[Award Winner ] Creating an old-school map in Gimp.

[torstan]

In which case Gimp isn't supposed to be able to read it. I'm not sure I understand the problem.

[Sheelon666]

I'm having a major problem when I select the Fuzzy Select tool to colour in the impassable sections of the map, point 11 of the (fantastic) checklist. When I click on the area of the map to colour, basically EVERY gridline, every wall line on the map has the "marching atns", and it wont at that time actually fill anything - when I select the Fill With Foreground colour all it then seems to do is colour in the existing lines more heavily.

Help - I dont have much hair left!

Edit: Kicks Self, just discovered the basic error I've made. Tutorial continues...

[torstan]

It was selecting things from all layers? If you let me know the mistake then I'll update the tutorial to mention it.

[Sheelon666]

Realised after I'd posted this I should have more more helpful to all reading this - Apologies it was a really silly mistake on my part - I included the blue grid as part of the Walls layer as opposed to the background layer - hence my select all problem. However one new thing has occurred and I just cant seem to find a way back:

Once I've done the Fuzzy Tool select and successfully coloured my impassable sections, the entire map is still covered with the selection tool (damn those ants!) and I cannot deselect, or select brush, or pretty much anything to be honest. At the least this is giving me some new ideas how to go about this and I've been creating my own layers and adding them to the map as I've been going along.

At some point when I dont have a scenario hungry group begging for the next RPG session (prolly when I get them all back to school after the holidays!) I'm going to tackle the RPG Fantasy map tutorial also.

Edit: ahem, spurred on by typing this out I though I'd go back and try something new. Clicked a few times twixt brush and Fuzzy tool, then clicked on a point on map and at least the Dungeon part of the map itself is no longer selected (though the outer part of the map remains surrounded by ants) and I appear to be able to draw again. Huzzah!

[torstan]

Edit->Select None doesn't work?

Having the grid on the Walls layer would definitely do it.

[Sheelon666]

Sorry to be a pain, I just don't know if it's my inexperience using a proggie like this (the height of my skills using M$ Paint is a Space Invader and Bases type picture) but I keep running into little problems and it's driving me bonkers. Would it help if there was a "If you get <insert event> then you have done this <insert action> and to fix it do <insert action2>".

For example: I'm trying to fill in internal impassable sections as described in the tutorial, but for love nor money it will just NOT fill in the one square of wall that I want it to. got the Fuzzy Select Tool done, Grow done, one individual square highlighted on the correct Layer and all it does is thicken the lines around the square. I dont understand why its not allowing me to colour in this selection.

After this, I was content to leave that one little square out of the 400 on screen incorrectly coloured, I could live with it. Moved onto inserting Doors - saved Door and Door2. Open, selected all, copy all, close item (for Door2) and then went to main dungeon map, Ctrl V, door appears, but now it's stuck there. Used the Select tool and the door icon will just not move, anchor remains there whatever I do, just cannot get the door manipulated in any way whatsoever. The good thing about trying these steps 12+ times is I'm getting to know my way round the interface if nothing else...! Like I said, hope I'm not being an ass, but I've followed the Tute hopefully doing everything as described and these events keep cropping up. BTW I'm using Gimp 2.6, the very latest version to do this, in case that makes a difference.

Edit: OK got the internal impassable sections done, I used the Rectangle Select Tool to go to the area, select and Colour FG. Going to reattempt door manipulation now but I REALLY cant see where I'm going wrong on that one - if I get no joy in the next 20 mins I'll email to you Torstan. Thanks for the help and advice.

[torstan]

Can you post the .xcf file here and I'll take a look? You'll need to compress it first to a zip file. If you don't have an archive utility then email it over to me at jonathan@fantasticmaps.com and I'll open it up and see what's going wrong. Gimp has it's quirks so you should never feel bad when things don't go quite right. It can be a little fiddly.

[Sheelon666]

OK Now got the doors moving as required - I had to Unlock the floating layer on the layers dialog and then it allowed me to move the door to the desired location. Tutorial continues.

[torstan]

I thought it might be a layers issue. Glad you got that sorted out. The lone square still sounds odd. I'd definitely like to take a look at the file for that.

[Sheelon666]

NP will send the file in a minute. Work has continued for a bit:- I am definitely getting the impression now that the tute is NOT for total nubs in this arena. If you want you could treat my...bloopers as additions for the tutorial:

Latest is as follows:- the grab handle for the door grapic is actually pretty small, and I found that it was much easier to do the door placement when zoomed WAY in to the screen. Also when anchoring the doors using the anchor icon, to what am I anchoring them? It appears I have to have the Doors layer directly below the floating layer icon, whereupon the door will be anchored to same. Is this similar to the merge layers command? I appear to have accidentally added some doors to my Walls Layer earlier.

Email to follow with the graphic for the map but one other point: in the bottom left just above the single room, there is a spot where an internal wall could be placed, however after accidentally placing the internal wall in the Doors layer, I cannot seem to delete all traces of the wall which was placed there. For the moment I am leaving that spot blank.