Estar,
Off topic: The map? Hexographer?

Quote from: ChristopherKubasik;953145Estar,
Off topic: The map? Hexographer?

Nope I draw them myself with CorelDraw. I do paid cartography projects from time to time like this one of the City State of the Invincible Ovelord.

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Quote from: estar;953173Nope I draw them myself with CorelDraw. I do paid cartography projects from time to time like this one of the City State of the Invincible Ovelord.

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Estar, I use CorelDraw x6 for my world map but have never been able to get it to compile so I can print it.  Any chance you could help a guy out?

Are you doing some of the maps for the Judges Guild Kickstarter?  If so, excellent stuff.

Quote from: Xanther;953176Estar, I use CorelDraw x6 for my world map but have never been able to get it to compile so I can print it.  Any chance you could help a guy out?

Sure be glad to help. What the specific issue?

Quote from: Xanther;953176Are you doing some of the maps for the Judges Guild Kickstarter?  If so, excellent stuff.

Yes I am one the Judges Guild Cartographers

Quote from: estar;953189Sure be glad to help. What the specific issue?

If you don't mind I'll PM you.  In short it only prints out part of the drawing.  All is good on the screen.

QuoteYes I am one the Judges Guild Cartographers

Excellent stuff you guys are doing, one of the best Kickstarters I ever signed on to.

Quote from: Xanther;953233If you don't mind I'll PM you.  In short it only prints out part of the drawing.  All is good on the screen.

If we need to go into more, yeah let's use PM. However given I can attach images to posts. I am going to take a guess. Have you used the  Fit to Page option in the layout tab of the print dialog as shown in the attached image?

Also if it is a large page size it may be easier to export it as a PDF and try printing it with adobe. Adobe reader has some nice print options for print different sizes different ways.

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Quote from: estar;953218....

I know i been harping on this recently but the difference between plot in the hand of a sandbox referee and in the hands of a railroading referee is that the sandbox referee is willing to let his players "trash" his work. If the referee isn't willing to do that or is not comfortable, then all this stuff we talk about isn't going to matter regardless of particulars.

I would differentiate between plot in a sandbox versus a railroad as follows.  In a sandbox the "plot" is the plotting and plans of the NPCs and as a referee you "know" how that will unfold absent action by the PCs.  It really is more a living world / world in motion concept to me.  That is in a sandbox "plot" only guides NPC actions and doesn't impact PC actions although it may inform them or lead to adventure if they interrupt the "plotting" of NPCs.  

In a railroad the "plot" is how the GM sees, wants and plans for the adventure to unfold.  In a railroad "plot" constrains PC action.  I find it just as bad when an NPC cannot die due to plot protection as when PCs automatically find something or cannot die due to plot protection.

I believe as a GM, to be truly fair and impartial, you have to let the PCs trash your best laid ideas...for me that is half the fun watching players come up with creative ways I never thought of, or just lucky die rolls, that negate what looked like a sure thing on the part of NPCs.

Quote from: estar;953237If we need to go into more, yeah let's use PM. However given I can attach images to posts. I am going to take a guess. Have you used the  Fit to Page option in the layout tab of the print dialog as shown in the attached image?

Also if it is a large page size it may be easier to export it as a PDF and try printing it with adobe. Adobe reader has some nice print options for print different sizes different ways.

The overall image is large, probably 4 x5 letter size pages.   I've tried fit to page and just printing whatever it is centered over.  I believe the problem has to do with the complexity of the closed curves for the coastlines.  They are hand/mouse drawn, so a huge number of nodes, so many that it won't let me convert it into an object (I'm going on memory on that part it has been a couple years since tried to fix the problem).  I lose a lot of detail if I export to bmp.  I see if I can export to Adobe and get it to work.  Can't recall if I tried that.  I have Adobe Acrobat XI so should have no issues.  My recollection is the file was too large to export.  It's only about 7MB but I think it is the complexity of the curves again.

Quote from: Xanther;953248The overall image is large, probably 4 x5 letter size pages.   I've tried fit to page and just printing whatever it is centered over.  I believe the problem has to do with the complexity of the closed curves for the coastlines.  They are hand/mouse drawn, so a huge number of nodes, so many that it won't let me convert it into an object (I'm going on memory on that part it has been a couple years since tried to fix the problem).  I lose a lot of detail if I export to bmp.  I see if I can export to Adobe and get it to work.  Can't recall if I tried that.  I have Adobe Acrobat XI so should have no issues.  My recollection is the file was too large to export.  It's only about 7MB but I think it is the complexity of the curves again.

Export it as a png and try printing it that. You may have to fiddle with the DPI and image size but in generally when it comes to large images Windows printer drivers are more forgiving of large bitmap than vector images.  Plus if you size it down to letter size you can control how it handles the scaling with different options. As opposed to the automatic method windows does behind the scene.

For the Wilderlands project I have a single master map covering the 18 sub maps where I do all my drawing. I then crop out the individual maps. For the combined map I have to export it as a image of the desired size to get it to correctly print at a smaller size.  Printed full size it would be 5 feet 10 feet, so there so I do some tweaking to get the best look for the scaling.

