High quality land maps?

[RiTz21]

I am thinking of publishing a board game, which requires (amongst other things) a high-quality "overland map" for the board.

I've been checking out all the various fantasy map makers, and I was wondering if anyone had comments on those. I saw Campaign Cartographer 3 (which looks good, but complex, and has no demo for v3), Fractal Mapper (which doesn't look as good as the others) and Dundjinni (which seems more appropriate for small scale maps).

Any suggestions?

Yes I have considered doing it on a contract basis, but I don't have much funds for a high priced artist...

RiTz21

[Robbie]

You'd be surprised what some mappers in here would do for publicity If you want someone to help you there's always our map request forum.

As for software...I am still a fan of CC3 only because I know it and its easy for me to produce maps in, but it has a steep learning curve. If you're already a capable image person with photoshop or Gimp however, there's some great tutorials here from our users on mapping with those as well as other tools Like Xara and whatnot.

[Richardb]

CC3 has the best bang for the buck. It takes a while to learn, but honestly, I found it a lot easier to learn than Bryce! As soon as you realize that CC is not a paint program, get used to the CAD concepts, and learn the icons, it is pretty straight forward for most common commands. Heck, I think you can do a simple map on your first day. Mastering takes a good bit of time, but that is true with any program.
I think that you can produce excellent overland maps with the package, far better than Dundjinni, which is small scale oriented.

[RiTz21]

CC3 does seems to give great output - Would anyone happens to know if the result can be user in a commercial game, or do they 'copyrights' their art and icons?

Thanks!!

RiTz21

[Richardb]

CC3 does seems to give great output - Would anyone happens to know if the result can be user in a commercial game, or do they 'copyrights' their art and icons?

Thanks!!

RiTz21

All output is usable by the mapper commercially. They have very liberal terms called out on their website. Your derivative works are yours alone. It is just a CAD program with symbol catalogs, which are free for your use commercially on not. They cover it somewhere on their website. I checked with them a number of years ago over a map I was putting in a book. No problems.

[Richardb]

Yep, all is okay - Here is the language from their website
USE OF SYMBOLS AND ARTWORK
This update includes a large amount of symbols, fill-styles and other artwork in a variety of file formats (OUR ARTWORK). This section sets out how you can distribute maps containing OUR ARTWORK.

(i) Subject to the restrictions in section ii and iii, you may freely distribute the maps you create using OUR ARTWORK in CC3 format, but not the source image files (PNG and bitmap artwork) associated with them. You may freely distribute flat files (for example BMP and PNG) exported from CC3 containing OUR ARTWORK. You may publish such maps for commercial gain.

(ii) You may not redistribute any map that in our sole opinion is, or appears to be, for the purpose of disseminating OUR ARTWORK. Think of your maps as documents, and our symbols as fonts. You can print a document containing Times New Roman font, but you can't give the font file away, or produce a "font book".

(iii) You may not produce commercial products which consist predominantly of floorplan-resolution exports OUR ARTWORK without written permission from ProFantasy Software Ltd. This includes but is not limited to PDF dungeon tiles.

[RiTz21]

Thanks for your replies!!

I've opened up my Map Request here.

RiTz21