So, I've found that Civilization VI is great for creating maps. If you're willing to piece together 40 screenshots.
What sort of programs do you guys use to make your maps? Do you hand-draw your maps?
Maps
Nicholas Myers
Christian Gonzalez
Civ V is better.
Charles Hughes
That does look nice, but that seems better for more grounded/realistic campaigns. I plan on having a sort of lighthearted tone most of the time.
James Richardson
Dwarf Fortress. It's logical in regards to geography and settlement location, and it can be zoomed in a fuckload, and has tilesets and some third party map viewing tools.
Charles Bennett
Civ IV's is better. It even has a toroidal setting so the map wraps around all four corners. It's largest maps are larger than Civ 5's. No idea about 6, OP's looks decent.
Evan King
It can also do this.
Aaron Howard
I liked the toroid of Civ IV but I cannot go back to Stacks of Doom. I was already really annoyed by them in Civ III.
Jaxson Ward
>picrelated is my original concept drawing for the world
I was going to just use msPaint to do the whole thing. You can clearly see why I went away from this.
That gives me a very technological vibe. Not what I'd use for more fantastical settings, but I'll definitely keep it in mind because that looks cool.
Mine is the maximum size. The tools it has are a pain to use and they're hidden behind a lot of ""secret"" files (you can find them with a quick google search, but most users won't know they're there).
I got Civ IV for free, so I may check it out eventually. looks pretty cool... but not sure if I want a globe. Maybe. Again, I'll check it out before I decide.
Evan Evans
Yeah, I personally can't go back to square tiles.
Isaac Wood
what tileset?
Asher Rogers
>That gives me a very technological vibe
That image is from a more fancified third party thing. The map you get in the default game looks more like this.
Gabriel Rivera
btw this is a little something I noticed awhile AFTER I designed the map. Just using the complete good one for the background
Juan Gutierrez
eh... I still prefer the fancified version you first showed. Looks a bit techhy without hurting my eyes to look at.
Noah Thomas
That's not dorf fort, that's
Benjamin Reed
It's more about the map itself than what it looks like. If you have photoshop you can take the map the game gives you and turn it into something like this.
Parker Jackson
Perfect world is also fun for generating land masses.
Lincoln Turner
How do you even get your map to look like that exactly?
Colton Jenkins
"GFXiNXS's Photoshop Map Maker"
Someone made a plugin for photoshop that'll take your dorf fort map and turn it into a map like that. The "Legends Viewer" in that image is something completely different and displays those boxes and lines on top of the map made by the photoshop plugin.
Kevin Hernandez
Someone's trying something similar using python that doesn't require photoshop, pic related. It doesn't look nearly as sophisticated, but it might suit a non-modern setting more since it doesn't look like it was done by satellite imaging.
Jeremiah Bennett
Oh, very neat.
Though yeah I can't be arsed grabbing Photoshop again. Still, I don't think the python script makes as good looking maps. It doesn't seem to handle rivers at all.
Oh, going from there to the forums, there's a GIMP version.
bay12forums.com
Joshua Richardson
I use hexographer, although the civ maps look great too. Anyone care to check my map for realism/cool scale? Also the reason i chose to have it similar to earth appearance was to provide a reason for their being similar cultures.
Juan Carter
>Brazil is disconnected from the rest of the Americas
I wish I lived in your fantasy world.
Elijah Myers
Looks like Atlantis to me.
Michael Cruz
Looks great, might give it a try in the future
Jeremiah Bell
What do you think?
Jonathan Bell
America and Russia need to stop eating desu
Dylan Diaz
How do you guys come up with names for your maps?
Justin Brown
Wow, where'd you find the Games Workshop concept art?
Brody Edwards
Hudson Ward
It looks nothing like the Old World. If anything it's a knockoff of Seventh Sea
Dylan Russell
Cute!
Jason Turner
Looks cool, what are the four alchememical symbols in n/s/w/e?
Camden Martinez
How do you get the map? I'm curious, since it starts off black.
Connor Rivera
Hand drawn masterrace
My favorite map so far
Logan James
Now that's a skill!
