[Shameless Self Promotion] A new place for sharing maps!
First off: I know I probably violating posting rule Nr. 7 "No advertising for sites or products that do not directly relate to ProFantasy." But a) it is about a service that can be useful after the creation of maps and thus does not interfere with ProFantasy's business model but might be of interest to map makers. b) I'd love for this to relate directly to ProFantasy. And c) I'm a bit proud of it and need to show it to someone and as this is the nicest community I know, you get to see it first. But if anyone feels this does not belong here, please do not hesitate and immediatlely delete this post.
Having said that, some might have wondered if I lost interest in making fictional maps after my flurry of posts earlier this year. I can assure you that is not the case, it is more that I was dissatisfied with the possibilities that were available to share the maps I created. Even though they were nowhere as beautiful as the ones many of you post here.
Yes, there are already a several ways to share the maps you create - upload the map to an image hosting website, include it in a campaign manager like world anvil or show it during play through a virtual tabletop tool. But as a long-standing dungeonmaster, occasional mapmaker ;-) and geoinformation professional, I felt there is something missing, a place in between. To be blunt: I want to be able to navigate my maps like google maps.
That is why I created www.fictionalmaps.com where you can do exactly that. It's still in early development, but the basic functionalities are there. You can upload your map, place markers,annotate them with information about the places, define the zoom levels when the markers are shown and share it with your audience. Your RPG group, your readers or your gaming community then can use it like google maps for YOUR world. I even managed to persuade award-winning artist Glynn Seal of MonkeyBlood Design to let me use his gorgeous map symbols.
There is still a lot of work to do, as you can see from the roadmap, but I want this to be community driven. So now I hope people will start to use the site and provide feedback. Everyone is invited to create an account, upload a map and tell me what you like, what you miss or what you would change. You can use the promo code PROFANTASY to get free access to all plans (until Dec 31 2020, at least).
I've tinkered at this for the last few months in my free time and can't wait to hear what you have to say about it. Are the basic features working for you? What do you think about the planned features in the roadmap? Are you missing something or do you think some things should be prioritized higher and others are maybe less pressing?
I really hope you like this and anxiously await your feedback!
Having said that, some might have wondered if I lost interest in making fictional maps after my flurry of posts earlier this year. I can assure you that is not the case, it is more that I was dissatisfied with the possibilities that were available to share the maps I created. Even though they were nowhere as beautiful as the ones many of you post here.
Yes, there are already a several ways to share the maps you create - upload the map to an image hosting website, include it in a campaign manager like world anvil or show it during play through a virtual tabletop tool. But as a long-standing dungeonmaster, occasional mapmaker ;-) and geoinformation professional, I felt there is something missing, a place in between. To be blunt: I want to be able to navigate my maps like google maps.
That is why I created www.fictionalmaps.com where you can do exactly that. It's still in early development, but the basic functionalities are there. You can upload your map, place markers,annotate them with information about the places, define the zoom levels when the markers are shown and share it with your audience. Your RPG group, your readers or your gaming community then can use it like google maps for YOUR world. I even managed to persuade award-winning artist Glynn Seal of MonkeyBlood Design to let me use his gorgeous map symbols.
There is still a lot of work to do, as you can see from the roadmap, but I want this to be community driven. So now I hope people will start to use the site and provide feedback. Everyone is invited to create an account, upload a map and tell me what you like, what you miss or what you would change. You can use the promo code PROFANTASY to get free access to all plans (until Dec 31 2020, at least).
I've tinkered at this for the last few months in my free time and can't wait to hear what you have to say about it. Are the basic features working for you? What do you think about the planned features in the roadmap? Are you missing something or do you think some things should be prioritized higher and others are maybe less pressing?
I really hope you like this and anxiously await your feedback!
Comments
I also noticed some things that went wrong with your map - the black borders should be white and there shouldn't be error tiles after zoom level 6. That's likely due to the size. There are still some bugs when the longest side of the image file exceeds 8192 pixels. Not exactly sure why, but I'm working on these and am also trying to speed up the process for large images. Unfortunately image processing is always a time consuming task, but there are a few optimizations I will try.