Incline Grid Cartographer - Best Tool for Drawing Classic RPG Maps

[Hidden Asbestos]

Hidden Asbestos I must be dumb but I can't get the game-link to work for either EOB or Wiz6. Is there a step by step guide somewhere I can go to and read?

Okay, EOB is easy but disappointing: Step 1 - Todo: support Game Link

Wizardry 6 -- you can find instructions here: http://www.davidwaltersdevelopment.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=1426

The steps are:
* download custom dosbox from my site and replace the DOSBOX folders like-for-like (maybe backup the old dosbox folder if you like)
* edit dosbox.conf for Wiz 6 to add the [netpeek] stuff from the link above
* start dosbox
* download Grid Cartographer Wiz 6 profile - as of v3.0.8 this is included in "%install folder%/Game Link"
* in GC -> Setup > Game Link, Load Profile then Activate
* Start playing Wiz 6 and it *should* work.

note: this is Windows only purely because I've not developed a modified dosbox for other platforms. GC work is done for all platforms but I don't really have the resources to take on dosbox linux / max as well as GC development. You can run GC on any platform and have Game Link working (e.g. I tracked the party in Pool of Radiance on my tablet while playing the game on Windows) - maybe someone who knows about dosbox linux / mac can help me out?

 

[mindx2]

Thanks and I meant Pool of Radiance not EotB.

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

Thanks and I meant Pool of Radiance not EotB.

Pool of Radiance is partially supported, but only the first few maps. I hope to return to these games later and expand them further. It's very time consuming to make these profiles sadly.

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

v3.0.9 beta 2 for Windows is now available

The main updates here are development enhancements to Game Link to support "Forgotten Realms: Unlimited Adventures".
(There are also numerous bug fixes and tweaks.)

Download here:
http://www.davidwaltersdevelopment.com/tools/gridcart/files/grid_cartographer_v3_0_9_beta2.exe

"Unlimited Adventures" Game Link info here:
http://www.davidwaltersdevelopment.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=1429

Enjoy!

edit: also, if you know of any FRUA forums or groups then please spread the word, it'd be great to reach more people via this new feature.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

The new Map profiles for games like Wizardry VI & Dragon Wars are a very nice new feature.

 

[Jaesun]

Just wondering, does this mapping uncover the map as you explore it, or does it just immediately show the whole map. I wasn't clear on that.

 

[Courtier]

Just wondering, does this mapping uncover the map as you explore it, or does it just immediately show the whole map. I wasn't clear on that.

The link thinger tracks your position without drawing everything for you, like in EO

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

Just wondering, does this mapping uncover the map as you explore it, or does it just immediately show the whole map. I wasn't clear on that.

Feelin' bad that I've mislead you with promise of a full auto-map -- this Game Link feature has been a really hard one to explain. It's just meant to make creating your own maps easier by giving you an accurate reference point. It's natural to assume it's way more complex than that but explaining it clearly often fails me. Apologies for any confusion.

 

[Tripicus]

I just found about your program. I was originally trying to dig up an old java program I had found before when I came across your work. Looks fantastic, and a big thanks for the FRUA support. Going to have a blast with this.

Supported.

 

[Tripicus]

A follow-up question, regarding the status of W6. When you mean the locations are incomplete, what will happens when I get beyond those locations? Will GridCart throw-up on me in a manner of speaking, or will I be able to continue manually tracking my position normally?

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

Hi Tripicus, thanks for your support I'm glad you like it!

A follow-up question, regarding the status of W6. When you mean the locations are incomplete, what will happens when I get beyond those locations? Will GridCart throw-up on me in a manner of speaking, or will I be able to continue manually tracking my position normally?

Okay, when you get to a point beyond where I've added support - it will say 'player location not available' and the marker will disappear. You can still map manually from that point on but without the aid of the automatic tracking. It won't crash or break your map.

