Incline Grid Cartographer - Best Tool for Drawing Classic RPG Maps

[thesheeep]

I do statically compile most things in except GTK and libpng (there aren't many libs used anyway) - but even if I did everything, the requirement comes more from the practicalities of testing - I only really have the resources to commit to saying it works on the distro I develop the thing with. Mint is a popular one and usually implies Ubuntu will work just fine - but the thing I'm doing is to avoid just saying "All Linux!" since it's likely someone will eventually make/find a distro that it doesn't work on and that could potentially turn into a complicated tech support problem. Better to be stricter and clearer, I'm afraid.

The thing with linux is that pretty much nothing precompiled will work on every distribution.
If something runs on Ubuntu, in 99% of cases, it will run on any Debian, and that covers the vast majority of (gaming) users to begin with.
From my experience, binaries working on Debian will work on Ubuntu as well and vice versa.

Linux is a frigging nightmare for any kind of non-open-source distribution.
What I did on projects I worked on is to write a smallish Python script that copies dynamic dependencies of the executable (and recursively dynamic dependencies of those dependencies) to a sub-folder of the executable location and then changes the rpath of these and the executable to that location (using patchelf ).
It was about two days of work and including fiddling around with ldd and readelf from within Python to write the script, I'd say. With the worst part being filtering out the .so files that should never be distributed with the program, like opengl files
But in the end the result was an easily zippable (or whatever installer at hand) bunch of binaries that would work out of the box on any platform compatible with the one that compiled them. And would never ever require installing additional software, nor would existing libraries that are the same as you use - but with an incompatible version - screw with the program. No more "You have to use THIS specific library version or bust".
So if one would repeat that process once for Ubuntu/Debian, Fedora, openSUSE and ArchLinux he'd be covered fairly well.
No need to have the user install libraries on his own and then flood your contact/forums with questions about exactly that.

Then again, your software is more likely aimed at users who are more tech affine to begin with and probably don't mind installing libraries.
Also, I don't know if your software self-updates, but for that, a single large static executable would be pretty horrible.

Ugh, thanks for bringing those painful memories back to me
I honestly love linux, but it has some VERY serious flaws.

 

[Bumvelcrow]

So if one would repeat that process once for Ubuntu/Debian, Fedora, openSUSE and ArchLinux he'd be covered fairly well.
No need to have the user install libraries on his own and then flood your contact/forums with questions about exactly that.

As I said above, Arch is already covered since the AUR repository has a vast quantity of non-officially-supported packages and the only one GC needed that wasn't part of the default system was libpng12. I just checked and this now seems to have been moved into the supported 'community' section so that's one problem solved (for me ).

Personally, if you're not going to fully statically compile it then I'd say 'supported for Ubuntu/Mint' and then ask for contributors to help out for distros like Fedora or others. That'll attract linux users like squirrels to nuts. Although, as HA said, there are only a limited number of share dependencies and it's not really a chore getting it working on anything reasonably modern.

I think Steam goes down the road of packaging shared libraries, which works most of the time but then I upgraded some low level package and suddenly the steam packaged versions were no longer compatible and I had to remove them all and edit the startup script to tell steam to stop messing around and just use the perfectly good system versions.

There are other solutions like linuxports and easybuild that will automatically build dependencies and keep them separate, but that's probably far more trouble that it's worth.

Or open source it and ask for donations.

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

A week to go! Mostly polishing some things and admin/biz stuff to concentrate on now.

(Also rigging up indoor fireworks and a wine bottle on an elaborate rope swing system to smash off the side of my monitor.)

As I said above, Arch is already covered since the AUR repository has a vast quantity of non-officially-supported packages and the only one GC needed that wasn't part of the default system was libpng12. I just checked and this now seems to have been moved into the supported 'community' section so that's one problem solved (for me ).

