Incline Grid Cartographer - Best Tool for Drawing Classic RPG Maps

[Hidden Asbestos]

Make it's background translucent, 70% opaque or 30% translucent is a value that works pretty well for my own console windows.

And what scripting language are you planning on using?
Python?
Lua?
Perl?
Sh/Bash?

Thanks for the tip. I'll add a slider for the opacity - should work well.

edit: http://i.imgur.com/fFuUjBU.png semi-transparent @ 70%

Scripts are powered by a slightly customised version of the Squirrel programming language. It's maybe not as popular but it's a fairly straightforward C/Javascript-like language that's designed specifically to take on a support role rather than being a massive 'platform' like Python or C#. I've had years of experience using it in other projects and as it's C-like in terms of syntax, comment style, arrays starting at zero, etc. it's very easy for me to chop and change between the two.

Once the feature goes live I'll post example scripts on the forum. Here's one for a bouncing ball: http://imgur.com/PQ9IDho -> http://imgur.com/T9v5Ypb

I'm also just about to write a mini DOS prompt thing that'll let you run scripts to do more command-like tasks, eg. a dice roller comes to mind - the sort of things that maybe don't necessarily belong in GC, or are specific to your usage of it (especially if you're doing some game making thing with it), or something I haven't got to yet. It definitely opens up a new world of possibilities and potential

 

[Grauken]

Feature I would like to see: uploading images in the background behind the grid. Reason, some metroidvania-type games have maps that have lots of non-standard type rooms, that I want to redo in grid cartographer, but just going by guts makes for big misalignments occasionally

More a question, could the scripting be used so that other people could add games (e.g. the memory coordinate fetching thing)?

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

Feature I would like to see: uploading images in the background behind the grid. Reason, some metroidvania-type games have maps that have lots of non-standard type rooms, that I want to redo in grid cartographer, but just going by guts makes for big misalignments occasionally

Sounds useful, I'll put it on The List TM

More a question, could the scripting be used so that other people could add games (e.g. the memory coordinate fetching thing)?

The scripting, no, but new games can be added already using the data provided except, without wishing to put you off, it's a complex process.

If you'd like to have a closer look: If you open up base0.zip from the installation folder you'll find a 'gamelinkprofiles' folder in there - you'll have to use these files as the documentation (or ask me questions). The numbers to identify the game are a mixture of arbitrary fourcc's for the game (e.g. 315a4957 -> "WIZ1") and CRC values I get DOSBox to calculate (visible on the game link debug HUD). The memory addresses for the player in game are found using the memscan mode of DOSBox - this involves recompiling it (since I don't ship the binary) after enabiling it in "dosbox\src\netpeek\memscan.h" or asking me for a copy. This adds a set of crude commands which let you filter the memory addresses down to the ones you want in a similar way to finding cheat codes in ZSNES. Once you have memory addresses figured out you can start to build a set of <view> elements in the game link profile which act like masks over these game bytes. A view has a number of conditions that must be met (e.g. X must be 0 - 19 in Wizardry) by the game data. If it does then the view is used to position the avatar. In Wiz 1 - 3 this is very simple, for a more complex example see Wiz 6 which has dozens of views for all the little mini-maps used to build the world.

I don't imagine you'll be an expert after reading that, but all of this stuff is available today - I've no idea how hard it is for someone else to do. Certainly you need to be doing some pretty technical stuff and be happy with XML, hex values and my crappy memscan tool (or write better ones). Also some deduction powers are often needed since these old devs coded things in odd ways sometimes - e.g. EotB player position is stored as a single 16-bit value: X + Y * 32, so when you change row you have to spot a number that just changed by 32. Feel free to get in touch and I can expand on any questions you have. Wiz 4 might be a good starting point as I've not done that one yet and I imagine it's a fairly simple map structure (with one gotcha being that you start at floor 10 iirc and I'm not sure how the game engine will represent that - maybe at 10 or maybe at 0 - you'll be able to tell more easily if you change floor)

 

[Grauken]

I take a look, might be interesting to get good at this

also probably easier than beating Wiz 4 though

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

Just got confirmation: Grid Cartographer has been greenlit.

Thanks for the votes and the kind comments! Lots of reading to do now

 

[FUDU]

Congrats Hidden. Hope it sells like hotcakes.

 

[Grauken]

Wiz4 is a go

now I have to play the game to check out if everything works

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

Wiz4 is a go

now I have to play the game to check out if everything works

Nice work!

Yeah testing the profiles can be a bit of a pain - the nature of the pain really depends on the game but if you play them in cheesy ways it can help, since your objective isn't to win but just to survive - cheating, using an OP party, save scumming and running from fights all help. For Wizardry can probably take an educated guess about certain things like the X and Y ranges always being 0 - 19. Since it's unlikely the programmer would suddenly change the internal co-ordinate system after a certain floor you can save time by assuming that's solved and you now just need to go to each floor to test it. Saves a bit of work - but I get the feeling Wiz4 is gonna make you suffer for every step

 

[Excommunicator]

Purchased this with the intention to use long term but will no longer be using as I don't agree with being charged so much for what should be a cheap or free update

 

[Grauken]

People often have the wrong idea about the economics and costs for one-man projects vs larger teams with more money behind it. If you think HA is rolling in the dough because of grid cart, think again. Not to belittle you, we all have our own individual price points and what we are willing to pay, and for you it stops here. No problem, but I doubt HA could justify putting so much effort into such a niche project, if he didn't get at least something back. He's not doing it to milk you or anybody, he's doing it, because if he doesn't, he will likely stop working on it

 

[Excommunicator]

The functionality just isn't there yet for that price point.

