Map types?

[Turion]

Is there a way to make a battlemap or any other type for similar projects such as text-based forum post-to-post RPG style games? What software would you recommend be capable of making a map of that type?

EDIT: I messed up on the title... sorry. Can you fix the title to "Map Types?"

[Phanues]

You should be able to make a topdown map with a grid easily in software such as Photoshop or the GIMP, though the quality of your maps largely depends on the time and effort spent on it.
Simply overlaying a grid over an image is an easy job in both softwares at any rate.

Totally depends on what you need out of the software really - using photoshop/GIMP would mean handcrafting the environment/objects - though you might be able to find a bunch of good brushes/images to use as a base for objects in the mapping elements subforum.
There's also software out there that contains pre-made elements you can simply place to create a map, but since i have no experience with those, there's not a particular one i could recommend.