New to Digital Cartography? Software General Information

[Ascension]

Our forum software can only process certain types of files and only ones so big in terms of megabytes and in terms of actual size. When you are on the screen to browse to your file to upload there should be a list of accepted file types and sizes there.

[SushiDave]

Hi! I am new to the site here and excited about sharing notes & ideas with fellow mappers & GM's in the Fantasy Realm setting. I have been using Fractal Mapper since version 6 and love it. Kudos to Mark Oliva and all the resources he's provided to mappers using the FM series. There are a few minor problems I've run into with FM, but nothing that can't be worked around. And of course, like a greedy user - have no shortage of items on my wish list. But? All in all, I find FM to work well for my needs.

[Paul Swateridge]

Hi Ascension. The file type and size were fine (jpg and 234 kb) but I found the reason. Seems like it will not upload if the files are nested too deeply in the windows file system. Move it 'nearer' to the root of the drive and it uploaded fine. My first album has begun! Now, back to painting the mountains I stared last night...

[Rythal]

I have been using Corel Draw and Corel Photo Paint for several years now. Is there any advice others can give concerning these pieces of software?

Hey paul

I did a tutorial on corel photo paint a while ago ( quite a while ago) for X3. There is a link in my signature, under My Tuts.

Edit: Here

[Redrobes]

Hi Ascension. The file type and size were fine (jpg and 234 kb) but I found the reason. Seems like it will not upload if the files are nested too deeply in the windows file system. Move it 'nearer' to the root of the drive and it uploaded fine. My first album has begun! Now, back to painting the mountains I stared last night...

Hi Paul, Good to see you here ( a local man ). This is interesting about the file system. I believe that it would be quite possible that this is the cause of upload issues. Some people have trouble, others do not and this could explain it. Perhaps the upload file string is too small to handle the full path for some people. I will bear that in mind when offering advice on why people have upload issues. I would not have thought of this as a solution so well done.

[Paul Swateridge]

To Rythal: thanks. I'll give it a look later

To Redrobes: glad to help. Thats what these forums are for I believe

[cantab]

Wow...206 posts and not a single mention of GIS software. That's what I use. Specifically, QGIS and GRASS. I guess it's kind of a steep learning curve; I used Arc in my university studies so got a start there.

[ravells]

Ah.... the reason for that was that when I made the poll I knew far less about mapping with software and the Guild (a very small place at the time) was concerned mainly with making fantasy maps.... so GIS didn't feature on my radar. I'd love to amend the poll, but I don't know how without deleting all the results we've got.

[cantab]

Well it seems that GIS software is indeed very rarely used for creative mapping. It's perhaps not the best-suited software, since it tends to be oriented towards working with real-world data than creating stuff from scratch, and it's not geared towards "artistic" maps. Proprietary GIS software is costly, and it's only in the last few years that there've been quality free offerings besides GRASS (which even by GIS standards is perhaps tricky to use).

Programs like Campaign Cartographer are I guess technically GIS software, but taking a very different approach and obviously one designed for creative mapping.

[Hai-Etlik]

Well it seems that GIS software is indeed very rarely used for creative mapping. It's perhaps not the best-suited software, since it tends to be oriented towards working with real-world data than creating stuff from scratch, and it's not geared towards "artistic" maps. Proprietary GIS software is costly, and it's only in the last few years that there've been quality free offerings besides GRASS (which even by GIS standards is perhaps tricky to use).

I've made occasional use of QGIS and GDAL in map making here at the guild, and I'm intermittently playing around with JTS.