Which mapping software should I use?

[EpicBradley129]

So I have a world that I've created for which I want to create some maps of decent quality and detail. I'm a complete noob when it comes to mapping software, so I'm not sure which to get. I've done some research, on this forum and elsewhere, and it seems like the most recommended software for beginners is GIMP. However, I don't think this software is for me, because I don't want to just create a visual representation of the world I already have, but instead I want the process of making the map to aid me in further detailing my world. To my understanding, GIMP is just a graphical software that lets you create whatever kinds of images you want. Proficiency with this software allows you to create maps of higher quality than more limited software like Campaign Cartographer. But what I like about CC3, or more specifically Fractal Terrains 3, is that it not only creates maps, but also gives you statistics for your world, such as altitude, temperature, and rainfall stats. It can draw rivers on automatically based on the topography created. Realism is very important to me, so features such as these which help me ensure that my map is not just readable, but realistic, are very important to me.

See, the thing is, I'm not just creating a world, I'm creating a planet. I already have a rough idea of my planet's physical characteristics, including atmospheric pressure, average surface temperature, surface gravity, etc. (if anyone is looking for a resource for creating detailed, realistic planets for high-realism settings, I highly, highly recommend the book GURPS Space), so I want to create a map that is in line with those statistics and hopefully adds to them. (And also, just because I can't stop my self from sharing, I'm not just creating a planet, I'm creating a solar system. And dammit, if I can make a galaxy, I'll make that too. Again, HIGHLY recommend GURPS Space. It can do all this. Except maybe the galaxy. Don't know how to do that.) But because I like to make things hard for myself, I specifically have the goal to make my world as different as possible from Earth, while making it as realistic as possible. So the atmospheric pressure is 10x that of Earth, the average surface temp is 132^oF (56^oC), the surface is 85% water, and it has 1.4x the gravity of Earth. Oh, and the sky (and oceans) is purple. Oh, and the plants are blue (probably). All of this, to my knowledge, is both physically possible and inhabitable. For the next few million years. Did I mention that the planet is in the early stages of a runaway greenhouse effect? You know, like Venus.

So as you can see, I already I have a fairly specific conception of how my world should be. I want to create a world map for this planet (the planet is called Salvumar) that conforms to these physical characteristics and to the world map I've already drawn. I'm attaching two pictures with this post. The first is the hand drawn map I already have of Salvumar. I drew this map maybe six years ago with no regard for realism, and now I'm trying to make it realistic without actually changing it because I like it and it's been my world map for six years. The second picture is a document detailing various properties of my world, including the most of the ones I shared in the paragraph above. I've been told that both of these maps are unreadable, so good luck.

To sum up, I want a mapping software that...

1. Can create realistic planetary maps with a great deal of flexibility as to the properties of the planet.
2. Gives enough customization of the planet's landmasses to create approximately the same world map as the one I've drawn.
3. Provides statistical information about the planet's physical characteristics.

Ok, so now to talk about the actual software available. Like I said, it doesn't seem like GIMP does much to make sure your maps are realistic, so I don't think it's the software I need. The obvious choice then seems to be Campaign Cartographer 3 and Fractal Terrains 3. There is also Fractal Mapper 8.0 w/Fractal World Explorer, which seems to do at least most of what I want and is substantially cheaper than CC3 and it's addons. This should be great, but it also gives much less detail about what it does, and I haven't heard much about it, which makes me think that it might not be as good as CC3 & FT3. So what software should I use? What software will be able to create the maps I want but also provide me with the level of rigor and realism that I want? It kinda feels like I'm asking for the best of both worlds here. I should say that I'm aware that CC3 has a steep learning curve and I have no experience in mapping software whatsoever. Well, I have two months left of summer vacation, so I should have the time to learn CC3. Right? Also, I watched Joe Sweeney's YouTube tutorials on CC3, and while I think I understand why people say CC3 has a steep learning curve, it appears to me that it is not all that hard when you've learned what each of the million different buttons and menu items do. So without really knowing what I'm talking about, I feel like I should be able to handle learning CC3. Of course, FT3 is really what I'm interested in. I'll likely just be using CC3 to add details to continents I've already created in FT3. I've seen but not watched Joe Sweeney's FT3 YouTube tutorials. Additionally, I should note that how good the map looks is much, much less important to me than whether it does what I want it to. Actually, I may very well create a detailed, functional map that's ugly as sin with whatever software, then redraw the map with GIMP to make it look pretty. That'll be years down the line, but I have that kind of time.

