# Mapmaking Discussion & Philosophy (WIP/Critique) > Software Discussion >  Anyone know what happened to Dundjinni?

## raindog308

I don't own Dundjinni but would like to.  I'm familiar with CC3 and AutoRealm and have been mostly making maps in Photoshop, which I find easier than either of those products.  DJ seems to focus on battlemat/encounter/tactical maps, which is what I'm looking for.

However, their store has been down since August due to a "server migration".  The owner of enworld just tried to buy their product through RPGNow and eventually had to get a refund:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/softwar...dundjinni.html

There have not been many updates on their forum and even a question in which I bluntly asked if they were going out of business was met with only a cryptic response.

For a small business to be without a storefront for two months has got to be suicidal...

I'm just wondering if anyone's heard more.

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## Redrobes

I heard it was down for a while then I heard it was back up. I am sure I was about to post that here then saw someones post on here saying that it was back. The person who was doing the most work on it that I could tell was Kepli who is a member here but I have not seen mail for ages. They were also on RPGMapShare and the four ugly monsters site too.

If you give up on them then you can try mine which is somewhat similar - ViewingDale link in sig. Also there is DungeonForge which is a similar and free kind of thing but you have to register on the site to get their link I think. Also fractal mapper is kind of similar in style too. All of those three are 'stamp based' i.e. you stamp down copies of PNG style bitmaps with rotation and scaling. Each, including dundjinni, has pros and cons so check them all out and see what you like from them all. If you want any questions about mine then ask away. RobA knows DungeonForge pretty well I think and Mark Oliva here waves the flag for FM8. You can also check out the popular MapTool which is a VTT with stamp tool kind of map abilities (Trevor, or Torstan here can give some advice on that one) as well as Battlegrounds RPG which Heruca is the dev for and is also a member here.

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## Steel General

I was just at the site and everything appears to be up and running.

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## raindog308

> I was just at the site and everything appears to be up and running.


Wish that was true...the web site and forum is working but the store is nonfunctional.

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## Mark Oliva

Dundjinni appears to be fading away ... slowly ... unfortunately.  The current version, 1.07, was released in 2004, in other words, six years ago.  Shortly afterward, Dundjinni Enterprises started releasing a lot of advance material on the coming Version 2.0, which existing users, at least, awaited eagerly.  However, about two years ago, an announcement appeared - well buried in the Dundjinni forums - that further development of Version 2.0 had been delayed indefinitely.  That was rather a letdown, because Dundjinni is great for making dungeon plans and encounter scenes, but it is problematical if one wants to make village and city maps or overland maps.  One hoped that Version 2.0 would address those shortcomings.  The user forums are the one really active area of the Dundjinni website.  They were down for about three months in summer but are working again.  The store still is lost on another plane.  Unfortunately, I'm rather convinced that if no one buys and revives Dundjinni, that the product probably is making a slow and painful exit from the stage.  Redrobes mentioned a number of alternatives in his posting.  After testing several programs, our project group chose Fractal Mapper 8 from NBOS for mapping our Dungeons Daring (TM) RPG and our Jörðgarð (TM) campaign setting.  If you're interested in FM8 and want to take a thorough but free look at it, make three free downloads:  

1)  Go to http://www.nbos.com/download/download-trial.htm#FM and download the free trial version of FM8.  It's crippled, so that you can't save maps, and it has a smaller symbol library than the retail version, but other than that, it's complete and functional.

2)  Go to http://www.nbos.com/nox/index.php?action=1001&id=125 and download the complete FM8 manual/tutorial free in PDF form.  Work your way through it.  It's an excellent work.

3)  Go to http://www.nbos.com/vintyri/pdftu01.zip and download our free FM8 Raster Mapping Tutorial in PDF form.  After you've done the NBOS material (No. 2 above), this one will take you on and teach you how to make Dundjinni style maps in FM8.

Why we chose FM8:

We had mapped our previous OGL products with CC2 and CC2 Pro from ProFantasy.  We were pretty happy with CC2 Pro.  The only problem we had with it were quite a number of complaints from some of our users over CC2's steep learning curve.  However, the era of vector symbol mapping that CC2 did was passing and raster mapping became the map standard in most of the RPG business.  We thoroughly tested CC3, which can make raster maps, but we rejected it because it is totally incompatible with our open source map concept.  We also wanted to spare our users the high learning curve.  We found that FM8 served our needs better than the other programs we tested, and also that on raster mapping level, it can turn out any map that CC3 can turn out with less work and in less time.  We continue to be delighted with our choice.

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## mearrin69

Thanks for that overview, Mark. I've bought FM7 some time ago (long before joining here) but never really managed to do much with it. I guess maybe I should try again...would be good for quick maps I think. 

Too bad about Dundjinni...as it seemed so promising. I bought it shortly after release and made a few cool things but lamented that it was written in Java and never really performed all that well on my set-up for some reason (I assumed Java was the culprit because it crashed a lot but maybe it was something else entirely). Had a great user community as well...lots of great contributors.
M

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## Mark Oliva

> I've bought FM7 some time ago (long before joining here) but never really managed to do much with it. I guess maybe I should try again...would be good for quick maps I think.


FM7 does a lot less than FM8.  FM7 also is unable to make raster maps in Dundjinni style.




> Too bad about Dundjinni..Had a great user community as well...lots of great contributors.


Fortunately, that's still the case, now that the user forums are running again.  However, I'd strongly urge anyone who wants to get the huge collection of objects (symbols) and textures (fills) offered there not to postpone the downloads forever.  The forums could disappear again, perhaps forever.  

