Incline Grid Cartographer - Best Tool for Drawing Classic RPG Maps

[Hidden Asbestos]

Tile snipper is just the thing I want for Exanima mapping now.

Glad you'll find it useful, sorry that I've not added support for it to the image exporter yet. That'll be along by the full v4.1.2 release at the latest.

 

[Grauken]

v4.1.2-beta1 is now available for Windows users on all platforms.

This marks a phased release of LibRetro support. Right now it's a little bare-bones and probably could be friendlier to use. I'd love to get some feedback on areas of confusion.

So that means memory checking for LibRetro emulated games is working already?

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

v4.1.2-beta1 is now available for Windows users on all platforms.

This marks a phased release of LibRetro support. Right now it's a little bare-bones and probably could be friendlier to use. I'd love to get some feedback on areas of confusion.

So that means memory checking for LibRetro emulated games is working already?

Sorry no, thats not quite at a usable stage just yet. This will be one of my areas of focus going forward, so we can get some tracking profiles created for console ports.

The low level memory access API is done but the tool to iteratively search for addresses by comparison isn't finished yet. I think the profile support for LibRetro games is working once we have the addresses but it's technically untested right now.

 

[Grauken]

How about doing a simple memory dump, that would be enough for me at the beginning

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

How about doing a simple memory dump, that would be enough for me at the beginning

Beta 2 is now available here: http://gridcartographer.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=1936
v0.00.0000 (you get the idea) of the memory scanner is here: http://gridcartographer.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=1937

Have fun

 

[tindrli]

i just found this one if anyone is interested

http://hextml.playest.net

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

Beta 4 is now available:
http://gridcartographer.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=1936

* ADDED: Game Link profile for Might and Magic II on SNES (E, J and T-ENG versions) and Mega Drive.
Big thanks to Grauken and Watser!
* ADDED: Viewport frames for LibRetro/Game Link. See the Video menu in the LibRetro viewport.
* CHANGED: Streamlined LibRetro game properties editor.

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

We're up to Beta 7, here's a full list of new Game Link Profiles so far.

http://gridcartographer.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=1936

* "Might and Magic" (NES)
* "Might and Magic II" (SNES)
* "Might and Magic" (2) (MD)
* "Wizardry", 1-3 (NES)
* "Wizardry", 1-3 (GBC)
* "Wizardry I-II-III" (SNES)

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

Beta 8 is now available with a Metroid profile. Does the Morph Ball make this a roll playing game?

 

[Stormcrowfleet]

This is huge incline.

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

Beta 11 is now available here: http://gridcartographer.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=1936

Adds profiles for:
* "The Dark Spire" (DS)
* "Wizardry: Legacy of Llylgamyn" (PS1,SAT)

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

It’s been a few months since I booted up my GC. Seeing this (and an email notification) I dl’d the new beta.

Wow! Metroid... I know some guys back in the 80s that would have loved that. They let me borrow their paper map copies to look at and add to if I found anything. Ah! The 80s.

AVGN 80s

ah... I think I see how linkage works now. Simple menu.

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

It is with regret that I must announce that I can no longer provide technical support for the Linux version of Grid Cartographer 4.
http://gridcartographer.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=1956

It's my hope that the version provided will continue to function but the breadth of Linux distros and the demands of supporting them mean it wouldn't be fair to offer it on the same basis as Windows / macOS

 

[Hirato]

It is with regret that I must announce that I can no longer provide technical support for the Linux version of Grid Cartographer 4.
http://gridcartographer.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=1956

It's my hope that the version provided will continue to function but the breadth of Linux distros and the demands of supporting them mean it wouldn't be fair to offer it on the same basis as Windows / macOS

You really should've moved it over to SDL2 so it would Just Work(tm) the same on all 3 of the operating systems - I don't have much faith in libpng16 sticking around forever, and the GTK peeps seem to content to break compatibility as often as a weather-vane changes direction.


Even if you don't intend to help them get it running... Will you still provide new builds and new features to Linux customers?
Or is this a wholesale drop of Linux Support? If so, why?


There's also that AppImage crap - I don't much care for it, but it could provide an avenue that makes it much easier to support Linux in a universal manner, if this is because it was simply too much effort to cater to the variety of operating environments out there.

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

Firstly, sorry Hirato as I know you've been a Grid Cartographer user for a long time. Sadly you can count the number of Linux users on one hand and as the O/S evolves with things like Wayland and whatever else under-the-hood, I'm struggling to justify the time required to keep up. This is a shitty business decision I feel forced to make and I appreciate it has also come as a surprise.

> Even if you don't intend to help them get it running... Will you still provide new builds and new features to Linux customers?
Or is this a wholesale drop of Linux Support? If so, why?