Now back to sharing, because I actually cannot stop myself. Like, I may have a problem. Send help. (If you're only interested in mapping software, feel free to stop here.)

If you can read my maps, you'll notice that the continents are all clustered together in an unusual configuration. In fact, comparing the drawing in the first picture to the mappy thing at the top of the second picture, you'll notice that all the continents are clustered together in an area about 25-30% of the total surface area of Salvumar - a continent supercluster, if you will. This is just the result of me initially drawing a crowded map and then later deciding that I wanted to make the surface 85% oceans. I'm justifying this setup by saying that the continents of Salvumar were just recently joined together into a single supercontinent - like Pangea - and are now drifting apart, forming instead a supercluster that will eventually break apart further until all the continents are spread out across the entire planet. You'll also notice that all the continents are rather small and snaky. Again, this is just how I originally drew the map, and now I have to justify it. This I'm justifying by saying that Salvumar has a high level of tectonic activity, which means it's tectonic plates are small and numerous. I believe this would create a larger number of smaller continents, as opposed to a smaller number of larger continents such as Earth has. Still I have to figure out if such a supercontinent would break apart as I've drawn it doing so. Incidentally, heavy tectonic activity, along with heavy volcanic activity and a hot, humid, hurricane prone climate make Salvumar quite a dangerous place to live. What fun!

I mentioned that Salvumar's sky and oceans are purple and it's plants are blue. I really want to make the sky purple because purple is my favorite color and also shut up. This turns out to be a difficult thing to do without making the planet uninhabitable, or at least without significantly changing the biochemistry of its inhabitants. I believe that I have a reasonable, if not a completely sufficient, explanation for how this is so. Salvumar's sun is fairly similar to Earth's, just slightly hotter, brighter, and more massive. This means the light coming from this sun is similarly composed (in terms of composition of different wavelenths) to that of our sun, just shifted slightly in the ultraviolet direction. Now, it's been a while since I did this research, but I believe that when our sun's rays hit Earth's atmosphere, the larger wavelengths such as red and green mostly pass through unabated while the smaller wavelengths, blue and violet, are scattered by the molecules in the atmosphere. Scattered light pings around the atmosphere for a while before it comes to Earth (or into outerspace, I presume), so when you look at any given point in the sky, you're seeing scattered light. This is why the Earth's sky appears blue. Violet is actually scattered more than blue in our atmosphere, so the sky should appear violet to us. It doesn't because our eyes don't work so well at the ultraviolet end of the visible spectrum. We're better at seeing blue than violet, so we see blue instead of violet when we look at the sky. Whether this violet would actually appear purple is unclear. Every visual representation I've seen of the visual spectrum has shown violet as purple, but MinutePhysics claims that this violet would appear more of a dark blue. But anyway, to make the sky purple, I'm currently saying three things: One, that Salvumar's sun is brighter than Earth's, so there is physically more violet light hitting Salvumar. Two, because Salvumar is more massive than Earth, it can hold light molecules in it's atmosphere. In particular, a significant component of its atmosphere is free helium, which reduces the density of Salvumar's atmosphere with respect to Earth's. Smaller molecules scatter smaller wavelengths, thus more violet light is scattered than in Earth's atmosphere. And three, I'm simply saying that the inhabitants of Salvumar have eyes that can see further into the utraviolet spectrum, so they can see all that violet more easily. Well, not so simple actually. I actually have six distinct civilized species living on Salvumar, which means five different kinds of eyes. Yup, five. One of the races doesn't have eyes. Because I'm edgy like that. I think what I'll actually do is make only most of the species see the sky as purple, to create some interesting conversations in my books.

