Mapnote Feature list. Vector map files than can zoomed from planet view to 127th level of dungeon. Interior mapping levels from -127 .. +127 Autolabelling of objects and/or fixed text labels Make map from multiple layers. Control layer display depending on scale Integrated GM notes and image files (MDI interface) Use bitmaps from other applications (eg fractals or map generators) Link any object to other worlds, to GM Notes, to images, to other views Snap to existing points, Snap to grid Interpolate points into line with fractal formula (using real coastlines as a seed) Player and GM views. Objects marked 'GM-only' dont show in Player view Hex or square grids superimposed Distance tool for measuring in user units Added in 0.2: Printing. (primitive at this point) Smoothing of lines TO THE CURIOUS: As the MAPNOTE file is often downloaded by the curious, this explains something of what it is about. MAPNOTE is the name of a new project aimed at producing a program for creating fantasy maps (though is probably useful for other maps). A key idea in it is the capacity to attach text (and eventually hypertext) or images to any map object so that the text and mapping can be smoothing integrated. Vector representation is used for map object so maps can be zoomed in and out, although this version supports BACKDROP layers of BMP files. Maps are made up of layer files of map objects. Layers can be set so that they appear and disappear depending on zoom level. Map objects also have a level no. (as in a floor level) so that multi-level buildings can be mapped. Mapnote is coordinated out of a mailing list MAPNOTE@lhn.gns.cri.nz. Send Message with a body of SUBSCRIBE to the address MAPNOTE-request@lhn.gns.cri.nz if you want to be on the list. Inquiries about the project (especially offers to help) should be directed to MDLCPGS@lhn.gns.cri.nz. Programming is in DELPHI but also need help written and icon design. PLEASE GIVE US ANY FEEDBACK. This is cut of latest code. Bugs probably abound, many things dont work so USE AT YOUR OWN RISK! I disclaim any responsibility for any losses incurred by use of this program. Installation. Needs nearly 3 MB. Unzip all files into a directory (eg C:\Mapnote) and then use Run from Program manager or File Manager to start Mapnote.exe. IMPORTANT. This demo uses lots of 256 colour bitmaps. They look awful in 16 colours. Backdrops use StretchBlt and this is poorly implemented in many early accelerator card drivers. If you get wierdness, try updating you drivers from ftp.cica.indiana.edu/pub/win3/drivers/video. Cirrus Logic definitely need the July 21, 1994 set. (1.42) It should run in 4MB of memory but havent tried it in less than 8MB. DEMO Demo of zoom layering feature. (You gotta do this!!!) Open erisfar.wld. The cities are now autolabelled but the Ice sea label is label object. Select zoom tool and drilldown on Arrwyn. At a zoom of about 8000km, the backdrop drops out and a detail layer cuts in. Are you impressed? Note the autolabelling too. The coast line isnt too hot - an early version of the fractal interpolator did it. Try playing with the Layer control function (on speed button). Try drawing a river. Select line tool and on the style palette, select blue colour, 1 pt width, solid. Draw by clicking or holding down to trace. Double click or right click to finish. Now choose select tool. Click on your line to select it. Try Edit|Interpolate|Smooth. You can repeat till desired shape. Tour of mapnote. 1/ Open world (file or toolbar) and open ERISFAR.WLD. This world consists of two layers. At the back is a registered bitmap created from a plasma fractal in FRACTINT. This is a BACKDROP layer. You can zoom etc to hearts content but doesnt get pretty at high zooms. On top is a map layer and I have added some rivers and two cities. The tool palette. Hints if you leave cursor on them. Small title. We need better symbols on this tool palette! These are simply bitmaps, not icons. Scroll bars and Centre tool help you move around. Zoom tools take you in and out. Status bar at bottom with cursor coords and zoom level. Using the default coord system which is y increasing up, x to right, with range from 0 to 25000000000. Can select objects and then click and drag to move. World file hopefully opened layers DESPITE fact that probably in different directory to what on my machine. (searchs the directory of the world file and mapnote.exe file to find them). Have a play with the Distance tool. Try turning on Show Hotspots (View menu) Double click on Pendor to see some notes. Note the Layer menu for contents and moving about the notes. 2/ Now double click on the city symbol for Arrwyn. You are given choice of jumps. Choose Arrwyn.wld - A window showing a grid plan of Arrwyn. If you click with select tool, you will realise this also a BACKDROP with map layer on top. The map contains invisible rectangles. Double click over sector 5 and you should get a player map view of that sector of the city. These are created by Perry Horner's Fantasy City Builder. Double-click on sector 1 and a box will come up to select a link. Two objects have been linked to the rectangle - a player map and GM map of same city sector. 3/ From file menu, choose Back link to return to previous view. Double click Arrwyn again. This time choose Arrwynf.wld. WARNING this loads 9 full size bitmaps - it needs resources!! All 9 bitmaps from previous link have now been mapped as backdrops and joined more-or-less seemlessly togather. You zoom and scroll round the whole city. Furthermore there is a maplayer on top so you can further annotate the bitmap to hearts content. One label (Castle st) there already. 4/ Double click on the castle in center of city. Yet another jump to castle plans. This is rude crude and unattractive. BUT it shows two windows with different levels. You can navigate between levels 0, -1, and -2 with the stairs buttons on the toolbar. Go to -2. Try turning on Player View (View menu). Select the treasure icon and press Ctrl-G (it is also on edit|gm only), to make it disappear. Turn off player view to see it back again. Try some drawing and try changing the palette on selected items too. Note the crosshairs when you are drawing and hold SHIFT key down with mouse. Try snapping (Ctrl key down and mouse click). It should beep if snaps successfully. Recent features. 