Evan Ortiz
Chad Forger of Worlds
Evan Russell
You'll laugh, but I've gotten pretty good at powerpoint. Pic related.
Nicholas Wright
That is probably the 11th or 12th map I've ever drawn since I started last year, it was surprisingly easy to pick up
Terra Ignito font masterrace
Ian Rivera
Warhammer Chaos symbols. I need to replace them with my own, but my tablet broke. The snake symbol is slightly different in my updated version but I can't access it yet. BasicallytheHoly Republic is beset on all sides by Chaos
Ian Martin
Thanks!!! Also here is my Not!"Chaos Undivided"
John Cruz
>Modified 13th Century Europe
>A realm called Sylvania
>Literally has the Chaos Wastes, they're just in the south this time
>Still has Chaos symbols
>Before reading your post I, an AoS baby, literally thought "Oh, that's just the Old World"
I know Warhammer didn't even hide how it ripped off Europe, but to say that your map looks nothing like the Old World is fucking stupid.
Samuel Gomez
I'm not arguing that. I'm just saying its shaped more like 7th Sea/actual Europe. It's a total rip off of both, though. I am Chad Forger of Worlds
Anthony Smith
Fuck that's awesome, might totally steal that.
Kevin Turner
Whoops, I didn't see the text there, lemme fix that for you guys.
Cameron Howard
Powerpoint is pretty useful for quick image editing
Joshua Parker
Because I'm terrible with digital things
Logan Brown
How do I use Hexographer? I'm too stupid to make good maps
Xavier Roberts
I start with the overworld, since you can create child maps it helps. I used earth's continents since i have very little grasp of geography and whatnot. Its pretty easy to just click and paint, just zoom out every once in a while to see if things make sense.
Make sure to check for smooth transitions between types of land. Make sure areas do not look 'too' monotonous with their type of terrain, an add a feature here or there. If you want, add special areas that sorta break the map in a way.
Elijah Long
I also forgot to mention there is a feature that lets you take an image and trace over it, or attempt to convert it. The conversions don't usually turn out good.
Jeremiah Cook
What's the font's name exactly? I can't find a terra ignito and the terra incognita font I finds don't seem to fit either.
Nicholas Anderson
He he
Ayden Hill
Example of Child Map
Matthew Diaz
enter now for your chance to name an irrelevant unmarked faction
Grayson Gray
Hudson Wood
Brody Phillips
Ayden Baker
Lincoln Thompson
I swear I've seen you post this before. How long have you been working on it?
I like it.
Connor Perez
Andrew Morales
I build a photoshop template for creating planets using the isohedral generator on donjon.
Jayden Reed
I first posted it in spring 2016. The first version was a single day project to create a world that could hold a few ASOIAF fanfic ideas I had (since I dislike fanfiction), those have all faded away as well as all of the content from the first version, stuff is slowly added and removed and gradually it has become barely recognizable a few times.
Austin Sanders
Terra Ignota
Xavier Lopez
Reminder that massive oceans with no land stretching into it at least SOMEWHERE makes your map look bland and unnatural.
Jonathan Carter
Just tried this one with a small world with minimum settings:
dffd.bay12games.com
Pic related is the before and after. The whole process took maybe 5 minutes to figure out and even less to actually complete.
>have GIMP and dwarf fortress installed
>extract the rar to your dwarf fortress folder
>"create new world"
>"start playing"
>"legends"
>using the x, p and d keys, export all region maps under the d menu
>run the .bat
It was pretty quick since I had a small world, but keep in mind that you can make worlds so fuckhuge and developed that it could take half an hour to generate and several minutes to export each of the dozen or so region maps.
Brody Long
Landon Lewis
"Africa" looks like a sleepy baby dragon with a gun.
Jordan Gomez
It took me a while to really learn how to parse the ascii jumble but it eventually just "clicks" in your head, almost like learning another language.
Brody Morgan
If you ever make anything out of this, a setting guide, wiki, whatever, I'd love to read it. I really like how monstrously detailed the map.
Camden King
What applications did you use to make this? Or did you just use image editors like photoshop or paint.net and GIMP to make it from the ground up?
Lucas Jones
prefer age of wonders 2 editor