I'm making the plants blue mainly because I don't want them to be green. Again, the light from Salvumar's sun is pretty close to the light from Earth's sun. On Earth, plants appear green because the chlorophyll in their leaves strongly absorbs blue and red light and reflects green light. So all I need to do is find or come up with a new chemical useful for photosynthesis that strongly absorbs green light and reflects some other wavelength of light, nominally blue light. That shouldn't be any problem for someone with virtually no background in chemistry (I'm actually a physics major right now in college, as well as a creative writing major, and I'm aiming to get a Ph.D. in physics. So maybe/hopefully I'll meet a chemist who can help me with this.). Actually, I'm just now realizing that the plants may not be blue, because even if they reflect blue light, all or most of the blue light is scattered in the atmosphere so they may not have any concentrated blue light to reflect. Would they be red? I remember at one point coming across a reason why the plants couldn't be red, but I don't recall the actual reason right now. If they're not green and they're not blue and they're not red, then what colors are left for them to be? Hmmm... maybe they would be very dark, almost black, perhaps with a slight blue tinge from the small amount of scattered blue light they're reflecting, and when you shine an artificial white light on them, they turn blue. Huh. THAT WOULD BE THE BEST. I'm just postulating here, I don't know how this would actually work. I need to research this further.

Whew, I think that's all. Well, no, not nearly. I could talk about my world for days, but I have to cut myself off somewhere. Hopefully this wasn't too much. Until next time!

[johnvanvliet]

for a full planet i use the USGS/JPL/NASA software "isis3 " ( working with real images from spacecraft )
also Gimp 2.9.3 ( development ! ) this handles 16 and 32 bit image depth
and Krita a image editor that handles 16 and 32 bit depth

and sometimes i use Qgis


i have also been known to use Blender 2.77 ( 3d software) and wilbur ( for eroding land masses )
wilbur is easier to use than the FORTRAN 90 code i could run

basically i make planets and moons and asteroids and comets fro the sim " Celestia"
( and some for space engine and stelliarium and a few other programs )

a few examples -- and some rather old ones
https://www.cartographersguild.com/a...p?albumid=4305

[waldronate]

I heartily recommend that you purchase FT3 because, well, because, ummm... Well $4 is $4 and I recommend purchasing a copy of FT3 if you can at all afford it.

One the subject of plant color, one suggestion for why "plants are green" is that their ancestors got the less desirable real estate deeper in the ocean, down under the surface dwellers. The rhodopsins in the surface dwelling beasties strongly absorbed green light (which is right at the peak of the sun's emissions and the most abundant part of the spectrum), meaning that only those critters possessing chlorophylls that could use the leftovers (red, blue, and a bit in the IR and UV) would go on to be the ancestors of modern green plants. Amusingly, descendants of some of those surface dwellers ended up giving rise to specialized light-sensing organelles in creatures that now eat those green plants. That is to say, you see the reflections of green plants more strongly than almost anything else you're likely to encounter in your environment...

There is no specific biochemical reason why plants are green (other than the green ones were more tolerant than the not-green ones at tolerating a noxious poison called oxygen): different chlorophylls and similar pigments reflect bands across the whole visible spectrum, plus a little. For a nice yellow star that peaks its energy output in the green area of the spectrum, any of those light-absorbing pigments would work, but things that strongly absorb in the green would be most efficient. Strongly absorbing in green leaves purplish. Add in a little red absorption and it's going to be blue.

At this point I would traditionally drag out my soapbox and prattle on with questions about the relevancy of these details to the stories that you want to tell, but I think that I'll try something new this time and not do any of that.

