[Map] Here be Orcs!

[Darraketh]

Hi Gang-

Just for kicks and giggles I created a Yahoo group...

drowchick, your effort is not without merit. However I don't Yahoo. Fortunately I feel comfortable posting right here on the boards at EN World with all its inherent limitations.

In this instance I see the benefits of a Yahoo group as counter productive. It would be as if those, few of us who are disciples of the one true mapper went off to some sterile meeting room and sat around patting ourselves on the back.

Here at En World I feel more like a sidewalk artist. We get many folks passing by. Occasionally someone will stop look and listen for awhile. Once in a blue moon someone will feel compelled to join our merry little band of mappers.

To put it another way, I'm trying to spread the word of HexMapper albeit for selfish reasons. (I'd like to have more tiles. More tiles=more mapmaking options.) Here I'm on a fairly busy street corner shouting to the masses, there I'd be behind the doors preaching to the choir.

...but thanks for the suggestion and the interest and I hope I didn't go overboard with this response. I certainly don't want to alienate anyone.

edit:spelling

 

[HellHound]

I'm an admitted old-school hexmapper.

All I want is for the proggy to include a few of the other terrain symbols from the old Expert Rulebook. But I can always get around to doing them myself ONE of these days.

 

[HellHound]

Oh yeah, and I joined the Yahoo group too.

 

[berova]

In all deference to Darraketh, there is something to be said for Yahoo Groups. While I agree EnWorld is a wonderful sidewalk (or corner?) from which to proselytize the coolness of HexMapper to the converted and more importantly unconverted, Yahoo Groups allows members to easily trade files (and by extension new tiles!).

So while I will continue to ply this board, I've joined drowchick's HexMapper groups on Yahoo.

Now, for my real reason for my posting in the first place... at the risk of exposing my newbie-ness with HexMapper... (I own Photoshop Pro 7) ... I do not know how to customize/create tiles let alone add them to a tile-set. Is it simply a matter of opening up a tileset from a draw program like Photoshop Pro and doing some copying, pasting and some editing? Will anyone offer a quick primer?

 

[Darraketh]

I'm an admitted old-school hexmapper.

All I want is for the proggy to include a few of the other terrain symbols from the old Expert Rulebook. But I can always get around to doing them myself ONE of these days.

Nice map.

I did make a few old-school tiles. The ruined fortress is original but fits the old school model. The shipwreck and wizard keep are both old-school.

I have a collection of pics of those old maps. I'll see what is missing and try to complete the definitive old-school set.

Great idea BTW.

Wouldn't it be fun to create an old-school adventure, complete with maps? Dungeons with very little story; hack-n-slash at it's best.

 

[Darraketh]

In all deference to Darraketh, there is something to be said for Yahoo Groups. While I agree EnWorld is a wonderful sidewalk (or corner?) from which to proselytize the coolness of HexMapper to the converted and more importantly unconverted, Yahoo Groups allows members to easily trade files (and by extension new tiles!).

So while I will continue to ply this board, I've joined drowchick's HexMapper groups on Yahoo.

Now, for my real reason for my posting in the first place... at the risk of exposing my newbie-ness with HexMapper... (I own Photoshop Pro 7) ... I do not know how to customize/create tiles let alone add them to a tile-set. Is it simply a matter of opening up a tileset from a draw program like Photoshop Pro and doing some copying, pasting and some editing? Will anyone offer a quick primer?

True, so feel free to share anything I create, there.

Over here, I'll keep the light on.

As far as creating the tiles I used MS Paint. I have PaintShop Pro now but I haven't created any tiles with it. I'll see if I can whip up a tutorial. I should have did it long ago.

 

[hong]

Hey Darraketh, do you mind if I put your tileset on my page for download? There's a few people on UNsenet who seem interested. I'll be sure to attribute the credit properly.

 

[HellHound]

Darraketh - I was going to try to make both the "small hex" and "large hex" versions of the tiles. I've made a GIF file of a scan of the back legend page of the Expert Rule Book that I was going to work from... but with my schedule (writing 3 d20 books in-house and freelancing for another) as tight as it is, I just don't have time to be poking around with the graphic software to be making these.

The benefit of the small symbols is that you could even export the 72dpi graphics created by HexMapper into a PDF document for making a module, running with an output around 150 dpi (so the hexes would be half as big as normal).

If you would be so kind as to email one of the members of the yahoo group your tiles for hexmapper, I would love to make them accessible to the group (with your credit, obviously).

You can email me at for_emergency_use_only@yahoo.com or blackhammer@dreadgazebo.com

Thanks

 

[HellHound]

Oh yeah, as for the old-school adventure...

I think it would ROCK.

I love those games, adventures, settings.

I am so old-school it hurts sometimes.

(Hell, we could do it as professionally old-school as possible and actually do an honest-to-goodness electronic release of it on RPGnow. Forget this First-Edition feel stuff... BASIC EDITION FEEL, NEW EDITION RULES - even go so far as to have a bright colored cover with a graphic box in the middle, the module letter in the upper-left hand corner, etc)

 

[Alchemist]

Oh yeah, as for the old-school adventure...

I think it would ROCK.

I love those games, adventures, settings.

I am so old-school it hurts sometimes.

(Hell, we could do it as professionally old-school as possible and actually do an honest-to-goodness electronic release of it on RPGnow. Forget this First-Edition feel stuff... BASIC EDITION FEEL, NEW EDITION RULES - even go so far as to have a bright colored cover with a graphic box in the middle, the module letter in the upper-left hand corner, etc)

Heh. We loved basic D&D because it was so simple to bring people into it. That was awesome. I would welcome adventures with the feel of basic D&D because I try to run my game with that sort of flavour. I'm even considering running my next campaign in the game world, since I still have all my maps and gazetters.

I also have a map contribution to the thread. I'm not good at this mapping stuff and I only have photoshop to manipulate with, but here it is. The Sundered Desert, where powerful magics in the distant past broke an empire, leaving the west a desert and the east a strange and desolate wasteland filled with roving tribes of desert goblinoids.