# Mapmaking Discussion & Philosophy (WIP/Critique) > Software Discussion >  Other World Mapper (mapping software), feedback request and future changes

## OWM

Hello!

I'm one of the three devs behind Other World Mapper, a (fantasy/sci fi/modern) map design software for overland, regional and local maps. We asked for feedback while in early development and during development and beta, and we ended up with a lot of good feedback that let us take our program to what it is today. Having completed most of the original goals (and many more added along the way), we are planning for future additions and are looking for feedback and suggestions.

If you are currently using Other World Mapper, let us know what you'd like to see added to the program over the next year. If you aren't, we would love if you could tell us what you think of the program as it currently is, and what could we do better or add to the program over the next year.

*These pages from our website have a nice overview of the program*
https://www.otherworldmapper.com/program.html

https://www.otherworldmapper.com/engine.html

https://www.otherworldmapper.com/tools.html

*And this video is a basic overview*

https://youtu.be/q05srtCvk9M

*Boiling it down to only a few points:*

 OWM is a DRM Free, royalty free, one time purchase app. Currently Windows/OSX, with the Linux version being almost ready. Drawing tools are designed around map elements such as land, rivers, bodies of water, regions and roads, as well as customizable settings for each. Everything drawn with the map tools is stored as vectors, yet rasterized real-time. Objects can be scaled, rotated and modified from their vector outline, while their borders, textures, fills and effects are rasterized again (real time) after each change. You can go as deep as modifying individual points. Each map element is a separate layer so that after it is drawn or placed, it can be moved and manipulated. You can import real GIS data and use it as a base for your map Support for various grid overlays Support for world projections as well as transforming existing maps between projections Ability to fully customize each item properties (color, line widths, texture opacity, etc), so you are not limited to the preset/themes we provide. Ability to import your own artwork.

You can see some map examples on our website
https://www.otherworldmapper.com

And also user submitted maps (better than ours!) that we shared on FB
https://www.facebook.com/otherworldm...type=3&theater
https://www.facebook.com/otherworldm...type=3&theater

*We are about to start regression testing for a new release which is already including several additions*

 Tiled map exporting Archipelago/fill tool Doors/window tool will allow to open/close and have options for being a "gap", portcullis, etc

*We have functionality already planned for later this year.* 
This is a short list of some of it, but the rest of the changes will depend a lot on the new feedback we receive. So far user feedback has being incredibly helpful growing OWM so we want to take it where users want us to go  :Smile: 

 Contour regions Light sources More options and modes for feature/symbol tool

We appreciate any and all feedback and suggestions.

Thank you!! 

- Alejandro

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## Tiana

I just downloaded the test version and I've made notes throughout my use process. I ended up crashing it because I couldn't get what I assume is the guideline for the text to double click to turn off. I had trouble with making the river tool stop rivering, and I literally could not get that text guideline tool to stop until the program crashed. It had an apparent first way of adding text which I was unable to determine how to operate before said program crash.

Prior to that I did make a landmass, figure out how to alter the texture of the landmass (but not how to get my own textures in), how to alter the stroke width, figure out how to add water, and all of that seemed mostly intuitive, although I would expect the water outline echo stroke option to be contained in the stroke panel and it wasn't? Eventually I found it under 'coastline' and was disappointed that I couldn't set the spacing between lines and the amount of opacity trail off, since I have a specific way I like to set mine up. I would also like to be able to add custom waves that either follow around the landmass like a ribbon or are oriented left to right, depending on my preference. I would like a button to go straight to this tool on the 'stroke' section of the sidebar for the coastline, since it would make sense to decide what color and width the land stroke will be and then want to adjust your waves accordingly.

I would also like a couple of more options for outline jaggedness. I'm not convinced it's better than what I can draw by hand. What might help is if you could change the fractalization using the number keys while not losing your "grip". Or a randomization option to increase and decrease how fractalized it is.

I was annoyed that I could make the side panels wider but not narrower, especially since there seemed to be no good reason for the amount of space the left hand panel took up on my monitor. I'd like to be able to make that shrink down to half the size so I can see more of my map work. I'd also like to be able to snap the toolbox into where the mini map is instead of having the mini map there. It moved and faded like it wanted to snap into place but I was never able to find a good place to position it. I would have liked to be able to shrink the tool box down to only 2 squares wide and set it on one of the sides or the top. I found an option to change the sizing and was shocked everything was almost already small by default; I changed what I could and it did not get me any more space in the view of the map.

I rebooted and found the art asset manager and find it very annoying that I can only see two rows of textures that then horizontally scroll. I couldn't figure out how to add my own textures, maybe a limitation of the demo but I got an error message when I tried to add a folder. I then tried to make a railroad and was only able to click once, and any other place on the screen it would not let me click or double click to add another part of the route or escape. I was able to escape by hitting esc though, leaving one slice of rail behind. While I have figured out how to intelligently merge the layers (which is the only feature this has which I might consider buying it for, the one thing I do waste time on while drawing is fixing up overlaps between paths and such) I do expect the tool to actually work to click down several road pieces and then give me a way to escape and leave what I drew intact.

The city wall/tower placing feature worked pretty well, though I was also having trouble figuring out how to make the walls stop, I did at one point run into a pop up that said 'click to merge'. My second attempt to make a wall was much worse. It only stuck when I clicked half the time and I could not figure out a way to make just a straight wall instead of one that went all the way around. I was particularly impressed by the house rooftop placer, that's another thing I could see myself actually using, although the amount of vector rooftops is limited enough that again, I would want a way to import my own assets to use.

The route measurer is neat but I couldn't make it stop routing.

So, the biggest bug which hindered my ability to create art was the way the tools would get stuck on and either not let me click down to end it or delete everything when I would hit escape or right click. I'm using a Macbook Pro.

One thing I did not observe was the ability to put textures on layers set to overlay, hard light, soft light, screen, multiply. I do this with almost every map I make, not just opacity adjustments. I would also want these types of layer interface effects for the terrain coloration effect.

The fact that the terrain objects can only be tinted and not recolored in the same fashion as the houses and walls seems like a lack of foresight. One of the key reasons I use Clip Studio Paint was their advanced brush system. I was able to set up a bunch of black line with white fill trees that the program will pick up and color in with whatever color I choose instead of white. Also the ability to make a brush set full of dozens of different trees scattered, but also had some encoding to shift the tint and lighting, flip randomly horizontally, and shift the size and angle just a little bit, so it looks even more diverse. I usually set my randomization to no more than 5% on all these features, maybe even 2% on the angle. This lets me throw in a forest in like, a couple of minutes, while making it look extremely complex. Never mind brick and tile fills. I also use it for the ribbon brush, but I still have to go and clean up my ribbon roads where they intersect, so your road maker tool is better (especially if there's an obvious key to push to indicate to the program you're done drawing that line), but your vegetation filler isn't.

I would like live preview on colors when I am testing them for a new waterline, background, or foliage, instead of having to click back and forth to get into the colors and out of the colors. I would prefer to not have to click at all to get to a color scroller but I certainly don't want to have to click three times each time I want to change a color. I would like to be able to click anywhere outside of the color pallet box to turn it off at the very least, instead of just the tiny x.

There are a couple of really good ideas in this program that would make it possible for me to consider using, things that make great sense for cartographic use and are more natural and intuitive and allow future editing in a way that my current "paint in a raster program" method does not. Right now I would see myself wanting to draw in features by hand still, though I can see myself using this to set up the base on which I draw if the bugginess with the road tool was gone.

If there's a way to draw elements in using a raster tool that has some decent stabilization (another reason I like Clip so much) that'd be neat.

Update: I was able to add some text on a horizontal line! There is no way to align the stroke to the outside of the text? I would like to be able to echo strokes on text too. Great for comic style text. And I would like to be able to adjust the glow style to screen or linear dodge or multiply for the shadow/glow outside of the text possibility, not just change the opacity. I was not able to intuitively figure out how to make text on a curve.

I also grew frustrated trying to select the text due to everything else being grabbable. I would like an option to "lock everything" and "lock everything except for what I have selected" and "lock everything underneath my current layer". The few times that I've brought myself to use Illustrator, I've definitely used an option something like that to make things easier when managing tons of asset layers.

Welp, that's all the thoughts I have for now, it seems like a great beginning to a program that could be exceptionally useful for many types of maps. Especially since it can integrate gis data and keeps everything vector editable, great ideas, acceptable execution, but it could be better, and would have to be in a few places to pull me away from hand-drawing everything! Still, I don't think it would be an impossible sell on me in the future, well done.

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## OWM

> I just downloaded the test version and I've made notes throughout my use process. I ended up crashing it because I couldn't get what I assume is the guideline for the text to double click to turn off. I had trouble with making the river tool stop rivering, and I literally could not get that text guideline tool to stop until the program crashed. It had an apparent first way of adding text which I was unable to determine how to operate before said program crash.


