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Thread: Oh geez, better late than never...

  1. #1
    Guild Member Chgowiz's Avatar
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    Info Oh geez, better late than never...

    Hi, I'm Neurowiz - the guy who apparently skipped right past the introductions and jumped straight into "WTHamIdoing" kinda questions.

    I have always, always, wanted to draw. I'm terrible at it. Give me a pen and paper and I can whip out a story, but drawing, I end up looking like a 3rd grader in an earthquake. My stick figures pull themselves off the page and run away in shame.

    But I love to try anyway, and as a young lad (heh, I sound so old saying 'lad') I found that some of the best parts of D&D were making maps of twisty passages... many alike.

    I tried Dunjinni back in '04/'05, dropped it for awhile, and now that I'm getting back into gaming, and on Linux, I wanted to try my hand at mapping. So here I am, courtesy of Butch Curry who directed me here (his videos are to blame. Yes. All of them. My wife will be emailing him shortly...).

    Thanks for the help so far and I look forward to getting good enough to participate in one of your contests. There is truly some magnificent work here and I hope to learn enough on my ancient GIMP installation to get half as good.

    I currently use GIMP 2.2 on Ubuntu 6.10. I use a creaky mouse that I want to shoot, but justifying a tablet on top of the other stuff I'm collecting would be a task.

    That's about it.. howdy!

    Regards,
    Neurowiz

  2. #2

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    Hi there Neuro! Seems a bit late to welcome you to the Guild since you've made yourself at home here already, but thanks for the brief bio! Butch Curry's mapping video tutorials are excellent. I've been through them all twice!

  3. #3
    Community Leader NeonKnight's Avatar
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    Welcome to the group. Another old timer for D&D!
    Daniel the Neon Knight: Campaign Cartographer User

    Never use a big word when a diminutive one will suffice!

    Any questions on CC3? Post them with CC3 in the Subject Line!
    MY 'FAMOUS' CC3 MAPS: Thunderspire; Pyramid of Shadows; King of the Trollhaunt Warrens; Demon Queen's Enclave

  4. #4

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    Howdy Neurowiz-

    Two suggestions - upgrade GIMP as 2.4 has a lot of great improvements - the biggest that would help is brush scaling.

    And look for a used tablet on craigslist or kijiji. I picked up an older graphire 3 6"x8" for under $100 cdn.

    -Rob A>

  5. #5
    Guild Member Chgowiz's Avatar
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    @ravells - Yea, babbling unfortunately. I looked at my tree pattern thing and said "Man, I am *such* a dork - everyone probably knows this and I posted the equivalent of how to breathe... " but I'm in awe of everyone's ability on here. Figured the best way to learn is jump in.

    @neonknight - Your avatar. Have it, I must. I think I'll scan in something from the old blue book box set that I just bought from ebay...

    @RobA
    Oh, both good suggestions. I *think* I managed to update my Ubuntu with an older enough GTK so that it doesn't break old Ubuntu but it supports 2.4.5 - I have it now running. Man, the brush scaling is a killer and I love the jitter and the support of PS brushes. Now I have to relearn selections...

    That's a good idea about the tablets. Thanks!

  6. #6

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    There are people of all kinds of different skill levels here, and some who may be virtuosos with one package might be complete novices with another, so any and all advice is welcome, no matter how elementary or how advanced.

    I am fairly inexperienced with every program, so I find pretty much every tip valuable. So don't ever hesitate to share a technique because you think it's too basic!
    Bryan Ray, visual effects artist
    http://www.bryanray.name

  7. #7
    Community Leader NeonKnight's Avatar
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    The avatar was made by the Folks at Wizards of the Coast the day of Gary's Passing, they have I think 9 different ones.

    this is my Avatar on the WotC Boards
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    Last edited by NeonKnight; 05-08-2008 at 01:11 PM.
    Daniel the Neon Knight: Campaign Cartographer User

    Never use a big word when a diminutive one will suffice!

