Mystara: The Grand Duchy of Karameikos

[Thorf]

Why not make a huge map in illustrator with everything on it and save individual areas when needed as pdf files. the pdf file will be cropped to the page size

This is exactly what I tried to do originally, but unfortunately my computer was not up to it. Illustrator (at least on my computer) really struggles and slows down to a crawl for the huge maps, meaning that any editing at all takes ages. I also tried making an Illustrator file with all of the maps placed as linked files, which worked okay until I saved it and tried to load it up again; it didn't load. It's frustrating when the technology isn't up to what you want to do with it, and that's the major reason why I took a break for the last two years from my mapping project.

That said, I've just ordered a new computer, and I'm going to upgrade to CS3 sometime soon, so I'll be interested to see how it deals with it then. It may yet end up being the solution I'm looking for.

[Redrobes]

Well i'll say it one last time. ViewingDale would eat this for breakfast. You would have unlimited mapping area and scale. It has hex maps which could be matched to your maps. It would probably work with your old PC if it had a graphics card with > 32Mb of ram on it. Theres a free demo and some movies to look at to see it going on the link in sig. You could map in illustrator or photoshop and export smaller parts of your map to keep your speed up when editing them and then align them up on a hex grid just like I am doing in the co-op map world here on this site using the square grid. Post up/me some big maps which should join up and ill make a movie demo...

[Arkkeeper]

Thorf I'll take some picture's of some of the maps you probably don't have, at least real images them at least. I just recently hung up my Hollow World world maps which show the outer world and the inner world. as well as precataclysmic outer world and post (the post has migration patters, yay!). and lets see... it's got a cross-section of the worlds mass showing how the pole holes work and it's got images of both poles, both inner and outer.

[Thorf]

Well i'll say it one last time. ViewingDale would eat this for breakfast. You would have unlimited mapping area and scale. It has hex maps which could be matched to your maps. It would probably work with your old PC if it had a graphics card with > 32Mb of ram on it. Theres a free demo and some movies to look at to see it going on the link in sig. You could map in illustrator or photoshop and export smaller parts of your map to keep your speed up when editing them and then align them up on a hex grid just like I am doing in the co-op map world here on this site using the square grid. Post up/me some big maps which should join up and ill make a movie demo...

Actually I did check out your site last night, and it is definitely of interest to me. The only thing I'm not sure of is just how compatible it is with my maps. If it is PDF-compatible in some way, it might just be exactly what I'm looking for - which is to say not a replacement for Illustrator but rather something that works with it or with the maps I've created in it.

I'm going to be posting more maps soon, including PDFs, and I would love to see a demonstration. If it works well, I'll almost certainly get your program.

Thorf I'll take some picture's of some of the maps you probably don't have, at least real images them at least. I just recently hung up my Hollow World world maps which show the outer world and the inner world. as well as precataclysmic outer world and post (the post has migration patters, yay!). and lets see... it's got a cross-section of the worlds mass showing how the pole holes work and it's got images of both poles, both inner and outer.

Arkkeeper, my good man, you underestimate my collecting abilities. I'm pretty sure I have every map made for this setting - certainly every poster map - and I've actually bought second copies of many books just to get a map to keep in pristine condition. (Some of my original maps are less than perfect after close to 20 years of folding and unfolding...)

So thank you very much for the offer, but I think I can manage.

Actually, I also got my father to take pictures of all my maps with a colour setting card in the picture too, so in theory I have really good sources for the colours. But the lighting conditions weren't perfect, so I'm thinking scans are probably the best way to go.

[Redrobes]

Actually I did check out your site last night, and it is definitely of interest to me. The only thing I'm not sure of is just how compatible it is with my maps. If it is PDF-compatible in some way, it might just be exactly what I'm looking for - which is to say not a replacement for Illustrator but rather something that works with it or with the maps I've created in it.

I'm going to be posting more maps soon, including PDFs, and I would love to see a demonstration. If it works well, I'll almost certainly get your program.

Its not PDF compatible. The problem with PDF's is that only Adobe and Ghost Script are available to decode them into a raster format so there is no freely available method of getting at the data in a PDF without paying a very large sum of money for the privilege. What I was thinking was whether it would be possible to hold the original maps in illustrator - possibly with smaller number of hexes to keep the file size down. You could export them as high res bitmaps like PNG's and ViewingDale can collect all of the high res bitmaps up and stitch the whole world together as a seamless expanse. It handles lots of high res images better than most other programs. You can then export a bitmap of any section of the world (covering several smaller illustrator regions) as a very high res image - certainly 600dpi or much more. If your going to send to printers then maybe you need it all in vector format but I have gone to commercial printers with high res bitmaps. The usual reason why they don't like bitmaps is because they are not high enough res. If thats the only reason then it wouldn't apply here. But I would understand if you needed to keep the finals in vector format for some other reason.

[mathuwm]

This is exactly what I tried to do originally, but unfortunately my computer was not up to it. Illustrator (at least on my computer) really struggles and slows down to a crawl for the huge maps, meaning that any editing at all takes ages. I also tried making an Illustrator file with all of the maps placed as linked files, which worked okay until I saved it and tried to load it up again; it didn't load. It's frustrating when the technology isn't up to what you want to do with it, and that's the major reason why I took a break for the last two years from my mapping project.

That said, I've just ordered a new computer, and I'm going to upgrade to CS3 sometime soon, so I'll be interested to see how it deals with it then. It may yet end up being the solution I'm looking for.

I upgraded to 2gb of ram from 1gb and it has made a huge difference

[Arkkeeper]

Oh dang see I got the idea you were doing this all from the online images. that means you have more than me. Now I'm all can I haz cheezburger much?

[Thorf]

I upgraded to 2gb of ram from 1gb and it has made a huge difference

I actually did the same in November, but at the same time I also got Vista, and although there is some difference, I think Vista killed most of it. But my new computer will have 4 GB of memory (even if it can only use 3 and a bit due to 32 bit Windows) as well as a fast Core 2 Duo processor, so I'm hoping that it'll allow me to do much more.

[Badger]

I actually did the same in November, but at the same time I also got Vista, and although there is some difference, I think Vista killed most of it. But my new computer will have 4 GB of memory (even if it can only use 3 and a bit due to 32 bit Windows) as well as a fast Core 2 Duo processor, so I'm hoping that it'll allow me to do much more.

I'm running CS3 with 2GB ram and 256mb Radeon Video Card.... Illustrator runs great.... and I've had some fairly large files I've worked with ...

But .... it could always run faster