Traveller World Maps and IS Form 8
Hello all, new poster here.
I'm planning a new Traveller campaign for which I'd like to generate a lot of planetary maps. I'm not too keen on the D&D style of map that CC3+ seems to give where there is no fine grain to the terrain but full hex blocks like this sample from Cosmographer, so I'm tending more towards Fractal Terrain to generate nicer looking images but I want to know what I would need to layer them with IS Form 8, can I do that in Photoshop for a result like this one by Ian Stead (obviously without a planetary image looking that awesome).
Alternatively, how would I go about making simpler maps in IS Form 8 like this one? What combination of software would let me do something like this?
Would love to hear from Traveller fans that have tried any of these tasks successfully.
Thanks in advance.
I'm planning a new Traveller campaign for which I'd like to generate a lot of planetary maps. I'm not too keen on the D&D style of map that CC3+ seems to give where there is no fine grain to the terrain but full hex blocks like this sample from Cosmographer, so I'm tending more towards Fractal Terrain to generate nicer looking images but I want to know what I would need to layer them with IS Form 8, can I do that in Photoshop for a result like this one by Ian Stead (obviously without a planetary image looking that awesome).
Alternatively, how would I go about making simpler maps in IS Form 8 like this one? What combination of software would let me do something like this?
Would love to hear from Traveller fans that have tried any of these tasks successfully.
Thanks in advance.
Comments
Mithral looks to me like the land masses were drawn in using a bitmap fill, then symbols added. The mountain symbols, at that scale, would be entire ranges. Foor hills wouldn't show up until a map of just one hexagon, made much larger, would show them.
Planet size maps, mountains and oceans, and the larger bays like Hudson's Bay, would show up. And maybe a few symbols showing capitals and space ports of major nations, but most towns and cities would be too small to note by symbol placement on such a large map. Forests and deserts would be a color, rather than symbols.
I only have 2 hexagon maps on my Traveller site as its rather tedious to make such maps.
1) So I just export a few hundred FT3 maps into a folder under FT3.
2) type up a spreadsheet of alphabetized names with room for where on my galaxy map, column, sector, sub-sector I am going to put them.
3) ftp the png files to my site.
4) type in an article, that is what they are called in textpattern, with the name of the planet. IN the article is a link to the plant name in my graphics folder, and all info for locating the planet on the sub-sector map.
5) a subsector map is uploaded, with planet links.
6) then a sector map is uploaded with links to the sub-sectors.
I didn't go into too much detail as most of this can be readily seen from my site setup.
I have found a spreadsheet listing where every planet is located is very useful. I have accident;y made duplicate planet names, but changed them by ading [2] for the second one, so forth.
I have another spreadsheet that lists galaxy arm columns, and under each page of that are sector, and then sub-sector listings, with planets and the url to that planet map under each sub-sector.
I didn't use spreadsheets to start with, and got overwhelmed losing the information on paper where which planet was where. Now I am slowly going through the alphabatized planet list and double checking everything. I have found a number of errors I have fixed. About 250 more planets to go. Then I can start adding more planets, X-Boat paths, etc.
http://forum.profantasy.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=6803&page=1#Item_7