More community ideas to promote Genesis

[Tapakah]

Dear Rhaegar,

I appreciate your enthusiasm. But Cherek outlined the maintainability request in the clearest way.

T.

[Rhynox]

I will play a bit with AutoRealm. If it entertains me enough, maybe I will draw Estwilde, Kalaman and the plains. Huge "if" there, though, lately I have been pretty bored with everything.

[Cherek]

I tried autorealm some again.

I think its possible to do some pretty nice maps with it. If you make some custom brushes its not so bad!

[Makfly]

Can the program not do any kind of antialiasing?
Or even just a basic blur, or anything to take away the horrid, jagged-edged, Microsoft Paint, bitmap-look?

Maybe you can create actual icons that have been made this way by default, but even if that's possible, how about the lines/fractals it's producing?

I tried just importing a map into PS and giving it a blur, but it doesn't look good. It's better than the original sure, but still not good enough, I think.

[Cherek]

No I dont think it can, which is the biggest drawback still.

You can import bitmaps and use as brushes, but as you say, lines and stuff will still be jagged. I applied a cutout (I think it is called) filter in Photoshop and got a decent look, but not great. But if we start adding filters in photoshop we might as well do it in Photoshop or Gimp or something?

Just add custom brushes and map away? Might be the best solution anyway? Gimp is free...

[Makfly]

Yea, I was thinking that perhaps we could do some touch-up in Gimp after a map is completely finished in AutoRealm. That should be fairly easy to do, and still completely free.
I haven't tinkered around with Gimp + AutoRealm yet, though, so I'm not sure we can find a nice and easy way do it still.

Maybe once I get more free time I'll look into it, but if anyone find a solution to this, do let everyone know, by posting here.

[Makfly]

I did tinker with the Gimp's selective gaussian blur, and the normal blur function faded to 30%, which gave an okay result.
I presume we could make a batch script, that can run a map through that, if necessary.

Now I also found some pretty spiffy mountain and hills brushes for GIMP and some mountain brushes for PS, but the Help in AutoRealms is not very...helpful.
Anyone have an idea of how to import GIMP (or PS) brushes to AutoRealms icon library? Or maybe even if it's a workable solution at all?

I can copy-paste from the clipboard to AutoRealms, but not having a picture on a white background is not very useful. I want the transparency to carry over, if AutoRealms even supports transparency that is.

Anyway hope this makes sense.

EDIT: Found a users manual for AutoRealms that someone made:
http://forum.cartographersguild.com/sho ... umentation
Unfortunately you have to log in, so create a profile there and all that. I can't be bothered just now, but if anyone gets a hold of it, post here.

[gorboth]

What a fantastic thread!

I agree that the map example Tapakah posted is of very nice quality. Have any of you had a chance to start experimenting with this yet? If so, please do share what you've come up with.

This is just the sort of support the game needs from its players. Go go go!

G.

[Cherek]

Well. I did actually manage to produce something.

Personally I think this is the way to go. Forget about Autorealms or other freeware or commerical mapmaking programs. They are still not even close to what you can do what a normal image editing software.

So I decided to create a Photoshop/Gimp template for Genesis mapmaking.

The forum would not let me upload so here is a link:

http://www.pici.se/627395/?size=fullsize

Note, WORK IN PROGRESS. It still lacks a number of icons, and the whole map and names are mostly made up of course so dont bother about that. We could make it more detailed by adding brushes of trees and mountains and stuff. I included those too in the template but havent started using them. I think it would work pretty fine even without those types of details too, and it would be simplier to massproduce obviously.

Speaking of that, this thing is super easy to massproduce and anyone (even Gorboth!) could do it. Its far simpler than Autorealms even if you dont know anything about image editing.

All you do is draw the coast outline with your mouse (dont even need a special brush!) and my template will take care of anything else. Same thing with roads and river. Just pick "river" in my template and drag and the template will make fix the rest. All text and the map-icons work the same way.

I am pretty sure if we used this template and I got a few helpers would could have all maps done very quickly if we wanted to.

That is... if you like the style of course!

It could be colored, like blue-ish for water and green for landmasses, but I kinda liked the monochrome style better myself. Probably depends on the rest of the website design which way you wanna go though...

Anyway... would be nice to hear some comments. For now Ive made a template that works in Photoshop, but converting it to Gimp seems easy enough I think. (knock on wood). It depends on what would be preferable. The widespread commercial Photoshop, which alot of people know how to use, or the 100% free and cross-platform Gimp software that is a little more unknown I would assume.

The end results should be very similar either way.

[Hektor]

I really like this. Excellent work Cherek. The style, the color scheme etc. *thumbs up*