0.1.1 Markers are now ordered into libraries. If you put your own icons in the same directory as the Mapnote image, then you can access them with CUSTOM. This is slower and takes more space than the library icons. The biggy here is LAYER CONTROL (Layer|layer control) or using the speed button when a mapper is active window. This dialog control several functions: 1/ Display order of layers. 2/ The zoom values at which a layer is visible. 3/ Autolabelling (and font for autolabels) 4/ choosing the drawing layer (the layer in which new objects are created) 5/ Whether a layer is displayed in current mapper. The use is basically simple. Select the layer you want to make settings for in list box. Set the values you want. Others. Filter now works to thin down points on a line. Under Options, have set user coordinates. Its raw - doesnt check that values you enter make sense. Units has good list but can enter ones that not on list IMPORTANT: If you change the coordinate system, you will have to delete .lyb files and re-register them in new system. Layer control and user coordinates are attributes of the WORLD file. Load a new world file and these will change. However, the zoom attributes are ALSO stored in the layer file for convenience. Finally, numerous bugs have been excised. PLEASE REPORT BUGS. I have in two years had about 8 bugs reported. Rest I have found myself. Have added controlling features to fractal interpolation. There are actually 4 controlling factors on the interpolation - the most influential being the nature of the seed coast used which I currently dont offer for control. To do this I need to actually classify all the coast line in coast.lib into categories people will understand. suggestions please. The other 3 are increment rate, sample rate, and scale factor, and they are interrelated - you probably change more than 1 at a time. Increment rate - simple. The total no. of points it inserts between each into the parent line. If you have dense line already, you probably want to reduce this. If insert large no. then probably want to increase scale-factor. High increment rates increase cross-overs. Sample rate - sampling rate used in getting the seed. 1 is every point in the seed. Increasing this accentuates general coastal character but reduces coastal detail. Fiddle with care. Probably get better results with increasing scale factor. (Temporarily ignored) Scale-factor - The actual points are produced by successive transformations of a seed. A scale-factor reduces a tendency to wild fluctuations. Too high a factor results in coast that need high zooms to show much character. Too small will result in the seed coast swamping the control points with lots of cross-overs. Cross-overs are hard to avoid. Avoid strong curves in the parent coast. Minimal node deletion can fix many problems though. Editing of nodes: You use the Node tool to make changes to individual nodes on an object, including rescaling the size of scaled markers and rectangles. You cannot select "single point" objects like text or symbols with the node tool. When you use the node tool, clicking on an object puts a Square on the node nearest the click point and cross on the node immediately previous to it. If hold the ALT key down when selecting, then get an EXTENDED SELECTION. This circles another node which can be used for setting limit for copy/cut operations, joining two objects, interpolation and filtering. With NUMLOCK on, you can move the selected node position with the 4 and 6 keys on the numerical keypad. Operations on selected nodes are: DELETE - press Del key removes a node. MOVE - click again but hold mouse key down and drag node to new position. Other operations require selection of from a right-click mouse menu. These are: (for lines and polygon objects only). INSERT - selecting this starts an insert mode. Clicking on map will insert new nodes into the object between current and previous point. Exit insert mode by selecting NODE SELECT from right click menu. EXTEND - Allows points to be added to end of object closest to the current selected node. Normal drawing functions work. Right click or double click to finish. BREAK - This breaks an object into two. The break occurs between the current and previous point. JOIN - Here is how you join to lines togather. Select a node at or near end of the "master" object. ALT select a node at or near end of second object. Right click and select JOIN. LABEL PT - This is rude, crude, unattrative and temporary. Select this and click where you want autolabel to be positioned. ABANDON EDITS. Edits to an object (except break and join) are not saved till another object has been selected. You can choose Abandon Edits to cancel. FRACTAL INTERPOLATION. This have been hard work and actually uses a library of real coast lines are seeds in COAST.LIB. I hope to reduce this library size. To use, node select start node and ALT select the end node. Choose Edit|Interpolation|Fractal. If you dont like results, abandon the edits, and try again. I am working on how to control this. TRACING. Consider problem of drawing a polygon to represent a swamp in a river delta. It is likely that part of the polygon will EXACTLY follow part of the lines or polygons defining the coast. How to get exact tracing? Here is a way. Node select first node on the coast that will be shared. Alt Select the last. Choose Edit|Copy and Edit|Paste. Now can either select a node on this new segment and go EXTEND to draw rest, or draw rest and use JOIN to link to the segment. You probably want to convert the line to polygon after that. Other changes: Zoom boxes changed so forced to be in same size as