Abstraction
First Post
Can anyone recommend map software for Mac OS X? Preferably free, but let me know if there is something really awesome that's worth the money. Thanks!
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Os X Map software?
- Thread starter Abstraction
- Start date
Maggan
Writer for CY_BORG, Forbidden Lands and Dragonbane
barsoomcore
Unattainable Ideal
What do you mean by "map software"? I make all my maps in Create and it works great (though it's not free). Of course the Gimp is amazing and free, though I find not quite as useful for mapping.
But those are general illustration programs. If you're looking for something that displays a grid and lets you plunk things down on it, then I think Dundjinni is the only game in town.
But those are general illustration programs. If you're looking for something that displays a grid and lets you plunk things down on it, then I think Dundjinni is the only game in town.
Breakdaddy
First Post
I usually use Photoshop CS2 for my maps, but I have a friend that uses Dundjinni and says it works well for his game. We are both using Powerbooks, mine is a 1.5ghz and his is 1.33 IIRC.
Abstraction
First Post
I have professional software, Photoshop and Illustrator, but I wanted something that would be less time consuming that creating maps from scratch. I looked at some free online map makers and they were all very sucky.
barsoomcore
Unattainable Ideal
I have failed to find a system that for any amount of money produces better maps than I can do in Create.Abstraction said:
If you use Create, I've created some standard effects for 1" scale maps so that I can easily lay out corridors and tile rooms with grid squares. Kind of handy.
azhrei_fje
First Post
You might take a look at http://rptools.net/ where there are a bunch of open source and free Java-based tools. So far, it seems that the MapTool isn't ready for prime time yet. (I've played with the Java WebStart version but found that there are a lot of things it doesn't do yet.)
You might also consider OpenRPG from http://www.openrpg.com/ It's Python-based (another interpreted language) so it's fairly portable. I've had problems getting it to do what I want, although a lot of people claim to be using it extensively?!
I'm writing my own Java-based tool, DndMapper, that is heavily influenced by the non-free TabletopMapper (which was written in VB and hence non-portable).
If you'd like to check out DndMapper, it's available for download from http://www.eeconsulting.net/tmp/ along with all of the design documents as well. When it reaches release 1.0, I'll get a project page at Sourceforge for it. The Java source code is inside the JAR file along with the executable. It's not much more than MapTool right now; although once I add the fog-of-war support, I plan to use it with my overhead projector -- I'll project the map onto a battlemat and use figs to represent creatures, although the design is based on being able to represent creatures and other objects inside the mapping tool. It'll have support for verifying line-of-sight, calculating movement distances, representing spell effects, and so forth. And it has an inherent DM vs. Player design so that it can be networked directly to the players laptops (although networking isn't in it yet, the design includes models with multithreaded support to make this easier). There is some discussion of this tool on the DMGenie forums.
Hope that helps.
You might also consider OpenRPG from http://www.openrpg.com/ It's Python-based (another interpreted language) so it's fairly portable. I've had problems getting it to do what I want, although a lot of people claim to be using it extensively?!
I'm writing my own Java-based tool, DndMapper, that is heavily influenced by the non-free TabletopMapper (which was written in VB and hence non-portable).
If you'd like to check out DndMapper, it's available for download from http://www.eeconsulting.net/tmp/ along with all of the design documents as well. When it reaches release 1.0, I'll get a project page at Sourceforge for it. The Java source code is inside the JAR file along with the executable. It's not much more than MapTool right now; although once I add the fog-of-war support, I plan to use it with my overhead projector -- I'll project the map onto a battlemat and use figs to represent creatures, although the design is based on being able to represent creatures and other objects inside the mapping tool. It'll have support for verifying line-of-sight, calculating movement distances, representing spell effects, and so forth. And it has an inherent DM vs. Player design so that it can be networked directly to the players laptops (although networking isn't in it yet, the design includes models with multithreaded support to make this easier). There is some discussion of this tool on the DMGenie forums.
Hope that helps.
trevorscroft
First Post
MapTool
To be fair, although MapTool supports building maps on-the-fly, it's primary function is a map _sharing_ tool, not a map making tool
To be fair, although MapTool supports building maps on-the-fly, it's primary function is a map _sharing_ tool, not a map making tool
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