Re: Good Dungeon Mapping e-Tool?

On Mon, 9 Jun 2008 02:04:59 +0000 (UTC), delrio@xxxxxxxxx (Del Rio)
wrote:

In article <ei2p44dc80ag91072i0tgcruhdrrr6hpgc@xxxxxxx>,
Kyle Wilson <kyle@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

No, that sounds very reasonable. I don't have any serious background
with geographic information systems, but a separation between content
and visualization of that content makes sense for most non-trivial
things.

That's what it was all about. The problem with using graphical
elements to create a map is that they change sizes as you zoom,
thus limiting the degree to which you can feasibly zoom in or
out on the same map without the proportions becoming
ridiculous. It would eliminate the need to have multiple maps
drawn at different scales.

It should also permit generating maps in many different styles from
the same underlying data set. The DM map that is crisp and detail
oriented and the player map in sepia tones with lots of missing detail
and some things in the wrong spot. If there were open source code, it
would be interesting to provide a 'map mangler' so that the players
could get a map from a drunken explorer without much DM intervention.

I'd think that it would be particularly nice if it could
interact with actual topographic/geographic data. I have been
seriously tempted to use real topos as the terrain for a setting.

Ok, that's a more serious notion than what I'd been
envisioning, but that's pretty cool too. It might be 10x the
work, though.

Yeah, I was afraid that would be the case. I have never had any
reason to look into GIS coding. The closest I came to this sort of
thing was downloading some historical topos as images from a site and
giving serious consideration to running part of my campaign here in
the local area (at least in terms of terrain contours) and seeing if
anyone noticed (I'm pretty sure that they wouldn't).

Ah well, I was mostly hoping that he would become clinically
insane enough to implement this in whatever microscopic spare
time he still has between all his other projects. ;-)

Yeah, see, that's the problem. Too many projects, so I work on the one
that interests me. Keeps me busy, but sadly isn't highly conducive to
getting things *done*.

One of the reasons I'm thinking about seeing who I can rope into
helping... I can provide design and guidance (which would force me to
get it out of my head to somewhere people can see it) for those
interested in taking part in my mad experiments.

Yep, I understand the issue. I haven't really gotten and serious work
done on personal interesting projects in quite a few years because the
choice between pushing work-related things forwards a few more notches
in my spare time (results in good things pay and work wise) or doing
cool things that in many cases I probably can't even share on the
internet (if they involve the rules of real games or trademarked
stuff) the real work wins out every time.

Yup. Lots of very cool open source projects have died because
they only appeal to niche interest groups like us: that means
no money to support them (I'm frankly surprised that the market
for fantasy mapping programs can support *two* competing
products as it is) and only some already-too-busy people trying
to fit them in betwen work/family/hobbies...

That said, a reason to pick one particular interesting off-side
project to work on and an appreciative audience can go a long way to
keeping an open source project on track...
--

Kyle Wilson
email: kylewilson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
.

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