Other World Mapper (mapping software), feedback request and future changes

[OWM]

(I say "household" and that may be confusing. Other World Mapper is for commercial use as well, only distinction there is that we ask you get a copy per user - but it can still be installed to multiple computers)

[Tiana]

Great, thanks. I have purchased, and I am now testing it on a commission. Further notes.

The delete / backspace doesn't work to remove anything on the Mac version. I have to go through the menu.

I would like a way to easily control a reference image's transparency, right now the only way I've found to get a reference is to set it as the background, and then I can only manipulate it from that specific panel... I'd like it to be in the layers.

Features: Create a random island with one click. Easy frame tools, with an option for a few plain frames and maybe the ability to place bumpers for icons, and a larger region for a label. Draw a custom shaped box to add to a wall, not just a square, circle, or polygon. When you hit undo, don't reset which tool it's on. When you click on the group for a layer set, don't jump to the bottom (I have only done this to merge the layers, which I have to do from the top). Make it possible to adjust the layer order from the layer panel instead of just from the menu.

The map I'm making is a black and white street map with a wall, and the program is perfect for the purpose though. Really overall impressed by how well the roads are coming together.

[OWM]

Thank you!

On your feedback, some comments and questions below. Thank you for the detailed feedback!

The delete / backspace doesn't work to remove anything on the Mac version. I have to go through the menu.

Will fix with the next release

I would like a way to easily control a reference image's transparency, right now the only way I've found to get a reference is to set it as the background, and then I can only manipulate it from that specific panel... I'd like it to be in the layers.

You should be able to manipulate everything from there...but you are right it ends up buried. We'll look into adding it as its own layer rather than it be the canvas background.

Create a random island with one click.

Next release is adding a fill mode to create island groups (or a single island) from an arbitrary shape, so not quite single click. We'll look into also added a way to do this with a single click.

Easy frame tools, with an option for a few plain frames

Do you mean overall map frame? You can add those from the Map menu, or do you mean frames around labels/text?

maybe the ability to place bumpers for icons and a larger region for a label.

Could you elaborate on these two points? Thank you!!

Draw a custom shaped box to add to a wall, not just a square, circle, or polygon.

What do you mean with custom shaped box? Right now you can draw arbitrary lines and curves when on "pen" mode.

When you hit undo, don't reset which tool it's on.

Which tool were you on? This sounds like a bug, undo/redo shouldn't change the current too.

When you click on the group for a layer set, don't jump to the bottom (I have only done this to merge the layers, which I have to do from the top).

Good point. We'll fix.

Make it possible to adjust the layer order from the layer panel instead of just from the menu.

You can currently drag/drop from the layer panel. Would it be helpful to add other ways to change the layer order from there?

The map I'm making is a black and white street map with a wall, and the program is perfect for the purpose though. Really overall impressed by how well the roads are coming together.

That's really awesome to hear! I've feel street mapping is one of the weakest parts of OWM, so that's nice to hear . Planning to add more tools and functionality to the city tools soon.

Again, thank you for all the detailed feedback! Please

[Tiana]

Next release is adding a fill mode to create island groups (or a single island) from an arbitrary shape, so not quite single click. We'll look into also added a way to do this with a single click.

Sounds good to me, honestly I was just thinking of the people who don't draw with that suggestion, since some of your tools definitely target them. (For myself, I was VERY happy drawing the islands in with the fractal tool in the map I show later on)

You can currently drag/drop from the layer panel.

Yes, I can drag and drop say, a wall to be higher than another wall within the 'walls' folder. But because every time I click on the group, it jumps me to the bottom. If I collapse the group and then click on it, it opens the group and jumps me to the bottom. Thus, I've found it impossible to move an entire layer group higher or lower via the layers panel. The time I had to adjust the layering, I did it by right clicking the vector and pulling it to the top. I see I could right click to do it, but I feel like I should be able to drag.

Would it be helpful to add other ways to change the layer order from there?

My most used keyboard shortcuts in Illustrator are the "move this object up one/down one layer" "move this object to the top/bottom" and "lock object".

Could you elaborate on these two points? Thank you!!

Re: corner bumpers. I have discovered your border tool and it does NEARLY what I wanted. Am I able to bring my own custom art into it? I see I'm stuck with your colors as well. But it's not bad.

