Aloha! Irish Amateur Cartographer and aspiring author here :)

[AsDuskFalls]

Hi all!

I'm Darragh (AsDuskFalls) and I'm an aspiring cartographer from Ireland. I've been working on a fantasy novel series for a number of years and I discovered my burgeoning love for cartography when I decided to try and create a map for the series. My main continent is conveniently separated into regions held by different races so I sketched their respective regions by hand, then scanned and imported these sketches into GIMP and used them as the basis for building a complete map of the continent. I had a look at a number of different mapping software options but I opted for GIMP so I could really tailor the look and feel and also so I could develop my graphic design skills. I get distracted easily with all of the other aspects of writing and world building, so I haven't done much more with it so far but I am planning on creating separate regional maps and getting into city/town maps for key story areas too. I'll post it to the WIP section as well but here's what I've done thus far:

PrimaryMap-overview-coloured.jpg

One question I have right off the bat, is are there any methods/tools/software that would allow me to create a zoomable map in the vein of Google Maps? I'd love to end up with an interactive map readers can refer to that they can zoom in on without it all turning into a pixelated mess and without having to work on a 15,000px X 15,000px file in order to have enough detail at high zoom levels. Ideally I'd love a solution that doesn't involve using Vector art as I haven't been able to get my head around drawing with Vector art software yet.