world map software

[iceman10058]

hey playground. im looking for a website, program, or somehting to create a world map for my homebrew campaign im working on. something friendly for the not so artistically inclined would be great!

[Vykryl]

Civilization V has a hex tile map builder. May not be best for placing cities, but topography and key resources is a good starting point. The older Civ games are either square or rhombus based tiles that still work well for geography.

I've been thinking of buying this to play with but haven't done so yet.

https://store.inkwellideas.com/colle...ware-icon-sets

There's also map tiles you can purchase through roll20. Just have to assemble the pieces in their game builder and take screenshots. Unfortunately I hacwnt found a way to export maps made in roll20.

[JoeJ]

Have you considered adapting maps of the real world? There's a great web site that lets you select features you want on your map, then download it in .png format.

[iceman10058]

Have you considered adapting maps of the real world? There's a great web site that lets you select features you want on your map, then download it in .png format.

not a bad idea. i never thought of that. i will deffinately check it out and play around with it, thanks!

[LordEntrails]

Well, if you want to get serious, then Campaign Cartographer 3+ with the Fractal Terrains add-on. https://www.profantasy.com/

In a day of practice and with the right approach (doing the free tutorials) you will get to a level that is almost professional (80-90%) and be amazed at what you can do.

But, if you want free, or you want something that you don't actually have to learn to use, and something is good enough. Then their are some free online world generators and numerous map making programs. Some of them are listed here; https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...ftware-summary

EDIT: Oh, and you really need very little artistic talent to generate these maps. I have very little and do wonderful maps (all the examples on this page are done by me; https://www.facebook.com/pg/Ultimate...97513187534479

[War_lord]

I use Campaign Cartographer and with a little practice and time you can put out some professional looking maps. The only thing is that it's very expensive.

[Resileaf]

If you just want a realistic-looking world map with geography and waterways made, Fractal Terrains is great. It's included with Campaign Cartographer, as the people before me have said, and I believe that there is a demo version of Fractal Terrains that would work well too. I can't search for it right now, though.

[roybigley]

Nice idea of yours! When my niece had an assignment at school to creat a personalized map, we used Mapchart and the result was awesome, you can try it too

[Knaight]

Take a look at Hexographer - there's a free version, it requires basically no artistic skills, and it's got quite a bit of material.

As for tile sets an the like in particular, Battle For Wesnoth has an excellent terrain set (similar to Civ), a map maker, and a creative commons license for all the art in it which makes it easy to use elsewhere (e.g. in Hexographer, though all the specialized code for terrain change borders is lost).

[elanfanboy]

Inkarnate, it is a wonderful software, and if you have the money, buy premium if only for the superior resolution. It requires very little artistic talent, basically just outline the continent then fill it in. Then add the stuff you want to add. I encourage you to at least check it out.

[Cealocanth]

Well, if you want to get serious, then Campaign Cartographer 3+ with the Fractal Terrains add-on. https://www.profantasy.com/

Seconded. It's a one time purchase. Make an account, buy the software, and own it forever. I have had CC3 since 2012 on a single purchase, and have moved systems many times since then.

[ArgentumRegio]

I use GIMP - it does take some effort to get thru the learning curve - there are tutorials for this. The results are anything you can imagine. Do yourself a favor though, I advise you get a pressure sensitive tablet for input - a pen like device is MUCH preferred to 'painting with a bar of soap' which is what doing art with a mouse is very like.

[Beleriphon]

Seconded. It's a one time purchase. Make an account, buy the software, and own it forever. I have had CC3 since 2012 on a single purchase, and have moved systems many times since then.

The caveat is that CC3 is not art software. Its a CAD program, and it works like a CAD program. It will not behave like Photoshop or anything similar.

[War_lord]

The caveat is that CC3 is not art software. Its a CAD program, and it works like a CAD program. It will not behave like Photoshop or anything similar.

That's an advantage if, like me, you're absolutely hopeless at art and wouldn't even know where to start with something like photoshop.

[ArgentumRegio]

That's an advantage if, like me, you're absolutely hopeless at art and wouldn't even know where to start with something like photoshop.

You are experienced in CAD software? If not you may want to watch some GIMP videos on youtube to see if you can wrap your head around the tool. You may be quite shocked.

[oxybe]

Civ V's SKD has a hex-based world generator. you can randomly create some pretty big maps based around certain terrain types (like you want large continents, small continents, a pangea, an archipelago, etc... as well if you want it to be a temperate, dry or humid planet), then you can simply change the hexes if you want there to be a desert here or a forest there.

Once you've got that settled, the game will have distributed some resource markers here and there to indicate sources of copper, iron, horses, tea leaves, etc... you can keep those in there or just remove them as well as pre-generate some settlements if you want to.

Save your work, then screenshot your map (with or without markers) or section of the map you want to focus on, bring it into something like GIMP for some minor graphical editing (fine tuning rivers and lakes and whatnot) and copy/paste custom map legend symbols on it. You can easily find a spritesheet of those used by open world videogames like Skyrim or just a legend another player made to fill up your map with towns, keeps, towers, ports, geographical markers, etc...

I got the complete Civ V (IE: all the DLC) for about 15$ CAN a while ago and the base game is 75% off on steam for just over 8$ CAN. Toss in something like GIMP if all you want to do is add in a layer or two of custom icons and do some work on the map.

For city generation, http://fantasycities.watabou.ru is surprisingly good at creating decent looking town setups and has a built-in "warp" feature you can use to change the sizes of stuff of the cities it generates

i made a rough proof of concept here
https://imgur.com/gallery/ullxqFR

[HurinSmite]

I've tried several video games with a map editor as possible campaign mapmakers.
I've tried Heroes of Might and Magic 7 - It was beautiful and I could make a pseudo underground dwarven city and an arabianesque city.
I've tried Civilization V but didn't like I (from my experience) had to constantly switch between grid and normal view to see the updates/changes I made to the map

I ended up using Heroes of Might and Magic 3 as it's less hassle than H7 and the sprite animations have a certain personality to them. I mostly use it for knowing where things are relative to each other.
An example from a chapter where the party was swamp adventuring:

Spoiler

Show

I only wish Warhammer Total War had a worldmap maker...

[LordCdrMilitant]

I use Powerpoint. For everything.

It works out well.