Anyone here use mapping software?

Post by **Beowulf** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 4:24 pm

I purchased Fractal Mapper v8.0 a week ago and have been playing with it a lot. I haven't figured it all out yet but so far it's much easier to use than the early version of Campaign Cartographer I owned. The latter I never did figure out.

What do you all use for mapping? Any CC3 or Dundjiini users here?

Post by **Halaster Blackcloak** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 2:31 pm

I've used...er...let me correct myself. I've tried to use CC2 and DD2. Never could figure the damned thing out.

I've had it since 1998 and have yet to create a single map from it. I went back to hand drawing.

Post by **Beowulf** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 10:36 pm

I could never figure out CC1. But Fractal Mapper v8.0 is pretty intuitive. So far I'm only scratching the surface of what it can do but I'm impresses. Hopefully instead of beating on it 8 hours a day I can chip away at it a bit at a time over the next couple months. For $35 it's well worth looking into.

Being I just like gadgets and stuff I still might try Dundjiini just for kicks. It's supposed to be simple to use yet powerful for dungeon type maps but isn't made for overland/large scale maps. FM 8.0 should be able to do both but if DJ is simpler I might use it for dungeons and FM for bigger stuff.

Post by **Halaster Blackcloak** » Fri Nov 02, 2007 2:28 am

One problem I have is this damned museum piece computer. 8 GB harddrive (I think my cell phone has a bigger drive!), 333 MHz processor, 256MB RAM, Windows 98SE...I'm a bit behind the times!

Every time I've decided to upgrade to a new system over the last couple of years, some huge expenses manage to put it off for a few more months and I'm back to square one. With the new year and now being much closer to the office and the area I want to work, hopefully the real estate career will take off so I can do that full time and then I'll have some spare cash to upgrade.

Post by **Beowulf** » Fri Nov 02, 2007 10:40 pm

Halaster Blackcloak wrote:One problem I have is this damned museum piece computer. 8 GB harddrive (I think my cell phone has a bigger drive!), 333 MHz processor, 256MB RAM, Windows 98SE...I'm a bit behind the times!

Holy crap!

Yeah, your phone is probably more powerful!

I just read Wal-Mart is rolling out a $200 computer with a version of Linus OS. You could buy one of them and use your current monitor. It's not a powerhouse but it's better than what you got. 1.5 GHz proc, 80 GB harddrive, 512 MB DDR2 memory.

I'm anxious to build a new machine myself. I have 3 computers, 2 homebuilt desktops & my laptop. My desktops were pretty hot when I built 'em but they're getting a bit long in the tooth. I'd like to build my next one around an Intel Duo-Core. I already bought 4 GB of new memory, and I have several optical drives I could use. And I have a brand new, still-in-the-wrapper 750 GB perpendicular Seagate HD.

[I'm going to school for network administration/network security, so I have to work on my geek-y-ness.]

Post by **Halaster Blackcloak** » Fri Nov 09, 2007 3:28 am

I'm seriously considering just getting a laptop for work, and screw the whole PC upgrade for now. Although the problem there is that I want to keep my work computer separate from my home computer. Eh. Not sure.

I may be able to get a nice Mac laptop from someone in trade for other stuff, but I'm not sure if going from a PC to a Mac is going to drive me crazy.

Post by **Halaster Blackcloak** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 4:51 pm

Well, the museum piece is dead and I had no choice but to upgrade to a new computer. Don't care for the Vista learning cure, but it does have some nifty features. It's almost scary that I could add 675 MB of comic book cover images and not dent the free disc space (320GB harddrive!

).

I was used to running my museum piece with 200-300 MB of free space. Ouch!

Now we need to pray that we can recover the info on the old harddrive that crashed, because I can't seem to locate any of the BIP material backups, along with lots of other stuff that may not have gotten backed up in the chaos of 2007.

I feel an ulcer forming already!

Post by **Beowulf** » Sat Dec 29, 2007 12:58 am

Yikes! Best of luck, Halaster. Hopefully the stuff can be retrieved. If you can't do it yourself, maybe you should consider taking it to a PC shop. Data can be retrieved from some pretty serious catastrophes.