However, if you send me your "SAVEGAME.DBS" file at the point where you lost tracking - I should be able to update the profile further and you'll get auto-mapping again. These profiles take time to make because for many games I need to physically get to the places. In reality this means I need to fight the battles and solve the puzzles to do it, which as you can imagine is a serious effort. So any help I can get would be great!

Also, not to make excuses but it's particularly hard to make a profile for this game. Unlike older titles in the series which use fixed size 20x20 grids - Wizardry 6 stores maps in a more complicated form, the places in the game are actually composed of loads of 8x8 'mini-grids'. The game connects these up to give you the impression of a seamless world but in reality you're jumping about all over these grids as you walk around. Sometimes two separate parts of the game will share the top/bottom half of the same grid, it gets pretty confusing!

What my profile does is recreate that connectivity and arrange the mini-grids back into a logical three dimensional space. For example when you climb up a tower you ascend up through the floors as you see in the game and everything lines up neatly. This take a little longer to get right but it's important to me that it works correctly.

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

Finally after what feels like an age: Grid Cartographer v3.0.9 is now available!

• New! Game Link profile for "Eye of the Beholder"
• New! Game Link profile for "Forgotten Realms: Unlimited Adventures"
• Extended! "Wizardry 6" profile now includes many more areas (thanks Tripicus)
• Streamlined Automatically detect and load Game Link profiles.
• New! Game Link icon in the bottom right of the interface. Hover over it for a tool tip.
• New! Game Link options page with list of supported games.
• And fixed lots of bugs.

Full change list:
http://www.davidwaltersdevelopment.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=1435

Fun fact: Eye of the Beholder stores player position as one value made up of X + Y * 32. It was a PITA to figure that one out

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

I've made a short post on my forum about the future of Game Link in Grid Cartographer, about why the process takes so long and what you can do to help improve support for your favourite game:

Game Link is something I'll keep adding to as part of v3, for sure. I don't believe there are any significant technical hurdles in supporting new games, especially those from series I've started on. The limiting factor is QA time.

Initial support for a game is actually pretty easy to add and I'm usually able to acquire the byte codes I need for position, facing and map number in an hour or less. The real bulk of the time making a profile is testing it actually works. Unfortunately the way an RPG is designed actively makes this difficult -- it throws up battles and puzzles specifically to slow your progress. Many of these games are designed to have hundreds of hours of gameplay and you need to play them properly to make progress.

The good news is that it's possible to assist me in the QA process. This can be simply supplying me with saved game files at regular points as you play through a game, or reporting problems in existing areas. (The recent improvements to the Wizardry 6 profile have come from people helping me out and the progress there has been far greater than my lone efforts.)

So if you (or anyone reading this) had a game in mind you'd like to 'champion' then please let me know. I'm absolutely willing to put the work in to assist you.

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

I've made a beta Game Link profile for Might and Magic (Book One)

You can try it right now on Windows/Linux by going here: http://www.davidwaltersdevelopment.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=1436

Big thanks to forum user Abelian (esp. for his trainer tool) and also Natreg for their posts in the Might and Magic thread about how the maps work for this game. Their posts from last year really got me through a tricky time getting the correct map number out of this game.

edit:

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

Might and Magic focussed update v3.1.0 to Grid Cartographer now available:
http://www.davidwaltersdevelopment.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=1442

Enjoy!


edit: vvv thanks for the support artakserkso ! vvv

 

[artakserkso]

Great stuff in v3. Update request from v2 sent.

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

I've been working with someone much better and more patient than me at Pools of Radiance on an overhaul of its game link profile. Look out for that in the next update. Plus the ability to add your own regions alongside the ones needed for game link (the current version has a bit of a stick up its ass when it comes to map validation)

 

[Excommunicator]

Just having a look through your software, I like it.

Just wondering what's the practical difference between a block and a corridor? Why would I want to use both?

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

Just having a look through your software, I like it.

Just wondering what's the practical difference between a block and a corridor? Why would I want to use both?

