Re: what is the best "paint" program to work with maps? (in windows)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Most of the program requires you to pay, especially Photoshop. If you're need a program just for hobbist purpose, it may be better to just use Gimp. Powerful and cheap (free of charge).

Downloading and installation could be a hassle. It's simple on Linux though I've never used the Windows Version. But unless a program comes in the OS, buying and installing it need a little bit work anyway http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif .

Re: what is the best "paint" program to work with maps? (in windows)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Most of the program requires you to pay, especially Photoshop. If you're need a program just for hobbist purpose, it may be better to just use Gimp. Powerful and cheap (free of charge).

Downloading and installation could be a hassle. It's simple on Linux though I've never used the Windows Version. But unless a program comes in the OS, buying and installing it need a little bit work anyway http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif . </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Hmm - Last time I installed a Linux distrib, it came with the Gimp already installed. I'd say, if you installed Linux in the past 2-3 years, it's probably included - especially if you clicked on the "OK, install everything and don't bother me anymore" button sometime.

Of course, installing Linux, in itself, requires a little bit of work (and, mostly, worrying whether it will work correctly in the end). But now that most of my gaming time is being spent on Dominions, I only ever boot up Windows when I want to sync my PDA http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif

Re: what is the best "paint" program to work with maps? (in windows)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Sorry. Extremely off-topic: ranting of a Linux-geek http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif .

The Linux Version of Gimp is of course easy to install http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif . I just didn't know anything about the Windows Version of Gimp.

Installing Linux is not hard for me neither, I've been doing it in the Last year on more than 10 machines http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif . In the era of Redhat 5.1 (two years ago), things were more difficult and you always had to prepare for problems. But now it's so easy that I often can't even believe when it's done (20 minutes for a fresh install of Mandrake!).

Ha! For PDA, I used Agenda, which even run its own Linux distribution. I don't even need to boot into Windows to sync http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif . Top this http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif !

But to give Microsoft some credits, Windows installation is in general easier (though much slower). But I've never install Windows on unsupported machine, so, it's not a totally fair comparison.

Re: what is the best "paint" program to work with maps? (in windows)
 

gimp is a very nice program, thanks all.

in the script area there are 2 random map generators, good ones in fact.

thanks again all!

Re: what is the best "paint" program to work with maps? (in windows)
 

Which scripts do you use to generate random maps?

Re: what is the best "paint" program to work with maps? (in windows)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Actually there are 3 of them. I thought you used them as a base. They look pretty close. Sorry but I didnt notice this post and started another thread that was gimp specific. I mention the scripts there.

[ December 04, 2003, 17:09: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

Re: what is the best "paint" program to work with maps? (in windows)
 

Thank you!

I wonder how I have managed to never notice those all this time. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif

Re: what is the best "paint" program to work with maps? (in windows)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Im looking forward to what we will get now that you know. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Now if we could just get someone to write a script-fu to do an overlay layer with province lines.

Re: what is the best "paint" program to work with maps? (in windows)
 

A very interesting generating program Ive found called Fractal Terrains. Check out this little "quick start" file. I especially liked the "skull world" and what that implies for importing images to seed off of.
http://www.profantasy.com/library/fi...Quickstart.pdf
Im checking out the demo now. Not sure if I will buy it.

EDIT: Interesting but I think not worth the price. Very easy to use to get interesting maps. Easy to create, and save settings, for colors and land patterns which work well. But I think I will shift attention back to the GIMP scripts

[ December 06, 2003, 13:18: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

Re: what is the best "paint" program to work with maps? (in windows)
 

For random terrain generation, try Wilbur. It was made by the same people who did Fractal Terrains. It's probably not as sophisticated as Fractal Terrains, but it's free.

Get it at:
http://www.ridgecrest.ca.us/~jslayton/software.html