New to Digital Cartography? Software General Information

[RPMiller]

You'll definitely want to check out the most recent version of MT to see the zoom capabilities.

I don't do much of anything currently with regard to mapping. I am in a degree program right now that pretty much sucks up all my time, free or otherwise.

[dormouse]

Have to say, the zoom in MT really is massively impressive.

[Redrobes]

I just tried the test utility and it says my system is too slow
That explains the problems I had, though I would have expected my graphics card to be good enough though it was chosen for resolution not gaming.
Radeon 3650 with 768MB RAM, now that I have checked. But I do run lots of progs and 2 monitors (one 24" and one 22").

That card would be waaaay in excess of the minimum standard required for the app. When you ran the test app did it say anything other than it was too slow. Did it say that it was running using the software renderer or it was not in true color or some other message like that ?

I run two monitors too and this is what I get with a less powerful card than you have.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKYU2gcsaoQ

Well, let me know if you want me to investigate.

[dormouse]

I tried it a few more times (4).
Very variable results in terms of frame rate.
Fast enough once, but only once.
No other message. Forced it into software once, but that was slow too.

Generous of you to offer to investigate, but it must be some of the other stuff that's running (though I didn't think I was running anything that was intensive atm) and that's a killer to find out on someone else's system. The good side of it is that it seems to be a very rare problem for you.

[Redrobes]

It wont be other apps running as it does most of the work on the graphics card unless by other stuff that would be a game, benchmark or something - basically you would know.

The test app should be rendering at about 500 frames per second. Not that you would see all those frames but the test app is supposed to say its too slow if its about 50 frames per second or slower. At the end it shows the framerate. On the very top line it says for me...
"OpenGL is successfully running this application with hardware assisted graphics acceleration".

I suspect that it is saying something different for you. Its probably saying that its using the built in software renderer which would be much slower - like 20 frames per second. In the directory that you run the test there is a file called TestResults.txt which you can get at with notepad. The top half of mine says the following...

OpenGL is successfully running this application with hardware
    assisted graphics acceleration.

Card Vendor / Renderer: GeForce 8600 GT/PCI/SSE2

OpenGL Version: 2.1.2

ViewingDale needs at least version 1.1.0 so this looks good.

Frames rendered: 13433

Frames per second: 447.8

Your system is sufficiently fast enough to run ViewingDale effectively.

if your able to post that bit then we can see what is going on with your system.

[dormouse]

OpenGL is successfully running this application with hardware
assisted graphics acceleration.

Card Vendor / Renderer: ATI Radeon HD 3600 Series

OpenGL Version: 2.1.7659 Release

ViewingDale needs at least version 1.1.0 so this looks good.

Frames rendered: 121

Frames per second: 4.0

Your system is too slow to run ViewingDale effectively.

[icosahedron]

Thanks for the recommendation - and it is nice to see that you are so keen on it.

But, as I promised Redrobes, I have already tried it. I found it incredibly slow and I can understand why you found personal tutorials helpful.

The tutorials weren't about its speed, on my machine the pan and zoom is so fast I sometimes overrun and have to back up! It was just getting my head around some of the initial learning curve since the program works like no other I've experienced. Having said that, it was a fairly shallow learning curve, and I'm sure when Redrobes has time he'll include some of these things in a helpfile update - I might even send him a draft to peruse if I get time first.

Well, I'm not sure I understand the bit about the DF grid being a cage. You can rescale any object on the map at any time.

Oops, I'd forgotten this bit. It's been a while since I used DF. I sorta stopped using it - I had a couple of big projects I wanted to do, and I was waiting for the zoom to be fixed...

it can go much more detailed than nearly all the images available on the net) and obviously it is up to you what scale the grid represents.

True, I mainly used the 20x20 scale, that's what I had in mind when I mentioned detail. DF can handle detailed images.

I didn't really see VD being a tile mapper but more of an image placer (I might be wrong on this though). If that's the case, then the grid has a different function in the two progs.

What's in a name? VD has a snap to grid and path feature which enables you to lay down repetitive 'tiles' quickly, but you can turn the grid off and place images wherever you want.

I'm not intending to be negative about VD generally - it just didn't work well on my system though it clearly does on lots of others, including yours.

Likewise me with DF, I found it to be a very useful program for producing small maps on the fly and if the updates had happened, I might never have looked for a replacement. In fact, I did use it only last week to send a quick sketch-plan to someone.

Will probably have another look at MapTools soon. BRPG's own mapping ability has improved over time, and I assume MapTools will have done too, though I don't expect VTTs to compete with mapping progs for basic mapping.

I haven't seen Maptools. I stumbled across VD by accident and Redrobes personally sold me on it via email correspondence - his 'before sales service' was excellent, including his advice on upgrading my computer to run VD.

What I like most about it is its ability to act like a 2D virtual universe experience - there are no separate maps in separate files, you just pan and zoom to go anywhere on a planet, and you can jump to any planet. It's a 'universe in a box'. Of course, you have to create the universe first...

Redrobes produced this video sequence, not sure if the link is still live:

http://www.viewing.ltd.uk/Temp/CG/VD_Demo5/Universe.avi

[trevor]

Have to say, the zoom in MT really is massively impressive.

Thanks. It's not as slick as VD's zooming, but at least it's available

Here are a couple vids Dorpond made a long while back when we first removed the limits on the zoom. Note: they look choppy because of the screencast software, in practice it's much smoother:

http://rptools.net/dorpond/demos/Zooming/Zooming.html
http://rptools.net/dorpond/demos/Zoom2/Zoom2.html

It turns out that it's not really as practical as we originally thought it would be. That is, when you sit down to create an encounter, you typically aren't thinking at the continent level. It's nice to be able to zoom way out in order to get context, or switch between hotspots, but don't generally interact with tokens at that scale.

[dormouse]

Thanks. It's not as slick as VD's zooming, but at least it's available
...
they look choppy because of the screencast software, in practice it's much smoother:

That would make VD's zoom incredibly impressive. For me, the MT one was instantaneous (or at least it seemed able to go faster than I could turn the wheel - and my display managed it without problems) and entirely smooth.

It turns out that it's not really as practical as we originally thought it would be. That is, when you sit down to create an encounter, you typically aren't thinking at the continent level. It's nice to be able to zoom way out in order to get context, or switch between hotspots, but don't generally interact with tokens at that scale.

I had wondered about that
I can see that it would be very useful if drawing a very large map (ie one that is much bigger than the monitor when you are at the resolution level you want), but couldn't see what would be gained in play apart from switching between hotspots. And I prefer everyone in the same place. All the players are in one place (we play f2f) and just use the VTT for mapping etc, so they can all see what any of them sees unless there's a real effort to hide it.
I suppose what it would enable is a very large map which they can move around, rather than lots of smaller maps. So long as MT can handle the very large maps.
I also noticed that you'd taken away the maximum cell size limit that I seem to remember from before (50x50 I think it was), so the maps could be done at 200x200 with no need to rescale the standard sized DJ images.
I haven't had a chance to look at it in massive detail yet, but it seemed to me that the maps would still be done outside of MT primarily.

[RPMiller]

There is a map that dorpond did that I think was a couple miles square so yea, no size limits, or if there are they aren't really significant.

There are several tile sets that are currently in use that you can see at the RPTools forums. Users are making pretty large maps inside MT natively.

Oh, and there is a great map of the Temple of Elemental Evil floating around somewhere if you want to see MT handle a really large map.