The 'block' is a brush that both fills a grid tile with a solid colour (that can be tinted in the pro edition) and has automatically generated walls. The 'simple block' is the same as a block but has no automatic walls - it just fills the tile.

A 'corridor' is just the automatic walls bit and doesn't fill the ground in. It also has a slight change to the rules governing automatic walls such that if you run a length of corridor directly adjacent to anything other than another corridor piece you'll get a wall. This change allows a 'room' made of blocks to have a loop of 'corridor' around it.

Why would you use one over the others? that's up to you really. It's an art package, there are no rules to follow. Just pick something that you like the look of!

Personally, since I use Grid Cartographer for making game maps, I draw all the walls and doors myself and use the simple block to colour in areas as a reminder. Like this for Pool of Radiance:

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

v3.1.1 is now available!

It includes a completely overhauled Pool of Radiance Game Link profile as well as lots of fixes and tweaks. Oh and you can now create extra regions while playing a Game Link map.

Download here: http://www.davidwaltersdevelopment.com/tools/gridcart/?aim=dl

Full change log:

* ADDED: Massive overhaul to the "Pool of Radiance" Game Link profile (Thanks mrkgnao).
* ADDED: More areas to "Wizardry 6" Game Link profile (Thanks luisfe).
* ADDED: Detect and give a Game Link error status if the game id matches a known profile but the packet length or footer is invalid.
* ADDED: Recent edge styles list to the brush palette.
* ADDED: Copyright notices for 3rd party libraries used in the creation of this software. See File > About.
* CHANGED: Tweaked the 'tavern' beer mug icon to be a little smaller.
* CHANGED: Game Link now permits adding new regions while active and won't report a map with extraneous regions as invalid.
* CHANGED: Allow renaming and deleting regions that are not part of the active Game Link profile (i.e. user added).
* CHANGED: XML export of labels now omits the color attribute if default, attribute renamed as just "c".
* CHANGED: Improved the error message when Game Link fails to activate.
* CHANGED: View > "Center on Avatar" command now changes region/floor to find the avatar in Game Link mode.
* CHANGED: Loading of low BPP (1,2 or 4) colour PNG images is now supported.
* FIXED: Crash bug when reading maps saved by v2.0.6 beta2 - v2.0.6 beta5
* FIXED: Image publishing creating larger images than necessary when residual invisible state remained in border tiles.
* FIXED: Incorrect default file name when exporting XML data.
* FIXED: XML export of labels was missing the vertical alignment attribute.
* FIXED: Ribbon tabs were still responding to mouse input while typing a note/label.
* FIXED: Initial menu scrolling position on File > Unlock and File > About screens.
* FIXED: Position of the pasted area possibly appearing outside of the view area.

Android

* FIXED: Display error presenting new or edited labels.
* FIXED: Inability to add or edit multi-line labels.

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

I haven't posted about Grid Cartographer for a while so here's a sneak peek at v4. It's still a few months out and there's a ton of work left to do, but I guess I should get the hype train rolling now I have something exciting to tease you all with.

This is "Game Link 2.0" which is basically Yo Dawg mode for RPG mapping - allowing you to play games (through a specially modified emulator) and do map drawing stuff without having to alt-tab.

What I'm also excited about is this tech can be made to work with other open source emulators (so long as they have software rendering). e.g. I already have a PSX GPU plugin working. My plan going forward is to extend this for other systems like the DS, C64 and so on.

 

[udm]

I really hope this ends up being endorsed by gog one day and/or you make millions out of it.

 

[Nostaljaded]

Will the emulator hotkeys still be useable? What about those conflicting hotkeys?

To have more potential sales,
I would have consider developing the ipad app a higher priority.
To me, it's more of a pretty, nifty graph paper replacement and apple users have deeper pockets, higher spending tendencies.

Is there anything that prevents you from putting the android app in Google Play?
I guessed it's the pro edition price and the market price expectation of an app.

