New to Digital Cartography? Software General Information

[Redrobes]

SOLVED!

Wow, cool. I have no idea what this does so ill look it up. Why do you think its conflicting then ?

[Redrobes]

...culprit was CircleDock. Unfortunately, it's something I have open and use all of the time. I shall report the issue, but unfortunately again the developer seems to have been taken over by real life a few months ago. Anyway, I have reinstalled VD and will have a look; I'm willing to spend some time without CircleDock, every now and then at least

You have a very large RAM card so it ought to be able to store textures for big icons and have enough RAM to keep several screens going with 3D accel. The only thing I can think of is that circledock is continuously loading textures and rendering all the time and burning all the power. My main app goes idle when it stops moving and updating and it defers to other apps a lot too so its likely to come off worst in a duke out for resources. The test app should hog it a bit more tho for the 30 secs but I am not making any significant hard effort to take over the machine for the 30 secs - the expectation is that the machine is idle when you run it.

[dormouse]

CircleDock is just a program launching dock.
Whereas RocketDock and ObjectDock are fixed at the side of the monitor, CircleDock comes up where the mouse is. I use a redundant button to bring it up and send it away. It means that all my program icons are just an inch or so away from where the mouse is. And since I use the mouse nearly all the time rather than the keyboard, it works better than anything else for me.

Here's a picture of my CircleDock with one set of programs to launch (I have a number of sets depending on what I intend to be doing).

[Redrobes]

Cool and useful I should think. It still does not seem like an app that would kill the 3D power of your card tho. If the icons were not on the screen then presumably its just in the background idle.

Anyway, are you getting several hundred frames per sec from the test app now ? If you get a rock solid 60, 75 or 80 then its probably locking to the monitor vsync. In that case it ought to be set to 'automatic', or 'under app control' or if all else then 'off' in the driver opengl setup page.

[dormouse]

On the TestApp it is now 300+ with CircleDock off, and a very low (but somewhat variable) number with it on. And with it hidden, it just sits in the system tray waiting to be called, so shouldn't be doing anything (and doesn't seem to according to Process Explorer etc). Certainly did not expect it to be having any impact at all - and wasn't for most of the progs I use.

So looks good for testing VD.

[RobA]

And since I use the mouse nearly all the time rather than the keyboard, it works better than anything else for me.

Funny I'm the exact opposite (more on keyboard than mouse) so I use Launchy and find myself habitually hitting alt-space on machines without it

-Rob A>

[dormouse]

Yes, people tend to be keyboard or mice biased. I don't mind keyboard shortcuts when I'm typing, but if I can get away without the keyboard completely for something, I do.

And for someone who is mouse based, who has tons of progs, files etc to launch and 2 large monitors, the amount of time saved by having a dock which always appears by the mouse cursor is enormous. Only have to move the mouse an inch instead of 12 or 24 inches. CircleDock was a real revelation when it came out - so it is very concerning to see that it may cause some dramatic slowing in graphics (even of the type I rarely use).

For myself, when I am in keyboard country, I prefer FARR to Launchy (we mice have to stick together ).

[dormouse]

Having been tempted to look at a lot of products, I think I will probably end up doing a review.

Haven't completely worked out the methodology yet, but will involve using each prog to do a range of maps of types that I find useful as a DM (ie won't include maps designed primarily beauty or for use in books, games etc; they are surely always best done in PS/GIMP etc anyway). Ease of use and time taken to do each map will be important factors (as they are to me in real life), and the maps will be there at the end to be compared. Not sure of the range of maps yet - island/continent, local area (eg village/woodland), battlemap building (+ area outside or wood), battlemap dungeon, VTT, old-style TSR/DungeonCrafter scale. Will probably use the same images in each, but haven't finally decided that since some progs come with their own and maybe shouldn't be deprived of any advantage that gives them.

Haven't decided all the progs to do yet.
DungeonForge and MapX (of course).
Dundjinni, Fractal Mapper 8, Campaign Cartographer 3 (again of course).
Don't know whether I should include Dungeon Designer 3 and City Designer 3; they do exist but adding them really puts up the price of the Profantasy progs to being much more expensive than the others.
ViewingDale (though I'm not sure it is best described as a mapping program).
MapTool (would that mean I needed to do BRPG and other VTTs too?)
I won't include DungeonCrafter (1 too limited, 2 unfinished and fairly limited by current standards, 3 barely started). Haven't decided about AutoREALM.
I won't include PS (seems like overkill, and massively expensive) but will include PSE; will also include the GIMP and Paint.net.
And maybe others will turn up as I go along.

I'll post a link here once I actually produce something, but it won't be soon. Will take me a while to decide on methodology, design the basic maps, decide on the images/textures. That will probably be 2 or 3 months. And it will take time to make sure I'm properly familiar with each prog, so will probably produce them at approximately monthly intervals.

I like messing about with software, so I'll find it an interesting project to do.

[trevor]

Awesome, looking forward to what you come up with !

[RPMiller]

I will be most interested in how the various VTTs compare to each other. I have wanted to do some mapping comparisons between the most popular ones, but I can't possibly afford to buy all of them.