Dian, if I wanted to make a map, what software would you recommend and what steps are needed.
A lot of that answer depends on how much time and detail you want to put in it.
If you want to make a map thats good detail, but do not want to spend stupid amounts of time doing it, Dragon would be the way to go. Dragon Mod 9 would be a good start.
If you are willing to spend the extra time, and want the most detail all in one shot, Map Generator 2 is the bet program, hands down.
Those are the ones I have used, and know. There are others, but nothing that compares to MapGenerator at least.
You would start by getting one of those programs, and Paintshop or Photoshop. Gimp would work too, its free. You would create a new raw BMP image in Paint shop, and load the pallet file that comes with the Map program, so to hae the correct colors to paint your map with. Oh, the size of the image in pixels will represent the size of the map in square tiles.
Once you get that far, you are ready to paint away.
Dragon Details:
Dragon uses shades of a color that share both the Land tile, and Altitude. So lets take grass for instance. There is a variety of green shades to the pallet, the lightest is the lowest altitude, the darkest green is the highest altitude. Same go's for the rest of the colors. Each color represents a Land Tile and a set altitude. It is editable within a txt file if you need to alter them.
Once you paint enough of your map, and are ready to check it out, Run the Dragon.exe file. You need to just enter the directory of the BMP file and the folder you want the Map0.mul to be created in. It will create the Map0.mul file. At the same time, it will save a txt file that holds all the items that would go along with it, like trees for your forest areas, and such. After you ran Dragon, you then run DragonSP.exe and it will create your Statics0.mul and Staidx0.mul files. You then can copy these files to your Ultima game folder, AND your ServUO folder client files, and should be able to boot the shard, and have a look.
Map Generator 2:
Somewhat same kind of deal as Dragon, however Map Gen2 differs dramatically being it uses 2 BMP files to paint your map. One BMP file is pure Land Tiles, the other is Pure Altitude. Now, why is this you might ask? It is because Dragon is limited to a 64 (off my memory) bit pallet, and because of that it shares Land Tiles and Elevation. Map Gen split these up, so now you have one pallet that does not need 10 shades of green (or 50 shades of gray
) for just grass, it only requires ONE green for grass, period. This means you are able to have MUCH more land tiles to choose from to paint your map with compared to Dragons.. 15 or so Land tiles.
Now, once you paint your primary Land Map, it will generate a base image duplicate for you to begin elevation painting. Same principle as Dragon, different shades for different Z levels. Now you can do some serious detail work with this program.
Then, when you finish enough, you compile the images into the map/statics/staidx files, boot your shard and have a look.
Final thoughts:
Why is Map Generator so much better, beyond the obvious? Because you have much more Land Tiles to choose from during the painting stage, and WAY more elevation levels to choose from.. so you will have MUCH less time needing to be spent after the map is done using something like CentrED to do the fine detail work. Where as with Dragon, you will finish your map as good as you can or are able.. but will then need to spend a ton of time with CentrED cleaning up the areas that you couldnt do because of the limitations.
I spent somewhere around 4 years painting my map, compiling to MUL files, touching up areas, compiling, touching up areas, compiling.. before I was finally done enough to ditch Dragon, and be okay with edits with just CentrED (World Forge at the time). And yes, I was anal with my map. Almost the entire map was done pixel by pixel by pixel. I wiped it out once, and started over almost completely one time as well.
dang.. yeah, that sums it up kinda. Hope it helps you out. My fingers hurt now..
