vector mapping?

[Redrobes]

This is my ViewingDale in action on this guilds community world (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qELcbKXdRm8). I think you might also want to look at Fractal Mapper 8 or FM8 as its know which does a similar thing. There is also MapTool the VTT which has long zoom in it too.

You can use vectors and technically it would do what you are asking but if the intention is to zoom such that a lot of your world is so small that the vector app would not want to show it then you would quickly find that it uses a lot of memory and takes a long time to redraw it even though its not going to display most of it. The apps above are optimized so that it fades out really small stuff and keeps the speed up - known as the management of Level Of Detail or LODs. If it does not do that then its holding the whole worlds worth of detail in memory at once which will get progressively worse with more detail added.

[mwsasser]

Thats really nice, was it a vector map or done in fractal mapper? My intention is not to do anything to the scale that you have. It'll be entirely b&w with hexes. It'll show a continent outline and I'd like to show major locations and smaller items as well. It's really for me so that in a year I can pull up a map hex and look to see what I've stuck in there.

[Redrobes]

Thats really nice, was it a vector map or done in fractal mapper? My intention is not to do anything to the scale that you have. It'll be entirely b&w with hexes. It'll show a continent outline and I'd like to show major locations and smaller items as well. It's really for me so that in a year I can pull up a map hex and look to see what I've stuck in there.

No, I write ViewingDale (dot com link in my sig). Its a kind of half 'n half vector/raster app. It uses raster bitmaps for all the icons and mapping - no vector or hand drawing capability, but it displays them at any scale you like so that in most cases you can zoom into it. If you set up the bitmaps so that you add more detail in smaller icons then it zooms in with no loss of resolution. The app manages all the generation and handling of the multi-resolution bit of it. So your left with adding layers of maps into a world at read fantasy world scales instead of pixel scales. So then when you add a cart or a person or whatever, they always appear at the correct scale in relation to all the maps you have added.

My advice is to try all the free ones like Fractal Mapper 8 trial with the links Mark has posted and if you dont find that suitable then you can look into the non free stuff like mine - actually there is a free trial of ViewingDale on the site too but its quite limited. As GP has mentioned, Xara is free on linux but costs on windows I believe. There is also Inkscape which is the open source free app similar to Adobe's Illustrator. There is CC3 which is non free, mainly vector as well as other odd ball ones too but all of these don't handle the LODs like I mentioned as they are not targeted specifically at the problem of displaying the whole world in one zoomable map.

[mwsasser]

All I want to do is make a b&w outline of a continent that I can zoom down to certain areas with. That way I know where I've placed certain villages, dungeons or whatever. If using illustrator or inkscape is the wrong thing to use, can you guys make some suggestions please?