I've been away from the forums for a while I was over seas for the summer, now I'm back. I've found a great game, that can also be used for mapping! Now, the game is called Minecraft. It's currently in Alpha development but it has a huge community with over 100 thousand copies sold already.

The game is about two obvious things: Mining and Crafting.
Essentially you mine blocks, and then use those blocks to either build structures or craft items (sword, axe, pickaxe, etc.). In single player there are mobs (or bad guys) that come out at night, ie. Zombies, Skeletons. This can be turned off if you use the Peaceful game setting.

You have five save slots (You can delete saves of course), in single player and every single time each world is generated randomly, so no two single player files will be the same.

Here is an image of a castle built in minecraft (Not mine, image taken from google):


Now, there is a program written by a community member that will render out your world, into a map layout.

Last night I started work on a castle and here are two renders of it from the Cartography program the community member has written.




As you can see, adding more and more detail will make the maps look much better.

I should note, that building large cities in single player will take you a long time, however is there is multiplayer servers! And you can collaborate with anyone to build vast cities!

Currently the game is 50% off while in alpha, but there is no telling when alpha will be over. The game has progressed fairly far already.

Minecraft.net
If you have Minecraft the Cartography program can be downloaded here http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewto...p?f=25&t=13134

If you'd like to know more, post away and I'll answer as best I can.
Also, if this is the wrong forum I apologize.