I remembered this morning that I tried to statically link libpng into GCs code originally, leaving GTK as the only external dependency. This caused real problems for GTK on certain distros as its message boxes and file selector would be missing icons (IIRC it seemed to work okay on Ubuntu but not on Mint, or something like that). Seeing this was a problem and assuming libpng was pretty common I made it external too. Everything else like zlib, glew and .. well I don't use many libs, are static. Of course classic Linux there's libpng 12 (Mint) and libpng 16 (Arch) and .. . well at some point you just have to cut your losses and put some of that onto your userbase. Sorry. Thanks for persevering!

Or open source it and ask for donations.

oh you !

 

[Hirato]

You could always use Qt instead, I think that (at least the Qt5GUI part of it) links to libpng.

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

I'm putting together the finishing touches now. Nearly all of my critical tasks are completed and ready for launch next week. One of the last big UI things I wanted to change was a revised tool options panel, more in keeping with the new theme. Rather than the old system where the options covered up the map, I've moved things around to put them under a new tab on the side panel.

As in v3, only the Eraser and Picker tools have options but it gives me a place to add new panels for other tools in future, as needed. It's a good way of packing extra functionality into a tool without the need to tuck the options away on a full-screen options page (where they'd be a little too far away for convenience.)

You can also see a little [+] / [-] toggle which simply collapses the whole panel up. It helps you see a more of the brushes again now that the colour panel is much taller.

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

what where actually the final versions of v1 and v2, I got v1.4.8 and v2.1.1 via wayback machine, but I wonder if these were actually the final ones for each release

I'm putting together a new web site for v4 today and since you asked about this - at the bottom of the new download page I've added a 'legacy downloads' section with links to the latest version of each of the previous major releases.

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

Got finished a bit early today and so erm I guess GC4 is basically ready to start packaging up. However instead of rescheduling the launch concert + laser party, worldwide TV and cinema ad campaign and sky writing I thought I'd work on some last minute random things and get a good bang-for-buck out of the contingency time I have left before Tuesday.

First one is an alternate 'hollow box' door style - since some people find the current capacitor looking one weird:

I'll hopefully get a few more random things done on Sunday. No requests please - it'll be what I can fit into the time I end up with and I can't guarantee I'll have time to do a proper job of *your thing*. Better to do it right in v4.1.

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

I've been thinking about stairs and ramps today and it dawned on my that the implementation to this point, having them as markers, doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. Stairs and ramps are supposed to be representations of the floor in the level (they have dynamic height but it's still a kind of floor). They're not a thing you're supposed to be able to pick up and move about which is what a marker is meant to be.

So you can now find stairs and ramps in the Ground section and they are drawn on the terrain layer instead. Older maps will migrate automatically (replacing any existing terrain the stair was placed on) and stairs/ramps can now have things placed on them in the freed-up marker layer.

This harmonising of the ground types opens the path to having more advanced control of terrain levels within the floor with the ultimate goal - using GC4 Pro as a game development tool - to recreate the slopes and height changes you find in the Ultima Underworld / System Shock 1 engine:

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

Okay, done. Gonna spend tomorrow packaging things up, doing admin and I'll post back when it's live at some point on Tuesday.

Rounded corners?

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

Here's my custom DOSBox R12 in advance of tomorrows Grid Cartographer 4 release.

You'll need this to use Game Link 2.0:
http://www.davidwaltersdevelopment.com/tools/dosbox/

It's designed as a drop-in replacement for existing DOSBox installs. It's just regular old DOSBox at heart but you can run it in game link mode if you like. Do this either by using the special dedicated 'dosbox_gamelink' executable, or by changing your config file to output=gamelink, or use -gamelink on the command line.

Also if you've used previous versions that used the older network based system for tracking - you no longer need to dick around adding [netpeek] gibberish to your dosbox.conf - all that stuff works automatically now and you can remove it. (Although, it's still possible to track the player over a network as you could in v3, in which case it works the same and you still need the [netpeek] config lines.)

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

Grid Cartographer 4
http://www.davidwaltersdevelopment.com/tools/gridcart/

Thanks to everyone for supporting this project, I hope you like it!

 

[Zdzisiu]

Grid Cartographer 4

http://www.davidwaltersdevelopment.com/tools/gridcart/

I think you should have more maps done in Grid Carto shown as examples on your site. My inner map whore was disappointed I could not find many beautiful maps to look at when I visited the site a minute ago. I think it would also help to show what the tool is capable of, from the simplest maps to the most complex ones.

