Map Forge BETA 001

[Foodstamp]

Originally Posted by pyg

Mostly for Foodstamp I gave Map Forge a spin in Wine under Linux and it works MUCH better than RanDom does. Looks perfect even the config stuff worked correctly. I opened up Cradle of Dominion but didn't try anything else. Good job Ballbarian.

Excellent! That's the cool thing about linux; with enough tinkering anything is possible .

[NTJedi]

Any other updates planned with this tool?

[NTJedi]

Any other updates planned with this tool?

[Ballbarian]

Oops, Sorry NT. Somehow I missed replying previously.

No updates in the near future, but I have not written it off entirely.

A few questions:
Are there particular features that you are craving or sorely missing?
Which item would you consider most in need of attention?
Have you found it useful in its current state of incompleteness?

[Calahan]

@ Ballbarian - Please can you add this great utility to your signature for people who have crappy search-foo, like me

[Stavis_L]

Originally Posted by Ballbarian

A few questions:
Are there particular features that you are craving or sorely missing?

Mind-reading plugin.

Originally Posted by Ballbarian

Which item would you consider most in need of attention?

Handling of provinces that have distant connections. It's very cumbersome, and doesn't seem to be a way to easily zoom out from the selected province.

Actually, UI "smoothness" in general would be most in need of attention (not that I'm complaining or that it's bad, but the functionality itself, at least that I've used, seems solid, thus leaving UI to improve on.)

Originally Posted by Ballbarian

Have you found it useful in its current state of incompleteness?

YES! Especially for "proofreading" maps, e.g. those modified by SemiRandom - not that SR spits out bad data, but a lot of the GAN/GOD files have formatting issues.

Also have used to re-allocate terrain/special sites for maps where the underlying map is good, but "bland".

[Calahan]

Does the feature - 'Custom Tools' - 'Mark All NoStart', work or not? I've just tried using it, and it seems to work fine in the map forge program itself. But when I save the .map file and load it up using the Dominions map editor, all the 'NoStart' tags have been erased. Is this user error somewhere by me, or....?

Also, I'd find it very useful if I could scroll through the list of provinces in the navigator using the cursor keys, while at the same time be able to click the terrain tool menu options with the mouse without it de-selecting the navigator as the window I wish to respond to the cursor keys. Since as it stands now, if I click on any of the features in terrain tool menu with the mouse, this then selects the terrain tool menu as the active window, and means I have to select the navigator again using the mouse in order to resume scrolling through the province list with the cursor keys. This makes it kind of pointless to use the cursor keys if doing heavy province-by-province map editing.

This is an awesome tool though Ballbarian. First time I've used it, and very impressed. Many thanks for the considerable time and effort you must have put into it.

[Ballbarian]

Originally Posted by Calahan

@ Ballbarian - Please can you add this great utility to your signature for people who have crappy search-foo, like me

Done!

[Ballbarian]

Originally Posted by Stavis_L

Mind-reading plugin.

Originally Posted by Stavis_L

Handling of provinces that have distant connections. It's very cumbersome, and doesn't seem to be a way to easily zoom out from the selected province.

Actually, UI "smoothness" in general would be most in need of attention (not that I'm complaining or that it's bad, but the functionality itself, at least that I've used, seems solid, thus leaving UI to improve on.)

Initially I was going to use the middle mouse scroll for zooming in & out, but turns out there is no support in VB6 stock events for this. A solution exists, but it is via the Windows API which I was trying to avoid in hopes of gaining some compatibility for linux users using wine. In case you were not aware of it, the function keys F5, F6, F7 & F8 will set zoom to 25%, 50%, 75% & 100% respectively. Next iteration I will try to implement page up / page down keys for a smoother zoom.

Originally Posted by Stavis_L

YES! Especially for "proofreading" maps, e.g. those modified by SemiRandom - not that SR spits out bad data, but a lot of the GAN/GOD files have formatting issues.

Also have used to re-allocate terrain/special sites for maps where the underlying map is good, but "bland".

Glad to hear that it has been helpful. I too noted the buggy GAN/GOD files. Just haven't been motivated to make the time to fix them. If anyone wants to tackle the clean up, I would happily update the collection.

Thanks for the great input.

[Ballbarian]

Originally Posted by Calahan

Does the feature - 'Custom Tools' - 'Mark All NoStart', work or not? I've just tried using it, and it seems to work fine in the map forge program itself. But when I save the .map file and load it up using the Dominions map editor, all the 'NoStart' tags have been erased. Is this user error somewhere by me, or....?

I think you have found a bug.
Just tried it and all appears well in memory, but the nostart values are not being properly applied to the output for some reason.

Originally Posted by Calahan

Also, I'd find it very useful if I could scroll through the list of provinces in the navigator using the cursor keys, while at the same time be able to click the terrain tool menu options with the mouse without it de-selecting the navigator as the window I wish to respond to the cursor keys. Since as it stands now, if I click on any of the features in terrain tool menu with the mouse, this then selects the terrain tool menu as the active window, and means I have to select the navigator again using the mouse in order to resume scrolling through the province list with the cursor keys. This makes it kind of pointless to use the cursor keys if doing heavy province-by-province map editing.

This is an awesome tool though Ballbarian. First time I've used it, and very impressed. Many thanks for the considerable time and effort you must have put into it.

In the wonderful world of windows, this is a feature called 'focus' and I will try to address it in the next version. I agree that it is reducing the usefulness of the navigator.