Conquer Club

Being part of the generation of mapmakers that love to develop a map using only a graphic software, a bonus spreadsheet and a notepad, I was wondering what stuff use the new generation of mapmakers. What are the tools and the guides you use to develope a map? Which of those tools or guides are the most useful? Finally what tools or guides could/should be improved in your opinion?

thenobodies80 wrote:Being part of the generation of mapmakers that love to develop a map using only a graphic software, a bonus spreadsheet and a notepad, I was wondering what stuff use the new generation of mapmakers. What are the tools and the guides you use to develope a map? Which of those tools or guides are the most useful? Finally what tools or guides could/should be improved in your opinion?

I do not know if this is entirely on topic or not, but it is my contention that way too much effort has been spent trying to make everything even. When you create a map that is "even", What you are basically doing is, making it a game where the dice are deciding the winners and losers. The advanced strategists are able to study a map, and figure out it's un-"evenness". This allows the better player, a better chance to win. And IMHO, makes for a good map. If everything is made perfectly "even", then instead of being able to read a map, the dice become the determining factor.

Just something to think about while you are creating your layout and bonus structure.

I'm still pretty old-school... I'm happy with my copy of Photoshop and Notepad (With the occasional calculator thrown in for good measure)... chipv's Map XML Wizard is the most convenient way of plotting the coordinates on a map, but I still prefer to write it by hand.

porkenbeans, I think you missed the point of the topic - this is about what TOOLS you use, not about the relative merits of balanced (or otherwise) maps.

MrBenn wrote:I'm still pretty old-school... I'm happy with my copy of Photoshop and Notepad (With the occasional calculator thrown in for good measure)... chipv's Map XML Wizard is the most convenient way of plotting the coordinates on a map, but I still prefer to write it by hand.

porkenbeans, I think you missed the point of the topic - this is about what TOOLS you use, not about the relative merits of balanced (or otherwise) maps.

Yeah, It's like I said, Not sure if it was Entirely on topic, as my point was more about "how" to use the tools, and less about which tools you use.

porkenbeans wrote:Yeah, It's like I said, Not sure if it was Entirely on topic, as my point was more about "how" to use the tools, and less about which tools you use

I created a new topic so we can discuss it there, pork.


As for me- not that I'm a mapmaker per se- I'm a pen-and-paper sketch artist, so mostly I use that to lay out my thoughts. Then I either scan it in and then play around with it in Gimp, or I try to copy it by hand with the pencil or brush tools. I use Wordpad and a paper notebook to keep track of bonuses and diagram gameplay elements.

As for CC, I used the Foundry Tutorials in the Melting Pot as guides, although the most useful stuff came from browsing this forum (discussions)... the golden numbers, for instance, was quite a helpful thread, and while it was incorporated in one of the tutorials/guides in one of these forums (Gameplay I think) it was a place I hadn't visited and felt out of place poking around in at the time.

Really, the improvement might be made I think in putting all of the helpful guides and tutorials in one spot... maybe in its own forum even. Right now, it's kind of all over the place, one really has to do some research sometimes to get a coherent idea of what's going on.

MarshalNey wrote:

porkenbeans wrote:Yeah, It's like I said, Not sure if it was Entirely on topic, as my point was more about "how" to use the tools, and less about which tools you use

I created a new topic so we can discuss it there, pork.


As for me- not that I'm a mapmaker per se- I'm a pen-and-paper sketch artist, so mostly I use that to lay out my thoughts. Then I either scan it in and then play around with it in Gimp, or I try to copy it by hand with the pencil or brush tools. I use Wordpad and a paper notebook to keep track of bonuses and diagram gameplay elements.

As for CC, I used the Foundry Tutorials in the Melting Pot as guides, although the most useful stuff came from browsing this forum (discussions)... the golden numbers, for instance, was quite a helpful thread, and while it was incorporated in one of the tutorials/guides in one of these forums (Gameplay I think) it was a place I hadn't visited and felt out of place poking around in at the time.

Really, the improvement might be made I think in putting all of the helpful guides and tutorials in one spot... maybe in its own forum even. Right now, it's kind of all over the place, one really has to do some research sometimes to get a coherent idea of what's going on.

Good idea. Maybe a sub-catagory in Suggs ?

I also use, like you, notebad, bonus spreadsheet, and Photoshop. I think it would be great if the more seasoned map-makers could run, a few times a year, a really well-crafted How to Make a Good Map tutorial, where new mapmakers would be taught how to use these tools and how to actually develop a good map. I am sure it would be well-attended.

As long as a program can produce nice graphics, doesn't matter how old it is. I use GIMP tho

In most of my work as a 'map-maker' I use Adobe Fireworks CS3, and for some artistic details I use Photoshop CS2.

I also rely on a spreadsheet I've created - The Region Distributor - that will give you:

-Regions that each player will get, depending on their number.
-Starting neutral regions
-Number of starting troops per player

K

How much did it cost you for adobe fireworks?

I used Photoshop CS2, later Photoshop CS3 (used, because my copy was crashed). sometimes I used Corel Paintshop.
when I started work on maps I read some tutorials (mostly about Army circles), but I had so much lucky that Industrial Helix showed me much, much things how to use Photoshop.
still I´m not artist and still I´m wondering what some guys are able to do with graphics.

one off notice: sometimes I have feeling that for CC is more important graphics as gameplay... ofcourse there must be any distincions...

I use the GIMP for graphics and although I haven't yet done any XML for CC, I will most likly use the same editor I use for html/php/perl - Bluefish.

Corel's Paint Shop Pro X and Paint Shop Pro 7 are my graphical tools. For the rest nothing like excel and the good old notepad.

For map graphics I use Paint.net with various 3rd party plugins. I do all the designing and drafting as well as the final graphics with the same software.

For bonus calculations etc. I use notepad and calculator. Sometimes pen & paper too.

For bonus calculations, I use Bonus Calculator 1.1

For XML - when I do it myself - I use chipv's excellent XML wizard.

For a first line-drawing I use Adobe Illustrator, for the more detailed graphics I use Photoshop.
And some nice tools from CC, especially for calculating bonuses and making the XML. (big thanks for these ones )

Now that I've started learning C#, I've found how powerful Paint.net can be with the Codelab plugin - it gives you a realtime interface where you can type C# code which is rendered in realtime and you can see the results of your code right as you type. So basically if you have the know-how you can achieve pretty much any graphical effect imaginable...

Just wanted to say, you GIMP/PS users don't know what you're missing