WOW, thank you so much for the detailed feedback! I'm going through it so I can properly respond and ask more questions about some of the suggested functionality. One early note: you can right click to stop drawing an item and finish it. Also, under settings you can enable "tutorial mode" which adds a window that gives an overview of each tool as you select it.

Again, thank you very much. We don't have a lot of OSX users so your feedback is particularly helpful!

- Alejandro

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## OWM

First set of comments and question from us  :Smile: . Again, thank you for the feedback!!!!




> I also grew frustrated trying to select the text due to everything else being grabbable. I would like an option to "lock everything" and "lock everything except for what I have selected" and "lock everything underneath my current layer". The few times that I've brought myself to use Illustrator, I've definitely used an option something like that to make things easier when managing tons of asset layers.


Currently you can select a group of items and then under Edit, "Lock in Place" and "Lock Properties." The next release is adding the ability to set which item types are selected when using the selection or transform tools - so perfect timing!




> I would also like a couple of more options for outline jaggedness. I'm not convinced it's better than what I can draw by hand. What might help is if you could change the fractalization using the number keys while not losing your "grip". Or a randomization option to increase and decrease how fractalized it is..


Currently you can set various fractalization parameters from the toolbar across the top (factor, aplitude, auto segment, etc). You can also regenerate/re-roll the current fractal the W and S shortcuts (in Windows there is a mouse scroll shortcut too). You can also set the pen to "Bezier Fractal" to create fractal segment along curve paths.

We can definitely add the ability to tweak some of these settings from the numpad. Which parameters would you like being able to modify as you draw?




> One thing I did not observe was the ability to put textures on layers set to overlay, hard light, soft light, screen, multiply. I do this with almost every map I make, not just opacity adjustments. I would also want these types of layer interface effects for the terrain coloration effect.


Good point, thank you! We'll work to add the option later this year.

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## Tiana

Thanks for explaining the features I was failing to find! I knew in some cases it had to be simple things I just couldn't intuit. I didn't look at any tutorial information as I thought it might be helpful to know what happens when someone just drops in blind. It was significantly easier than if I'd dropped into literally any Adobe program blind... I really respect that you are here and trying to get feedback to improve the program. ^_^ I'll tool around with it again and see if I have better results by using the W/S shortcuts to reroll the fractal. I love being able to keyboard control things like the thickness of lines and the opacity of a stroke. In this case, what I would like to be able to adjust with the keyboard on the fly is how jagged versus how smooth the fractalization is.

Okay, so I pulled it up. I love what W/S does. Feels very natural to work with, and is exactly the kind of concept I was hoping for. My only complaint is that every time I push it, my computer makes the error beep even though it causes a program response. What I'd like now is for A to make it generate a smoother fractal and D to generate a rougher fractal. I love how you can move back and forth though, rather than losing whatever you rolled up. I ran into a bit of trouble trying to pan around to make a larger landmass, as I discovered I was unable to zoom out so far I could see the whole canvas with negative space around. I would like to be able to zoom out as far as I please, without getting an error sound effect. I would also like to be able to push the space bar to transfer to the pan tool while still holding onto a fractal item that I'm drawing, such as a river, lake, or landmass, so I can work zoomed in without having to merge a bunch of objects to get the final big one. It works when I'm not using a tool, which makes sense, but it also repeatedly makes the error beep sound while I'm holding it. Which is a bit annoying.

Oh yeah, I'd also like to be able to set if the shadow I give a landmass is multiply or screen, and it would be neat if it would be possible to set whether it's light or dark on the stroke to denote a shadow on one side and light hitting the other side, or to isolate lighter beach areas.

LOVE that I can copy the properties from one landmass to another with ease. Would like a keyboard shortcut to copy and past properties, since I imagine using that quite a lot.

And I discovered that I could move the layers menu to the other side and include it with the other menu, so that fixes my issue with the size, although it removes the ability to access the properties. It would be nice if it could be stored with 'presets' as a tab, and also drop the mini-map in there too. Or if you fill one sidebar up with all of the menus, a scrollbar appears that allows you to get to the bottom. Because it was nice that I could store the mini map and layers there, but sucked that I then no longer had space to scroll to the bottom of all of the preset options and layer options.

Also discovered that I could get a 'map only' view, helpful.  :Very Happy:  

Now, when I clicked on a river after drawing it, I was able to grab on some green dots and drag it and change the shape on the fly. It felt very natural and I was quite pleased to see the w/s options worked to alter the river fractalization as well. But, when I clicked on my continent, while I got the same green line/dot option, pulling on one of the dots did nothing. I also got to an option that showed nodes for the entire vector shape yet pulling on them did nothing. Is there something I'm supposed to do other than click and pull? I suppose it doesn't really matter since if I started to use this as a main program I'd probably freehand coastlines over top of a sketch made with the fractal coast, and then merge it together. But it doesn't behave like I expect so I'm mentioning it in case that's a bug. I thought maybe my computer was delaying but I could never get even a little bit of a movement response and the rivers moved effortlessly.

Discovered the lake waveline echo fill, it was located exactly where I expected the rest of the shoreline options to be! I think it makes more sense if that was included in the main shoreline option. I love the look though, it's perfect, and the UI for all of the river options allows for a ton of different river looks, which I also love, the different tapers and strokes, etc. The only option I'd want that doesn't exist yet is a randomization of thickness instead of just the taper, or to literally be able to squeeze and pull sections. I suppose right now the best option for that would be to draw lakes over top of a river route if we want thicker regions.

To be honest I'm pretty impressed by the shortcuts that make my task easier without destroying the fun of still illustrating a map. I am seriously considering it as a base structure creator due to how it clears up the only problem I ever run into as a commission taker, which is when someone wants me to edit the underlaying continent long into the process and it's impossible without doing a crapload of extra work. The fact that this is vectorization that allows you to add raster textures while maintaining that node editability (I'm assuming either I'm doing something wrong here or there's a glitch).

It also allows me to save styles and thus replicate a map exactly by creating a storage folder, and do things like very rapidly change the entire feel of a map's color and texture and lineart.

There are a lot of things here I really like and I'd say it's quite likely I'll end up buying it even if it doesn't take over my entire process.

Edit: I sent you a sale =P

Edit 2: Now I'm working on promoting it to another person. Turns out your program may be a very easy product for me to sell.  :Very Happy:

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## OWM

> There are a lot of things here I really like and I'd say it's quite likely I'll end up buying it even if it doesn't take over my entire process.
> 
> Edit: I sent you a sale =P
> 
> Edit 2: Now I'm working on promoting it to another person. Turns out your program may be a very easy product for me to sell.


Thank you so much!!! Really appreciate the support and telling others about OWM  :Smile: 




> Thanks for explaining the features I was failing to find! I knew in some cases it had to be simple things I just couldn't intuit. I didn't look at any tutorial information as I thought it might be helpful to know what happens when someone just drops in blind. It was significantly easier than if I'd dropped into literally any Adobe program blind... I really respect that you are here and trying to get feedback to improve the program. ^_^


A lot of the functionality in OWM came from user feedback, so it only makes sense listening to it  :Smile: 




> Okay, so I pulled it up. I love what W/S does. Feels very natural to work with, and is exactly the kind of concept I was hoping for. My only complaint is that every time I push it, my computer makes the error beep even though it causes a program response. What I'd like now is for A to make it generate a smoother fractal and D to generate a rougher fractal. I love how you can move back and forth though, rather than losing whatever you rolled up. I ran into a bit of trouble trying to pan around to make a larger landmass, as I discovered I was unable to zoom out so far I could see the whole canvas with negative space around. I would like to be able to zoom out as far as I please, without getting an error sound effect. I would also like to be able to push the space bar to transfer to the pan tool while still holding onto a fractal item that I'm drawing, such as a river, lake, or landmass, so I can work zoomed in without having to merge a bunch of objects to get the final big one. It works when I'm not using a tool, which makes sense, but it also repeatedly makes the error beep sound while I'm holding it. Which is a bit annoying.


We'll work do add the A/D shortcuts, that makes a lot of sense. We'll look into the pan and the error sounds, these are OSX only problems so very much appreciate the OSX feedback!




> Oh yeah, I'd also like to be able to set if the shadow I give a landmass is multiply or screen, and it would be neat if it would be possible to set whether it's light or dark on the stroke to denote a shadow on one side and light hitting the other side, or to isolate lighter beach areas.


Could you elaborate on this? I want to make sure I understand what you mean - Thank you!




> LOVE that I can copy the properties from one landmass to another with ease. Would like a keyboard shortcut to copy and past properties, since I imagine using that quite a lot.


Excellent suggestion. We'll add that!