[markem]

I haven't been on for a while. Got sucked off to a company where I worked nine hours a day and rode the bus (3-4 hours both ways). So 16-17 hour days. Basically swallowed my whole life and left me totally exhausted. It has taken seven months to get back on my feet and I only just now feel like I might be able to work again. :-/

Anyway, all of that aside:

1. Campaign Cartographer uses what I call an archaic methodology to let you work on maps. By "archaic" I mean that the program was written when microcomputers first came along and it was written using FastCAD. FastCAD is a 2D CAD program that works how Architects USED to work before computers came along. So what you USED to do was to first decide everything about what you wanted to place on your drawing AND THEN you would set everything up AND THE apply your decision. A good example would be : You want to place a building on to a map. First you select which building you want to place, scale it to size, adjust the orientation, maybe the color of it, and then you apply it. But what if you are off by a few pixels? Well, IN THE OLD Campaign Cartographer you used to have to delete the image (which was a pain) and then reapply it. In the current version you can use the arrow keys to adjust your placement. CC3+ is one heck of a lot better than CC3 even. But, to me, it is still running in reverse. The good things about it are it has just a ton of images and you can also buy the Annuals and Add-ons as well as various artists also have things to sell. I own almost all of what they sell and I still use it occasionally. But not that much anymore.

2. Fractal Mapper from nBoss. I bought this a while back in the hopes that it would do what CC3 doesn't do. It is a good piece of software, very fast, has eliminated some of the drudgery CC3 inflicts on you - but it just isn't what I wanted in a program. Here is an example of what I mean: Let's say you want to draw an island. Fractal Mapper doesn't have a way to just draw a series of lines, in the general shape of what you want, and then to convert those lines over to being fractal lines. Or to put that another way - there is no way to bend a fractal line. You can draw straight lines and you can draw a lot of really short straight lines to make a curve - but you can't curve the fractal line. Also, one of my pet peeves is that all of the images are of various sizes. So a barrel is large - but an image of a horse is smaller than the barrel. (That is just an example - I forget just which ones are really large and which ones are small.) So you have to adjust everything to make it fit correctly. So over all I like FM8 but at the same time - I don't use it. Why? Well, mainly I like CAD programs and FM8 just isn't a CAD program.

3. MapX. You will have to search for this program. I really liked where it was going and then *POOF* it was gone. MapX combined a CAD program's way of doing things with a forwards-thinking way of applying everything. So you could set your scale for the entire map, everything adjusted accordingly (so a horse was a horse and a barrel was a barrel) and just apply things. Unfortunately - it crashed a lot thus taking everything with it when it went. :-( But the last version I got worked pretty well and I used this program to do quite a few things.

4. AutoCAD. Like CC3 (after all the inventor of FastCAD was also the inventor of AutoCAD) you do a lot of things in reverse. If you have ever programmed - look at LISP. It works the same way. Or Postscript. Soft of an RPN thing. Very powerful but also frustrating to use.

5. DungeonMapper. Abandonware also. It worked similar to MapX but it crashed so much I stopped trying to use it.

6. Fireworks. Used to be owned by MacroMedia - now owned by Adobe. This really under-sold program does everything you need to create maps. It uses vector shapes so you can resize them to your heart's content, you have a massive number of modifications you can make to anything, it contains brushes and allows you to create brushes so you can make realistic smoke come out of your chimneys. The biggest tihng about Fireworks is the vector aspect of it. Fireworkd combines the best of Adobe Photoshop with Adobe's Illustrator making it really easy to just be an artist. You can also create your own libraries of items. Which makes it really nice to produce maps. Especially with the drag-n-drop outlook.

7. Photoshop/GIMP. A LOT OF PEOPLE USE THESE. With some simple training that you can get from YouTube you can produce some fantastic images with these programs. However, they are flat. In other words - once you've made them it can be a pain in the butt to change them. Especially if, like me - the dummy, you forget to NOT FLATTEN YOUR IMAGES. Having ten or so layers allows you to also hide/show various layers. The main thing here though is that you are making pretty pictures to look at - not use in a game. Because it really isn't the right tool for usage in a game. It IS the right tool to make absolutely awesome images though. So if that is what you want to do - go for it! :-)

8. Inkscape. Now we come to something that you CAN use to do maps and such but you can also use in an actual game. Inkscape is a vector based 2D CAD system. It has a lot of tools that you can use to do all sorts of things and it also has layers so you can place objects on various layers, cover them up, hide them, reveal them, and so forth. It also comes with a built-in programming language (either Python or Lua - I forget which). So you can program it to do all sorts of things and, unlike CC3, you do it in a more forwards (or intuitive) style/way. I am sure people who are now used to how CC3 or FM8 work will say otherwise. What I say to them is: The difference between PageMaker and Microsoft Word is that PageMaker works in the same manner as CC3 and Inkscape works in the same manner as Microsoft Word. That is why MS Word is the #1 word processor in the world instead of PageMaker (which actually is now called InDesign by Adobe).

