Temporal Comet Strike world

[Gamerprinter]

When I complete this map, I think I am going to create another Xara Xtreme tutorial - the techniques I use to create regional/continental maps, including forest texturing and layering, mountain creation, canyons, cut rivers and more.

Again, I know the number of users for Xara here is 1, maybe two if you count Ravs using Serif DrawPlus, which is the closet app to Xara Xtreme, but there might be some techniques that can cross into other apps - GIMP, Illustrator...

I really am trying to convert more users to apps like Xara Xtreme.

GP

[Badger]

FINE!!!! I'm downloading it ...

But if it don't have a magic "Instant Map" button .... I'm going to be VERRRYY Disappointed!!!

[Badger]

Well.. there isn't an "Instant Map" button, but I do like the speed with which it handles itself... but... what exactly are the advantages of this over say ... Illustrator?

[RPMiller]

It came together nicely GP. Although the rivers look a little "hacked" in, but I imagine you are going to clean those up. How in the world do you do .5 pixel??? I didn't think that was even possible since a pixel is the smallest display unit.

[waldronate]

ftp://ftp.alvyray.com/Acrobat/6_Pixel.pdf

[RPMiller]

ftp://ftp.alvyray.com/Acrobat/6_Pixel.pdf

Thanks for the doc waldronate, but it didn't answer my question and in fact showed me that I was correct in asking the question. I learned computer technology and how they work before I ever saw raster and vector programs, or rather before I learned how to use them so I always come from the more exacting definitions of things. Thus I already knew that a pixel wasn't a square. Therefore the reason why I asked the question. If Xara is able to produce a half pixel line, that to me, means that it is doing some really interesting math internally or it is fudging what it says is a pixel and thus it prompted my question.

That all said, I really liked that article so thank you. I will definitely sock that away for a future debate I'm certain will come up at some point. Point, get it.

[waldronate]

It's done the same way that antialiased lines are done. There are many algorithms for doing this task with the simplest being to rasterize the image at higher resolution then sampling down (which is what most graphics cards do for their full-screen AA). There are also algorithms for directly performing antialiasing, with the quick google search http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...ed-area+sample turning up a number of good discussions.

My point on the document was that the screen/image representation samples a continuous function and the sampling function determines the minimum visible item.