> And I discovered that I could move the layers menu to the other side and include it with the other menu, so that fixes my issue with the size, although it removes the ability to access the properties. It would be nice if it could be stored with 'presets' as a tab, and also drop the mini-map in there too. Or if you fill one sidebar up with all of the menus, a scrollbar appears that allows you to get to the bottom. Because it was nice that I could store the mini map and layers there, but sucked that I then no longer had space to scroll to the bottom of all of the preset options and layer options.


Good point, OWM actually used to let you to tab tool windows togeather, that went away when we changed UI frameworks. We'll try to bring it back.




> But, when I clicked on my continent, while I got the same green line/dot option, pulling on one of the dots did nothing. I also got to an option that showed nodes for the entire vector shape yet pulling on them did nothing. Is there something I'm supposed to do other than click and pull?


When you are in full "Shape Edit" mode (and you can see all the individual points) there is a new toolbar at the top that lets you be in move/add/subtract point, as well as other options. You can also edit the "control" points instead of the full path, regen fractal segments and create nexuses for rivers.





> The only option I'd want that doesn't exist yet is a randomization of thickness instead of just the taper, or to literally be able to squeeze and pull sections. I suppose right now the best option for that would be to draw lakes over top of a river route if we want thicker regions.


You can add size breaks to the rivers, holding "alt" or after you created the path from the Shape Edit tool. For really thick water ares combining the water tool with the river tool is the best way to go, but we'll look into giving the river tool more options on this.





> To be honest I'm pretty impressed by the shortcuts that make my task easier without destroying the fun of still illustrating a map. I am seriously considering it as a base structure creator due to how it clears up the only problem I ever run into as a commission taker, which is when someone wants me to edit the underlaying continent long into the process and it's impossible without doing a crapload of extra work. The fact that this is vectorization that allows you to add raster textures while maintaining that node editability (I'm assuming either I'm doing something wrong here or there's a glitch).
> It also allows me to save styles and thus replicate a map exactly by creating a storage folder, and do things like very rapidly change the entire feel of a map's color and texture and lineart.


Yep! That was the idea behind OWM - Anna Meyer (not sure if you are familiar with her) gave us a ton of early feedback and was really excited about OWM because of that very reason (though she's mostly making 3D terrain maps nowadays which is outside of our scope). Ability to import Shapefiles from GIS data and svg vector data you created in another program is also helpful for professional fantasy cartography. And, indeed, you can edit everything in the vector shape which remains as Bezier paths (it's not made into lines).

Again, thank you for all the questions and the detailed feedback (and your support!). I still owe you replying to some of your original comments, which I'll do soon.

- Alejandro

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## Tiana

> Could you elaborate on this? I want to make sure I understand what you mean - Thank you!


When I set up my maps, I often put a fuzzy glow around the edges of the coast on top of the land, very much like the current shading option allows. Yours is adjustable only by opacity at the moment. But then I will drop a clipping mask over it, and draw on parts of it to make certain regions light beach sand instead of shadow, or set it as a different layer style so it responds to the underlying texture.

I imagine you could have a variegated option as well as a beveled option so that it creates the idea that light is hitting one side, and the other side is casting a shadow.

Thanks for being involved in the community to make your program better. You owe me nothing re: replies.

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## OWM

> When I set up my maps, I often put a fuzzy glow around the edges of the coast on top of the land, very much like the current shading option allows. Yours is adjustable only by opacity at the moment. But then I will drop a clipping mask over it, and draw on parts of it to make certain regions light beach sand instead of shadow, or set it as a different layer style so it responds to the underlying texture. I imagine you could have a variegated option as well as a beveled option so that it creates the idea that light is hitting one side, and the other side is casting a shadow.


That makes sense, right now you would have to use a different tool (i.e. region tool) to add shading to certain areas. We'll look into having more options for the shadow, particularly something that would give the casting a shadow effect.




> Thanks for being involved in the community to make your program better. You owe me nothing re: replies.


Good feedback requires a reply  :Smile: . But I think I ended up covering everything, some of the other points were Mac specific bugs, but let me know if I missed anything.

By the way, team already implemented the copy/paste properties and the A/D shortcuts, so they will be there with our next release.

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## Tiana

Nice!  :Very Happy:  If I purchase it (let's be fair that is pretty likely  :Surprised:  ) am I able to install it on both a Windows and a Mac computer for use non-simultanously? I have both available, I've just been testing on the Mac OS since I figured it was likely you would have less feedback about that.

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## OWM

> Nice!  If I purchase it (let's be fair that is pretty likely  ) am I able to install it on both a Windows and a Mac computer for use non-simultanously? I have both available, I've just been testing on the Mac OS since I figured it was likely you would have less feedback about that.


Glad to hear!  :Very Happy: 

Yes, you can use either or both. Next release is going to include a Linux version, and you could use that one as well if you wanted. Currently the Windows version is the most polished one, but OSX should be there as well with the upcoming release.

Basically, the license is a "household" license, so you can install it to as many computers as you have at home.

Thank you!

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## OWM

(I say "household" and that may be confusing. Other World Mapper is for commercial use as well, only distinction there is that we ask you get a copy per user - but it can still be installed to multiple computers)

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## Tiana

Great, thanks. I have purchased, and I am now testing it on a commission. Further notes.

The delete / backspace doesn't work to remove anything on the Mac version. I have to go through the menu.

I would like a way to easily control a reference image's transparency, right now the only way I've found to get a reference is to set it as the background, and then I can only manipulate it from that specific panel... I'd like it to be in the layers.

Features: Create a random island with one click. Easy frame tools, with an option for a few plain frames and maybe the ability to place bumpers for icons, and a larger region for a label. Draw a custom shaped box to add to a wall, not just a square, circle, or polygon. When you hit undo, don't reset which tool it's on. When you click on the group for a layer set, don't jump to the bottom (I have only done this to merge the layers, which I have to do from the top). Make it possible to adjust the layer order from the layer panel instead of just from the menu.

The map I'm making is a black and white street map with a wall, and the program is perfect for the purpose though. Really overall impressed by how well the roads are coming together.

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## OWM

Thank you!  :Smile: 

On your feedback, some comments and questions below. Thank you for the detailed feedback!




> The delete / backspace doesn't work to remove anything on the Mac version. I have to go through the menu.


Will fix with the next release




> I would like a way to easily control a reference image's transparency, right now the only way I've found to get a reference is to set it as the background, and then I can only manipulate it from that specific panel... I'd like it to be in the layers.


You should be able to manipulate everything from there...but you are right it ends up buried. We'll look into adding it as its own layer rather than it be the canvas background.




> Create a random island with one click.


Next release is adding a fill mode to create island groups (or a single island) from an arbitrary shape, so not quite single click. We'll look into also added a way to do this with a single click.




> Easy frame tools, with an option for a few plain frames


Do you mean overall map frame? You can add those from the Map menu, or do you mean frames around labels/text?




> maybe the ability to place bumpers for icons and a larger region for a label.


Could you elaborate on these two points? Thank you!!




> Draw a custom shaped box to add to a wall, not just a square, circle, or polygon.


What do you mean with custom shaped box? Right now you can draw arbitrary lines and curves when on "pen" mode.




> When you hit undo, don't reset which tool it's on.


Which tool were you on? This sounds like a bug, undo/redo shouldn't change the current too.




> When you click on the group for a layer set, don't jump to the bottom (I have only done this to merge the layers, which I have to do from the top).


Good point. We'll fix.




> Make it possible to adjust the layer order from the layer panel instead of just from the menu.


You can currently drag/drop from the layer panel. Would it be helpful to add other ways to change the layer order from there? 




> The map I'm making is a black and white street map with a wall, and the program is perfect for the purpose though. Really overall impressed by how well the roads are coming together.


That's really awesome to hear! I've feel street mapping is one of the weakest parts of OWM, so that's nice to hear  :Smile: . Planning to add more tools and functionality to the city tools soon.

Again, thank you for all the detailed feedback! Please

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## Tiana

> Next release is adding a fill mode to create island groups (or a single island) from an arbitrary shape, so not quite single click. We'll look into also added a way to do this with a single click.


Sounds good to me, honestly I was just thinking of the people who don't draw with that suggestion, since some of your tools definitely target them. (For myself, I was VERY happy drawing the islands in with the fractal tool in the map I show later on)




> You can currently drag/drop from the layer panel.


Yes, I can drag and drop say, a wall to be higher than another wall within the 'walls' folder. But because every time I click on the group, it jumps me to the bottom. If I collapse the group and then click on it, it opens the group and jumps me to the bottom. Thus, I've found it impossible to move an entire layer group higher or lower via the layers panel. The time I had to adjust the layering, I did it by right clicking the vector and pulling it to the top. I see I could right click to do it, but I feel like I should be able to drag.




> Would it be helpful to add other ways to change the layer order from there?


My most used keyboard shortcuts in Illustrator are the "move this object up one/down one layer" "move this object to the top/bottom" and "lock object".




> Could you elaborate on these two points? Thank you!!