9. Visio. Finally comes Visio (my favorite). Visio is what Inkscape is based off of. I have Visio 2003. With it I have made maps, diagrams, dungeons, countrysides, and lots of other things. You can also make your own libraries (which are called stencils). Visio USED TO BE the #1 2D CAD program in the world and was used by almost every single business to draw their network diagrams, seating charts, and tons of other things. Then Microsoft decided, after 2003, to make it in to a drawing program with a dash of 2D CAD on the side. This is the same route Deneba's CANVAS program took. Didn't like it with CANVAS - don't really like it with Visio. This is why Visio is kind-of falling by the wayside with businesses. There are a lot of places that need a decent 2D CAD program because it is really hard for a lot of people to look at and understand a 3D CAD wire drawing. Especially since those lines criss-cross all over the place. A 2D CAD program though - you just put each layer of a building on a separate layer and turn off what you don't want to see. Anyway, Visio is intuitive and easy to use. You can also work with bitmap images. Best of all - it uses VBA. So if you already know VBA (I do not) then you would have no problem making Visio do all sorts of things. I'm a programmer by trade - but mainly C/C++, BASIC, FORTRAN, COBOL, PL/I, Pascal, Chess, SPSS, PHP, Perl, Javascript, HTML, XHTML, DHTML, CSS, XML, JSON, and a lot more - but not VBA. Never learned it. Been slowly but surely trying to learn it - but not there yet. When I DO get there I'm going to be writing some really nice mapping routines to draw random hills, mountains, rivers, and the like. You can see some of my older Visio drawings in my folder.

Visio drawbacks: Although I love Visio - I have to tell you abuot its drawbacks. The first one is - it is a memory hog. A 5K image can take up ato 1MB of space in Visio. Why? I have no idea. I didn't write the program. :-) It just is. Next to Adobe's Photoshop, Visio is like a pig next to a thoroughbred horse. (Phtoshop has always had excellent memory/hard drive interfaces and never runs out of memory.) My biggest map I ever did made it so I could load in the map and I could save the map. Nothing else worked. Further, if Visio gets too many images (not vector shapes - but bitmapped images like PNG, JPG, etc...) it starts showing rectangles with a big "X" draw across them. Now - granted it usually takes about a gigabyte of memory usage to make it start doing this - but it does it non-the-less. And it is always SURPRISE! White box time! That is to say - you never know when it is going to happen or why. (Yet another reason I want to figure out how to do VBA scripting.) Last, but not least, you can go way overboard in making your stencils until you have so many stencils - it is just as bad as having no stencils. Visio will sit there for up to ten minutes while it makes a menu of all of your stencils. So just loading in the stencils can take quite a while.