Still, you could upload just the free edition (and direct them to your website for the pro edition).
In this way, more people will be aware of your product at zero cost and minimal time in spicing up the Google Play storepage.
And then you could easily measured the effectiveness from web redirection analytics.

 

[Bumvelcrow]

Hey, Hidden Asbestos, are you the author (sorry - haven't read through the entire thread)? I tried out the linux version a couple of weeks ago, which didn't work because it was looking for libpng12.so, which isn't included in my distribution (Arch). Any reason it doesn't link against version 1.6?

Looks really good, by the way, and I'm hoping to try it out at some point.

Edit: I see you have a forum. I will come and hassle you there.

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

Thanks everyone for the brofists and enthusiasm!

I really hope this ends up being endorsed by gog one day and/or you make millions out of it.

My plan for v4 is to submit to GOG and Steam Greenlight, I think it's a good fit for both platforms. Millions would be nice too

Will the emulator hotkeys still be useable? What about those conflicting hotkeys?

On the picture I posted you can see 'key lock' around the dosbox image. This means that dosbox is being sent *all* keyboard input - implicitly including hotkeys for cycles up/down, etc. I've also added an icon to the system tray which gives quick access to the input mapper and quitting DOSBox.

You can configure GC to lock/unlock input when you click in and out of the window, press a specific key (like VirtualBox uses R-CTRL to lock/unlock) or press mouse button 4/5. 'Modern' DOS games have mouse input and I've catered for that too. For games that support absolute mouse position (i.e. ones you can still play in regular dosbox without mouse lock - like Wizardry 6 for example) you can setup 'passive mouse input' which lets you move and click on the game link window and have it just work. You can also lock mouse input which effectively creates two mouse cursors one for the mapping and one for the game. I've got it going quite seamlessly now.

To have more potential sales,
I would have consider developing the ipad app a higher priority.
To me, it's more of a pretty, nifty graph paper replacement and apple users have deeper pockets, higher spending tendencies.

Is there anything that prevents you from putting the android app in Google Play?
I guessed it's the pro edition price and the market price expectation of an app.

With v4 going to places that mobile can't really follow (such as with Game Link 2.0) I'm strongly considering separating the mobile version off and going back to Google Play (and Amazon Appstore potentially) with a pared down 'Touch' edition. This will mean it becomes a separate purchase again, separate from existing Pro licenses and probably without an upgrade path from v3 - the plus side is that it does pave the way for things like an iPad version on the Mac Appstore and also potentially pay for more time adding tablet specific interface customisations (e.g. cloud storage and basic gestures / multi-touch input).

Market price expectation for apps is a bit lower yes, and I'll probably make a concession to that, but I'm not going to shy away from asking a fair price for it either.

Still, you could upload just the free edition (and direct them to your website for the pro edition).
In this way, more people will be aware of your product at zero cost and minimal time in spicing up the Google Play storepage.
And then you could easily measured the effectiveness from web redirection analytics.

I'm pretty sure Google won't like that, and it certainly doesn't seem fair to use Google Play as free advertising space. I appreciate the suggestion though, I'm still exploring strategies for v4 and beyond.

Hey, Hidden Asbestos, are you the author (sorry - haven't read through the entire thread)? I tried out the linux version a couple of weeks ago, which didn't work because it was looking for libpng12.so, which isn't included in my distribution (Arch). Any reason it doesn't link against version 1.6?

Looks really good, by the way, and I'm hoping to try it out at some point.

Edit: I see you have a forum. I will come and hassle you there.

Yup I'm the author. I don't know if libpng 1.6 would necessarily cause a problem, I'll have to look into it further. What I'm more concerned about is the next person saying the opposite: "why are you not using 1.2? my distro doesn't support 1.6!" or it causing any problems in other distros - major version changes seem like a better time to make changes like this, it doesn't sound right for v3 during its twilight months.