Quote from: estar;953250Printed full size it would be 5 feet 10 feet, so there so I do some tweaking to get the best look for the scaling.

You should get the whole thing printed out on canvas in color and hang it like a tapestry behind your GM chair.  Or make a table that size and have it on parchment underneath the glass surface.  Shouldn't cost you more than a few grand for both.  

Quote from: CRKrueger;953256You should get the whole thing printed out on canvas in color and hang it like a tapestry behind your GM chair.  Or make a table that size and have it on parchment underneath the glass surface.  Shouldn't cost you more than a few grand for both.  

Canvas is a bit overboard considering I can get it printed using outdoor banner material between $50 to $100. But yeah I will doing something with the combined map. I probably say it is the only thing like it in the industry or hobby. Sure people have printed huge maps. How many were printed that were designed to be printed at that size as opposed to being a smaller poster sized map blown up to banner size.

This is a much reduced jpeg of the whole map
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This is what one section of what it looks at normal scale. Note this is not the final version of the combined map. There is a handful of post processing steps i do once the edits are in like putting white backgrounds around the text.

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Quote from: estar;953250Export it as a png and try printing it that. You may have to fiddle with the DPI and image size but in generally when it comes to large images Windows printer drivers are more forgiving of large bitmap than vector images.  Plus if you size it down to letter size you can control how it handles the scaling with different options. As opposed to the automatic method windows does behind the scene.

For the Wilderlands project I have a single master map covering the 18 sub maps where I do all my drawing. I then crop out the individual maps. For the combined map I have to export it as a image of the desired size to get it to correctly print at a smaller size.  Printed full size it would be 5 feet 10 feet, so there so I do some tweaking to get the best look for the scaling.

Printing to pdf with fit to page works.  Thanks Estar

Still odd stuff when try to print directly to my printer with fit to page like dropping some (but not all) of my Ocean Layer (I did make sure it is set to print in the object manager)

I'll next try to just print to pdf what is centered over the desktop/letter page outline.  That was my original intent, a massive map that would have all the detail zoomed in, that is printed at the actual scale.  I would just center the "page" over the area I wanted printed.  


P.S.  Maybe we should move this to a mapping thread?


Lastly, I love your swamp textures, are those also in CorelDraw or did you have to make them.

I see you have a hex grid on your maps.  Anyway to get that automatically in CorelDraw x6?  I've tried a few of their grids, can't seem to get them to work.  I ended up for my Traveller maps (which have some of the same printing issues) making the hexagons myself then constructing the grid.

Quote from: estar;953262Canvas is a bit overboard considering I can get it printed using outdoor banner material between $50 to $100. But yeah I will doing something with the combined map. I probably say it is the only thing like it in the industry or hobby. Sure people have printed huge maps. How many were printed that were designed to be printed at that size as opposed to being a smaller poster sized map blown up to banner size.

This is a much reduced jpeg of the whole map

Spoiler

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This is what one section of what it looks at normal scale. Note this is not the final version of the combined map. There is a handful of post processing steps i do once the edits are in like putting white backgrounds around the text.

Spoiler

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[/spoiler]

Let me know when you're going to sell the full-size map.

Separated out the Mapping posts from the D&D thread.

Quote from: Xanther;953266Printing to pdf with fit to page works.  Thanks Estar

Still odd stuff when try to print directly to my printer with fit to page like dropping some (but not all) of my Ocean Layer (I did make sure it is set to print in the object manager)

I'll next try to just print to pdf what is centered over the desktop/letter page outline.  That was my original intent, a massive map that would have all the detail zoomed in, that is printed at the actual scale.  I would just center the "page" over the area I wanted printed.  


P.S.  Maybe we should move this to a mapping thread?


Lastly, I love your swamp textures, are those also in CorelDraw or did you have to make them.

I see you have a hex grid on your maps.  Anyway to get that automatically in CorelDraw x6?  I've tried a few of their grids, can't seem to get them to work.  I ended up for my Traveller maps (which have some of the same printing issues) making the hexagons myself then constructing the grid.

A bit of a story about that. Back in the day wargame maps, Judges Guild and many other publishers would have a map drawn up. But forested and other textured terrain were formed by using an x-acto knife to cut a section of stuff call Zipatone and applied to the specific region. It was some texture printed on a transparent background. There was a competitor that made Letratone.

Flash fowards to the middle 2000s and zipatone is gone and so is much of Letratone. All that remains are grayscale fills used by manga artists. However Letraset put out a CD-ROM with high quality scans of their Letratones including the swamp textures. A few years later a wargaming enthusiast re-creates several the more common zipatone fills and posts them online.

http://www.jrcooper.com/gaming.htm

With that as a source and a few things I was able to create independently I was able to put together a Hexcrawl Mapping Kit. This has a swamp, forest, and jungle texture you can use.
http://www.ibiblio.org/mscorbit/map/Hex_Crawl_Map_Kit.zip