Seeking mapping software

Archived from groups: rec.games.frp.misc (More info?)

sanlosinst@yahoo.co.uk wrote:

> I'm starting to create a fantasy gameworld, and I'd like to get my
> hands on some software that will help me do it. Physically my world is
> much like ours (spherical, has continents and oceans, rotates producing
> day and night, circles the sun generating seasons, etc). I deally I'd
> like something like this:

Sounds like a good idea for a new project...

> At the end of the process it should be able to generate maps of any
> part of the world, at a fairly broad scale. I should also be able to
> zoom in on an area of interest and map it in a finer scale by imposing
> fine detail on the existing coarse-detailed map.

Mapcraft allows this, though it doesn't do any of the other stuff. One
of the main goals was being able to cope with maps of different resolutions,
but keeping all the maps in sync.

It's tiled based (not vector) however, and is still in alpha so features
like this are command line only. However, I never found any program which
did anything like this when I decided to start writing my own.

> That's my dream product. I realise that it's asking a lot and this kind
> of thing probably doesn't exist. But is there anything even vaguely
> like it on the market?

You can find programs to do all of the above, but I'm not sure any one
program does all of it. Campaign Cartographer is supposed to be quite
good, though it didn't do any of the above when I last looked at it.

Mapcraft is my open source Java based project, found at:

http://mapcraft.sourceforge.net/

I did start adding world generation stuff, but doing it well is *hard*,
so it hasn't got very far yet. The goal was also looking at generating
maps for thousands of Worlds for a Traveller campaign, so quantity
rather than quality was a goal. I also wanted it to automatically choose
placement of population centres, and work through the de-forestation
and other stages of civilisation before settling on the final, modern,
world map.

http://www.glendale.org.uk/traveller/gallery.html

--
Be seeing you, ---------------------------
Sam. http://www.glendale.org.uk/