ViewingDale Questions

[Kasim]

Hello everyone,

I'm new here but have been an avid gamer for quite some time. Since I've traditionally been stuck as the GM of games, I've been compiling a massive amount of maps and campaign information, all on paper though.

Well, due to graduating college and moving to an entirely new local I'm going to take the time and document the campaign world. I imagine it'll take some time to either find a gaming group or form my own, this will be a good use of my energy.

I've been researching various programs for the past week that will enable me to easily create my maps. Criteria that I'm expecting, in no certain order:

-Low cost, no $599 programs. I'd be willing to fork over about $50 for a program that makes my life easier. Time=Money right? But it is afterall only a hobby.
-Easy to work with, although I have CAD experience I don't want to make this a project that's 99% learning and 1% never finishing..
-Pleasing to the eye, no it doesn't have to be photorealistic but it must be easy enough for an amateur to use that people will know what they are looking at without me spending hours tweaking graphics.
-Robust enough to allow me to not be forced to resuse images out of lack of options. Nothing bugs me worse then a map made of repetative objects.
-Zoomable and scalable so that I can use one map for the entire world without seams such as my paper maps.

I've been looking at ViewingDale as it seems to meet these criteria better than most. So this leads me to ask a few questions since the forums there are giving me an error and some unbiased opinions will be nice. (Yeah you can chime in too RedRobes)

I have downloaded the trial version and played with it for a few minutes. I've watched the videos and checked out all the screenshots. I've also tried registering on the forums there, but have an error atm.

-Is there a full blown tutorial and good documentation with ViewingDale?
-It says that this is infinately zoomable, in practice does this lend to a great way to build a entire campaign map in one chunk instead of seams with maps pasted side by side? Do objects dissapear at certain zoom levels and if not, does this lag computers badly once maps get too complex? (We're talking a campaign world with dozens of cities, and probably millions of objects, roads, buildings, notes, ect.)
-How do you make the landforms? Although the sample islands look very impressive, I already know the shape and terrain of my map. I could refit my campaign to an existing map, but for several reasons, I'd rather not. I see how to place objects but how do you create the land and mountains itself? Will this be viewable in DragonFlight or will that require an entire rebuild of the map once GeoTerSys is launched? This isn't really needed but would be nice to show players the topography.
-How hard is it to go back and edit the landforms? For example if 2 years from now I decide that a region needs to be reshaped for campaign purposes, will it be a major pain?

I do plan on making things as realistic as possible, continental drift, mountains in the right place, vocanoes where they should be, places of frequent earthquakes, weather and climate, ecology, the works.

I really like the ability to use one program for all my mapping, including the interiors and dungeons like I'm seeing in ViewingDale. I do plan on posting my documentation to a website for my players or to give other GMs some ideas. Hopefully, I can come up with something of quality. Thanks in advance for the help.

Edit: Oh, and am I off base? Is there a better program that would fit my needs?