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So I'm looking to make a few maps, as in world and national scale maps, any good programs out there to help? I used to use Illustrator for this sorta thing, but don't have a copy of it at the moment, and am always more comfortable drawing digitally than physically.

Cinos wrote:So I'm looking to make a few maps, as in world and national scale maps, any good programs out there to help? I used to use Illustrator for this sorta thing, but don't have a copy of it at the moment, and am always more comfortable drawing digitally than physically.

My info may be outdated (it's been 5-6 years since I was making maps), but then there were basically 2 programs that did this well. 1st was Campaign Cartographer which was the 'high end' and more expensive. Second was Fractal Maps, which was good, but not quite so good as CC but a lot less expensive (IIRC CC was $200 and FM was like $20-40). Each could do worlds, continents, areas, cites, down to houses. So could be used for everything from world maps to city maps to battle/scenario maps. Both had a limited number of 'models' and a person could buy more as 'packs' or make their own and load inot the program.
I used FM with some degree of success, but never put enough time into mastering it. Could make rivers and coastlines that looked 'real' with the Fractal part of the name. Could also set parameters (world age, land %, etc.)and just create a world then raise/lower water levels. Could also load a background, if you had a map from another source. One thing in FM I did find frustrating (and again, it might be a feature I overlooked), is that it could randomly make a city point (on like a country map) with population, but I could not get it to do it with numbers I had.
I'd suggest looking at the current programs and also 'The Cartographer's Guild' which is a forum for map makers.

I currently have campaign cartographer. It is a little difficult to get a handle on but makes some beautiful maps. Combined with some of the add on programs, you can even do towns, ship deck plans, dungeons and a few other things.

I use Campaign Cartographer 3.

The Dark Elf wrote:I use Campaign Cartographer 3.

I have the same version. Do you have any of the additional programs to go with it?

Icefalcon wrote:

The Dark Elf wrote:I use Campaign Cartographer 3.

I have the same version. Do you have any of the additional programs to go with it?

Yes. all but the cosmic one.

I had a copy of the first version of CC and the Dungeon Designer. I made up some good maps with those. I had a 'world map' for the campaign, but it was mostly just two large countries and a few island chains. Only ever did one region map, of where the campaign was situated. Had a rough map for the town where the PCs had their main base of operations. An even rougher map of the nearest capital city. And was working on a map of the building the PCs were using as their base (which was an old water mill, turned into a blacksmith, which then turned into a Inn which retained the working smithy. This was located outside the town, but not on the same side as the city). They had cleared it out of diseased rat men (think Skaven from Warhammer), and were given the title for the building by the town as their reward.

Then, my discs became corrupted. Yeah, I bought CC back before there were cds. I didn't notice until I went to install CC & DD on a new computer after the old one fried. I lost the old hard drive, but at least I had back ups of the maps on separate floppy discs.

I got in contact with Profantasy, but never heard back from them. All I was asking was for a bit of a discount in buying both CC & DD again. I never bothered with them again. I just went back to doing it the old fashioned way, drawing on grid paper. Or asking one of my mates to draw up my maps, they were practically artwork. He was pretty good.

CyCo wrote:I got in contact with Profantasy, but never heard back from them. All I was asking was for a bit of a discount in buying both CC & DD again. I never bothered with them again. I just went back to doing it the old fashioned way, drawing on grid paper. Or asking one of my mates to draw up my maps, they were practically artwork. He was pretty good.

When you buy from them now, they also have downloadable versions that you can get straight from the sight. As long as you can keep the original e-mail with links, you can download them as many times as you want. I had to when my last computer quit.

This was done on CC3.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid ... =1&theater

The Dark Elf wrote:This was done on CC3.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid ... =1&theater

While nice, not exactly the nation / world scale I'm looking for.

Icefalcon wrote:

CyCo wrote:I got in contact with Profantasy, but never heard back from them. All I was asking was for a bit of a discount in buying both CC & DD again. I never bothered with them again. I just went back to doing it the old fashioned way, drawing on grid paper. Or asking one of my mates to draw up my maps, they were practically artwork. He was pretty good.

When you buy from them now, they also have downloadable versions that you can get straight from the sight. As long as you can keep the original e-mail with links, you can download them as many times as you want. I had to when my last computer quit.

While that's good to know, doesn't help me. This was in the age before the internet.

Skidrifter wrote:This was done via CC3.

http://i4.minus.com/ibpNuXoHcEEOv6.PNG

This is also giving me a dead link.

Much more what I'm looking for.

Panomas wrote:

Cinos wrote:Much more what I'm looking for.

Just curious are you doing a submission?

And I'm old school myself and use illustrator

Goodness no. I don't think I'd submit anything for it. I'm kicking around as I have been with my own game develop stuff for fun, and I wanted to make city level maps for some Iron Kingdoms games I'm running as well, and a planned palladium game I hope to start soonish.

anything and everything you could want to know about map making....

http://www.cartographersguild.com/