Wheee, Grid Cartographer is now one month old.

To celebrate I made an RPG - as in Really Primitive Game - to show off using Grid Cartographer's XML export feature.

http://www.davidwaltersdevelopment.com/tools/gridcart/flash.php

Hope you have 5 mins of fun with it and it'd be really great if someone found this as a useful beginner programming project.

Either way, enjoy :-)

If you've ever found yourself in one of those cheaper "budget edition" dungeons then you might find yourself climbing ladders instead of taking the stairs or elevator. Version v1.3.6 will help you map these frightfully low quality constructions with two new ladder tiles.

I've also added a binary file format for data export, tweaked the stair art a to be a bit chunkier and a smoother exit process allowing you to save your work as you quit.

This is probably a lot to ask given the price of the program but I wish there was a tutorial showing the clueless such as myself how to map a level or town in a game like Might and Magic or say, Wizardry 6. I don't have the first idea of how to begin. For example, upon entering a dungeon how do I know where I am in relation to a map I want to draw? How does on figure out where the entry point lies on the map? Is it always working from top to bottom? Bottom to top? Left to right? Is it always different? How many tiles in from either border is the entry point to the left and right? Do you just have to experiment tile by tile and then redo the map once you have at least figured out where you are entering? How does one know the dimensions of the grid as in how many tiles each direction? Do you just map around and eventually toss that mess and take the information learned to do the map right a second time?

I hope some of those questions made some sense. Maybe my own confusion is confusing to read about.

I'd like to play the first two Might and Magic games, Wizardry 6 and the Lands of Lore games and from what I understand mapping is a must for these. That brings me to my last question. Is mapping a must actually or is it just nice to have maps but you can muddle through without them? I am not against trying out mapping and maybe I'll find it fun. I have never done it before so I don't know. Currently it sounds like a pain in the ass to me which looks like it would be lessened a lot by this program but I might even enjoy it if I only had some clue about how it is done.

I should add that I meant a tutorial on the web site, not in the program itself. I understand that would be a major project and it isn't something I'm asking for. I think a lot of gamers might shy away from some of the classics where you need to do maps because they don't know how and they don't know where to begin figuring it out. I was considering just skipping the games I listed above and moving on to the installments that included maps within the game itself and my "fear of mapping" is why.

I honestly couldn't imagine playing Wizardry 6 without mapping it. There aren't very many things on the screen that would help navigate; all the features of a room are described in text. When it says there's a desk and chairs in a room I kind of have to take its word on that. So yes, without a map you will probably be pretty lost.

If you're using this program where to start drawing is really a non-issue. You have unlimited map space so it's not like you'll be running into the edge of the page anytime soon. North is towards the top and in Wizardry 6 you'll have a spell to tell you which way north is. I don't recall a compass in Might and Magic but for that game I assumed the direction I faced upon exiting the inn was north. Also helpful is that M&M I's maps are 16x16.

In Wizardry 6 you can see nine tiles at any given time any further and it's just darkness. You'll see the tile you're standing on the two tiles to the sides of you and six tiles, 3x2, in front of you. Eventually you'll learn to spot the difference between a wall that's right in front of you and the walls which are 1 or 2 tiles in front of you. So when I map I find the tile that I'm standing on, use the compass to find the direction I'm facing and draw two squares in that direction and any other squares I feel confident in drawing.

The program has lines to represent walls and, more importantly, doors. If you see a door, map it, save (always save), check to see if it's open and then change it if need be. I find it's easy to use the number keys at the top to switch the door drawing from a closed one to a locked one. "1" is an open door "2" is a locked one. I changed the color of the door to differentiate a gate from a plain door, especially since the "knock-knock" spell doesn't work on gates.

Stairs belong on their own tile and should be drawn directly above or below the stairs on the following floor. This will help keep the floors directly above one another which will help in various scenarios. After a while your map will begin to take shape and you'll be able to see what the castle looks like architecturally, pretty cool.

The map progress will help you identify where you've yet to go so if you get stuck it's fairly easy to peruse the map carefully and see which doors or gates have yet to be tested with a particular key. Screw-ups are inevitable so don't feel too bad if you have to go back and correct something. I've made at least 2 screw-ups so far. As long as you keep casting "Direction" you should keep them to a minimum.

I can't think of much else to help you map that isn't blatantly obvious. Note what the room is (King's bedroom, Storage room, etc.), note the effects of fountains, locations of buttons. Use colored lines or tiles to represent hazards.

Yeah I don't know, just some things I've found useful. If you have any other questions feel free to ask.

edit: Also, I drew the first floor of Sorpigal (M&M) by hand, it was surprisingly fun but slowed the game down to a crawl. This program only made grid-based mapping about a thousand times easier to do.

