Scratchbuild your own Kriegsspiel- ready maps for no cost

An article in BATTLEGAMES magazine - which is actually archived on the net - suggests one can scratchbuild quite easily ones own Kriegsspiel- ready maps in the freeware graphics program INKSCAPE, and provides some convincing illustrations.

See how to download the program at http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Installing_Inkscape

Hexographer is a freely downloadable map-making software program that allows users to create hex-style maps as well as town maps, battlemats and hex star-maps. I quickly generated a nice basic map by choosing the 'grasslands' option and reducing the 'water' content. Get it HERE

Tile Mill is another free and interesting looking map generator, though I have not yet tested this one. Get it

HERE

Hexographer incidentally has functionality to 'trace' graphics over and/or impose graphics onto a map you have imported into the program (ie. find a map of the area you want, then construct a hex grid and other content over it). I have not tested this, and you may find it comes only with the paid - for version (about £30 I think).

Many thanks Your royal Highness. However some of the links appear to be missing.

Doubtless affairs of state were more pressing

Martin (J)

Martin wrote:Many thanks Your royal Highness. However some of the links appear to be missing.

Doubtless affairs of state were more pressing

Martin (J)

Were you logged in, Martin? They all work for me now.

Yes I was Jeff. But they do also work for me too now. How odd.

Even now crack elements of HRH's Royal Guard are on their way to arrest me.

All praise to your Royal Rufusness, good egg, never doubted you for a minute etc etc....

Anonymous (no make that Digby)

Glad you had no problem with the links

During my enforced idleness this week due to illness, I found yet another mapping program on the web, which this time does not even need downloading, but works on the server, its called GBGEN Wargame Map Sketcher and is HERE

This looks as though it might be vaguely useful, if only for producing AARs of tactical battles fought during KS sessions. Its not clear without further testing whether it can produce 'grand tactical' maps at a scale suitable eg. for a detachment game. It does have predefined and hacheted hill, river and road shapes etc. which would be useful for such a map.

I am also in the (long) process of downloading and extracting some very nice looking free materials from The Perfect Captain’s first class site Martin may be interested in the ECW Module, though I am already bagging me the Wars of Religion map for my 2013 project).

Counter/block sheets are also provided there; its possible that some of the campaigns are actually playable as board games, though this needs further enquiry.

To save you the longwinded downloading hassle, I propose to circulate some of the more promising materials by email in due course.

"L3DT is a Windows application for generating terrain maps and textures. It is intended to help game developers and digital artists create vast high-quality 3D worlds. Its freely available HERE from the Bundysoft site.

What it can do:

Generating and editing heightmaps
 Designable heightfields using a high-level 'design map' in which you can specify land altitudes, roughness, lakes, climate, etc.
 A fast and flexible fractal 'inflation' based heightfield generator, including effects such as erosion, terraces and cliffs, volcanos, mountain peaks, etc., all of which are controlled from the design map.
 An integrated 3D heightfield editor that allows you to easily shape and reshape your heightfield using mouse-driven brush tools.
Generating textures, light maps, bump maps, alpha/splat maps, etc.
 A texture generator for high-resolution interpolated ground texture maps, as well as the ability to generate alpha maps for run-time 'texture splatting'.
 A extensible climate modelling engine for controlling the distribution of ground textures, including water-table and salinity modelling. Supports up to 65,000 unique and user-definable land types per map.
 Automatic and manual water-flooding routines, for making sea and lakes at different water levels.
 A fast light mapping module for pre-calculated terrain lighting and shadow casting, including high-resolution light mapping and bump mapping.
3D display
 Real-time 3D rendering and editing of maps in the Sapphire plugin, as well as support for Terragen, VTP Enviro, and other popular renderers.
Calculations and optimisations
 An automated calculation pipeline that allows you to queue-up some or all of your calculations, set the relevant settings, and then walk away while L3DT does its thing. No program baby-sitting is required.
 An automatic disk paging system that supports heightfields up to 128k × 128k pixels in size (16 gigapixels) and textures up to 4M × 4M pixels (16 terapixels). Want to make megatextures? No problem!
 Support for multi-core processing.
 A batch generation engine for making multiple map projects automatically.
File formats
 Support for a broad range of file formats:
 Image formats, including BMP, JPG, PNG, TGA, DDS, PGM, PBM, PCX and RAW.
 Mesh files, including DAE (COLLADA), OBJ, X, 3DS, B3D, and TIN (export only).
 Terrain exchange formats, including TER (Terragen), BT (Virtual Terrain Project), GeoTIFF (import only), and HFZ.
 Game engine terrain files, including TER (Torque 3D), SD7 (Spring) and HTF (GLScene).
 Support for more formats may be added by plugins.
Customisation
 A graphical interface for performing custom calculations by connecting together multiple 'filters'.
 Support for scripting using the Python and ZeoScript languages (via the cdPython and ZeoScript plugins).
 An extensive plugin API that allows developers to directly access L3DT data, perform calculations, load or save files, add new file format options, etc. The source code for many examples are provided.
User support
 A walk-through tutorial is integrated with the program.
 A comprehensive and up-to-date user guide is available on-line.
 Support and advice is available through the community forum.
 A users' wiki is provided, including spaces for user-submitted tutorials, climates, and other material"