Here's a fantasy map I did with an elaborate frame and here's another example of one of the pieces of fantasy cartography with a customized border.

I think these two illustrate what I'm trying to talk about quite well. I would have liked to be able to take the eagle pattern on the second one which I used for the ribbon and wrapped it around everything as a stroke after dropping the squares into the side corners and in the center bottom. Making that border loop around the corner icons was a huge pain, and something I would love to be easier to handle in a mapping software. Maybe looking at a couple examples which stymied or frustrated me will help get you thinking about how a tool could handle creating such a result?

The other thing I'm thinking is a few stock fancy scrolls that one could put text into, again I'm thinking of the people who don't draw their own doodads. In fact, this map is back from when I used stamps, so those probably are stock art scrolls and corner doodads on the first map.

On that note, I am available to make more assets. I can definitely imagine contributing in some fashion as you expand if you wanted to make purchasable expansion packs which add in new assets. That is going to be a way to get continuing income from the program.

Which tool were you on? This sounds like a bug, undo/redo shouldn't change the current too.

I'll see if I can find it and reproduce it, because yes, you're right, it's not causing the same effect when I'm in the custom shape tool.

I would love to be able to use the w/s shortcut while in the wall tool to make a wall wider or narrower without clicking out of the shape, and maybe have w/s control the taper amount. Same thing for the river tool.

I would like a keyboard shortcut for when I click on an icon and want to grab its style and set it to the tool. There's an option in the menu which is great to set the style of an object to the tool associated. Kinda like how I can eyedropper a color in most painting programs. Copy/paste style will work too, but hey, could be fun.

Again, thank you for all the detailed feedback! Please

Please what? You're welcome, though, I'll keep making notes as I test it out for my actual maps to let you know how it all goes and try make it the best program it can be.

At the moment, the main things that make me feel gimped are that I can't drag around the reference map to whatever position I please and click it on and off from the layers menu, and the lack of blend modes. Fortunately, my programmer housemate says those are easy to add because the math has already been solved; if you made fractal coastlines she thinks you won't have a problem figuring out how to begin implementing those.

My programmer housemate is impressed, by the way, that you're doing Windows, Mac, and trying for Linux too. She's pretty sure you're not using Electron but instead making specific versions of the program for different OSes, and says, "that's a good resource use!" about the numbers that show up in Activity Monitor on Mac. I figured I would share her props since it's a sort of feedback I can't give. She says the UI is a tell that you guys built a lot of this yourselves with some hard programming work and is impressed with and gushing about the vector coastlines implementation being awesome.


Edit-
Anyway, I'm editing this to add I've been tooling around on Windows 10 atm, and I keep getting this error. It continued after I saved the file as well, not being limited to me working on an untitled file.
owmerror.jpg

It's driving me a lil batty that I can't click off canvas, or centre it (it's left justified if I work small) which was causing some trouble creating this coast shape as it overlaps both edges. I would have liked to be able to click off canvas to snap to the outside, perhaps.

I discovered I could click on a different line mode without dropping the shape I was working on, so that was nice. That was how I got around that problem (switched to a line on the edge).

I have one area where I drew and merged a couple of shapes and deleted some nodes I don't like, but the program gave me an error insisting the shape needed more than 3 nodes, even though I had merged the two shapes and it should have had sufficient nodes to handle.



Edit 2-
I discovered there isn't even a folder where it's whining about there not being a file. I've created one. This seems to have solved the problem, I assume it's a bug in install where it was not created. This didn't occur in the Mac install.

If you stick with the current color window. When you have the color window open on windows, go to advanced color, not limited color options by default. This extra window with the gimped color took me by surprise, especially since I can't save my own color pallet to it. Color eyedropper should be activated by default to grab from the art.

Stroke on outside of text, not just inside.

Screen/linear dodge/multiply/linear burn glow options for outside text.

Control-A to select all text when you're in the typing option. Useful to delete if you mess up some part.

Button to switch to all caps/no caps/small caps.

A button that temporarily switches the select tool, to the move tool, and returns to the select tool once released.

When rotating an item near the edge of the canvas, the item has to be moved to get to the rotation icon. It should automatically rejigger to make sure that button stays on the visible canvas.