Ok - so - I use Visio because I like it. I can whip out a dungeon in about an hour, completely stocked with monsters, treasures, and so forth. But there is more to Visio: Like PowerPoint, you can set visio up to open up new files with a single click. You can make Visio close the current file also. You can have multiple sheets in a single document like Excel. You can, with a single click, move from one sheet to another. With that same click you can also make it move your character's figures from the previous sheet to the new sheet. You can make an animation play, you can make things fade in and out - just like in PowerPoint. In fact, Visio does everything that PowerPoint does, has a built-in word processor that works almost like MS. Word does, you can use a database with it (MS SQL, Access, or even MySQL) and just like Excel you can do calculations or pull records in to Visio or export them to the database. It does graphs. It will do inventories for you. Just attach it to an item like a chest and suddenly you've got an inventory. Best of all - EVERY SINGLE MICROSOFT PRODUCT will interact with Visio. So if you want to write a lead-in to a game you can do so inside of Visio OR use MS Word and then import your graphic images from Visio in to MS Word. Not only THAT - but you can edit your layouts FROM WITHIN THE OTHER MICROSOFT PRODUCT. So you don't have to go back to Visio, make the changes, copy everything, and go paste it back in to Word - you just double click the Visio entry and Visio automatically boots up, pulls the graphics over, lets you edit it, and then you tell Visio to put it back and it saves it and then updates the Word document. (Or PowerPoint, Access, or whatever) It truly is integrated into the entire Office product line as well as everything else Microsoft makes. Like Visual Studio. One more reason I like Visio is because it interfaces with a LOT of non-Microsoft programs also. And you can even set up pages in Visio 2003 (I don't know about later versions) to be displayed on the web. In fact, you can set up web pages inside of Visio that will accept input and store the input into your database. And you can tell Visio to save these pages as executable files that you can send to other people so they can do all of their grunt work of setting up their characters and then send that back to you. You almost - but not quite - can run an entire game from Visio. But you can't because the one thing it won't do - is act as a webserver. It won't do that. So my frustration is - I can do a LOT of what I want to do to run a game in Visio - but I can't actually run a game from within Visio. (Not to mention I have no idea just how much memory it would require to even start doing it.)

This is one of the reasons I recently bought Visual FoxPro v9.0. Microsoft has abandoned Visual FoxPro so you can now get it fairly cheaply. It used to cost around $700. Visual FoxPro, once you understand it, (I think) it will do everything that Visio does PLUS act as a webserver. At least that is my hope because Visual FoxPro also works with Visio and I can transfer everything over to it. They talk about the advanced graphics capabilities and I am hoping some of those capabilities is to handle vector graphics. I guess I will find out soon enough. :-) Visual FoxPro may soon become my best friend for doing everything. :-)

Anyway - that is my $0.02 worth. Have fun! :-)

[EpicBradley129]

@ All

Thanks for the responses guys, I appreciate it. Just wanted to say that before I respond to each of you individually.


@ johnvanvliet

I looked up the software you suggested, and those are some really interesting, unexpected programs. I like the idea of using software created for actual scientific research, but I'm not sure that those programs are useful to me at this time. It seems like the programs you suggested that aren't pure graphical software, which won't help me make my maps realistic, take data sets and create maps from those, and I do not have such data on my world. I think it would be really great to eventually accumulate that level of data on my world, but right now I don't even know if that's possible, and if it is I certainly don't know how to do it such that these programs could use it. Maybe I'm not understanding the functionality of these programs, but right now they don't seem like what I need. In a few years, however, they could be perfect for me.


@ waldronate

Yeah I like what I'm hearing/reading about FT3. I think that's the program for me.

Question: when you said

One the subject of plant color, one suggestion for why "plants are green" is that their ancestors got the less desirable real estate deeper in the ocean, down under the surface dwellers.

did you mean that that is a real world theory about how plant life evolved on Earth, or that it is a suggestion for what I could use for my fictional planet?

Also, you seem like you're quite knowledgeable in this subject. Would you mind telling me your credentials in this area? Or if you're just a guy who googles things - like me - could you possibly link me to some sources? I'd like to learn more about this if I can.

In response to the question you didn't ask, the need to justify worldbuilding details by their relevance to the stories set in that world assumes that the stories take precedence over the world. At least in my case, that assumption is just flat out wrong. I am a worldbuilder at heart, perhaps even more so than a story teller, so I like fleshing out my worlds to the best of my ability even when those details are not necessary for the story. There is, of course, some worldbuilding that would actively detract from the story. For example, if I really wanted to make my world seem alien, I could create a whole new numbering system, one that's base-8 or base-16. But then nearly everyone reading my stories would have no idea what any of the numbers are, which would create a lot of confusion within the stories. That would be a poor choice to make. The color of the plants, however, is something I can describe without explanation, even if there is an in depth explanation for it, and it won't create any confusion. There's no reason not to do this, so I'm going to do it. Honestly, this question irritates me somewhat, because ultimately my answer is "because I want to," and having people continually question that desire makes me feel like they see my interests as pointless. Which is not to say that I'm irritated at you right now; it was a fair comment to make. I apologize if I came off as stand off-ish in this paragraph.