Maybe some people could send you their maps done in GC 4 and the previous versions and you could put them into a showcase category or something.

All in all, I just need pretty maps to look at.

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

Grid Cartographer 4

http://www.davidwaltersdevelopment.com/tools/gridcart/

I think you should have more maps done in Grid Carto shown as examples on your site. My inner map whore was disappointed I could not find many beautiful maps to look at when I visited the site a minute ago. I think it would also help to show what the tool is capable of, from the simplest maps to the most complex ones.

Maybe some people could send you their maps done in GC 4 and the previous versions and you could put them into a showcase category or something.

All in all, I just need pretty maps to look at.

Thanks for the feedback. I actually had the build ready to go last night and I've spent all day putting together the site. That's as many images as I got done, I couldn't wait any longer without slipping the release date. Anyway - enough excuses - I'd definitely be happy to add new maps to the site, that would be awesome - it's something I'll hopefully get time to do eventually once things have settled down a bit!

Sounds like a boast but honestly this project has started to become pretty hard for me to remember all the shit it can do tbqh and I forget what I should be showing off in the promotion! Especially the stuff it did already in v2 or 3 that new people might like to know.

 

[Grauken]

Damn Fastspring doesn't want my money. Probably gets confused as my paypal accout is based on a german adress but phone number is hongkong. damn

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

Damn Fastspring doesn't want my money. Probably gets confused as my paypal accout is based on a german adress but phone number is hongkong. damn

Sorry to hear this - yeah they do lots of fraud checks and phone number is part of that (you have to ask for special permission to not have all that address stuff on the order form sadly) so this is a downside if you're in this situation. Let me know if you need assistance and I'll see if I can contact them for you - it's a new thing for me to deal with but we'll hopefully work something out. http://www.davidwaltersdevelopment.com/contact/

 

[Grauken]

Thanks for the help, will upgrade my W6 map with the new doors, yeah

 

[Bumvelcrow]

Just upgraded to v4 pro and I'm looking forward to giving it some testing tomorrow. Particularly the game link under linux.

 

[Yaar Podshipnik]

Upgrade request up!

 

[Bumvelcrow]

I just downloaded it and it works fine on Arch - no odd libraries required. Very smooth and nice looking. Trouble with the custom dosbox, however. Whereas the standard dosbox (from the custom tarball) runs fine, invoking it with ./dosbox_gamelink just causes it to hang at the logo and never get as far as the command line. I see:

Spoiler

DOSBox version DWD-R12 SVN 3986
Copyright 2002-2015 DOSBox Team, published under GNU GPL.
---
CONFIG:Loading primary settings from config file dosbox.conf
GAMELINK: Initialised!
MIXER:Got different values from SDL: freq 44100, blocksize 512
ALSA:Can't subscribe to MIDI port (65:0) nor (17:0)
MIDI:Opened device:none

But no c:\ prompt ever appears. Meanwhile, gridcart's little animated gamelink icon at the bottom right of the screen stops animating and shows a red question mark with 'unknown game'. I've tried starting them in different orders but whatever I do dosbox never gets past the dosbox logo.

I'll try again tomorrow.

 

[Yaar Podshipnik]

Yes, them sweet, sweet curves! And the box door is useful as well - I'll use box door for those that are initially closed, and capacitor ones for the initially open. Footprint stuff is another great addition!

Can't figure out if bulk deletion of field effects/footprints is possible. Tried dragging the tool over areas with effect, expected it to work kind of like a toggle (i.e. if on the first tile it would add field effect then all tiles that are dragged through get effect added; reverse for removal), but it didn't. Is there a way to get this behaviour?

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

Yes, them sweet, sweet curves! And the box door is useful as well - I'll use box door for those that are initially closed, and capacitor ones for the initially open. Footprint stuff is another great addition!

Can't figure out if bulk deletion of field effects/footprints is possible. Tried dragging the tool over areas with effect, expected it to work kind of like a toggle (i.e. if on the first tile it would add field effect then all tiles that are dragged through get effect added; reverse for removal), but it didn't. Is there a way to get this behaviour?