I still intend to publish new builds, but on a 'YMMV' / experimental basis. If it works, great. I don't intend to add LibRetro support but Custom DOSBox should still work.

This issue is more about the service I can provide. My attempts to restrict support to just Linux Mint have been a total failure, I always get support requests from some other variant of Linux and I can't just spend whole days installing new distros to help them. Even if I did fix something, it might break for someone else. As you say, things break all the time on Linux and I can't dedicate the resources to keep up.


> You really should've moved it over to SDL2 so it would Just Work(tm) the same on all 3 of the operating systems - I don't have much faith in libpng16 sticking around forever, and the GTK peeps seem to content to break compatibility as often as a weather-vane changes direction.

SDL2 would require me to implement my own file selector, so it's not really a move I can make without a ton of work - and it likely wouldn't be as good as a proper Linux one anyway.


> There's also that AppImage crap - I don't much care for it, but it could provide an avenue that makes it much easier to support Linux in a universal manner, if this is because it was simply too much effort to cater to the variety of operating environments out there.

I'm hoping something like Wine might help. I've not heard of AppImage. There's also something Valve is working on to support Linux but I don't know if that's just for games or not.

 

[Hirato]

Fair point with the file dialogue - Qt might've been a better option then, as that would also pull in the libpng dependency that seems to be the bane of your existence.


Valve's thing is just Wine with some experimental and not so experimental patches, and additional changes more tailored for gaming on modern desktops (like disabling the ability to change screen resolution).
AppImage and friends are probably worth looking into, the basic idea is that the application is distributed as a big fat compressed bundle that provides everything it needs to run - so effectively it means that GTK3, libpng, and a bunch of their dependents will just get rolled into a single executable that should run on any Linux system with a functional graphical environment.

There's a long video on the website that explains it.
The guy kind of just waffles on for a bit, things of substance starts at ~6mins, the interesting bits at ~11m

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

I've put Linux back up on the download page. It was an over-reaction to drop support for Linux altogether.

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

I've posted a question + poll about future CRPG development over on my Patreon page. You need to be a patron to vote but there's information about my future plans in the publicly visible post which you might find interesting.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/steering-episode-21904888

 

[newtmonkey]

Interesting, though I would personally prefer more gamelink profiles for DOS and Amiga games, as most of the PS2/PSP blobbers have very nice automaps already (I see now that Grauken mentioned this on your Patreon site as well).

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I need to boot mine up again and apply the last update (been busy doing other stuff).

I’m not even fully sure which emulators and games sync up. I’m assuming there’s a tutorial by someone on how to setup your game to sync.

I go through the forgetting each time I boot up an emulator. Generally it’s save/load, screenshots, record, and controller setups I have to remember. Sucks my favorite emulators fail with win10. Ah I miss the WinXP hotspot.

Dunno what’s up with my gaming slump. I hoard games but rarely play them..... I need to go to gamer counseling. Take some gamer stimulants/roids. Or just eat better....

 

[Grauken]

As of the recent versions, GridCarto has basically integrated LibRetro, so you don't really have to setup things, except the LibRetro cores for the system you want to the use. The only externl thing is Dosbox

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Maybe I spend too much time in the field cutting brush and digging earth but I just looked at LibRetro and my head started to hurt. I must be turning more primitive. I’m sure it’s easy to use and will eventually look into it more in depth. Can it emulate EVERY platform instead of having 20 emulators?

 

[Grauken]

That's their aim. If you booted up retroarch, yeah, that interface can be a bit overwhelming at first. Currently the Libretro integration in GridCarto is super-simple compared to that, but if you need a primer, I probably can help

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

Maybe I spend too much time in the field cutting brush and digging earth but I just looked at LibRetro and my head started to hurt. I must be turning more primitive. I’m sure it’s easy to use and will eventually look into it more in depth. Can it emulate EVERY platform instead of having 20 emulators?

Hi - if you go here: http://gridcartographer.com/download/#clients there are download links for all of the emulators that I've personally tested and should work. They're all pretty mature so should run games from those systems perfectly. You load up GC, go to the LibRetro tab, import these emulators "cores" basically as if they were plug-ins, then add games and off you go with split screen gaming + mapping. Hopefully it's easy enough, happy to help explain if not - there's some basic hello/welcome screens built-in now so it shouldn't be so daunting.

btw. LibRetro is only available for Windows and only in the latest beta: http://gridcartographer.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=1936 (although the beta is coming to an end soon)

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

What’s after beta?

Btw, i just bought the lair ware ULTIMA 3 for Mac OS. (I bought the code to unlock full version $5). Now I need a good Mac emulator. Will Mac emulators possibly work with GC or does libretro have that possibility. I’m still reading and the thought just occurred to me.