Also, making Salvumar's plants non-green highlights the differences between it and Earth, which drives home the "you're not in Kansas anymore" feeling I want to invoke at the beginning of the story set in this world. So there is that story-related reason.


@ markem

Wow, that's a lot of information. A lot of it was pretty technical for a noob like me, so I'm not sure I fully understood everything you said, but I think I got the gist. What I'm getting right now is that, for my specific needs, either CC3 + FT3 or Fractal Mapper 8.0 are my best bets. Do you (or anyone else) know if there are any features that FM8 offers that FT3 does not, or vice versa? At this point I'm pretty sure I'm going to get CC3 + FT3, if only because with all it's add-ons it covers every level of scale from the solar system to the rooms of buildings. I want to know if there's anything that FM8 has that I'd miss out on with CC3 + FT3 + other add-ons.

[waldronate]

did you mean that that is a real world theory about how plant life evolved on Earth, or that it is a suggestion for what I could use for my fictional planet?

Both! One set of theories regarding evolution here at home is that there has been a long succession of successful biosystems, each being replaced by a different system. In this particular discussion, an extremely successful biosystem that ruled the planet for hundreds of millions of years was replaced by an upstart after the successful one poisoned itself with oxygen (look up the origin of "banded iron formations" for discussions on this subject).

Also, you seem like you're quite knowledgeable in this subject. Would you mind telling me your credentials in this area? Or if you're just a guy who googles things - like me - could you possibly link me to some sources? I'd like to learn more about this if I can.

Yes, I seem like I'm knowledgeable on lots of subjects. I've been studying these sorts of things for nigh on thirty years now, I've read an awful lot on the subject, and I tend to remember a whole lot of what I read. As far as credentials, I have a piece of paper that says that my butt spent two years in a chair at a community college. I have some other papers as well, and I wrote Fractal Terrains for ProFantasy as well as Wilbur for my own amusement.

[markem]

Hmmmmmm.....a bit of overkill I guess. :-)

To answer your question - I have not used Fractal Terrain so I can not comment on it. I have used Fractal Mapper from nBoss. I do not think the two are the same kind of program. Fractal Mapper is more like CC3. Fractal Terrain is more of a terrain or world builder program. CC3 & FM8 are more like you want to build a part of your world - like a valley - or a city - or an area near a city. That kind of thing.

You can try FM8 (if I remember correctly) for 30 days before you have to buy it.

You can try Visio 2000 if you go to https://winworldpc.com/. Visio 2000 is considered abandoware. But depending upon how you feel about such things - it can be a good way to at least try out Visio and see how it works. You can always remove it from your system afterwards.

I am not sure if CC3 has a trial period that you can use the software for but if it does I would do that. The same with Fractal Terrain.

MapX (If you can find it) is also abandonware. I just looked and I have the downloads for MapX. So if you need them let me know and I can send them to you. (I tend to buy and/or archive just about everything I have ever come across that works with RPG games. Sort of a pack rat when it comes to RPG games. Not - online games - but like PCGen, MapX, RPG Tools, things from SourceForge - basically anything that is free I try and usually store). So anyway - try it before you buy it is my motto. Of course, I usually wind up buying it too! :-P

About winworld: They only have abandonware software. All of the versions of Visio they have are before Microsoft bought the company. The 2010 version they have is beta-ware and was given away by Microsoft. Which means you would still have to actually buy the 2010 version. (I have not downloaded any of the versions although I do own the 2000 and 2003 versions.) Anyway, to get to the software you have to click on the word "Library" next to the WinWorld logo. Then go to something like screen #23 and look for the "V"s. WinWorld is a great trip down memory lane. I actually recognize a lot of the software they have on there because I've used it in the past. Heh. Showing my age here. :-)

