HexDraw released. DYO HASL Map

Michael Dorosh

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What publishing rights do people have after they use your program to draw the terrain onto a map, and then print it off? Or would this be for personal use only?
 

Jo.B

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they have any rights to publish their maps,
the included images are for free.
 

Michael Dorosh

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Is it possible to introduce one's own artwork elements - for example, say I draft an overhead view of the Eiffel Tower or the Reichstag and want to include it - can I drop it into the program as a scalable element? In other words, does it support custom artwork? (I have downloaded the trial program after reading about it on consimworld, by the way, just haven't had time to run it yet... :) )
 

Jo.B

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sure, it is easy to bring in a background image.
The image could be rotated and scaled. Transparency could be set to the terrain as in this picture below.
This light green is original darker.


 

Michael Dorosh

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No, not a background image, I meant - can we introduce new "foreground" elements not in your library?

Though I have to say, having a background image to work over will be very handy indeed - we've been begging the Combat Mission team for that ability for 8 years and they've never been able to provide it. That will be an excellent tool all on its own as far as map creation.
 

Jo.B

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You can bring in any bitmap in the foreground you like too. HexDraw helps you in this
by providing images with hexagons which depends on your selected hexsize.
Also you can modify or alter the Library. Or create a new one on your own taste even with the trial version.
 

Rod Zombie

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The potential is awesome. I think I'm going to have to get a copy.

Thanks for making this available!

- Rod
 

Tuomo

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Very cool! Kudos - a ton of work obviously went into this, and I'm a sucker for vector-based graphics.

It will be interesting to see if this way of building a map is easier for people to use than the bitmap-based apps that have come before. I suspect that ultimately the map artist is going to do a similar amount of work, but if this way is more intuitive/usable than others, so much the better.

People will want to know if their HexDraw maps can be used in VASL. The answer is kind of detailed.

ANY map can be used in VASL, as long as it's packaged in the way that VASL expects. That is, it needs to be a gif with the name bdX.gif, where X = whatever you want, and packaged into a zip archive file (no compression, and with the .zip extension removed, like bdX) along with a file called data (no extension) that can be empty, but is generally used for version information.

If you want VASL to understand the coordinates of your map, you need to either use a gif of standard size (1800x645 pixels for a geomorphic map) or tweak the data file by adding dx,dy parameters that basically tell VASL how far apart your hex dots are spaced. HASL maps often use these.

If you want VASL to use its cool terrain-changing capabilities for your map (turning the ground white in snow, etc), then you need to ensure that VASL understands what your map's colors are. The easiest way to do this is to use the standard set of colors that come prepackaged with VASL boards.

Another option is to add a colors file to the bdX archive, which basically overrides VASL's colors with ones of your own choosing. This works fine, but you may also want to tell VASL how your board's colors should change according to the various conditions such as Mud, Winter, etc. In that case, you'd need to create a colorSSR file that does this, and include this file in the bdX archive.

It gets complicated, but it's all described in the Ye Old Booke of VASL Mapmaking Secrets:
http://home.comcast.net/~tomrepetti/misc/YoBv6.pdf

OK. How does this relate to HexDraw maps. As a vector-based program, I assume that when HexDraw exports a map to an image file (gif, bmp, jpg, whatever), it has to render each terrain object into a bitmap. Here's where the trick lies - many rendering tools antialias the result in some way, basically creating shades of color on the edges of an object as a way to enhance the smoothness of the result and avoid the pixellated look of many computer images.

The problem is that VASL really needs to see a limited number of well-defined colors in order to do its color-based transformations. When Winter is in effect, it looks for a specific shade of green for its Level 0 Open Ground and turns it into white. It looks for specific Red/Green/Blue pixels for Grain and turns them into the (winterized) Open Ground color for whatever level they lie on. Etc.

So while HexDraw output can easily be converted to some kind of gif that VASL will read, it'll take a bit of tweaking to enable VASL's full color-changing abilities for that map. Not saying it can't be done, but it's definitely a processing step that needs to be taken.