Re: corner bumpers. I have discovered your border tool and it does NEARLY what I wanted. Am I able to bring my own custom art into it? I see I'm stuck with your colors as well. But it's not bad.

Here's a fantasy map I did with an elaborate frame and here's another example of one of the pieces of fantasy cartography with a customized border.

I think these two illustrate what I'm trying to talk about quite well. I would have liked to be able to take the eagle pattern on the second one which I used for the ribbon and wrapped it around everything as a stroke after dropping the squares into the side corners and in the center bottom. Making that border loop around the corner icons was a huge pain, and something I would love to be easier to handle in a mapping software. Maybe looking at a couple examples which stymied or frustrated me will help get you thinking about how a tool could handle creating such a result?

The other thing I'm thinking is a few stock fancy scrolls that one could put text into, again I'm thinking of the people who don't draw their own doodads. In fact, this map is back from when I used stamps, so those probably are stock art scrolls and corner doodads on the first map.

On that note, I am available to make more assets. I can definitely imagine contributing in some fashion as you expand if you wanted to make purchasable expansion packs which add in new assets. That is going to be a way to get continuing income from the program.




> Which tool were you on? This sounds like a bug, undo/redo shouldn't change the current too.


I'll see if I can find it and reproduce it, because yes, you're right, it's not causing the same effect when I'm in the custom shape tool.

I would love to be able to use the w/s shortcut while in the wall tool to make a wall wider or narrower without clicking out of the shape, and maybe have w/s control the taper amount. Same thing for the river tool.

I would like a keyboard shortcut for when I click on an icon and want to grab its style and set it to the tool. There's an option in the menu which is great to set the style of an object to the tool associated. Kinda like how I can eyedropper a color in most painting programs. Copy/paste style will work too, but hey, could be fun.




> Again, thank you for all the detailed feedback! Please


Please what? You're welcome, though, I'll keep making notes as I test it out for my actual maps to let you know how it all goes and try make it the best program it can be.

At the moment, the main things that make me feel gimped are that I can't drag around the reference map to whatever position I please and click it on and off from the layers menu, and the lack of blend modes. Fortunately, my programmer housemate says those are easy to add because the math has already been solved; if you made fractal coastlines she thinks you won't have a problem figuring out how to begin implementing those.

My programmer housemate is impressed, by the way, that you're doing Windows, Mac, and trying for Linux too. She's pretty sure you're not using Electron but instead making specific versions of the program for different OSes, and says, "that's a good resource use!" about the numbers that show up in Activity Monitor on Mac. I figured I would share her props since it's a sort of feedback I can't give. She says the UI is a tell that you guys built a lot of this yourselves with some hard programming work and is impressed with and gushing about the vector coastlines implementation being awesome.


Edit-
Anyway, I'm editing this to add I've been tooling around on Windows 10 atm, and I keep getting this error. It continued after I saved the file as well, not being limited to me working on an untitled file.


It's driving me a lil batty that I can't click off canvas, or centre it (it's left justified if I work small) which was causing some trouble creating this coast shape as it overlaps both edges. I would have liked to be able to click off canvas to snap to the outside, perhaps.

I discovered I could click on a different line mode without dropping the shape I was working on, so that was nice. That was how I got around that problem (switched to a line on the edge).

I have one area where I drew and merged a couple of shapes and deleted some nodes I don't like, but the program gave me an error insisting the shape needed more than 3 nodes, even though I had merged the two shapes and it should have had sufficient nodes to handle.



Edit 2-
I discovered there isn't even a folder where it's whining about there not being a file. I've created one. This seems to have solved the problem, I assume it's a bug in install where it was not created. This didn't occur in the Mac install.

If you stick with the current color window. When you have the color window open on windows, go to advanced color, not limited color options by default. This extra window with the gimped color took me by surprise, especially since I can't save my own color pallet to it. Color eyedropper should be activated by default to grab from the art.

Stroke on outside of text, not just inside.

Screen/linear dodge/multiply/linear burn glow options for outside text.

Control-A to select all text when you're in the typing option. Useful to delete if you mess up some part.

Button to switch to all caps/no caps/small caps.

A button that temporarily switches the select tool, to the move tool, and returns to the select tool once released.

When rotating an item near the edge of the canvas, the item has to be moved to get to the rotation icon. It should automatically rejigger to make sure that button stays on the visible canvas.


I can only sometimes get the "click to follow" option to actually stick, and with fractal regions it isn't nearly sticky enough. I would like a keyboard shortcut to hold down that would automatically make my political border snap to the nearest river/coastline instead of having to click on the exact right pixel. This is made tricky by the fact that the box which tells you what it's going to stick to (if it works) sometimes blocks the area I need to see if the fractalization matched up enough to make it snap.



Edit 3:

When I draw part of a road and hit esc because I didn't want to keep it, it resets the tool. (Mac version)

I couldn't move a custom shape to be underneath a house, even though it registered as having been sent to the bottom, the only way I could have the house on top was to make the custom shape have no fill.

I tried to make a railway station with a custom shape, and then railway through it. I was unable to grab the railway to adjust them, even though I locked the shape. I also could not get the custom shape to go to the bottom and show the railroad through it, I had to make it just the outline.

Anti-aliasing options for text (crisp versus smooth).

Even though I'm giving you a ton of criticism, I think this program has potential to be more enjoyable of a map making process than hacking Photoshop into doing the job. I was working on a country map and very pleased with the responsiveness when adding islands, and the ability to put text on a curve.



It's close to being on brand for my look, and definitely a workable start, but I wasn't quite satisfied with the texture diversity, being without my usual overlaying, blending, stacking, etc options. So this is the point where I've taken it out of OWM and gone back to Clip Studio, where I've added some textures above and beyond this, and I'll draw in the elements. This is a commission or I might try have a go at the mountains and stuff just to see if I find any bugs, but I hand draw mountains these days.

Edit 4
Mac version. PNGs don't work. Can't open in Photoshop or Clip Studio Paint. It gives me an error, saying, "not a PNG". Same thing happened with a JPG and a TIF. A PDF and a Bitmap file worked though.

This is the road map I'm working on, by the way, so you have a visual for what I'm describing with the railroad station and custom shapes with lines within them.


I ended up putting on the inset map in another program, even though I made both in OWM, because I couldn't find a good way to actually get a circle that contained the mini map and move it around as one element.


Edit 5-

A couple more text tool essentials -
-Adjust lead spacing between text rows. This is a 100% necessity. Not all fonts calculate it in a visually pleasing way.
-Adjust spacing between letter characters / kerning. I use this in probably 70% of my maps and having started to put this text tool through its pacing, I REALLY want to be able to use it as my default.

A text tool fun but not necessary-

-preview font from the font selection window.
-When you go to change the font size, center the current size instead of aligning to the top so you don't have to scroll to access both larger and smaller sizes from the menu.
-A keyboard shortcut to hold down when you're in the text tool that will let you move the text and rotate it, and then switch back to the text tool to go and make more text once you release it.

----------


## OWM

> Please what? You're welcome, though, I'll keep making notes as I test it out for my actual maps to let you know how it all goes and try make it the best program it can be.


"Please let us know if you think of anything else" was the complete sentence, which you did  :Smile: . Thank you so much!!

Currently going through your new feedback, sorry I didn't see your comment with the Autosave folder issue earlier. Creating the folder is the work around and the issue is fixed with the upcoming release.

More in a bit.

Thank you!

----------


## OWM

First half of my reply below. Thank you again!




> My most used keyboard shortcuts in Illustrator are the "move this object up one/down one layer" "move this object to the top/bottom" and "lock object".


The layer order shortcuts should be there, Cmd+F, Cmd+B, etc. We'll add one for locking objects - that's another we missed. By the way, if you go to Help-->View Keyboard Shortcuts you can see the ones currently implemented.




> Re: corner bumpers. I have discovered your border tool and it does NEARLY what I wanted. Am I able to bring my own custom art into it? I see I'm stuck with your colors as well. But it's not bad.


You can bring your own artwork to it. For some reason we missed adding it to the Art Manager, but if you go to the program folder in Windows, or the artwork folder in OSX, you can just drop new artwork into the respective folders and OWM will pick them up.




> I think these two illustrate what I'm trying to talk about quite well. I would have liked to be able to take the eagle pattern on the second one which I used for the ribbon and wrapped it around everything as a stroke after dropping the squares into the side corners and in the center bottom. Making that border loop around the corner icons was a huge pain, and something I would love to be easier to handle in a mapping software. Maybe looking at a couple examples which stymied or frustrated me will help get you thinking about how a tool could handle creating such a result?


Definitely those are good inspiration for making a new tool for this. Thank you!!




> The other thing I'm thinking is a few stock fancy scrolls that one could put text into, again I'm thinking of the people who don't draw their own doodads. In fact, this map is back from when I used stamps, so those probably are stock art scrolls and corner doodads on the first map.


Good idea, thank you!!




