Tsaraine
04-02-2006, 09:56
Ever wanted a map for your nation/region/planetary empire but found your MS Paint maps looking unmaply? Or need a map really fast? Or are you like me, and just very lazy indeed?
Thankfully, in this digital age there are programs to do our thinking for us - and our cartography, to boot. For what it's worth, I thought I'd share a link or two I've run across in my meanderings across the trackless terrain of the Internet.
First is this (http://home.comcast.net/~brons/NerdCorner/Planet.html)fractal map generator (also avaliable for the PC here (http://www.diku.dk/users/torbenm/)). You put in command lines and it spits out maps, which you can then tweak by altering the verticality, the sea level, toggle the ice caps on or off, and so on, as well as changing the projection and the scale.
Unfortunately, it outputs as .xpm files, which have got to be about the most obscure image format in the World; hence the next two links are for Lemke Software's GraphicConverter (http://www.lemkesoft.de/en/index.htm) (for Macintoshes both new and Classic) and IrfanView (http://www.irfanview.com/) (for the PC). Both can take .xpm files and turn them into something more usable; GraphicConverter is a functional little paint program to boot, but it's shareware.
The maps run from seed numbers you set; if you find your brain running out of random numbers, random.org (http://www.random.org/nform.html) can generate you a bunch of them - truly random numbers, as opposed to the psuedorandom numbers spat out by most digital number generators.
There's also (for the Classic Macintosh and Unix) a random star system generator (http://home.comcast.net/~brons/NerdCorner/StarGen/StarGen.html) which is fairly good (and certainly useful - after thinking up half a dozen or so star systems on your own it becomes difficult to think of original ones, at least in my experience). About the only complaints I have of it is that it can't handle binary systems or "Hot Jupiters".
Well, if this proves of interest to someone I shall be pleased to have been of service - have fun!
~ Tsaraine
Thankfully, in this digital age there are programs to do our thinking for us - and our cartography, to boot. For what it's worth, I thought I'd share a link or two I've run across in my meanderings across the trackless terrain of the Internet.
First is this (http://home.comcast.net/~brons/NerdCorner/Planet.html)fractal map generator (also avaliable for the PC here (http://www.diku.dk/users/torbenm/)). You put in command lines and it spits out maps, which you can then tweak by altering the verticality, the sea level, toggle the ice caps on or off, and so on, as well as changing the projection and the scale.
Unfortunately, it outputs as .xpm files, which have got to be about the most obscure image format in the World; hence the next two links are for Lemke Software's GraphicConverter (http://www.lemkesoft.de/en/index.htm) (for Macintoshes both new and Classic) and IrfanView (http://www.irfanview.com/) (for the PC). Both can take .xpm files and turn them into something more usable; GraphicConverter is a functional little paint program to boot, but it's shareware.
The maps run from seed numbers you set; if you find your brain running out of random numbers, random.org (http://www.random.org/nform.html) can generate you a bunch of them - truly random numbers, as opposed to the psuedorandom numbers spat out by most digital number generators.
There's also (for the Classic Macintosh and Unix) a random star system generator (http://home.comcast.net/~brons/NerdCorner/StarGen/StarGen.html) which is fairly good (and certainly useful - after thinking up half a dozen or so star systems on your own it becomes difficult to think of original ones, at least in my experience). About the only complaints I have of it is that it can't handle binary systems or "Hot Jupiters".
Well, if this proves of interest to someone I shall be pleased to have been of service - have fun!
~ Tsaraine