One possible solution is to create HexDraw libraries that use VASL-specific colors, but they won't work in VASL if HexDraw antialiases its output when it renders the image. Another solution is to tell VASL to handle the HexDraw colors by using colors and colorSSR files as described above, but again, things get hairy if there are lots of colors generated by antialiasing.

Another solution is to simply modify the rendered HexDraw image to use a more limited set of VASL-specific colors (either the preset VASL colors or ones specified by the artist with the colors and colorSSR files). The result won't look exactly like the original, but it'll work.

I'd be glad to look at a HexDraw-rendered image file and see what's possible. Ultimately, the Map Elves are glad to have more hands working at the table, and we'll do what we can to enable people's dreams.

Tom
 
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Gunner Scott

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Hey Jo-

I would love to buy this program, But your websight does not take paypal, anyway you can change this? Ya, I'm paranoid about using a real credit card on the internet.


Scott
 

Jo.B

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Scott

it takes pay pal, for US only, try again

jo

Edit
it also takes paypal from other countrys
 
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Jo.B

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Tumo!

I think, I can simply switch of the antialiasing. Also I beleave the color thing is not easy but possible. I see a little problem in sizeing (the dy, dy are integers I guess) . I have to read more in the vasal book.
I would appreciate an 'export to VASL gif feature'. Come on, let's work together and solve this. :shy:

cheers
jo
 

Michael Dorosh

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Okay, five minutes of fiddling with the demo is enough to convince me that this is worth the 45 dollars. Drag and drop buildings, free rotation, roads that fill themselves in, scalable maps.

If you don't mind a couple other questions - the help file in the demo doesn't seem complete and this will be of interest to others anyway - what formats can I output to? (The feature is disabled in the demo). Pdf? Gif? Png? Bmp?

This program is much more powerful than I had anticipated - even from what litle I've seen. It is extremely well done. Congratulations.

Haven't figured out how to smooth out the edges of non-contiguous woods hexes, etc., but I am sure that will be in the documentation.

The simple ability to choose different fonts for on-map text, colours, etc., was unexpected but very welcome.

Being able to edit the bitmaps for the buildings right from HexDraw is also a great idea.

EDIT - okay, website says bmp. I keep seeing new features that are easy to crow about. I guess if anyone has any interest at all in making maps, they will already be trying the demo for themselves so no point listing them all - too many to list anyhow. Very impressed with this and I'm off to order. Thanks for this great contribution to the community.
 
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That sample map picture looks fracking AWESOME. If we can get a seamless export to a VASL recognizable format, this program would likely be, for lack of a better word, perfect.

Great Job!!!

- Josh
 

Michael Dorosh

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Very cool! Kudos - a ton of work obviously went into this, and I'm a sucker for vector-based graphics.

It will be interesting to see if this way of building a map is easier for people to use than the bitmap-based apps that have come before. I suspect that ultimately the map artist is going to do a similar amount of work, but if this way is more intuitive/usable than others, so much the better.

Tom
I think the perfectionist will still want to fiddle with the output in Paint or whatever graphics program he uses; some processes seem cumbersome at first blush and may actually be easier to do with the eraser tool in Paint (i.e. sculpting crest hexsides which look like they need to be done individually in HexDraw?) But even if there weren't minor nits like that to pick, I think a true artist like yourself would always find an "excuse" to get in and go "hands on" with his favourite tools after the final render in HexDraw is done. Don't you? :)

The crewmen of the first Mercury spacecraft were very much aware that re-entry could be done automatically, and in fact, everyone wanted it done that way. The test pilots they were recruiting insisted that they have a) a window to look out of and b) controls to fly the capsule - which they also insisted on calling a "spacecraft".

I suspect Map Divas will be the same way with this excellent program - I've been fooling with the full version for a few hours and am quite pleased with the functionality, and the results.
 
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