> On that note, I am available to make more assets. I can definitely imagine contributing in some fashion as you expand if you wanted to make purchasable expansion packs which add in new assets. That is going to be a way to get continuing income from the program.


We have add on artpacks on our shop (let us know what you think). 

New artwork contributions sounds really good, by the way. I'll message you about it  :Smile: 




> I would love to be able to use the w/s shortcut while in the wall tool to make a wall wider or narrower without clicking out of the shape, and maybe have w/s control the taper amount. Same thing for the river tool.


You actually can do this with the arrow keys, would it make more sense with A/D, W/S?




> I would like a keyboard shortcut for when I click on an icon and want to grab its style and set it to the tool. There's an option in the menu which is great to set the style of an object to the tool associated. Kinda like how I can eyedropper a color in most painting programs. Copy/paste style will work too, but hey, could be fun.


We are adding the copy/paste style shortcuts, we'll add a Set Tool properties shortcut as well. Thank you!




> At the moment, the main things that make me feel gimped are that I can't drag around the reference map to whatever position I please and click it on and off from the layers menu, and the lack of blend modes. Fortunately, my programmer housemate says those are easy to add because the math has already been solved; if you made fractal coastlines she thinks you won't have a problem figuring out how to begin implementing those.


The blend modes just need to be added to the UI, the 2D engine we built for OWM already supports it. We'll work to make the reference map its own layer, should have done it that way from the start - thank you!




> My programmer housemate is impressed, by the way, that you're doing Windows, Mac, and trying for Linux too. She's pretty sure you're not using Electron but instead making specific versions of the program for different OSes, and says, "that's a good resource use!" about the numbers that show up in Activity Monitor on Mac. I figured I would share her props since it's a sort of feedback I can't give. She says the UI is a tell that you guys built a lot of this yourselves with some hard programming work and is impressed with and gushing about the vector coastlines implementation being awesome.


Tell her Stephanie and Katie (the other two devs) + I say thank you!!  :Smile: 
The UI is based on wxWidgets which is a cross platform library that uses native controls (hence it's light and looks like the rest of OS), with a lot of custom stuff we built on top of it. And yep, the app has two (and now three) versions, which makes it lighter (and its written in C++ for performance).

----------


## OWM

Next batch of feedback from the edits we looked into  :Smile: . By the way, love the maps you've been making with Other World Mapper!!

These we'll be adding with the release coming out within a couple of weeks:



> Control-A to select all text when you're in the typing option. Useful to delete if you mess up some part.
> 
> preview font from the font selection window.
> 
> When I draw part of a road and hit esc because I didn't want to keep it, it resets the tool. (Mac version)





> It's driving me a lil batty that I can't click off canvas, or centre it (it's left justified if I work small) which was causing some trouble creating this coast shape as it overlaps both edges. I would have liked to be able to click off canvas to snap to the outside, perhaps.


Too close to regression testing to change this, but we'll change it with the version after.




> I have one area where I drew and merged a couple of shapes and deleted some nodes I don't like, but the program gave me an error insisting the shape needed more than 3 nodes, even though I had merged the two shapes and it should have had sufficient nodes to handle.


Investigating, sounds like its complaining about the "drag" nodes rather than the actual path shape.




> If you stick with the current color window. When you have the color window open on windows, go to advanced color, not limited color options by default. This extra window with the gimped color took me by surprise, especially since I can't save my own color pallet to it. Color eyedropper should be activated by default to grab from the art.


We're currently working on the a custom color picker/editor, right now we just bring up the OS's default.




> Stroke on outside of text, not just inside.


Right now the stroke does both, in and out. Do you mean having them as two separate options like we do say for the closed area tool? Thank you!




> Screen/linear dodge/multiply/linear burn glow options for outside text.


So basically blend modes for the shadow/glow?




> Button to switch to all caps/no caps/small caps.


We'll try to add this, maybe as a shortcut so it doesn't add to the UI.




> A button that temporarily switches the select tool, to the move tool, and returns to the select tool once released.


Good point, there is space to switch to the pan tool so it makes sense to momentarily switch to the transform tool too. Thank you!




> When rotating an item near the edge of the canvas, the item has to be moved to get to the rotation icon. It should automatically rejigger to make sure that button stays on the visible canvas.


Good point, we'll fix.




> I can only sometimes get the "click to follow" option to actually stick, and with fractal regions it isn't nearly sticky enough. I would like a keyboard shortcut to hold down that would automatically make my political border snap to the nearest river/coastline instead of having to click on the exact right pixel. This is made tricky by the fact that the box which tells you what it's going to stick to (if it works) sometimes blocks the area I need to see if the fractalization matched up enough to make it snap.


The click to follow should be working pretty well, but a snap shortcut makes a lot of sense! We'll also look into the "hint box" getting in the way - thank you!

----------


## Mark Oliva

In evaluating a demo version, it's helpful if the user can look up information in the help file.  I've tried it on 3 different Windows 10 Pro PCs but get only the fatal error message above.

----------


## OWM

> In evaluating a demo version, it's helpful if the user can look up information in the help file.  I've tried it on 3 different Windows 10 Pro PCs but get only the fatal error message above.


Thank you for the feedback and for trying Other World Mapper! I'm not seeing that issue in our test PCs, but we'll investigate.

Meanwhile, the help document is a PDF file that you can find in the installation folder if you want to open it directly, typically: C:\Program Files (x86)\Three Minds Software\Other World Mapper Demo

Thank you!!

- Alejandro

----------


## Tiana

I have created a video demonstration of me making a fantasy island map exclusively in Other World Mapper. No tutorial text or talking over, just a 7700% faster screen capture of me using OWM to make up a map on the fly using its native tools. I've never done a video before, but it seemed like an appropriate first video to make, to demo a new program's capabilities. Actual working time is more like 5 hours (video is 5 minutes), which is still quite fast for this level of detail. I would have expected to spend more like 20-40 hours if I was illustrating something like this, on the low end if I was making my own assets and stamping them but nonetheless.

I have to say, while I have figured out how the click to follow works since my post, I still get a glitch with it where just as I go to click to connect it, it disconnects, puts a line across the whole section straight instead of following, and I have to undo and reset. This is potentially visible in the video a few times, though it does happen very fast.

Looks like videos are what everyone's doing these days, so I might do some more of these. It was kinda fun for me to watch a super fast version of the art unfold, so I could observe my process.

I have to say, while I have made several more notes in an email draft to you (so I stop cluttering the forum LOL), overall I think this program's been a gamechanger for me already. I've already used it to make a city road map for a book in half the time it would have taken me to do the lineart manually, and almost every edit I wanted to make was clean and smooth as a whistle (like I said, I made notes). Like I threw in a river, decided later I wanted river echo shorelines, realized 3/4s of the way in that there was an island in the middle of the stupid Tiber river, and didn't have to erase all of the echo shorelines and regenerate them, I just had to draw in an island and it rejiggered automatically. Astonishing. Or like, near the end of the Estavin map, I realized I wanted to have some jaggy island atoll bits making it a pain to boat through a certain region, and boom, added them in just like that and it regenerated the coast waves. Change the color of the rivers? No problemo. Chop a land region in half? Done!

Or like, now that I've figured out how the tool to add trees works, I love that I can cycle and randomly pick from the folder I'm in, and create sets like that. Really has high potential for creating regional sets. Some of my clients are meticulous enough to tell me what types of trees grow in an area, so now I can cluster trees from the central art management database instead of creating a whole new brush each time. While I do want there to be size and color jitter options to make it even more flexible, it is remarkably intuitive once you really dig into creating a map.

In so many ways, it behaves like I WISHED Photoshop could, and knew it never would. I can tell this program is a labor of love designed by people who really listened to the critique and desires of real humans who draw maps, not just a cash grab. And that's why, since the cost to purchase was so reasonable, I'm participating to give back in another way–building hype. I'm talking your program up, because I think it's the next best thing since "expand selection, stroke, expand selection, stroke." I wouldn't bother, except you charge such a reasonable price for it the least I can do is try get a few people excited about it. Let's kick those respective subscription model's arses! All hail reasonably priced programs from small studios!

----------


## OWM

> I have created a video demonstration of me making a fantasy island map exclusively in Other World Mapper. No tutorial text or talking over, just a 7700% faster screen capture of me using OWM to make up a map on the fly using its native tools. I've never done a video before, but it seemed like an appropriate first video to make, to demo a new program's capabilities. Actual working time is more like 5 hours (video is 5 minutes), which is still quite fast for this level of detail. I would have expected to spend more like 20-40 hours if I was illustrating something like this, on the low end if I was making my own assets and stamping them but nonetheless.


Video is perfect! We've been wanting to do a timelapse video like that, but with your mapping skills it looks awesome!




> I have to say, while I have figured out how the click to follow works since my post, I still get a glitch with it where just as I go to click to connect it, it disconnects, puts a line across the whole section straight instead of following, and I have to undo and reset. This is potentially visible in the video a few times, though it does happen very fast.