PS: If you click on my Photo Album below you will be taken there. All of the images there were done with Visio. Not the hand drawn stuff - the OTHER stuff. :-) At the same time - you should go look at some of the stuff done by others with Photoshop. Some of those just blow me away. :-)

[ladiestorm]

I don't use FM8, so I don't know much about it... but my friend, Mark Oliva uses it, so I do know one thing FM8 offers, that cc3+/ FT3 doesn't offer. Open source mapping. I use cc+3/cd3/dd3, and I know that when my maps are complete, they are done. If you were to download one of my maps, you would get what you see. You can't change them, you can't alter them... they are complete. The only way you would be able to alter one of my maps, is if you have cc3+, and my fcw, which I almost never post.

FM8, on the other hand, produces maps that can be changed, or altered to fit what you need.

So what does cc3+ offer that FM8 doesn't? From what I can tell, with all the add ons and things... more versatility, and overall better looking maps. the cc3+ maps are a little more polished, although some would say they tend to be cartoonish... but then, you are mapping fantasy worlds... so, as in all things, it comes down to personal preference. Both Waldronate and I use cc3+, although I don't have FT3...yet! Mark Oliva, on this site uses FM8. Feel free to check out the maps we've made, and it will give you a feel for what you will get.

LoopySue on the profantasy site uses FT3, so you could check out her maps there, as well. I don't know if she's in the guild or not.

Bottom line is this... get the program that works best for what you want to do. We can tell you what each product offers, but we can't tell you which one is the best... because we don't know what will best fit your needs. Only you can determine that.

[markem]

@ladiestorm : Well said! :-)

[Mark Oliva]

The only way you would be able to alter one of my maps, is if you have cc3+, and my fcw, which I almost never post.

Even then, it would work only if the user who downloaded your FCW had all of the symbols and fill styles that you used in exactly the same folder that you do. If not, red Xs start to appear where symbols and fills should be. FM8 allows users to decide whether they embed symbols in their maps. If the symbols are embedded, they also are accessible to users who don't have them installed on their computers. However, this difference isn't very important to most users, because they aren't trying to create maps for other people to modify.

So what does cc3+ offer that FM8 doesn't? From what I can tell, with all the add ons and things... more versatility, and overall better looking maps. the cc3+ maps are a little more polished, although some would say they tend to be cartoonish... but then, you are mapping fantasy worlds... so, as in all things, it comes down to personal preference. Both Waldronate and I use cc3+, although I don't have FT3...yet! Mark Oliva, on this site uses FM8. Feel free to check out the maps we've made, and it will give you a feel for what you will get.

One of the big differences between CC3/CC3+ on the one hand and FM8 and Dundjinni on the other that LadieStorm did not mention (and probably doesn't know) is that CC3/CC3+ have huge learning curves, where Dundjinni and FM8 are relatively simple in interface steering and can be learned quickly.

I have CC3, CC3+, FM8 and Dundjinni. I would argue that FM8 can duplicate almost anything that you can do with CC3+ and that you can duplicate almost anything that I could do with FM8 with CC3+. However, I would urge guild members not to follow this advice ...

Feel free to check out the maps we've made, and it will give you a feel for what you will get.

... as far as our FM8 maps are concerned. Our Vintyri Project maps by no means show what FM8 can do. We make our maps for our Dungeons Daring (TM) RPG and our Jörðgarð (TM) campaign setting, where a key goal of ours is to keep our maps relatively simple technically so that users with relatively little technical knowledge can go in and modify the maps to fit their campaigns' needs. For that reason, our maps are not representative of what FM8 can do, and they shouldn't be used for quality comparisons.

Bottom line is this... get the program that works best for what you want to do. We can tell you what each product offers, but we can't tell you which one is the best... because we don't know what will best fit your needs. Only you can determine that.

This, on the other hand, is excellent advice. With CC3+, ProFantasy gives you a 14-day return-and-get-your-money-back right, so you can test it for two weeks at no risk. FM8 has a free trial version and free tutorials that you can use forever. One of the main differences is that the trial version cannot print maps.