No sooner did I decide to keep my maps up-to-date than work got too busy for me. ARGH!
Here is my "recipe" for map-making:
Ingredients:
* Tiled map editor
* GIMP (
http://gimp.org - Freeware photoshop alternative)
* Maps from AT Source and Project Page source:
+
http://code.google.com/p/andors-trail/s ... Fres%2Fxml
+
http://code.google.com/p/andors-trail/s ... age%2Fmaps
(I usually grab the whole source distribution instead of getting the maps one-at-a-time)
Directions:
Create a working directory (I call it "maps" and put it under the "res" folder - as a sibling to "xml")
Copy ALL of the map files to the working directory (WD)
Open Tiled
Open Windows Explorer and browse to the "maps" folder
In Windows Explorer, Select a "bunch" of map files (ten or so at a time...I tend to work on an "Area" at a time...so Catacombs1-4 would be a single "bunch")
Drag the selected files from Explorer and drop them on "tiled"...wait for tiled to finish opening them. The more you "drop", the longer it will take.
In Tiled, select the "Layers" tab
now, for each file you have open:
* check/uncheck layers so that only "Above", "Objects" and "Ground" are checked
* Select File->Save As Image
* In the "Save As Image" dialog box, uncheck "use current zoom level"", check "only include visible layers" and "draw tile grid"
* Click "OK"
* Close the file (I click on the "X" button on the tab for that)
When all of the files have been converted (all the tabs are closed), go back to Windows Explorer and delete the selected files (this way you know they're done - that's why I copy them to the Working Directory)
When you've converted all of the maps to pictures (or get bored of converting), use GIMP (or whatever image manipulation package you prefer) to merge all of the images together. Because this is a more complex task, I'll just give guidelines rather than step-by-step.
I work on one "Area" at a time to create a "sub-map". For example, all of "blackwater_mountain" becomes a single map.
Because we checked "Draw Tile Grid" in the "Save As Image" dialog box, the pictures have a bunch of squares on them...this makes it easy to line them up.
There is an official standard for how the images line up to create the worldmap, but it's more of a guideline. As a general rule, the sub-maps connect with a one-tile overlap. Usually, though, I look for visual cues to see how the "new" submap lines up with the existing area map. Rapidly toggling the visibility on the submap being added helps see how it fits in to the area map.
With many of the maps, where there are "levels" (underground maps - cave entrances in particular), an overlay will "block off" some of the content for one or the other map. The worst-case answer for these maps is to place them somewhere else with a "connection indicator" to show how they relate. I think I use a dotted pink line for that...
Sometimes, however, there is a lot of "dead space" that can be removed so that the maps will overlay each other. For these situations, I line up the maps, pick the one that will be "above" (which one obscures the other least) and "cut away" all of the excess tiles.
Even with this, there are often "corners" that remain obscured - for those situations, I highlight the blocks in the "top" map increase their transparency until you can see both maps, and easily focus on one over the other.
When I'm all done, I export to .GIF - GIF is a "lossless" format (so you can edit and edit and edit and only your changes appear).
... and eventually post a link to them here.
I hope this helps us keep up the World Map!
(Hmmmm...I wonder if it would be useful to have a thread for "world-map builders" and people can say "I'll take these files" and maybe a couple of people could manage merging the area maps into the world map?)
) above what I would expect...