Glad you were able to get it to mostly work. We'll look into the glitch, after the current release is out the "follow" is one of the things we were going to re-visit and add more functionality too.




> while I have made several more notes in an email draft to you (so I stop cluttering the forum LOL),


Please do and send us an email when you are ready. Love the feedback and getting as much of it as we can into OWM.




> Or like, now that I've figured out how the tool to add trees works, I love that I can cycle and randomly pick from the folder I'm in, and create sets like that. Really has high potential for creating regional sets. Some of my clients are meticulous enough to tell me what types of trees grow in an area, so now I can cluster trees from the central art management database instead of creating a whole new brush each time. While I do want there to be size and color jitter options to make it even more flexible, it is remarkably intuitive once you really dig into creating a map.


We were able to sneak in color blend modes and opacity for colorization of features with the upcoming release (just add, multi, and alpha - but still better), so we should be able to add more randomization options with the release after, including color and scale.




> In so many ways, it behaves like I WISHED Photoshop could, and knew it never would. I can tell this program is a labor of love designed by people who really listened to the critique and desires of real humans who draw maps, not just a cash grab. And that's why, since the cost to purchase was so reasonable, I'm participating to give back in another way–building hype. I'm talking your program up, because I think it's the next best thing since "expand selection, stroke, expand selection, stroke." I wouldn't bother, except you charge such a reasonable price for it the least I can do is try get a few people excited about it. Let's kick those respective subscription model's arses! All hail reasonably priced programs from small studios!


Thank you!!!  :Smile:  And yeah, I really dislike subscription model for software and I'm not particularly happy with DRM software either, hence our one time purchase, DRM free commitment.

----------


## Mark Oliva

Our project group has run OWM through the paces in tests with the demo version.  Conclusions:

1)  Compared with other 32-bit cartographic applications, it's impressive.

2)  However, it's not a program that we would consider using.  Just like _CC3+, Dundjinni, MapForge_ etc., we consider the software to be obsolete.  Our PCs all have 32 to 64 GB memory and have been running 64-bit operating systems for more than a decade.  OWM, like the other programs I mentioned, allows us to use only 4GB of that memory and also denies us the use of many other advantages of the operating system.  This would have been a great entry 15 years ago.  We'll skip it.

----------


## Tiana

I'll try do some more video recordings since it gives a way to actually look back and see what was going on when I glitched. I determined one of the things is that, I click outside of the canvas when creating a shape of some sort, and would like it to stick there instead of then following me when I move my hand and click somewhere else, creating a point on the closest part of the canvas.

I look forward to seeing what the new release will be like and definitely understand you can't apply all the feedback immediately.




> Our PCs all have 32 to 64 GB memory and have been running 64-bit operating systems for more than a decade.


Dayum. I didn't even know it was possible to get a computer with 64gb RAM. You're obviously on the cutting edge and investing a serious amount of cash into your setup in that case (presumably as a publisher doing intense digital work it made sense and was a business expense?) and I doubt there's going to be many people here who can match your machine for power. I just got Windows 10 this year, and 16 gigs of RAM. You're definitely on the upper end of the bell curve, probably somewhere a bit below "Disney's rendering power" and "military computers".

I appreciate that the program uses a minimal amount of RAM while performing as powerfully as it does, and I believe many other average computer users will feel the same way. There are tons of people using laptops with 4-8gb because they never put their machine through rigorous artistic tasks who still might want to make a map, so putting its performance right in the realm of "average joe" makes a lot of sense to me. I can see why that would make it no good for your team though, and it looks like you do more of a 3D sort of art style so it makes sense why you'd want more RAM.

I wouldn't mind tapping into more of my RAM but I never had any moments where I felt the program was moving slower than I could think.

Edit: Ran it through a 20x30 map last night and definitely started seeing performance hangups at that size.

----------


## OWM

> Our project group has run OWM through the paces in tests with the demo version.  Conclusions:
> 
> 1)  Compared with other 32-bit cartographic applications, it's impressive.
> 
> 2)  However, it's not a program that we would consider using.  Just like _CC3+, Dundjinni, MapForge_ etc., we consider the software to be obsolete.  Our PCs all have 32 to 64 GB memory and have been running 64-bit operating systems for more than a decade.  OWM, like the other programs I mentioned, allows us to use only 4GB of that memory and also denies us the use of many other advantages of the operating system.  This would have been a great entry 15 years ago.  We'll skip it.


Thank you so much for the comments and feedback!

Other World Mapper is a 64 bit application (the Installer will install a 32 version if your system is 32 bits), so I'm not sure what you mean with saying it only allows 4GB of RAM use? Also not sure what other operating system advantages it denies use? Let us know so we can look into it!

The only limitation is maps right now can't be larger than 20000 x 20000 pixels, which is something that will be removed later this year.

Thank you!

----------


## Mark Oliva

> Other World Mapper is a 64 bit application (the Installer will install a 32 version if your system is 32 bits), so I'm not sure what you mean with saying it only allows 4GB of RAM use?


So far, I've installed only the demo version.  It installs under 64-bit Windows 10 Pro as a 32-bit app.  Is something going wrong there, or is only the full version a 64-bit app?  If it will be available on a 64-bit basis, that, of course, will change our appraisal considerably.  In that case, we obviously can use more than 4 GB of memory and the following point ...




> Also not sure what other operating system advantages it denies use?


... would be moot.

----------


## OWM

> So far, I've installed only the demo version.  It installs under 64-bit Windows 10 Pro as a 32-bit app.  Is something going wrong there, or is only the full version a 64-bit app?  If it will be available on a 64-bit basis, that, of course, will change our appraisal considerably.  In that case, we obviously can use more than 4 GB of memory and the following point ...
> 
> 
> 
> ... would be moot.



It defaults to Program Files (x86) for the installation path for legacy reasons (first alpha builds were 32 bit), but the actual app is 64 bits. Simple check is creating a map that is 20k x 20k pixels and add a few elements to it, RAM usage per task manager will show more than 4GB.

We'll look into updating the install script so it will default to just plain Program Files if it's a new installation.

Thank you!

- Alejandro

----------


## Mark Oliva

> It defaults to Program Files (x86) for the installation path for legacy reasons (first alpha builds were 32 bit), but the actual app is 64 bits.


It's clear that installing in _Program Files (x86)_ does not define an app as being 32-bit.  I have figured out what in my installation caused limited memory access.  The process might give you some useful information.  But maybe not, too, because I use protective software on our computers that probably isn't on most other users' machines.

1)  I did not install the demo version as an administrator.  I ordinarily do that when I install something, but I simply forget the step when installing the demo.  I realized that right away, but since the demo seemed to run, I thought, _Okay_.

2)  I used monitoring software to check performance.  I opened the OWM demo and began piling 3rd party PNG symbols, each with a size of >100 MB, into the test map.  Every time the memory monitor showed it was nearing 4 GB capacity, OWM crashed with a freeze.  The monitor showed no noticeable change within the upper 60 GB of memory.  There were no error messages.  The program simply became inactive and the Windows 10 Pro task manager reported that OWM was not responding.  I killed the dead session with the task manager.

3)  The combination of the _Program Files (x86)_ installation with the crashes at <4 GB memory usage led me to believe that I'm dealing with a 32-but app.  I did no additional checking to see whether I was running on a 32- or 64-bit level.

4)  Last night, I uninstalled the demo, manually checked for registry entries, erased those that were there, rebooted and installed the demo again, this time running the installation as an administrator.  The issues described above no longer were there.

Conclusion:  It probably is good to always run the OWM installation as an administrator.  Others may not have problems with not doing so, but if such issues are going to occur, running installation as an administrator might prevent them.

Servus,

----------


## Mark Oliva

The Help File contains the following:

_18 Presets and Themes
Presets are saved under folders which together make up a “Theme.” You can create a new
Theme and add Presets to the Theme using the Preset window.
These folders are saved in the installation path and may be copied and shared with others._

That's good news, of course.  Is there any information anywhere on _how_ to make a new theme and preset?

Error situation:



This message occurred with the demo version and it still occurs with the full version.  The reason that it appears is that the OWM installation did not create the folder in question.  If one knows one's way around the computer one can fix it easily enough.  One only needs to create the folder manually, and after that, the message no longer appears.

Again, this may be a nearly unique problem due to protective software on our computers.  It's possible that the software keeps the OWM setup from creating this folder.  I have no way to know whether that's the case.

Is there a place online at Three Minds where these things can be posted?  They really might be of little interest to most guild members.

Servus,

EDIT:  OK.  I've since learned that the error message above is a known bug planned for repair in the next release.

I've also learned that you folks have a forum.  Unfortunately I can't post there yet because my account remains inactive.  So it goes.