I can only sometimes get the "click to follow" option to actually stick, and with fractal regions it isn't nearly sticky enough. I would like a keyboard shortcut to hold down that would automatically make my political border snap to the nearest river/coastline instead of having to click on the exact right pixel. This is made tricky by the fact that the box which tells you what it's going to stick to (if it works) sometimes blocks the area I need to see if the fractalization matched up enough to make it snap.



Edit 3:

When I draw part of a road and hit esc because I didn't want to keep it, it resets the tool. (Mac version)

I couldn't move a custom shape to be underneath a house, even though it registered as having been sent to the bottom, the only way I could have the house on top was to make the custom shape have no fill.

I tried to make a railway station with a custom shape, and then railway through it. I was unable to grab the railway to adjust them, even though I locked the shape. I also could not get the custom shape to go to the bottom and show the railroad through it, I had to make it just the outline.

Anti-aliasing options for text (crisp versus smooth).

Even though I'm giving you a ton of criticism, I think this program has potential to be more enjoyable of a map making process than hacking Photoshop into doing the job. I was working on a country map and very pleased with the responsiveness when adding islands, and the ability to put text on a curve.

terra-smalldemo.jpg

It's close to being on brand for my look, and definitely a workable start, but I wasn't quite satisfied with the texture diversity, being without my usual overlaying, blending, stacking, etc options. So this is the point where I've taken it out of OWM and gone back to Clip Studio, where I've added some textures above and beyond this, and I'll draw in the elements. This is a commission or I might try have a go at the mountains and stuff just to see if I find any bugs, but I hand draw mountains these days.

Edit 4
Mac version. PNGs don't work. Can't open in Photoshop or Clip Studio Paint. It gives me an error, saying, "not a PNG". Same thing happened with a JPG and a TIF. A PDF and a Bitmap file worked though.

This is the road map I'm working on, by the way, so you have a visual for what I'm describing with the railroad station and custom shapes with lines within them.
rome roads.jpg

I ended up putting on the inset map in another program, even though I made both in OWM, because I couldn't find a good way to actually get a circle that contained the mini map and move it around as one element.


Edit 5-

A couple more text tool essentials -
-Adjust lead spacing between text rows. This is a 100% necessity. Not all fonts calculate it in a visually pleasing way.
-Adjust spacing between letter characters / kerning. I use this in probably 70% of my maps and having started to put this text tool through its pacing, I REALLY want to be able to use it as my default.

A text tool fun but not necessary-

-preview font from the font selection window.
-When you go to change the font size, center the current size instead of aligning to the top so you don't have to scroll to access both larger and smaller sizes from the menu.
-A keyboard shortcut to hold down when you're in the text tool that will let you move the text and rotate it, and then switch back to the text tool to go and make more text once you release it.

[OWM]

Please what? You're welcome, though, I'll keep making notes as I test it out for my actual maps to let you know how it all goes and try make it the best program it can be.

"Please let us know if you think of anything else" was the complete sentence, which you did . Thank you so much!!

Currently going through your new feedback, sorry I didn't see your comment with the Autosave folder issue earlier. Creating the folder is the work around and the issue is fixed with the upcoming release.

More in a bit.

Thank you!

[OWM]

First half of my reply below. Thank you again!

My most used keyboard shortcuts in Illustrator are the "move this object up one/down one layer" "move this object to the top/bottom" and "lock object".

The layer order shortcuts should be there, Cmd+F, Cmd+B, etc. We'll add one for locking objects - that's another we missed. By the way, if you go to Help-->View Keyboard Shortcuts you can see the ones currently implemented.

Re: corner bumpers. I have discovered your border tool and it does NEARLY what I wanted. Am I able to bring my own custom art into it? I see I'm stuck with your colors as well. But it's not bad.

You can bring your own artwork to it. For some reason we missed adding it to the Art Manager, but if you go to the program folder in Windows, or the artwork folder in OSX, you can just drop new artwork into the respective folders and OWM will pick them up.

I think these two illustrate what I'm trying to talk about quite well. I would have liked to be able to take the eagle pattern on the second one which I used for the ribbon and wrapped it around everything as a stroke after dropping the squares into the side corners and in the center bottom. Making that border loop around the corner icons was a huge pain, and something I would love to be easier to handle in a mapping software. Maybe looking at a couple examples which stymied or frustrated me will help get you thinking about how a tool could handle creating such a result?