window. Selecting is in Z-order - topmost (last added) objects found before earlier ones. Bug in zoom box fixed. Monumental bug in polygon selecting fixed (and made much faster). In Layer - added PACK. Editing of objects creates waste space in the map layer files. This function packs the file down to size again. In edit menu added: Bring to front - alter the drawing order of objects Convert to Line/ Convert to polygon. Powerful functions. Lets you convert between lines, polygons and also converts rectangles to lines and polygons. Can often be easy to draw with rectangles, then convert to lines and punch holes for doors etc. Also can build huge polygons by joining a series of lines. Adding node editing is happening slowly. When editing polygons/lines a RIGHT click brings up a popup menu to select between Insert mode, extend mode, break and join options. Added distance AND ANGLE readout on status bar for line/polygon tools. Added angle readout to Distance tool. Updates: 28/10 0 Markers (icons) get their own style palette page. The library box isnt active yet - need more icons first!! Check out the lovely set that Matt has produced. 1 Scaled markers introduced. Check the "scaled" box and the icon size will grow smaller or larger with zooming. These arent bug free. The code doesnt like some video drivers and they dont mix with 256 colour backdrops from reasons that baffle me at the moment. The monster and treasure markers in castle.wld world file are scaled icons. 2 autolabelling: this is first cut only for discussion purposes. Later versions (when we have layer control dialogs) will allow labelling to be turned on and off by layer and will have a setup to control font, colour etc on a per layer basis. Anyway, the idea is that you can give any object a name, and it will labelled beside it. This keeps the distance between an object and its label fixed in terms of pixels whereas if you used a label object (like on Arrwyn and Pendor), the label gets further from the object as you zoom in. Autolabelling slows down screen redraws though as system must check whether both label and object inside the clip region. The position of the label is automatically determined and I would like your comments PLEASE! I am playing with allowing the position to be changed with node tool. You can name an object in two ways: 1/ Select an object and select Edit object name from Edit menu. 2/ (more efficient). Check Option|Name object on create. With this option checked, every time you create a new object, you will be promted for its name. I have autolabelled "Wizards keep" on Erisfar.lym as an example. Zoom in the castle icon and note the label sticking close. 3 Inverse of zoom tools on Alt. If you are zooming in, then press ALT while clicking the mouse botton will result in a zoom out instead. Likewise for zoom in tool. 4 Drawing grid. Check Show drawing grid in View menu. this results in snaps to grid as well 5 Copy Bitmap to clipboard - on the edit menu. This copies contents of current mapper to clipboard. You can take it to Paintbox or Corel to etc to tart up or falsify before printing. 6 File Back Jump was done last time but not mentioned to reverse out of a world link. 7 Previous view. On View menu. this implements BABABA type back viewing. Hope to add Back view for unwinding a stack of views later. Updates; 28/8/95 0 View links implemented. Open another window, zoom it to required level and size. Select a map object in another window, and Edit|link| View. Add the desired window. Close extra window. Double clicking map object will restore that window. NOTE: WLD file format changed. 1 Note files implemented 2 Crosshair mode with drawing (Hold shift key down) 3 cut,copy, paste implemented for map windows 4 GMonly tag can be applied to any object. If choose View|Player then the objects marked GMonly are NOT visible. To change status of an object, select it and either use edit menu or Ctrl G. Ie Select View|Player and then select objects you want to hide. Ctrl-G each one, and they should vanish. View|Player only again and they should reappear. 5 Added Display extra level. Consider. You have mapped the first level of a dungeon and now want to map the second. Down level you go .. but how do you line up with the upper level, have the staircases in right place etc? Well, you select Display extra level and enter 1. All the level 1 objects appear but you cant select them. You can however snap to them. So try the necessary links between the levels and then Go to extra level menu again and set it to 2. If you change levels the display extra option is lost. 6 added show hotspots. View|Show hotspots. Like Player view this is selected on window by window basis. 7 Editing of object characteristics. Select object. If palette on (see Views menu - on by default) then, attributes of object are displayed. Change anything on palette and automatically makes change to object selected in mapper. 8 distance and MARKER added to tool bar. Distance is for measuring on the map. MARKER allows ICONS to be used as symbols. Being implemented. It allows icons to be either fixed in size or scaled. NEED LOTS OF ICONS PEOPLE!- plenty of free icon makers out there. What you see is first hack. I want separate icon library for mapping, interiors, monsters, Others? Any Icons added to maps at moment will not be guaranteed to be supported in later version. Specifically, the icons shown are mostly copyright violations pinched from Epic Games, Castle of the Four Winds. Holding Cntrl key down with mouse click, should result in snap to nearest existing point. Double-click or ESC to terminate line and polygon drawings. Only minimal testing here. How do you create Backdrop layers? Choose Add layer to World and load an IMAGE type (.BMP). Then choose Layer|Register Bitmap. Up comes a dialog to set the coordinates. Unless VERY brave, stick with defaults - (loads bitmap into upper part of system space) - as no checks and corrections in yet. This creates a .lYB file and adds it to the world.