On the presets and themes question above, a private E-Mail has made clear to me that I didn't make myself very clear.  I already have read the instructions in the help PDF.  I know the basics.  What I want to know:

1.  What does one need to do to make presets like your river presets that will work in OWM?

2.  How does one make presets with faded edges like those delivered that will work in OWM?

FYI:  I've read the full help guide and the homepage tutorials, and I've run the two videos you have on YouTube, but I have quite a number of questions to raise and points to make.  However I'll wait until that day when my forum account is active.

Servus,

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## Mark Oliva

> I didn't even know it was possible to get a computer with 64gb RAM. You're obviously on the cutting edge and investing a serious amount of cash into your setup in that case


Actually, I think you'll find a number of people here with 32 GB RAM.  64 GB wouldn't be all that rare either.




> presumably as a publisher doing intense digital work it made sense and was a business expense


I'm retired.  The Vintyri (TM) Project is a non-profit.  We produce free, open-source, open gaming material.  We are not a business and do no business.  But we probably will release a beta soon that will substantially expand OWM's mapping possibilities, if it runs correctly.  The alpha version already appears to do so.





> I appreciate that the program uses a minimal amount of RAM while performing as powerfully as it does, and I believe many other average computer users will feel the same way. There are tons of people using laptops with 4-8gb because they never put their machine through rigorous artistic tasks who still might want to make a map, so putting its performance right in the realm of "average joe" makes a lot of sense to me.


Actually, I think this kind of misses the point.  I'd never suggest that OWM be programmed to *need* 32 or 64 GB RAM.  I don't know why anyone would suggest that.  But I _do_ want my programs to be able to use the RAM that I have when *they* need it, which can be the case with some huge maps that have a large graphical content.





> it looks like you do more of a 3D sort of art styl


We do no 3D, but we do use what's called a photorealistic style by some, although true photorealism really is somewhat more and somewhat different.




> Ran it through a 20x30 map last night and definitely started seeing performance hangups at that size.


Uh ... 20 x 30 _what_?

Servus,

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## OWM

> It's clear that installing in _Program Files (x86)_ does not define an app as being 32-bit.  I have figured out what in my installation caused limited memory access.  The process might give you some useful information.  But maybe not, too, because I use protective software on our computers that probably isn't on most other users' machines.
> 
> 1)  I did not install the demo version as an administrator.  I ordinarily do that when I install something, but I simply forget the step when installing the demo.  I realized that right away, but since the demo seemed to run, I thought, _Okay_.
> 
> 2)  I used monitoring software to check performance.  I opened the OWM demo and began piling 3rd party PNG symbols, each with a size of >100 MB, into the test map.  Every time the memory monitor showed it was nearing 4 GB capacity, OWM crashed with a freeze.  The monitor showed no noticeable change within the upper 60 GB of memory.  There were no error messages.  The program simply became inactive and the Windows 10 Pro task manager reported that OWM was not responding.  I killed the dead session with the task manager.
> 
> 3)  The combination of the _Program Files (x86)_ installation with the crashes at <4 GB memory usage led me to believe that I'm dealing with a 32-but app.  I did no additional checking to see whether I was running on a 32- or 64-bit level.
> 
> 4)  Last night, I uninstalled the demo, manually checked for registry entries, erased those that were there, rebooted and installed the demo again, this time running the installation as an administrator.  The issues described above no longer were there.
> ...


Thank you for the feedback! OWM shouldn't need to be installed as an admin, but it could be an issue if you are logged in as a domain user rather than a local user. We are towards the end of regression testing for our next release, so we'll take the chance to do extra testing of the installer with different user scenarios.

Thank you!

----------


## OWM

> The Help File contains the following:
> 
> _18 Presets and Themes
> Presets are saved under folders which together make up a “Theme.” You can create a new
> Theme and add Presets to the Theme using the Preset window.
> These folders are saved in the installation path and may be copied and shared with others._
> That's good news, of course.  Is there any information anywhere on _how_ to make a new theme and preset?


You can save new presets from an item's property window (button near the top left of an item's properties). From there, you'll be prompted for the preset's name and a parent theme (any you can create a new theme from there too).




> I've also learned that you folks have a forum.  Unfortunately I can't post there yet because my account remains inactive.  So it goes.


Sorry about the delay! I gave you forum access yesterday morning. Spam/bots have been terrible over the last few months so we do manual verification of new users. It takes a bit longer to grant access, but it's better than having bots getting through.




> 1.  What does one need to do to make presets like your river presets that will work in OWM?
> 
> 2.  How does one make presets with faded edges like those delivered that will work in OWM?
> 
> FYI:  I've read the full help guide and the homepage tutorials, and I've run the two videos you have on YouTube, but I have quite a number of questions to raise and points to make.  However I'll wait until that day when my forum account is active.


You can change any item's properties from the property window and then save those as a new preset, but I fear I'm missing part of your question. Let us know here or on our forums (either is good) - or if you have any other questions.

Thank you!

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## Mark Oliva

> OWM shouldn't need to be installed as an admin, but it could be an issue if you are logged in as a domain user rather than a local user.


FYI:  I was logged in as a local user with a local administrator account.  I just did a test installation on a laptop (Windows 10 Home/8 GM RAM) without admin log-in.  The result I got on my main machine occurred again.  I uninstalled and reinstalled as admin, and the problems were gone.  I was logged in again as a local user with a local administrator account.  However, a German-language protective program installed on all of our computers called _HS Wächter_ may be causing this, rather than it being a normal problem.

Servus,

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## Tiana

> Uh ... 20 x 30 _what_?


Uhm, sorry, I grid most of my work in *inches* and assumed it was easy enough to infer. On the topic of inference, I assumed your title of "publisher" and your swanky realistic looking maps meant you were a professional map publisher. I now assume it must have been the automatic title generated by the forum for a certain post count.

Yes, I was a bit confused as to why you would want a program to intentionally use up all of your available RAM, I believe I understand better now what your problem is. For the record, I installed in the Administrator account, and do not seem to be experiencing the same bug. i'm only seeing the program slow down because y'know, I loaded up that map with a LOT of things and it's poster sized.

Ya blew my mind, that's all. It is the logical progress, I just thought 32 was where we were at for the top end civilian personal computer. Nothing wrong with us having had different experiences lead to different conclusions. Many in your sphere may have beefy systems. That's cool, I don't discount that. Even though a remarkable number of people I know are professional artists in some fashion, they are all _mostly_ younger poor people or non-computer-passionate older professional artists who include computers only as an incidental side part of their art. I don't know very many people who are retired and they would be people who have a "the computer for Facebook". If your people group are the people who picked up on computers as they started growing in popularity and just rode the train of improvements forward, naturally following their growth it would make sense higher end equipment would be more familiar to you than me. Like I can think of one guy I know who might have equipment hanging around like that, a serious video editor and audiophile. Wouldn't be surprised. He seems to have the cutting edge stuff. Winnipeggers are notoriously cheap, so yeah...

Recently I had a discussion with my programmer housemate about how much RAM I should have in the new computer. Her opinion on the matter was that most computer use wouldn't require 32 gigs except for intense 3D work and we got 16 and beefed up other aspects instead.

I look forward to having more RAM now that I know it exists, and is not ridiculous to want for the art I do. Now I have reason to aim higher. As well, I look forward to what the Vintyri project ends up bringing to OWM. If your maps are made out of your project Alpha then it will be a good expansion.

Interesting about your style, I initially thought by looking at your portfolio it used some sort of 3D rendering to get the semi-realistic style. Is it maybe what would be called "Photo bashing"? That's an art form that's not exactly photo editing, but turning photos into tools to create a new piece of art or extensively painting over it in some way so that the original photo/s is/are completely unrecognizable. It's obvious to me it's not intended to be completely photorealistic, but photo-evokative?

Love that what you're doing is free and open source, that's amazing for the community, what a sweet way to spend your retirement.  :Smile: 

I should note I also observed there was an OWM forum but it looked sort of dead, heh, so I didn't join it, sorry.



Oh yeah, to save presets for things like river and road styles. The official explanation Alexandro just posted confused me so I figured I'd provide a visual aid. Just have the tool set up however you want it and click this button and it will bring up the window to save it. This toolbar is by default located on the right side of the monitor, but may be triggered off, in which case you'd pull it up from settings, windows, properties. I circled the button to click in red. It kind of slides into the UI for me if I don't intentionally look for it, something about how it engages with the monitor static. Also it kind of seems decorative too. I think it could be made more obvious.

----------


## Mark Oliva

> I assumed your title of "publisher" and your swanky realistic looking maps meant you were a professional map publisher. I now assume it must have been the automatic title generated by the forum for a certain post count.


No, it's because we're publishers.  We just publish non-commercially, and we've published more RPG publications than a number of commercial publishers.  Our download statistics and support request volume suggest that we have a good user base.




