Drawing maps

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Gunness
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Drawing maps

#1 Post by Gunness » Wed May 09, 2007 2:06 pm

I was wondering what people might be using for creating maps. For me, mapping is part of the fun of playing adventure games (yes, I'm a masochist so I even enjoy the odd maze), and I'm happy to say that for me, the days of drawing maps on paper are long gone.

I've tried using Microsoft Word, but its drawing routines are annoyingly imprecise, so the connecting lines always wind up being uneven. So for the time being I'm perfectly happy using MS Visio, which is really excellent.
However, I've recently started using OpenOffce, and supposedly it has a program similar to Visio, which should make it an ideal choice for maps. Since OO is absolutely free, there might be someone out there who has tried it?

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#2 Post by Alastair » Thu May 10, 2007 12:02 am

When I do draw a map I often start with pencil and paper (especially for mazes), but instead of repeated re-drawings I move on to Serif DrawPlus and complete the map there. Older versions of DrawPlus often turn up on magazine cover discs (or at least did, it's been a few years since I've read a computer magazine), so you can get a copy quite cheaply.

As for OpenOffice Draw, I've just had a quick play with it. It has connectors, but as yet I have yet to discover if you can turn objects (such as rooms) into blocking objects so that connectors will skirt around rooms, or if you can increase the number of connection nodes available on an object.

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maps

#3 Post by Doreen B » Thu May 10, 2007 6:18 pm

I have always used the old fashion way of pen and paper.

I did try using Word but got so confused when the mapping area is so big, you tend to end up with lots of papers and then have to number them, its confusing.

My friend uses Excel.

Doreen

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#4 Post by Alastair » Thu May 10, 2007 9:48 pm

Why are people using word processors and spreadsheets to create drawings? What you need is a drawing or diagramming (apparently that's a word) program.

Further to what I said above here is a wikipedia list of free diagramming software, apart from OpenOffice Draw I have not tried any of them so do not know how suited they are to mapping.

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#5 Post by Gunness » Fri May 11, 2007 10:26 am

After starting to do maps electronically, I don't think I could ever be bothered to draw them on paper again :) Just the memory of endless erasing of lines and adding of rooms in weird places 'cause you're running out of space - it's enough to give me nightmares. Of couse, mazes are still easiest to do on paper (at least initially)
Alastair wrote:Why are people using word processors and spreadsheets to create drawings? What you need is a drawing or diagramming (apparently that's a word) program.
I guess that people use whatever they have available to them, and an awful lot of people own the MS Office package. Until the fairly release of version 2, OpenOffice wasn't really a viable alternative (not to mention that it's a whopping 90MB download).
MS Word is not a perfect choice, far from it, but for something as basic as drawing boxes and connecting those, it works fairly well.

That reminds me...there used to be this shareware program that allowed you to draw maps with a few keystrokes (the name eludes me, but I think it's available from the IF Archive). I found it very much lacking.

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#6 Post by Alastair » Fri May 11, 2007 10:57 pm

Gunness wrote:
Alastair wrote:Why are people using word processors and spreadsheets to create drawings? What you need is a drawing or diagramming (apparently that's a word) program.
I guess that people use whatever they have available to them, and an awful lot of people own the MS Office package.
But doesn't MS Office come with a drawing program? You'll have to excuse my ignorance because I've never used MS Office!

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#7 Post by Gunness » Sat May 12, 2007 8:48 am

No, the basic package only contains Word, Excel (spreadsheet), Powerpoint (presentation) and Outlook (email/calendar). More expensive versions also contain a database and a DTP program, but still no drawing tool. Odd, really!

So in that respect, OpenOffice is quite a revelation.

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#8 Post by df » Thu Jul 05, 2007 2:53 am

I use ifmapper, it was built specifically for mapping IF!

its a ruby gem so you need ruby installed.
-- Stu / DF --
-- Mountain Valley + Softgold Adventure Fan --

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#9 Post by Gunness » Thu Jul 12, 2007 10:14 am

Ifmapper? Never heard of it - but it has a nice ring to it ;)

So what feature does this baby come with?

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#10 Post by Mark » Thu Aug 02, 2007 9:23 am

Pen and paper here. Still the most convenient and flexible of all, at least while playing. Editing the finished maps for elecronic use I do with CorelDraw (I guess Adobe Illustrator works just as well). Corel is perfect for the standard text adventure map style. Draw one square, copy/paste, then shift it along defined steps with the cursor. Same with the connecting lines, or the square description text. I think I would go mad if I had to use Word or Excel for this :-).

When drawing mazes, like the ones common in e.g. the AD&D rpg's, it's still handwork all over. Can't really be done with any drawing software, at least not without a lot of effort.