Cool. Glad you like it!

Yeah the quickest way to remove field effects at the moment is to use the eraser. Then open the Tool Opts. panel for it and uncheck the other boxes and go hog wild over the affected area.

In future I'd like to improve the mark area > delete functionality so that it either has its own options (not sure on the workflow for that) or just uses the eraser options (which might be unclear I'm not sure) - which will let you erase things even quicker.

I also want to revisit the toggle behaviour so that if you click to toggle something off and then hold the mouse and drag, it'll sort-of 'latch' and erase other similar things as you drag around.

That's some of the things on the plan - after sleep

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

I just downloaded it and it works fine on Arch - no odd libraries required. Very smooth and nice looking. Trouble with the custom dosbox, however. Whereas the standard dosbox (from the custom tarball) runs fine, invoking it with ./dosbox_gamelink just causes it to hang at the logo and never get as far as the command line. I see:

Spoiler

DOSBox version DWD-R12 SVN 3986
Copyright 2002-2015 DOSBox Team, published under GNU GPL.
---
CONFIG:Loading primary settings from config file dosbox.conf
GAMELINK: Initialised!
MIXER:Got different values from SDL: freq 44100, blocksize 512
ALSA:Can't subscribe to MIDI port (65:0) nor (17:0)
MIDI:Opened device:none

But no c:\ prompt ever appears. Meanwhile, gridcart's little animated gamelink icon at the bottom right of the screen stops animating and shows a red question mark with 'unknown game'. I've tried starting them in different orders but whatever I do dosbox never gets past the dosbox logo.

I'll try again tomorrow.

Okay, thanks for the report. Although this might be okay actually ! - in game-link mode the dosbox logo should stay on, it has no display (so I just leave the logo on the window since it's a cool logo and it seems respectful to its awesome devs). If you go to view > split screen (F6 or F7 shortcuts) or press alt+enter what do you see? Ideally you'll get the dosbox output, but perhaps you'll see 'no signal' or some kind of weirdness - that would be good to know about.

Anyway I definitely wanted to add some kind of notification to make game link clearer but I didn't have time and I couldn't quite decide on how to do it in a way that didn't remind people of the Office paperclip !

 

[Bumvelcrow]

Okay, thanks for the report. Although this might be okay actually ! - in game-link mode the dosbox logo should stay on, it has no display (so I just leave the logo on the window since it's a cool logo and it seems respectful to its awesome devs). If you go to view > split screen (F6 or F7 shortcuts) or press alt+enter what do you see? Ideally you'll get the dosbox output, but perhaps you'll see 'no signal' or some kind of weirdness - that would be good to know about.

Anyway I definitely wanted to add some kind of notification to make game link clearer but I didn't have time and I couldn't quite decide on how to do it in a way that didn't remind people of the Office paperclip !

Aha! I see DOS! Thanks for the hint. I just fired up Wizardry 6 and got a bit distracted. Gamelink itself seems to be working great - gridcart is tracking my movements perfectly. It was saying it couldn't find any settings for this game (wiz6) and to press here to create a new one, which I did. Now it's saying Wizardry 6 in the gamelink icon, so I presume all is well. I haven't used gamelink with the previous versions so I will have to experiment a bit more, but it's looking great. Now if you'll excuse me i have some Wizardry to play.

Looks very good, HA. Lucky I have tomorrow off work.

 

[udm]

Hey David I'm just curious, if GC4 already costs $50 now, how will future iterations of GC be priced?

Request for upgrade sent btw.

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

Hey David I'm just curious, if GC4 already costs $50 now, how will future iterations of GC be priced?

It's a fair question but one I honestly haven't given thought to. I would say that it's at a price now where I feel there's a fair trade between the features you get and the price. I can't say for certain there won't be any movement a year from now, should there even be a v5, but I don't expect to have to do this re-alignment for Steam again.

Request for upgrade sent btw.

Thanks! It's morning here now and I've processed a few over-night requests. Apologies for the delay.