Cool free hex mapping program (From PCat's Player Commentary thread)

Cerebral Paladin · Jul 17, 2009

Forked from: Running player commentary on PCat's 4E Campaign

Piratecat said:
On a separate DM note: Inkwell Ideas has a really cool, free old-style hex mapping program. I'm in the process of mapping Capria. I'll post it once I do.

I forked this to a separate thread to add a "I totally agree," in the hopes that people who may not read the Running player commentary thread will see this. I've spent a little time playing around with Hexographer, the free mapping program from Inkwell Ideas, and it seems really awesome. I wish I'd had it when I started my current campaign-- I'll definitely be using it for my next one.

Also, there are a bunch of other world design resources (including a heraldry generator and a city map generator) linked to from the same website that also seem really useful and neat, although I haven't given them a whirl yet.

It also nicely works on Macs as well as PCs.

Thanks for linking to this PCat-it's a great resource.

Piratecat · Jul 18, 2009

It's incredibly nifty! It you loved the old Greyhawk map, you'll want to check this out.

Kishin · Jul 18, 2009

Interesting. Looks like it uses some of the same tiles as HexMapper does, curiously enough. If that's the case, I for whatever reason had no idea HexMapper derived them from the old Mystara maps.

I'll give it a whirl. Mapping programs have always been near and dear to my heart.

InkwellIdeas · Jul 18, 2009

Thanks folks for posting about and complimenting my project, Hexographer. Here's a more direct link than the one posted above: Hexographer Overview

As far as I know, all of the hex mapping programs with similar hexes are based off those old TSR maps. (Although some hex mapping programs may have different styles and therefore not use similar color and icons.) I was lucky to have bought a Dragon Archive DVD before the legal issues occurred, so that was my primary source. Also, the pro version lets you swap in any .png image to use as an icon for that terrain type or feature. The free and Pro versions both let you scale the icons and change the background colors of terrain.

The Coat of Arms Visual Designer that has also been mentioned should be getting more updates once I get Hexographer to 1.0 (hopefully in a couple of weeks.) The Coat of Arms Visual Designer is here: Coat of Arms Visual Designer

And if you have some ideas for improvement or see a bug, drop me an email (It is on the linked sites and in the "File" -> "About" dialogs or post. (Although I sometimes don't see all posts.)