Definitely those are good inspiration for making a new tool for this. Thank you!!

The other thing I'm thinking is a few stock fancy scrolls that one could put text into, again I'm thinking of the people who don't draw their own doodads. In fact, this map is back from when I used stamps, so those probably are stock art scrolls and corner doodads on the first map.

Good idea, thank you!!

On that note, I am available to make more assets. I can definitely imagine contributing in some fashion as you expand if you wanted to make purchasable expansion packs which add in new assets. That is going to be a way to get continuing income from the program.

We have add on artpacks on our shop (let us know what you think).

New artwork contributions sounds really good, by the way. I'll message you about it

I would love to be able to use the w/s shortcut while in the wall tool to make a wall wider or narrower without clicking out of the shape, and maybe have w/s control the taper amount. Same thing for the river tool.

You actually can do this with the arrow keys, would it make more sense with A/D, W/S?

I would like a keyboard shortcut for when I click on an icon and want to grab its style and set it to the tool. There's an option in the menu which is great to set the style of an object to the tool associated. Kinda like how I can eyedropper a color in most painting programs. Copy/paste style will work too, but hey, could be fun.

We are adding the copy/paste style shortcuts, we'll add a Set Tool properties shortcut as well. Thank you!

At the moment, the main things that make me feel gimped are that I can't drag around the reference map to whatever position I please and click it on and off from the layers menu, and the lack of blend modes. Fortunately, my programmer housemate says those are easy to add because the math has already been solved; if you made fractal coastlines she thinks you won't have a problem figuring out how to begin implementing those.

The blend modes just need to be added to the UI, the 2D engine we built for OWM already supports it. We'll work to make the reference map its own layer, should have done it that way from the start - thank you!

My programmer housemate is impressed, by the way, that you're doing Windows, Mac, and trying for Linux too. She's pretty sure you're not using Electron but instead making specific versions of the program for different OSes, and says, "that's a good resource use!" about the numbers that show up in Activity Monitor on Mac. I figured I would share her props since it's a sort of feedback I can't give. She says the UI is a tell that you guys built a lot of this yourselves with some hard programming work and is impressed with and gushing about the vector coastlines implementation being awesome.

Tell her Stephanie and Katie (the other two devs) + I say thank you!!
The UI is based on wxWidgets which is a cross platform library that uses native controls (hence it's light and looks like the rest of OS), with a lot of custom stuff we built on top of it. And yep, the app has two (and now three) versions, which makes it lighter (and its written in C++ for performance).

[OWM]

Next batch of feedback from the edits we looked into . By the way, love the maps you've been making with Other World Mapper!!

These we'll be adding with the release coming out within a couple of weeks:

Control-A to select all text when you're in the typing option. Useful to delete if you mess up some part.

preview font from the font selection window.

When I draw part of a road and hit esc because I didn't want to keep it, it resets the tool. (Mac version)

It's driving me a lil batty that I can't click off canvas, or centre it (it's left justified if I work small) which was causing some trouble creating this coast shape as it overlaps both edges. I would have liked to be able to click off canvas to snap to the outside, perhaps.

Too close to regression testing to change this, but we'll change it with the version after.

I have one area where I drew and merged a couple of shapes and deleted some nodes I don't like, but the program gave me an error insisting the shape needed more than 3 nodes, even though I had merged the two shapes and it should have had sufficient nodes to handle.

Investigating, sounds like its complaining about the "drag" nodes rather than the actual path shape.

If you stick with the current color window. When you have the color window open on windows, go to advanced color, not limited color options by default. This extra window with the gimped color took me by surprise, especially since I can't save my own color pallet to it. Color eyedropper should be activated by default to grab from the art.

We're currently working on the a custom color picker/editor, right now we just bring up the OS's default.

Stroke on outside of text, not just inside.

Right now the stroke does both, in and out. Do you mean having them as two separate options like we do say for the closed area tool? Thank you!

Screen/linear dodge/multiply/linear burn glow options for outside text.

So basically blend modes for the shadow/glow?

Button to switch to all caps/no caps/small caps.

We'll try to add this, maybe as a shortcut so it doesn't add to the UI.

A button that temporarily switches the select tool, to the move tool, and returns to the select tool once released.

