I've updated the Hexographer with a feature to let users change the colors of symbols as they are placed. That's more important for people creating star maps who want different colored planets, starbases, etc. than for wilderness maps. But if you want different colored city/castle/mines/etc icons, you can now do that. Another recent change is to easily hide/show (using a menu item) a map that you are tracing (if you chose to import a map to trace.)
For those who haven't seen it before:
Over the past 2 months I’ve been working on a program that allows a user to create hex maps like those in Known World/Mystara/“The Voyage of the Princess Ark” Dragon magazine article series.
I had previously created hex map brushes for GIMP based on those maps, but the core architecture of this hex map tool came to me and I wanted to do it for a number of reasons.
The software is web-based at: Hexographer
Here’s a sample map snippet so you can easily see what it does:
Some key points:
-It starts as an applet in a web page so many people won’t have to install anything. (You may need to install/upgrade Java, however.)
-You can choose to start with a map of random terrain or a map of all one terrain.
-You set the map’s width and height in hexes and the size of the hexes.
-You can customize the random terrain generator to give a different mix of land.
-Then your map opens in a pop-up window.
-There you can select terrain buttons then click on the map to change a hex into that terrain. You can also drag over hexes to change all of those hexes.
-You can select generic line and text buttons to draw lines or add labels and there are also preset line a text buttons that have settings appropriate for coastlines, rivers, roads, country borders, etc.
-You can optionally turn on/off hex borders, hex numbering, terrain icons.
-Hex numbering is very customizable: font name/style/size/color; rows then columns vs. columns then rows; set the separator character; what number to use to start the rows and columns.
-If you add text and lines and note if each is a political feature, natural feature or infrastructure, you can turn each of these on and off as if they are layers. (The preset road/river/boundary line and text buttons are set up for this.)
-You can save it to a native format for later editing and export it as a regular PNG image so it can be edited in an image editor or printed.
-It also includes some planet/star/asteroid/etc icons to create a starmap. (Coming in the next couple of days is a feature to change the colors of those icons.)
-You can also import a map to trace over it if you want to use an old map or part of a map as a guide.
-And probably a whole bunch more.
Please let me know what you think, if you encounter any issues, and what you’d like to see added.
For those who haven't seen it before:
Over the past 2 months I’ve been working on a program that allows a user to create hex maps like those in Known World/Mystara/“The Voyage of the Princess Ark” Dragon magazine article series.
I had previously created hex map brushes for GIMP based on those maps, but the core architecture of this hex map tool came to me and I wanted to do it for a number of reasons.
The software is web-based at: Hexographer
Here’s a sample map snippet so you can easily see what it does:
Some key points:
-It starts as an applet in a web page so many people won’t have to install anything. (You may need to install/upgrade Java, however.)
-You can choose to start with a map of random terrain or a map of all one terrain.
-You set the map’s width and height in hexes and the size of the hexes.
-You can customize the random terrain generator to give a different mix of land.
-Then your map opens in a pop-up window.
-There you can select terrain buttons then click on the map to change a hex into that terrain. You can also drag over hexes to change all of those hexes.
-You can select generic line and text buttons to draw lines or add labels and there are also preset line a text buttons that have settings appropriate for coastlines, rivers, roads, country borders, etc.
-You can optionally turn on/off hex borders, hex numbering, terrain icons.
-Hex numbering is very customizable: font name/style/size/color; rows then columns vs. columns then rows; set the separator character; what number to use to start the rows and columns.
-If you add text and lines and note if each is a political feature, natural feature or infrastructure, you can turn each of these on and off as if they are layers. (The preset road/river/boundary line and text buttons are set up for this.)
-You can save it to a native format for later editing and export it as a regular PNG image so it can be edited in an image editor or printed.
-It also includes some planet/star/asteroid/etc icons to create a starmap. (Coming in the next couple of days is a feature to change the colors of those icons.)
-You can also import a map to trace over it if you want to use an old map or part of a map as a guide.
-And probably a whole bunch more.
Please let me know what you think, if you encounter any issues, and what you’d like to see added.