Post by **Halaster Blackcloak** » Mon Dec 31, 2007 2:06 am

Nerd On Site quoted me $200. Well worth it if it'd save me all the countless hours of time and frustration of trying to re-gather all that stuff from partial backups. Till I can afford to get him out in January, I'll be shitting bricks wondering what can be salvaged.

Post by **Beowulf** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 2:16 am

Even a pretty severe crash can often be recovered. Hopefully you'll get all your data back. But I also hope you learned your lesson- always back your important stuff up!

Especially given how cheap harddrive space is nowadays. You can generally get an external 250 GB Seagate for under $125.

Post by **Halaster Blackcloak** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 7:12 pm

Well, I was doing backups, technically. The problem I had was that in Windows 98, whenever you save a file, it saves it to the last folder that you saved that type of file to automatically, unless you choose otherwise. So I'd inevitably misplace files.

What I decided to do was to create a single, catch-all folder called Download Holding. Everything went into that folder that I saved, whether it was a picture of an old AD&D module from ebay, or a cover to a comic book that I needed to add to my collection, or pictures of Mars from the lander. Then, when it got sorta hefty (say 100-200 files usually), I'd burn a CD backup, then sort the various files into their proper folders...Superman #85 into the Superman subfolder of the Comic Book main folder, G1 Against the Giants into the AD&D 1E subfolder of the D&D main folder, old GI Joe pics into the GI Joe subfolder of the Toys main folder, etc.

Problem is, I sorta have been forgetting to back up the main folders after sorting. So I have pretty much everything saved through sometime in October/November of 2007. But looking for something now is like dumping the entire contents of your bedroom, kitchen, living room, study, garage, and attic into a huge pile in the back yard and saying "find me a screwdriver". Yikes!

The time involved in re-sorting it all into proper folders and in many cases renaming them would be astronomical.

Worse yet, I simply cannot seem to find a recent backup of my Favorites/Bookmarks from Firefox or my emails from OE/Thunderbird. Put it this way...there is enough research I've emailed myself in the Health folder of Firefox to give you a Bachelor's degree in Clincial Nutrition. Countless hours of work, and I can't find the damned backup!

If this guy can recover all that, I'll hand him my first born!

Post by **Sir Clarence** » Mon Jun 23, 2008 1:00 am

New member, old thread.

I'm using CC3 and have to say that I'm very fond of it. I'm aware that most people dislike the CC2/CC3 programs for several reasons, but aside from some minor issues I enjoy working with it, and up to now it served me well, producing a wide variety of very different looking types of maps.

Tue Jun 24, 2008 2:51 pm

Sir Clarence wrote:New member, old thread.

I'm using CC3 and have to say that I'm very fond of it. I'm aware that most people dislike the CC2/CC3 programs for several reasons, but aside from some minor issues I enjoy working with it, and up to now it served me well, producing a wide variety of very different looking types of maps.

I bought quite a bit of CC3 software and had just given up ever learing it. Then last weekend a friend was over and started asking me questions as I was posting on line...Long Story Short...He knows Auto-Cad, and in a few moments he was able to show me some cool things with the software...So there's hope that some I may be able to learn how to use it.

My wife still reminds me how much money I had spent...

Post by **Doirche** » Tue Jun 24, 2008 4:51 pm

I can't believe I never saw this thread

The maps for The Ruins of Undermountain III project are being made with Adobe Illustrator. I also use CC3 and DD3 for other projects I am working on

Post by **Beowulf** » Sun Jul 06, 2008 9:56 pm

Cool. I'm interested in eventually trying out a few other pieces of software, too.

Post by **Varl** » Mon Jul 07, 2008 11:44 am

I'm getting into Dundjinni a lot. It's amazing how it can manipulate artwork and customize a single piece of art to get what you're looking for. I love how you can cut and customize art pieces to get what you need. The sheer quantities of art objects available to DJ is wonderful. Layering to get the effects you want is also nice.

CC3 has also taken this route with mapmaking, but I don't find its UI as intuitive as DJ's. Both could stand to have UI improvements done to them, but DJ, once you run the Jailbreak tutorial, teaches you everything you need to know. From then on, it's practice to make yourself better.

Post by **Doirche** » Mon Jul 07, 2008 9:05 pm

I have Dundjinni as well and have just recently begun to check out all of it's features. Seems like a really nice program.