How to graphically create a Town!?

[RiTz21]

For my RPG, I am looking for a way to 'create' a town, with buildings. There are various buildings (like churches, Barracks, town halls, fields etc...) that a Player can have, and it would be fun to find a way to 'paste' those building onto a Map to represent the town you'd build.

Is there any 'free' software or game editor that would allow one to 'build' such a town? I am looking to create a Graphics of what buildings are in the town.

Thanks!

RiTz21

 

[Dalzig]

City Creator ?
AutoREALM ?

If you're looking for a free alternative to City Designer 3, I know of none. Your best bet would probably be to get GIMP, steal some stock pictures, and make maps by hand.

 

[RiTz21]

How about the "editors" that comes with some games?
Perhaps one of those is free and 'downloadable'?

Some games have awesome Maps - like the Baldur's gate series/NWN...
Any of those editors available just to make a town? That would be cool!

RiTz21

 

[DreadPirateMurphy]

I understand that it used to be possible in the old days to use a piece of graphite to mark paper in such a way that it could be used as a map. Some vendors even sell it encased in a wood handle with a piece of rubber on the end to allow for corrections. In my youth, I even had the opportunity to use paper that had been pre-marked with light ink in a grid pattern, such that it could be used to represent scale.

Amazingly, the technology was immune to power outages, and replacement graphite was remarkably cheap compared to ink jet cartridges.

Sadly, I am undoubtedly showing my age be even mentioning such things. I guess I'll go churn some butter or spin some thread...

 

[the Jester]

I'm totally going to agree that graph paper and pencil are a great way to go, at least at first.

Later, I'd add color with colored pencils, highlighters or crayons.

 

[weem]

I recommend some of the other things mentioned already of course - such as drawing it out on graph paper.

But, Google Sketch is a free 3d program you might try (very easy to use). I made the following very quickly...

[edit] Download it here [/edit]

...I grabbed a town map (Barovia) from the wotc gallery and imported it. Then, I created the buildings on top of the ones that were there.

You can also just set down a default grass "floor" and do your own, etc. For example, I made this one pretty quickly as well...

I have also used Illustrator (not free though) - this is a quick example of what you could do by simply drawing some boxes and then using the 3d extrude & bevel tool...

 

[Mark]

Good stuff, Weem! Thanks!

I guess I'll go churn some butter or spin some thread...

Now that you've *spun* this one . . .

 

[RiTz21]

Thanks for the replies!!

A friend mentioned that the world editor in Age of Empire II could be used to create such town - I re-installed it on my PC to check it out, and it's not bad!

It does not allow you to zoom In/Out of the map you create (an ability I would need to be able to show an overhead view of the whole town). There were many interesting buildings I could use, although I didn't find a Cemetery, which would have been nice to plug near a Church.

Are there any other game editors that would allow building a medieval Town like AoE2? (perhaps something with more graphics, and more recent?)

RiTz21

 

[weem]

Neverwinter Nights 2.

I used to do a lot of modding for that back when it was new. I had a site devoted to it (not up anymore), but here is a screenshot of a roman-like arena I made at the time...

This one was not done by me, but gives you another idea of what's possible...

 

[Mark]

The more I mess around with SketchUp, the more I think this is going to be a very useful program. There's lots of free tutorials for it, too. I'm getting the dungeon Tantalus set up in SketchUp and then exporting various snapshots (as jpg, bmp, png) to use in the google wave game I am setting up. With the new Fighty+ gadget for use in the wave, it should work as a completely customized virtual tabletop. Still a few kinks to work out yet.

Google SketchUp