The fabled tutorial thread on ViewingDale

[Redrobes]

If you get a download or a boxed disk then you will get an installer which is a standard windows exe installer app. You can install the app anywhere on the PC but I would recommend putting it into a place that has several gigs of free space on it for all of the accumulated art. ViewingDale stores its art in files under the apps main directory. You can divert this to a different place by editing the configuration file but thats not usual.

Before you install its a very good idea to uninstall the trial version that you might have downloaded. The two are not compatible.

When it is installed it will normally put a launch icon on the desktop and a shortcut in the start menu. When you run the app it will load the last map you were looking at or the index page for the first time run. The index page is blue with some circles and text on it.

The circles are links and they will take you to other maps such as the island map that it comes with or the help pages which are all in ViewingDale format. When you see this page its quite possible that your circles are not circular but elliptical and it all looks a bit squashed. This would be true particularly on wide screen monitors. We need to fix this.

ViewingDale works is real world scaling. To get that you must calibrate it to your monitor and this is done by measuring accurately your monitors drawable area in mm. Thats right to the edge of the screen not the window its running in. If you do this and have the width and height then you can use the "Start" button and hit the System Settings button and then the "Screen Width in mm" and "Screen Height in mm" and enter the values in. When finished the page should have exactly circular jump icons on the index page.

If you happen to be using a large screen or a small screen such as either a projector or a micro tablet PC then it might be a good idea to enter the widths or heights in stages as it will change the screen progressively each time and it might be too squished if you go in one giant step. If you really get stuck then you can close it, edit the configuration file and restart the app. If you are using a projector down onto a table with miniatures then its an especially good idea to enter correct values as then all the maps will always be the correct scale for your miniatures with no more scaling - ever.

If your running a single desktop over multiple monitors then put in the value for the multiple monitors. The app copes well with spanning over multiple monitors providing your using one graphics card driving them or hardware connected cards in SLI mode or whatever fancy setup nVidia has come up with this year.

You should also check your graphics card specs and enter in the amount of RAM it has on it into the system settings menu item for it too. The more RAM your graphics card has the better it will run. I would say 8Mb is absolute minimum, 32 Mb or more is recommended but having 64 or 256 is better. There's a diminishing advantage beyond about 256Mb.

Thats the setting up done. Ill cover patching up next so we can get that out of the way.

[Redrobes]

On the website there is a download under the support menu for "Versions and Patches". The download gets you a zip file and within is an installer. You can run the installer out of the zip if you want to. It will install a new directory under the main viewingdale install directory called VersionControl. It will probably have put an icon on the desktop which looks like a band aid sticky plaster.

Ensure the app is closed, run the plaster icon by clicking on it. Or go into the VersionControl dir and run the ViewingDalePatcher.exe.

It will analyze what you have and find suitable patches for it and move your app up versions until it gets to the latest. It stores the old set in a directory so you can revert back if need be. It may add extra applications for you too as and when they get developed.

Once finished you can run up the main app and hit the big Menu button and then "About ViewingDale" and it will tell you what version you are running.

Since version 1.03 there exists an x86 and an x64 version of the app. The x86 is the normal 32 bit standard version. The x64 looks and feels exactly the same but is complied for native 64 bit OS'es like XPx64, Vista64 and Windows7 64bit. My recommendation is if your not sure then use the normal 32 bit app but the 64 bit one on 64 bit machines is slightly better only in the increase in memory capability when saving huge bitmaps. Otherwise its exactly the same.

[Redrobes]

Moving the mouse you will see that most of the time its in the shape of a cross. If you click with the left button then it centers the page on that point. With the right button it grabs the page and slides it around changing the cursor to a hand shape. If you move the cursor over a hot spot circle then it will change to a pointer. When you click with the left button the type of hot spot does different things. Ones with an arrow in like those on the index page are jumps to new map pages. If you click inside the one for the introduction to basic features then it takes you to a new page. Also you will see that a new box appears in the top right corner. This is the jump stack and shows where you have come from.

You need to know how to move around using keys too. The cursor keys pan and the Page Up / Page Down buttons zoom. The Home key centers the page to fit. The backspace key jumps you back up the jump stack - i.e. taking you to the previous map shown. It puts you at the position and zoom that you were at when you jumped from that map.

With the boxed set you get a laminated card showing all the keys. Actually there are a few more than this now that its progressed a few more versions.

As stated on the image the mouse wheel does zoom too. Another tip is that clicking with the mouse inside the jump stack can take you back to any previous map instead of using the backspace button multiple times.

As you pan and zoom you will see the title bar change its position and scale. The position is in the current units which I will talk about later but it starts in meters. The scale is shown as though you are at 1:X i.e. when it says 60 thats 1:60 scale. Or say 1 inch on screen = 60 inches in map which is 1 inch = 5ft map scale. If you have calibrated your app to the monitor as discussed in the previous message then the scale is real. I.e. if it says 1:1 then what you see on the screen is actual size.