If this:
http://www.viewing.ltd.uk/Temp/CG/VD...gDale_x264.avi
is what your interested in then a) See my sig and b) enter this months challenge cos I am giving 3 copies away to top three winners by vote !
I was actually very interested in this. I was wanting to have a map interface that not only had a zoom interface, but also a "plotting" mechanism that showed the progress/travels of adventuring groups. Haven't found something that had the latter without delving far into flash though.Originally Posted by Redrobes
The app does not have any drawing tools in it but it can drop a lot of icons down before it slows down at all. So you can drop dots, arrows or lines down. It has a pathing tool so that you can drop multiple items down based on the mouse move. Here is that demo vid showing its options.
http://www.viewing.ltd.uk/Temp/CG/VD_Demo6/Pathing.avi
Basically the app is a map manager with loads of tokens which you can add or update over the net which turns it into a pan and zoom based VTT so it had a chat and multiple client interfaces added. Anyway, you can update any of the images using a paint package and reimport those images in and it will add it to the view. I.e. the map you see is not a frozen version, its dynamic like in the way I moved some of those barriers and path tokens. Certainly a vector app like Inkscape is going to do better paths and PS / Gimp has the raster paint facility and this app does not do that but conversely this does the compositing of multiple inkscape and PS images maintaining scale into your world and links that with text, documents, photos, art, web pages and of course other maps. So thats what this one is all about.
Theres a free demo on the website tho there is no import / export with it.
After reading about this i've decided to design my atlas in the google map style and by doing so supply you all with a tutorial since i come from a programming background i cant see this being an issue.
I've managed to doodle my map, but i simply cant get it to look right. Please bare with me
Redrobes: Awesome program. I really like it and it's something I'm definitly going to keep in mind for future purchase. The only thing is that it doesn't quite match my purposes. Since ady is offering to freely teach me how to do it myself that's what I'd rather do. I'm more of the "Teach a man to fish" type than the "Give a man a fish". Plus, the main feature I'm looking for is the ability to put it up online so that myself AND my players can pull up the map at any time whether we're at the game table or not.
Ady: I await your tutorial with great anticipation.
Thanks tommy. Heres the situation summary. Using Google Maps is better because a) its free and b) if you can find a good host then its online all the time. Using Google Maps is worse because a) it only serves flat images so that you cant change the maps in any way without uploading a whole new set of tiles. Its good for non editable maps - you have to have the maps in some other app and generate the tile set from it. That app has to be able to store huge maps or have levels of detail tile sets all of its own. So you may require a zoom capable map editor to even get at something that will generate the tiles for you. At least if you want more than about a 3 level deep tile zoom range. I have seen loads of people do the GMaps stuff but other than google I have never yet seen anyone do one that is deeper than just a few levels. The best I ever saw is SeerBlue's thing on here with the CWBP mainly covering my Thrubmorton tile 7. Search for that post cos it had some info on how to do it. There are some flash web things too. There is one where its a tunnel of art with the middle bit of the art joining up to the next bit and it goes on and on until it loops back to the original. Its well cool. Ill try to find the link and edit it in if I can.
I would be interested in Ady's and anyones scripts to generate the data to go with tiles and the tile breaker app too. I think with some python, perl and some image magick it could be done pretty easily. I think that some of the GIS apps can do it. I think it was either GeoControl or was it Global Mapper that could do it. Theres must be other ways too. I am sure there are some web sites where you load big images in and it does it for you but not more than one big image.
Finally I should mention that as of V1.08 (current latest), which all the version patches are free for the boxed app, there is a built in web server so that any browser can obtain PNG images served from the one app hosting. That does mean that the app has to be running for the duration you want it serving and the right map loaded and you have to set your networking up to allow a port to forward to the app through NAT routers etc i.e. the usual faff for serving something networking from local machine but it will allow a position X,Y and Zoom scale and image size to be requested and it returns back a web page showing the image. Obviously its static and you cant do much with it other than to request another image a bit to one side or more or less zoomed in etc. When connected as a VTT then clients can connect in and move their character tokens about and the GM can move the map about for the clients and all the usual VTT goodness in real time - but you need to be connected with the app for each person. Its the same app for player clients and GM server.
Edit - This is the thread
http://www.cartographersguild.com/fo...s-for-the-CWBP
This is the almost but not quite working page its referring to. Whats a google maps API key then ? And this is maybe another reason why its not as simple as it ought to be.
http://www.me-dem.org/maps/InsCarto/...Maps/Gmaps.htm
Zoom Quilt:
http://zoomquilt2.madmindworx.com/zoomquilt2.swf
Ahh it was indeed Global Mapper. Useful page of info here - most from SeerBlue:
http://www.cartographersguild.com/fo...le-street-maps
Last edited by Redrobes; 01-20-2010 at 08:51 PM.
I attempted this a while back:
Link
I took ages trying to find out how to do this, and it appears that Microsoft have a product call Deep Zoom Composer that can do it all for you (apart from draw your map of course)
Deep Zoom Composer
Hope this is what you are looking for. :-)
lots of great stuff here
thx
-p
Another option, which eliminates the annoyance of an API Key and gives you more freedom than Google Maps is OpenLayers.
It supports simple single images, "Tiled Map Services" (static image tiles in a particular arrangement), Web Map Services and Web Feature Services (Advanced services provided by special map servers), and non-standard map services like OSM, Google Maps, and Bing Maps.
PS: Didn't notice this was a necrothread.
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