I wanted to test the recently added Gnomeyland icons for Text Mapper and looked at the following map:
Gnomeyland icons for Text Mapper
/pics/8876746436_f2598482c1_o.png
This is the text description I came up with:
include https://alexschroeder.ch/contrib/gnomeyland.txt 0101 water 0102 water 0103 water 0104 water 0105 water 0106 water 0201 water 0202 dark-grey marsh 0203 dark-grey marsh 0204 water 0205 water 0206 water 0301 water cave xml <line x1="30" y1="45" x2="130" y2="45" stroke="#6ebae7" stroke-width="20" stroke-linecap="round"/><path d="M 30,45 c 0,-20 -20,-20 -20,0 c 2,0 3,0 20,0 z" stroke="black" stroke-width="2"/> 0303 dark-grey tower cave "Portal" 0304 grey grass 0305 grey mountain 0306 water 0401 water 0402 grey trees 0403 water 0404 water 0405 water 0406 water 0501 water 0502 light-green tree "Silberbäume" 0503 soil 0504 water 0505 dark-grey forest-hill 0506 water 0601 water 0602 green forest 0603 green forest "Faule Wald" 0604 green forest 0605 dark-grey trees 0606 water 0701 water 0702 water 0703 dark-grey forest-mountains "Einhorn" 0704 dark-grey forest-mountains 0705 water 0706 water 0801 water 0802 water 0803 water 0804 water 0805 water 0806 water lake xml <circle cx="45" cy="75" r="30" fill="#6ebae7" stroke="black" stroke-width="3"/> 0302 dark-grey forest lake "See"
Note some tricks:
1. the “cave” is defined right then and there, not in a library, and it includes a little water connection to the central bay
2. hex 0302 with the lake comes at the end such that the neighboring hexes don’t overwrite the overflow
Result:
/pics/8959577095_02aed1b95f_o.png
I could work on this some more, or I could just take it, import it into Inkscape, and keep working on it.
The big question is: how much easier is it to work with a text description of a map compared to fiddling with Inkscape directly? As I create new maps, I’m no longer sure this map generator is all that useful, to be honest.
#RPG #SVG #Maps #Text Mapper
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I think it could useful as a kind of intermediate language (like MSIL). For instance, you could make a front-end (GUI or website) that lets you tweak some basic things easily (number of roads, cities, amount of water, etc.), and with a push on “Generate”, the front-end then spits out Text Mapper “source code” and feeds it to the back-end, producing the final SVG.
– Jensan 2013-06-05 17:31 UTC
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Hm, good point. Perhaps somebody could write a random map generator without having to implement the map drawing aspect.
– Alex Schroeder 2013-06-05 20:24 UTC
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I like the text mapper. I would rather write the textual description than trying to do this in inkscape. At your level of artistic talent, maybe it’s not that useful ...
– Harald 2013-06-05 20:33 UTC
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Well, even for people not into the artistic aspect of it could get by reasonably, I assume, by opening the Gnomeyland template, for example, and using copy and paste. I haven’t tried it, however. Something to consider.
– Alex Schroeder 2013-06-05 21:09 UTC
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I agree with Jensan, a GUI Editor of some sort would be really helpful I guess.
– Andreas Gohr 2013-06-06 08:54 UTC