    Any questions on CC3? Post them with CC3 in the Subject Line!
    MY 'FAMOUS' CC3 MAPS: Thunderspire; Pyramid of Shadows; King of the Trollhaunt Warrens; Demon Queen's Enclave

  8. #8

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    Quote Originally Posted by Neurowiz View Post
    now that I'm getting back into gaming, and on Linux, I wanted to try my hand at mapping.
    I just started trying in earnest to create maps for a new PathfinderRPG campaign (you might call Pathfinder "D&D 3.6", since it's an OGL game picking up where 3.5 left off rather than trying to emulate video games and collectible card games the way D&D 4.0 is doing). I'm in sort of the opposite circumstance from yours, though -- I've been using FreeBSD for some years, and Linux (mostly Debian) for some years before that, and have been playing D&D since a decade or so before there was a 2nd Edition, but only started playing with digital gameworld cartography, um, yesterday.

    Quote Originally Posted by Neurowiz View Post
    I currently use GIMP 2.2 on Ubuntu 6.10. I use a creaky mouse that I want to shoot, but justifying a tablet on top of the other stuff I'm collecting would be a task.
    I'm using GIMP 2.4.5 myself. I should probably look into Inkscape as well, but I'm somewhat comfortable with GIMP, and not so much with Inkscape, so I guess I'm not likely to give that a go for a while. It shouldn't be difficult at all to move up to GIMP 2.4.x on your Ubuntu machine, as long as you have a broadband (cable or DSL) Internet connection. You might want to consider moving up.

    I don't know that I'll ever get a tablet for cartography purposes. My ultimate aim is to come up with ways to create maps that look good without having to do any actual "drawing" to speak of.

    Anyway . . . just figured I'd post something in your introductory thread here, since we seem to have some things in common with what we're doing (open source OS, open source image editing tools, no tablet, new to this stuff in some way).

  9. #9
    Guild Member Chgowiz's Avatar
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    @Midgardsormr - I 'grew up' in the hoary ages of Usenet - there was a method and manners to posting questions/techniques. I'm always leery of the audience and besides, I didn't want to see presumptuous. Making trees is hard for me, but maybe it's just me. LOL...

    @Neonknight - Oh that's great! I've managed to score a box with the original chits. The box has crushed edges, but when I reopen the blue book, much squeeing will be had.

    @apotheon - the issue with upgrading was that the Ubuntu 6.10 repos have been closed to updates for awhile. And while I can download/configure/make/install, my worry was updating the underlying gtk libraries and other libs. I don't fully grok ldconfig/so's so well, and trying to add the new libs so I could compile/install 2.4.5 was giving me the heebies - I couldn't just uninstall the old libs without uninstalling 3/4s of my other programs. Fortunately, no grue has eaten me or my install, so things seem to be going OK with the update- although I still wonder if the old libs are coexisting OK with the new. I'm happy with the stability of 6.10, so I've not upgraded the base OS in awhile.

    I haven't looked at Pathfinder, I'm still trying to catch up to how complex 3.0/3.5 is. That's why I love microlite20 - you can use the SRD and the stuff in it, but you're not involved in the complexity. I'm curious to see what happens with 4.x.

    Neurowiz

  10. #10
    Community Leader NeonKnight's Avatar
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    I remember I had the blue box with the chits (ahhh, chits) and I had to cut the chits all out cause I didn't have dice at the tender age of 12.

    Then many years later I was walking past a second hand bookstore and I saw it in the window, so I bought it, and IT STILL HAD THE UNCUT CHITS! GLEEE!

    Ah, such memories. Have some rep!
    Daniel the Neon Knight: Campaign Cartographer User

    Never use a big word when a diminutive one will suffice!

    Any questions on CC3? Post them with CC3 in the Subject Line!
    MY 'FAMOUS' CC3 MAPS: Thunderspire; Pyramid of Shadows; King of the Trollhaunt Warrens; Demon Queen's Enclave

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