Back to Heruca:
Once again, I am in no way trying to put your MapForge down. I've been following your work, mostly on the Dundjinni forum, for more than 10 years, and your contributions to the cartographic community are both tremendous and excellent. That's exactly why I'm raising the issues that I did. For the non-GIMP, non-Photoshop elements of the cartographic community, Dundjinni brought RPG cartography light years ahead in an age when CC2 Pro and FM7 still were stuck in vector cartography that usually produced maps that looked like something from a low grade imitation of an animated Disney film.
However, Dundjinni also is a program that burned itself out, and I would dislike very much seeing you launch a program that ends up doing the same thing. Dundjinni is a program that didn't manage to grow with the times. For those who still can get it to run (I can), it continues to make better battlemaps than anything I've seen (or made myself) with FM8 or CC3/CC3+.
However, when one tries to make a larger scale overland map or a city or village map with more than a few buildings on it, one gets into trouble. The reason for this is that Dundjinni has a single scale for all objects (symbols) and textures (fills). In comparison, CC3+ has four different scales available for each object or texture, and it automatically picks the best version of the object for the scale currently being displayed. FM8, like Dundjinni, offers its objects and textures in a single scale, but unlike Dundjinni, FM8 has different scales for overland, city and dungeon objects and textures. Both systems produce good results.
However, because Dundjinni has only a single (official) scale for all objects, and because Dundjinni can use only a limited amount of memory (like all 32-bit applications), one finds oneself in trouble in short order when making a map like the sample from our project group that you posted above (a map that was made with FM8 ). When one sticks with the official, single Dundjinni scale of 40 pixels = 1 scale foot, the building objects are unnecessarily huge. Some of these objects (symbols) have a size of more than 20 MB each. That size isn't necessary for such a map, but it's the only official size. In Dundjinni, duplicating the map shown above causes an incredible result. One cannot merely make a cup of coffee while waiting for Dundjinni to draw the map on the screen. One could in theory drive to relatives 50 miles away, drink a cup of coffee or two with them and then return home before Dundjinni is done drawing ... and that with a modern computer using SSD drives and 32 GB memory. However, that's only theoretical. In practice, Dundjinni will have crashed before one reaches the distant relatives.
That notwithstanding, one can successfully make such a map with Dundjinni, if one goes into a graphic program and makes new, scaled-down versions of the objects and textures being used. I've made such maps with Dundjinni by scaling down the objects and textures from 40 pixels = 1 foot to 10 pixels. However, that requires the creation of down-scaled versions of every single object and texture used in the map. Who wants to do that, when one can buy FM8 or CC3+ and avoid that?
That's the reason I brought up the scaling issue. I'd like very much to see you succeed with Map Forge, regardless of whether I would use it personally.
On the 32-/64-bit issue:
This really has nothing at all to do with learning to walk before you fly. Writing 64-bit code is no more difficult than writing 32-bit code. But many of your potential users are running 64-bit Windows, and a substantial number of them will have 8 GB memory or more. Many decent laptops leave the factory these days with 8 GB as standard. People are starting to want to use what they buy. If you read through postings here, you'll find that one of the things, among others, that are driving CC3+ and Dundjinni users over to The GIMP and Photoshop are the limited resource usage of Dundjinni and the frequent crashing and non-performance of CC3+ (If that means nothing to you, read ProFantasy's own forum).
From your last posting, I assume that Map Forge will be an application that runs on top of another program's machine, just as CC3+ is an application that runs atop Evolution Computing's FastCAD. If that's the case, and the machine you've selected is 32-bit only, you have no alternative. That's similar to the dilemma that ProFantasy faces with Campaign Cartographer. To produce a 64-bit version, Evolution has to come out with a 64-bit FastCAD machine that ProFantasy can use or ProFantasy has to drop FastCAD and program its own machine ... no minor chore.
In any case, if you're committing a lot of your time and/or money to Map Forge, I hope you'll seriously address the question of how many people might buy your product over what period of time. If it's a 32-bit edition, my guess is that most folks will look at it as an alternative new Dundjinni version, and that it will have decent startup sales among Dundjinni users who want an update. But will it be able to sustain sales after that initial bubble breaks, or will it burn itself out and lose its market like Dundjinni did once Fluid Enterprises decided to drop the program after the big Dundjinni bubble.
You've done a lot for us here in the cartographic community. I'd like to see you succeed. That's the only reason for these remarks.
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Originally Posted by Redrobes