> people I know are professional artists in some fashion, they are all _mostly_ younger poor people or non-computer-passionate older professional artists who include computers only as an incidental side part of their art.


It depends what kind of _artist_ you mean.  Commercial artists in the graphics business who do a lot of work with _Photoshop_, for instance, have and need pretty beefy computers.




> I don't know very many people who are retired and they would be people who have a "the computer for Facebook".


I avoid _Facebook_ and co. like the black plague.  My partners Carl and Trevor also stay far away from it.





> If your people group are the people who picked up on computers as they started growing in popularity and just rode the train of improvements forward, naturally following their growth it would make sense higher end equipment would be more familiar to you than me.


After years as a newspaper reporter and editor in the U.S., I switched to computer programming after moving here to Bavaria and started my own software company.  I also taught computer programming in a school.  My motivation for having a power computer is my absolute dislike of having to wait more than 5 seconds for anything.  The computers that I have give me that luxury.  




> Recently I had a discussion with my programmer housemate about how much RAM I should have in the new computer. Her opinion on the matter was that most computer use wouldn't require 32 gigs except for intense 3D work and we got 16 and beefed up other aspects instead.


That probably was good advice.




> I look forward to having more RAM now that I know it exists, and is not ridiculous to want for the art I do.


If you're using an ordinary hard disk on your computer, a better first investment would be in an SSD drive for Windows, your most-used programs and your frequently-opened graphics and data.




> look forward to what the Vintyri project ends up bringing to OWM.


The instructions haven't been written yet, but here's the first alpha:

https://www.vintyri.org/downloads/vcc_owm_alpha1.zip  (490 MB)

Download it, unzip it and run Setup.exe.  Install it into:

_(Install drive and location)\Three Minds Software\Other World Mapper_

If you used the default installation location, that's:

_C:\Programs (x86)\Three Minds Software\Other World Mapper_




> Is it maybe what would be called "Photo bashing"? That's an art form that's not exactly photo editing, but turning photos into tools to create a new piece of art or extensively painting over it in some way so that the original photo/s is/are completely unrecognizable.


That's about right for many of the objects.

Servus,

----------


## 3l3phant

I just discovered OWM and I'm rapidly wondering why I didn't do better research on map-making software before spending money on a ton of other applications. This is brilliant!  :Smile:  

I have a question (and I apologize if I should have started another thread to ask): When placing mountains via the Along Path option it doesn't appear to allow the same "cycle" and "random order" options. That would be fantastic for doing mountain chains that didn't look so homogeneous.

----------


## Mark Oliva

> When placing mountains via the Along Path option it doesn't appear to allow the same "cycle" and "random order" options. That would be fantastic for doing mountain chains that didn't look so homogeneous.


I don't think it can do that either ... but the folks are looking for suggestions.

Servus,

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## Mark Oliva

In my reply to Tiana (two posts above) I mentioned the new OWM alpha version of the Vintyri Cartographic Collection but also added that the installation and usage guide was not available.

The Guide is available now.  You can get it here:

https://www.vintyri.org/downloads/Vintyri OWM Guide.zip  (24 MB)

The add-on itself is available here:

https://www.vintyri.org/downloads/vcc_owm_alpha1.zip  (490 MB)

Download it, unzip it and run Setup.exe.  Install it into:

_(Install drive and location)\Three Minds Software\Other World Mapper_

If you used the default installation location, that's:

_C:\Programs (x86)\Three Minds Software\Other World Mapper_

This products all are released on a free, open gaming, open source products for personal and commercial usage.

Because this thread probably still is of limited use to most guild cartographers, I've moved further discussion over to the OWM forum.  Those interested in continuing new information can go to:

https://www.otherworldmapper.com/for...php?f=19&t=415

Servus,

----------


## wthrasherb

I haven't read through all the posts here, so forgive me if I am repeating something someone already discussed.

I have not tried out the program yet, but I'm watching the Basic overview video right now.

You asked for feedback. 

A problem I have with most "mapping" software is they all seem to lack the ability to select and copy a region of a larger map. In photoshop, I make a large landmass (for world maps) and while I'm making the map, I create regions by creating a "shape" of the region. I add a new layer, select the entire landmass, then I remove the regions I don't need and I am left with the shape of one region. Then I fill that shape in with black and use it later to select only that region.

Once I have the shape, I can create a new document and move the one region shape to the new document, enlarge the shape (if needed), then I make a new map of the region.

Mapmaking software like Other World Mapper is great in a lot of ways, but I haven't found a way, with any software on the market, to duplicate the process (or similar) that I just described.

The idea is to be able to draw multiple versions of a map or parts of a map and not have to redraw the base land shape. Also, in Photoshop, I'm able to do "non-destructive" changes, trying out multiple techniques without losing anything or having to redraw anything.

Let me know if something like this is possible in Other World Mapper and I will buy it.

Otherwise, the app looks cool and useful. Good job.

----------


## Mark Oliva

> A problem I have with most "mapping" software is they all seem to lack the ability to select and copy a region of a larger map


I haven't tried to do this yet, but Three Minds Software says that _Other World Mapper_ can do this easily and without loss.

Servus,

----------


## OWM

> I haven't read through all the posts here, so forgive me if I am repeating something someone already discussed.
> 
> I have not tried out the program yet, but I'm watching the Basic overview video right now.
> 
> You asked for feedback.


We love feedback!  :Smile: 




> A problem I have with most "mapping" software is they all seem to lack the ability to select and copy a region of a larger map. In photoshop, I make a large landmass (for world maps) and while I'm making the map, I create regions by creating a "shape" of the region. I add a new layer, select the entire landmass, then I remove the regions I don't need and I am left with the shape of one region. Then I fill that shape in with black and use it later to select only that region.
> 
> Once I have the shape, I can create a new document and move the one region shape to the new document, enlarge the shape (if needed), then I make a new map of the region.


You can easily do this from Other World Mapper, either by selecting items and doing "New Map from Selection" or by simply doing copy/paste of items (landmass, water, regions, etc) across maps. Since everything is stored as vectors, you can also upscale when you do a new map without loss of quality (and if you need more resolution for the fractal coastlines you can add "nested" fractals to existing segments). The new version that is about come out also lets you do "new map from area" instead of having to select map items.




> Let me know if something like this is possible in Other World Mapper and I will buy it.


You can do all of these from Other World Mapper, but before buying please try the free demo. It has all the functionality except for saving (and only a small subset of the artwork).
https://www.otherworldmapper.com/demo.html

Thank you!

----------


## OWM

> I just discovered OWM and I'm rapidly wondering why I didn't do better research on map-making software before spending money on a ton of other applications. This is brilliant!  
> 
> I have a question (and I apologize if I should have started another thread to ask): When placing mountains via the Along Path option it doesn't appear to allow the same "cycle" and "random order" options. That would be fantastic for doing mountain chains that didn't look so homogeneous.


Thank you for the feedback and your support!  :Smile: 

The current version doesn't support that, but we are working to add that with our October/November release. It will also let you have random features for the "fill mode" instead of only being the one symbol.

One suggestion, you may find the "Auto Order" placement mode for Features helpful when placing mountains or trees, so that OWM auto orders them as you place them.

Attachment 117376

Attachment 117377

----------


## OWM

> The instructions haven't been written yet, but here's the first alpha:
> 
> https://www.vintyri.org/downloads/vcc_owm_alpha1.zip  (490 MB)
> 
> Download it, unzip it and run Setup.exe.  Install it into:
> 
> _(Install drive and location)\Three Minds Software\Other World Mapper_
> 
> If you used the default installation location, that's:
> ...


This is really awesome!! Checking it out right now.

Just FYI in case you want to add this to your installer, OWM saves the installation path to the registry for both the full and basic versions, so you could use that for the default path.



Thank you!

- Alejandro

----------


## Mark Oliva

Thanks to the Other World Mapper users who downloaded the VCC 1st alpha and sent us error reports in the last few days.  Other than our spelling of "Cartographic" as "Cartgographic" in the Setup program, the errors all were in missing and wrong textures.

We've fixed that and have uploaded a second alpha version now.  Those who want it and who haven't downloaded yet should go here:

https://www.vintyri.org/downloads/vcc_owm_alpha1.zip  (430 MB)

Those who already installed the first alpha should go for this patch instead:

https://www.vintyri.org/downloads/vcc_owm_patch_1.zip  (300 KB)

Updaters need to:

1.  Unzip the file into a temporary folder.  It contains a folder named Templates and a PDF file. 

2.  Read the PDF file to see how to install the patch.

The full Other World Mapper version of manual for the collection now is available too.  It not only has installation instructions but also is chock full of information:

https://www.vintyri.org/downloads/Vi...OWM Guide.zip(PDF - 24 MB)

Where from here?  We'll take this release through beta to full release and then issue one more product that will add dungeon material.  After that, we'll look at whether there's enough interest to warrant releasing the rest of our products in OWM format.

Servus,

----------