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#11 Post by dave » Mon Aug 27, 2007 4:18 pm

I normally used guemap to create and edit the map. Though I'm messing around with a better presentation format (as guemap hasn't been updated for a long time).

My current aim is to use SVG (scalable vector graphics); as an example, a map for Sorceror of Claymorgue Castle:
http://aimemorial.if-legends.org/maps/s ... rceror.svg

Unfortunately, even though SVG is an Internet standard, the only big browser that supports it is Opera; though there are plugins for the other browsers.

I'm interested in feedback on the map, as it does take a while to get it right and I'd like to get most of the templates done as best as possible before I start drawing more.

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#12 Post by Mark » Mon Aug 27, 2007 4:49 pm

Looks pretty okay to me. And as it's a vector format (if I got that right), it should be a small file. Always a shame when you draw maps in Corel, and then you have to export them to jpg. Blows them up like hell, and makes them look fuzzy as well. I experimented with exporting to wmf (the only vector format I know that can be read by pretty much every software), but usually, during converting, a lot of things get screwed up. Another option might be eps. Never tried that yet, though...

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#13 Post by dave » Wed Nov 07, 2007 10:44 pm

Yep, it's a vector format with attached images. If I resize the images right and keep them as png format the size work out as (approx):
  • SVG file: 24K
  • Images: 200K
I've just done another one for Voodoo Castle (at a similar URL - just replace sorceror/sorceror.svg with voodoo/voodoo.svg - it won't let me post the URL). This gave me the opportunity to get some timings to create each map:
  • Playing game and mapping (I use GUEmap to draw the map and arrange it): about 1-2 hours, quicker if I use a walk through.
  • Drawing map: about 1.5 - 2 hours. This is done with a text editor.
I'm getting quicker drawing the maps as I most of the elements are templates. Unfortunately SVG isn't perfect at this and some items are manually placed (e.g. text and some arrows). I also have to work out the co-ordinates for the rooms by hand.

I have tried doing maps for games with no images, these work, with less space, but aren't as pretty. I'm still not certain how this will work with larger maps (maybe multiple maps in one, or implement it so you can drag the map).

Thoughts? Any games you want to see mapped?

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#14 Post by Gunness » Fri Nov 09, 2007 7:03 pm

Hi Dave,
(Just for the record, you haven't been able to post URL's, as my new counter-spam plugin blocks the posting of URL's until the poster has made a certain number of posts - 5, I think. You can always paste as text, of course)

I'm a little late to the party, but I hope it's not too late to weigh in with a few thoughts.

Generally I think the map looks excellent, and I particularly like your use of comments and the fact that objects are only displayed if the mouse is hovering in the right spot.

A few observations:
1. The text is much too small for my liking
2. How will this work out if you want to print the map? Will the objects be visible or not?

and finally, a major obstacle in my book:

3. Apparently Firefox is supposed to have native SVG support out of the box, but I just get an error when trying to open the map. And the majority of users are still using IE.
In the end I had to download an external SVG viewer to read the map. I don't mind the extra mileage, but I think a lot of people will just skip a document if it requires a special viewer or extra plugins. Of course, that's their problem, but they'd still be missing out your map.

Maps like these always wind up looking like crap in jpg, but I find that png and gif compress fairly well. And they're all universal formats.

I do find your project very interesting - I just think you have to take the lack of support for SVG in the major browsers into account.
Last edited by Gunness on Mon Nov 12, 2007 12:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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#15 Post by dave » Sun Nov 11, 2007 10:21 pm

Here's a slightly tuned example without images, of the first part of the map of Saga of a spy: Rick Hanson.

I've tuned it a bit so it only takes me about 15 minutes to create a map (moved all the calculations so that Javascript does them, rather than me).

The map is at /maps/svg/rhanson/rhanson1station.svg

As there are no images I set the text size up to 12pt which is more readable (though the comments, objects, deaths etc. are still at 6pt). As there are no images it does scale well too!

Printing unfortunately won't show anything other than the map (this something I need to think out properly).

In terms of browser support, unfortunately Opera seems to be the only big name browser that natively support SVG, not a problem for me as I've been an Opera user for years, but it does mean that other users will have to download the Adobe SVG plugin. This is a big flaw.

On this latest map I also added a blue line to show the starting room - I'm not certain this looks quite right, maybe changing the colour of the rectangle, or drawing a border around it may be more efficient.

One idea did occur to me that would make this format very useful is to use the animation facitillities of SVG to do a visible walk through (i.e. show the walk through and highlight what's happening in which room). I still have to knock up a proof of concept for this.

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