My advice is work on building a community first. This isn't something people will use and throw away (like a file converter) it's something that once they've commit to using, people will keep making content for years to come. Build that community first and then think about how you can turn it into a residual income. If the cost is too high, too soon, you'll end up damaging your chance to grow a decent sized community.

 

[Watser]

He has a decent sized community, he has Grauken and I. It's all he'll ever need

 

[Grauken]

btw. his next update will likely include the Wiz4 beta profile, and I'm working on Wasteland (I know, nobody needs that, but its a fun learning experience for me)

 

[Watser]

I have a partially complete map of Wiz 4 along with the savefile, I can send it to you if you want something easier to fool around with.

 

[Grauken]

That would be nice, then I can check whether it holds together.

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

The functionality just isn't there yet for that price point.

Without wishing to sound facetious, feel free to make feature requests on my new (under construction) forum: http://gridcartographer.com/forum/

Purchased this with the intention to use long term but will no longer be using as I don't agree with being charged so much for what should be a cheap or free update

I've put out many free updates for every major version and I think if you try the launch version and compare it to the final release of that major version you'll find that there's a big improvement every time. Many of these changes have come from feature requests.

My advice is work on building a community first. This isn't something people will use and throw away (like a file converter) it's something that once they've commit to using, people will keep making content for years to come. Build that community first and then think about how you can turn it into a residual income. If the cost is too high, too soon, you'll end up damaging your chance to grow a decent sized community.

C'mon this has been going since 2013, there are 21 pages here (and it's pinned to the top of the main forum), similar sized threads on GOG.com and posts on SA, reddit/RPG, G+/"Map-Making in Games", threads on Cartographers Guild, Steve Jackson Games. Lots of twitter followers, my own forum with a gallery (currently broken while I move forum lol), just got greenlit on Steam. Not sure how else you'd suggest I go about building a community?

Ultimately I've no problem in saying this is a tool for a small niche and although I'm trying to diversify into gamedev and tabletop there's only so big a market/community for it.

 

[Watser]

Can't wait to do Grimoire in this.

 

[Grauken]

Probably easier to start with something small, like Fate

 

[Grauken]

Grauken and I finally got automatic tracking working for 100% of Wizardry 6

How long till Wiz7?

Good news everyone


Probably takes some time though to fully finish it

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

Started adding fog-of-war.

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

And now, an announcement:

Starting with the next release (v4.0.4) I'll be ending support for 32-bit builds of Grid Cartographer. This will affect the Windows and Linux builds only; the macOS build has been 64-bit for all of v4.x.

This decision was made to reduce the time spent creating/testing builds, especially on Linux. Based on market share data showing that less than 7% of Steam users run a compatible 32-bit O/S (http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey, March 2017) this should hopefully not impact the majority of Grid Cartographer users.

If you have questions or feedback about this please let me know.

 

[Gragt]

Just got confirmation: Grid Cartographer has been greenlit.

Thanks for the votes and the kind comments! Lots of reading to do now

Better than Grimoire.

If you have questions or feedback about this please let me know.

I have one: how much extra work would you estimate it takes you to maintain both a 32-bit and a 64-bit version?

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

If you have questions or feedback about this please let me know.

I have one: how much extra work would you estimate it takes you to maintain both a 32-bit and a 64-bit version?

I think it's important to point out that going from 10 builds (gamer+pro x win32/64, mac, linux32/64) to 6, not only frees up time compiling but there are other overheads. Keeping 32/64bit codeblocks projects in sync, testing each build, swapping VMs and packing things up, etc. all adds up. Also having 2 linux distros to maintain and the chance of 32/64-bit only bugs (of which we recently had a crash because of one).

I estimate it'll save 0.5 to 1 day for each release.

Sadly it's a question of where do I spend my resources and I've made this decision to hopefully get that time back for other things, while impacting the least number of users.

Apologies to anyone affected by this, I will refund you if you're no longer able to use v4, send me an e-mail with your order number.

 

[Hirato]

I thought I'd try and put some of Etrian Odyssey 2's maps inside grid cartographer, mostly because I was curious how hard/easy it is to map the 4th stratum.
I also noticed I could rename the floors, EOU likes putting little remarks in there, for example when you go into 18F, it will print 'The fall that fell the fragile' - I was hoping I could put these in there but the character limit is a bit small.

 

[Hirato]

Some other feedback:

• The floor list on the left should react to scrolling
• Adding walls is really fiddly, it would be great if the tool could use cursor momentum in its calculation, because I keep trying to draw lines and it either adds bits and pieces that go the wrong direction or sometimes completely misses parts
• Vsync still doesn't work on Linux, could you perhaps add a soft frame-limiter that can be set/overridden by command line option? eg --limit-fps=60
  The high framerate does seem to cause some weird stuff to happen, eg 'll click the go to below floor button and suddenly I have another 3 basement levels instead of just 1.

feature requests:

• Ability to link Teleport In and Teleport Out, so that linked teleporters are easy to identify
• I'd love the ability to make some sort of tool sheet for the entire file (or on a region basis), which basically just sets the current tool to a specified configuration, eg if I select wall in here I always get a wall brush that paints in blue, and if I then select the two directional shortcut from this sheet, I always get it in the colour green.
  At the moment I'm getting around this limitation by using the dropper tool to select something I had already placed.

Icon requests:

• Icons for different kinds of gathering point than just mining; EO uses a hand for Take and scissors for Cut
• a non-directional door icon that occupies a full tile.
• a Beacon; the geomagnetic poles serve as both an entrance, an exit, and I don't think any of the current icons really work for it.