All of the downloads offered in the forums also work in FM8.  They should work in CC3 too, in principal, but I've seen postings from CC3 users saying that they have trouble in CC3 with the PNG alpha channel, causing transparent areas to turn white rather than remain transparent.  Not being a CC3 user, I don't know how great or widespread a problem this might be.  Some CC3 users have reported the same alpha channel problems in converting our Vintyri symbol sets for CC3.  However, someone expert in CC3 will have to resolve those problems.

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## tribunal88

You should check out RPTools (http://www.rptools.net/). It's pretty incredible and does just about everything you might need to run a campaign top to bottom. It even has server/client feature so you can have people remote in if thy want. I cooked up a great map in an hour. Best of all, it's FREE!!!

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## Mark Oliva

> You should check out RPTools (http://www.rptools.net/). It's pretty incredible and does just about everything you might need to run a campaign top to bottom. It even has server/client feature so you can have people remote in if thy want. I cooked up a great map in an hour. Best of all, it's FREE!!!


RPTools is a pretty good program, although it won't do everything that Dundjinni (TM) or Fractal Mapper (TM) 8 do.  However, a lot of people have trouble getting it to run, particularly on Windows 7 64-Bit or Windows Vista 64-Bit.  I have the current Java version installed on all three machines in my office.  RP Tools works on one computer.  On the other two it just brings up the message _Could not create the Java Virtual machine_.  I know several people who have had the same problem and have given up.

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## jfrazierjr

> RPTools is a pretty good program, although it won't do everything that Dundjinni (TM) or Fractal Mapper (TM) 8 do.  However, a lot of people have trouble getting it to run, particularly on Windows 7 64-Bit or Windows Vista 64-Bit.  I have the current Java version installed on all three machines in my office.  RP Tools works on one computer.  On the other two it just brings up the message _Could not create the Java Virtual machine_.  I know several people who have had the same problem and have given up.


Thats a problem with the Sun installer(or possibly the OEM install process), not MapTool.   Java won't run from the command line either in this case.   The WebStart will likely work without a problem, but in order to get the downloaded files to run, you would need to:

Uninstall Java*Reboot*.  This step is VITAL!!!!install latest java from java.com

On the computers where those messages are found, if you open a command prompt and type: java -version
you will get a 'command not found' type error.  Once reinstalling, if you can do the above, the MapTool jar should work without a problem.  

However... to get back to your original comments, you are right.... MapTool is not designed to be a real map editor and has far less map editing capabilities that FM8 or Dundjinni.    It will work in a pinch for most thing for simple maps (assuming you have enough/the right textures or objects in your resource library).  The main drawback is that there is no way to add drop shadows which is something that really helps maps stand out when created in other programs.  

Disclaimer: I have done a number of bug fixes and a few feature additions to the MapTool code and plan to be part of the next re-write for version 1.4 beginning next year.

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## Mark Oliva

> you would need to:
> 
> Uninstall Java*Reboot*.  This step is VITAL!!!!install latest java from java.com
> 
> On the computers where those messages are found, if you open a command prompt and type: java -version
> you will get a 'command not found' type error.  Once reinstalling, if you can do the above, the MapTool jar should work without a problem.


Hi, Joe!

Right.  I know those routines.  On the machines with problems of which I'm aware (including two of my own), this brings the same result.  And when one goes to the command line and enters java -version, one gets this message:

_Windows cannot find 'java'.  Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again._

The current Java version is installed.  I'm aware of this issue only with 64-bit versions of Windows.

Nonetheless, on the two of my three machines that have this problem, all other Java programs run without problems.  The third machine also has 64-Bit Windows 7, but RP Tools runs fine on it.  However, when one goes to the command line and enters java -version, one also gets this message on that machine:

_Windows cannot find 'java'.  Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again._

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## jfrazierjr

> Hi, Joe!
> 
> Right.  I know those routines.  On the machines with problems of which I'm aware (including two of my own), this brings the same result.  And when one goes to the command line and enters java -version, one gets this message:
> 
> _Windows cannot find 'java'.  Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again._
> 
> The current Java version is installed.  I'm aware of this issue only with 64-bit versions of Windows.
> 
> Nonetheless, on the two of my three machines that have this problem, all other Java programs run without problems.  The third machine also has 64-Bit Windows 7, but RP Tools runs fine on it.  However, when one goes to the command line and enters java -version, one also gets this message on that machine:
> ...


Odd... In any event, it's a simple enough problem to fix by adding the path to the java exe to the Path environment variable.   Let me know if you want specific details.   Basically, if it works from the command line, it will work period.

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## Mark Oliva

> Odd... In any event, it's a simple enough problem to fix by adding the path to the java exe to the Path environment variable.   Let me know if you want specific details.   Basically, if it works from the command line, it will work period.


Hello again Joe!

Before replying, I wanted to contact the other people I know outside of our project group who also were having trouble with RP Tools before getting back on this topic.  Here's what we have among us:

Five machines running Windows 7 64-Bit
Three machines running Windows 7 64-Bit that also can boot Windows XP Pro 32-Bit.
Three machines running Windows 7 32-Bit.

All installations under all OSs are running Java 32-Bit Version 1.6 Update 22, which java.com reports is the current version.

Five machines running Windows 7 64-Bit run all Java programs installed except RP Tools.  Calling RP Tools produces the error message.

Two of the three machines running Windows 7 64-Bit that also can boot Windows XP Pro 32-Bit produce the error message under Windows 7 64-Bit.  One runs RP Tools just fine.  All three of these machines are in my office.  All three run RP Tools just fine under Windows XP Pro 32-bit.

All three machines running Windows 7 32-Bit run RP Tools just fine too.

I told everyone how to add java.exe to the environment variables.  That was done on all machines with a reboot.  It had no effect as far as RP Tools is concerned.

With that, I'll give the mystery back to you.

Happy weekend!

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