Need some help with my world.

[xorpion]

What i would LIKE to do, is something like google maps, where you have the overhead view, but can zoom in to see a closer view. not exactly to the level of detail in google maps, but to a topographical point where you can zoom in on where a city/town/village might be. i dont need the program i design this with the have the functionality of google maps, i just need something that will let me design an entire planet with i little bit of detail for zooming in.

i have no idea what program i could use, i'm very new to this world/map designing thing. any and all tips and suggestions would be helpful immensely.

i actually have a fair bit of detail written out for this world, if someone was even willing to design it for me that would be awesome.

[kestrelgrey]

Hey! Looks like you're a new member, so welcome! This sounds like a really interesting. I've been looking into this myself, so maybe I can help out. If you don't need the functionality of google maps, you could try doing something with Flash, or layered images on a webpage. It would also help to have a vector map of the world, rather than a raster image, so you can build the map and then zoom in and out without losing the clean lines. I guess a couple questions:

1) How many "zoom levels" are you interested in? do you want to be able to zoom in to see individual buildings, like google "map" view? Or do you just want to zoom in far enough to see most streets (like google "map + terrain" view?
2) Do you have a whole planet you're "working down from", or do you have various areas/regions that you'd want to have zoomable maps for, and then you'd add to those?
3) How big is/are the area(s) you want mapped for zooming?
4) Not entirely relevant, but is this a more "low fantasy"/"medieval" style map/world, or are you doing something more modern? This more affects the "look" of the maps themselves, really.

I'm working on some stylized maps right now, but I can also create vector maps and I sort of know Flash, so if you need any help with this, let me know. I'd love to help. Good luck! ^-^

[Vellum]

Xorpion welcome to the site. I'd be interested to see how this works myself, sounds like and interesting project.

[jtougas]

Welcome to the Guild.

[Redrobes]

Hi xorpion and welcome, I write ViewingDale which is purpose designed to do that zoom job. It doesn't have "levels" as such. It zooms through an infinite hierarchy which you can edit using the app. We run the CWBP here - the community world building project where we have many maps at various stages of scale and resolutions and I have combined them all into the one zoom world using it. You can see a you tube vid of that here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qELcbKXdRm8

You can do something similar with other applications. I think Fractal Mapper might have similar zoom capability. You can also prerender the whole map in high res into tiles and put them into a tile based web server app like GeoServer or WorldWind etc. The only issue there is that its hard to modify any part of the map without re-rendering the composite as a whole and redoing the tiles.

Anyway, if your interested then the link is in my sig for the website. Theres a few tutorials and other resources on this site which you can get with a search or a look at the keyword index - also in my sig.

[Jaxilon]

Ah...RR got here before me but I was going to mention ViewingDale but he does a nice job of letting folks know about his wares while not becoming a rabid salesman. I like that

You might also check out "Zoomit". I just tried it using one of my old images and it seems like it creates a slightly less detailed or clear image but nicely zoomable.
Here is a link to the full sized original for comparison sake.

[Redrobes]

Hex that's cool - I didn't know about zoom it. It seems like a real easy way to get an image onto a pan/zoom interface. I agree tho that the image quality at max zoom is not as good as your original tho.

[amberroberts09]

Welcome to the Cartographers Guild.

[xorpion]

Alright, so I have not posted in a while. Tried to expend all the resources i could before coming back. I have not been able to find anything that can help me to design an entire planet's map. i have all the specs down, the level of detail i have on paper brings a pretty clear image to mind, but no program i have found has been sufficient in producing that image.

Can anyone help me out? even if I give the specs, could someone with some level of skill higher than mine (nearly zero :p) possibly sketch this map out for me? I'm pretty sure i have enough detail to give that no matter what is made, it will meet/exceed my expectations.

I've been trying to find a way to represent this world i have created in an image for my records for my D&D campaign for the last 4 years. As I have yet to start running this campaign due to not having this map, I would like to get this done A.S.A.P. Any help would be appreciated.

(kind of a newb to cartography)