DomMap - new Version

[Gandalf Parker]

Edi said:
I'll play around with GIMP and try to find a suitable swamp color. I kind of like the gray-green colors that can be found in the Faerun map's swamps, so I'll see if one of those fits the bill.

Good. Im not a good choice for colors. My eyes, and my giant monitor that I wont give up, are both getting weak. Feel free to recommend better greens and browns for my site also. Im getting jokes about it.

I was debating that I should probably pull up Kristoffers latest map and pull the colors out of that. As a general default on map colors that would seem to be a good source.

I wonder if anyone will play with the color switches and do a lava map, or a desert map, or arctic, jungles, etc etc. Hmmm if I choose dark cave colors and set the impassable switch to maximum I could get a cave layer. Ohh Ohh do a width 2000 and heigth 500 with colors of blues and whites, another 2000x500 of greens and ocean, and a Last with cave colors and a maze, then paste them together into one 3 level map. I know there are already a couple like that but I like the idea.

[LintMan]

I have a new Version, 2.17 ready. Notable additions:
- a gaussian blur is applied to the map to smooth things out some. This blur can be turned off or increased through new switch -gbr.
- Some anti-aliasing is applied to the province borders to spiff them up a bit and make them more visible. The strength of this is controlled through new switches -aa and -aad.
- capitals are now surrounded by a small yellow diamond shaped border to make them more visible. The effect can be disabled with the -cb switch and the color changed through the -c_cap_border switch. The shape of the border is under consideration if people want to vote for an alternate such as a simple + shape, x, or square.
- improved switch help output showing default values
- note that a few parameters now take percentages (0-100) instead of 0.0-1.0 fractional ranges
- somewhat smaller memory requirements.

I have sent the zip to Gandalf, who will hopefully add it to his site and if Arryn is willing to host it, I will send it there as well. And let me try again to attach it here...

[Gandalf Parker]

Yes the link for now is.....
http://www.dom2minions.com/~minion/DomMap/dommap217.zip
If someone wants to whip out a "homepage" for DomMap I would gladly accept it.

We have abit of a voting lock. Some of you with a discerning eye want to voice an opinion on the new capital-outline feature? Is the diamond OK? Will it actually allow for color variation off of that yellow color?

Others for consideration would
(A) + (one pixel above, below, and each side
(B) x (a pixel on each diagonal)
(C) box
(D) diamond as it is now.

[PhilD]

I tried downloading and running the new Version, and ran into something strange.

The Perl script (with no arguments) seems to freeze midway through a Gimp script-fu; if I Ctrl-C it, that kills the Gimp, and the script runs its course, but the resulting maps are way more blurry than I'd expect; the run_dommap.sh (shell script) gives, IMHO, a much better result.

Is that normal, or is this Version only intended to be used with more precise options?

[Gandalf Parker]

Actually I dont think the scripts are looked at. DomMap now has its own blur routine. Actually something like 5 of them. One standard blur written in, one shadow-terrain effect, one for shadow-roughness which does what bump and scatter were doing to the maps before, one which does the new capitals highlighting, and one which anti-aliases the borders. All of them have new switches to control them.

The easiest I think is to run it just as defaults, then change what you feel you need to.

[LintMan]

PhilD said:
I tried downloading and running the new Version, and ran into something strange.

The Perl script (with no arguments) seems to freeze midway through a Gimp script-fu; if I Ctrl-C it, that kills the Gimp, and the script runs its course, but the resulting maps are way more blurry than I'd expect; the run_dommap.sh (shell script) gives, IMHO, a much better result.

Is that normal, or is this Version only intended to be used with more precise options?

Sorry, the Perl script is a bit out of date... Using Gimp 2.0.2 in WinXP, I had to hack the script-fu script to get it to work called from within gimp, and I've never been able to get anything but a useless error when calling it from the command line. So I had long ago changed my copy of the perl script to skip the gimp part but left it as-is in the main distribution because presumably it worked OK for others. Then I forgot all about the difference.

But in any case, with the built-in blur in DomMap, the gimp stuff isn't really necessary (which was the point). I'm attaching a new perl script sans the gimp bit.

[Edi]

Gandalf, check your email. I ran a couple of quick and dirty tests on the colors I lifted from the Faerun map, the suggestions are in the text file I attached to the message.

Edi

[Gandalf Parker]

Got it, thanks. Forwarded a copy to Lintman

[LintMan]

Edi said:
Gandalf, check your email. I ran a couple of quick and dirty tests on the colors I lifted from the Faerun map, the suggestions are in the text file I attached to the message.

I like the colors, Edi. As you mentioned, they can sometimes come out way too light after all the shading, etc is done. Here's some settings you can use to prevent that for the most part:
-beb 16 -bes 96 -bsb 32 -bss 128

[Gandalf Parker]

LintMan said:

I like the colors, Edi. As you mentioned, they can sometimes come out way too light after all the shading, etc is done. Here's some settings you can use to prevent that for the most part:
-beb 16 -bes 96 -bsb 32 -bss 128

Hmmm I always felt that the range on those was alittle high anyway. Too much random variation for a default setting. Maybe if Edi (and anyone else who wants to check it) feels that the new colors, and the new shading variables, work well together then we can chance both at once to be an acceptable general default for the public. As long as it still ALLOWS a range from slightly-less and slightly-more than the developer thinks anyone would ever want, then Im happy with the possiblities for my beloved randoms