties can be modified (nothing is permanent).

Technical

• Anti-aliasing for all generated objects (landmasses, regions, etc.).
• Separate layer and opacity controls for each individual item. This and the anti-aliasing allow for smooth blending of objects in the map.
• Because each object is kept in a different layer, every object can be selected, moved and modified at any time (landmass, rivers, regions, water bodies, etc).
• Buffering is also map-centric. For example, a landmass is rasterized once properties for it are set (or an object that interacts with it is added), and won't be rasterized again until it needs to. This allows for map changes to be shown real time.

Auto-generated

• Regions can follow natural borders as you draw them (i.e. edge of land, rivers, other regions).
• Physical regions (terrains) like grasslands, deserts, etc smoothly transition at the edges.
• Rivers can automatically link and blend with existing rivers, and can link with border of landmasses.
• Other “auto-generated” tools.

We are working on a demo video right now with what we have so far for alpha. We are also working to include this information in our website and sample pictures.

Thank you for the feedback!! It will help us improve the wording on our website.

Our intent is to say that the shape outlines are stored as vector objects, yet rasterized on the screen (and for printing) real time. That's to say, if you decide to change the size of an object, you can do so without pixelation by modifying the underlying vector object. For instance, after changing the size of a landmass, it will be rasterized again at the new size, applying all effects stacked on the object (transparency, anti-aliasing of borders, smooth edges, shadows, etc). Rasterizing is seamless and happens real-time as the object properties' are modified.

[Kyete]

Thank you for the feedback!! It will help us improve the wording on our website.

Our intent is to say that the shape outlines are stored as vector objects, yet rasterized on the screen (and for printing) real time. That's to say, if you decide to change the size of an object, you can do so without pixelation by modifying the underlying vector object. For instance, after changing the size of a landmass, it will be rasterized again at the new size, applying all effects stacked on the object (transparency, anti-aliasing of borders, smooth edges, shadows, etc). Rasterizing is seamless and happens real-time as the object properties' are modified.

[Kyete]

The kickstarter is now up! Here's the link; Other World Mapper Kickstarter .

[Johnny Au]

Looks very interesting.

One day, it would be a viable competitor to Campaign Cartographer, because your software (even in alpha) looks much better than CC3.

I am curious to know if there will be a Mac version of Other World Mapper.

[Kyete]

Thanks!

The first release of Other World Mapper will only have native Windows support. A Mac release is something we have considered for the future, but we cannot promise anything yet.

[Johnny Au]

Thanks!

The first release of Other World Mapper will only have native Windows support. A Mac release is something we have considered for the future, but we cannot promise anything yet.

That is what stretch goals are for.

[Kyete]

Thank you for taking the time to look at our project. We're just past 30% of our funding goal!
The first two stretch goals have been revealed. We really hope to get to the awesome stuff in these.

First Stretch Goal: $10000

• Option for labels to auto-center on objects
• Option to populate regions with features (i.e. fill a region with trees).

Second Stretch Goal: $12000

• Tools and artwork for creating Dungeon Maps

Here's a preview of some of the early artwork for the science fiction set which will be part of the art expansion.