Thanks very much for all those tips and info. It sounds like I just need to dive in and I'll become acclimated to it. I think I need to look at mapping as a part of the gameplay and part of the fun in its own right to appreciate it in the old RPGs. It's gonna be a while as I'm working through a bunch of other games at the moment but I think I'll buy this program to have it handy when the time comes. It's quite a bargain for a nice custom app just for this purpose and I'm sure it must beat the hell out of using graph paper.

Mapping in these old games was expected and many of them were designed to trick you in ways having an auto-map would make obvious such as rotating rooms. Grid Cartographer lets you fight back against these cruel designers :-)

I don't have much to add to Shaolin_sKunk 's excellent post other than to say that the Pro edition also adds several powerful clipboard functions to move sub-sections of the map around. I also have on my todo list to add the ability to rotate the whole floor around as well - to solve a problem I had in Realms of Arkania where you start off facing south.

Basically I had the same problem as you had when starting to learn how to map these games - especially when I tried on paper - "where do I start!?" - I was always worried that I'd be too close to the edge of the paper and have to start over. That's why one of the main aims of Grid Cartographer was to create a feeling of an infinite work area with no "wrong place to start". I've since added extra commands to nudge the floor around as a whole (so you could line it up to the major grid lines or match stairwells between floors) and as I mentioned move rectangular areas around, as well as a bunch of stuff to let you use it as a level editor for new computer games or tabletop dungeon maps.

Thanks for giving it a try!

Unfortunately this would be quite difficult to do since often full-screen games change the display resolution. Switching to Grid Cartographer would cause the screen to return to your desktop rez. I guess some kind of Steam Overlay could be written but that doesn't sound easy and Valve seem to have had a lot of compat problems over the years making that work. The solution for now is to run in a window (which is I what I do) or use a laptop or second monitor. Sorry this is not ideal.

I've just released v1.3.7. This adds new floor transform commands for Pro edition users - flipping and 90 degree rotation. This will be useful for games where your facing might not be too clear before you start drawing.

I had this problem with Realms of Arkania - I didn't spot you started off facing south before it was too late!

Hope this helps for more complex games where you might get spun around and not know which way is north.

LINK: http://www.davidwaltersdevelopment.com/tools/gridcart/

Hey everyone, it's been quite a while but I've just released v1.3.8.

Grab the update / free edition here: http://www.davidwaltersdevelopment.com/tools/gridcart/

Here's the full list of changes:

* ADDED: New 'start' screen with quick access to recent files and new map type selection.
* ADDED: 30 x 30 major grid lines setting for The Bard's Tale.
* ADDED: Per-map file saving of block-based / edge-based setting. To make switching games easier.

* PRO: Rotate and Flip actions (and keyboard shortcuts) now work when pasting and moving regions.
* PRO: Rotate and Flip actions are context sensitive - if you have dragged out a selection then only that region will be affected.

* CHANGED: The fill area tool now keeps the selection active, allowing you to drag it around and quickly paint several areas.

Hope you like it :)

Just wanted to let people know that I'm developing a version of Grid Cartographer for Android tablets. Having it running on a separate screen will be a lot more useful for many people, I'm sure.

I'll post back when it's done and you can follow @HiddenAsbestos for slightly more frequent updates.

Nice! Do you think an Android phone version would ever be a possibility? The small screen is not ideal but would be accessible to more people thus more sales. :)

Holy shit, you continue to provide awesomeness. No android tablet here or would be more excited but damn!

Any plans for iThing users? I don't have an ipad either but it could be worth looking into!

hehe yeah, I can't seem to stop tinkering with this project :-)

Unfortunately there are no plans for iOS right now. I don't own an iPad or Mac right now and to be frank, this is just too niche a product to justify the expense there. Maybe some day I'll find myself with these things and I'll swing back and port it then.

Thanks! I won't be placing artificial restrictions for it running on phones. I have an HTC Desire S as well as a Galaxy Note 10.1 and I'll be testing on both. You might need to zoom in quite a bit with a phone, but I think it'll still work quite well since you're usually concerned with just a small local area anyway.

Thought I'd post an update on Grid Cartographer Touch

It's actually working _really_ well on my phone, far better than I'd imagined. My HTC Desire S has a 3.7" screen which is on the small side and yet I was able to doodle a few maps today without feeling restricted at all.

Other progress has been made. The brushing and colour selection are working well. Extra zoom modes have been added to improve things with phones. The eraser and hand tools both work and the basics of the mark, move and fill tools are in. Undo and Redo are both in as well, although that still needs a bit of work so it doesn't fill up all the RAM.

The next major job is to replace the menu system with a scrolling list of options. There are quite a lot of things on the menus in this software so adding each one will take a bit of time. Should be able to roll through a lot of them when I get going though.

That is awesome news.

Will you have Stylus support? If so, which ones - capacitive or pressure? I would love to be able to draw maps easily on my tablet with a stylus.