Good point, there is space to switch to the pan tool so it makes sense to momentarily switch to the transform tool too. Thank you!

When rotating an item near the edge of the canvas, the item has to be moved to get to the rotation icon. It should automatically rejigger to make sure that button stays on the visible canvas.

Good point, we'll fix.

I can only sometimes get the "click to follow" option to actually stick, and with fractal regions it isn't nearly sticky enough. I would like a keyboard shortcut to hold down that would automatically make my political border snap to the nearest river/coastline instead of having to click on the exact right pixel. This is made tricky by the fact that the box which tells you what it's going to stick to (if it works) sometimes blocks the area I need to see if the fractalization matched up enough to make it snap.

The click to follow should be working pretty well, but a snap shortcut makes a lot of sense! We'll also look into the "hint box" getting in the way - thank you!

[Mark Oliva]

message.jpg

In evaluating a demo version, it's helpful if the user can look up information in the help file. I've tried it on 3 different Windows 10 Pro PCs but get only the fatal error message above.

[OWM]

message.jpg

In evaluating a demo version, it's helpful if the user can look up information in the help file. I've tried it on 3 different Windows 10 Pro PCs but get only the fatal error message above.

Thank you for the feedback and for trying Other World Mapper! I'm not seeing that issue in our test PCs, but we'll investigate.

Meanwhile, the help document is a PDF file that you can find in the installation folder if you want to open it directly, typically: C:\Program Files (x86)\Three Minds Software\Other World Mapper Demo

Thank you!!

- Alejandro

[Tiana]

I have created a video demonstration of me making a fantasy island map exclusively in Other World Mapper. No tutorial text or talking over, just a 7700% faster screen capture of me using OWM to make up a map on the fly using its native tools. I've never done a video before, but it seemed like an appropriate first video to make, to demo a new program's capabilities. Actual working time is more like 5 hours (video is 5 minutes), which is still quite fast for this level of detail. I would have expected to spend more like 20-40 hours if I was illustrating something like this, on the low end if I was making my own assets and stamping them but nonetheless.

I have to say, while I have figured out how the click to follow works since my post, I still get a glitch with it where just as I go to click to connect it, it disconnects, puts a line across the whole section straight instead of following, and I have to undo and reset. This is potentially visible in the video a few times, though it does happen very fast.

Looks like videos are what everyone's doing these days, so I might do some more of these. It was kinda fun for me to watch a super fast version of the art unfold, so I could observe my process.

I have to say, while I have made several more notes in an email draft to you (so I stop cluttering the forum LOL), overall I think this program's been a gamechanger for me already. I've already used it to make a city road map for a book in half the time it would have taken me to do the lineart manually, and almost every edit I wanted to make was clean and smooth as a whistle (like I said, I made notes). Like I threw in a river, decided later I wanted river echo shorelines, realized 3/4s of the way in that there was an island in the middle of the stupid Tiber river, and didn't have to erase all of the echo shorelines and regenerate them, I just had to draw in an island and it rejiggered automatically. Astonishing. Or like, near the end of the Estavin map, I realized I wanted to have some jaggy island atoll bits making it a pain to boat through a certain region, and boom, added them in just like that and it regenerated the coast waves. Change the color of the rivers? No problemo. Chop a land region in half? Done!

Or like, now that I've figured out how the tool to add trees works, I love that I can cycle and randomly pick from the folder I'm in, and create sets like that. Really has high potential for creating regional sets. Some of my clients are meticulous enough to tell me what types of trees grow in an area, so now I can cluster trees from the central art management database instead of creating a whole new brush each time. While I do want there to be size and color jitter options to make it even more flexible, it is remarkably intuitive once you really dig into creating a map.

In so many ways, it behaves like I WISHED Photoshop could, and knew it never would. I can tell this program is a labor of love designed by people who really listened to the critique and desires of real humans who draw maps, not just a cash grab. And that's why, since the cost to purchase was so reasonable, I'm participating to give back in another way–building hype. I'm talking your program up, because I think it's the next best thing since "expand selection, stroke, expand selection, stroke." I wouldn't bother, except you charge such a reasonable price for it the least I can do is try get a few people excited about it. Let's kick those respective subscription model's arses! All hail reasonably priced programs from small studios!