Shareware graphic tools?

[Ubercat]

I'm a poor student and can't afford the pricy programs that seem to be used for map making. Does anyone know of a good tool I could use that is free and not stuffed with adware or other malware?

I'm dreaming of a map, sort of like the Cradle of Dominions(?) which actually comes in three flavors, one for each age. I like the fixed start locations for each of the nations in CoD, but I'm envisioning a larger one with 22 fixed locations.

Each start province on each ages map would correspond to the equivalent faction for that age, Ie. C'Tis would start in the same place in each age. Maybe I could make some minor geographical changes in each age to represent what mighty spells and titanic struggles have done.

Thoughts? Suggestions? -Ubercat

[Sombre]

GIMP is popular. Google it I guess.

I use PSP and wouldn't switch to anything else.

[Zylithan]

yeah, gimp is free and useful. i make my grpahics in other game editor (age of wonders shadow magic)... so that works if you have another fantasy game with editor. Someone recently used the wesnoth editor... Wesnoth is freeware, so wesnoth and gimp should be more than adeuqate and totally free and legal. google for downloads.

[Arralen]

Haven't tried it, as I only recently stumbled over their website - but AutoREALM (http://www.autorealm.org/) looks quite promising:
It's an opensourece map making program .. should be ideally suited for the task, shouldn't it?

[Edi]

AutoRealm is good for making base outline for continents and such, perhaps adding some stuff, then taking the image to GIMP and modifying it as necessary. I've got it but haven't played around with itmuch. A friend of mine also knows some other freeware image processing program, but I need to ask him what it was.

[lch]

Arralen said:
AutoREALM (http://www.autorealm.org/) looks quite promising



Developed with Delphi Personal Edition™ (from Borland Inc.) and based on the simple and natural TurboPascal™ language


*laughs uncontrollably*

[Kaljamaha]

Inkscape (http://www.inkscape.org/) is nice too.


K.

[Aezeal]

atm I'm using GIMP and it does what I want to do.
1. loading takes a bit long though..
2. I find it to be a bit unstable, save often because if you change something (mostly with patterns or other "difficult" tasks) the program sometime hangs and you need to shut it down.

[Philthy]

lch said:

Arralen said:
AutoREALM (http://www.autorealm.org/) looks quite promising



Developed with Delphi Personal Edition™ (from Borland Inc.) and based on the simple and natural TurboPascal™ language


*laughs uncontrollably*



Delphi is a fantastic platform to develop on. It is also offering them Linux cross compatibility out of the box as well. I use it at work for RAD on the applications here over C# simply because the outside support is simply huge. You can find precompiled units for virtually anything. Though, C# will eventually surpass this, but until then...

[Ubercat]

Thanks guys. I'll check all these programs out.

[Arralen]

Ubercat said:
Thanks guys. I'll check all these programs out.


Yeah, and then come back and tell -or show- what worked best. and maybe 2nd best, just in case its a matter of personal taste, you know what I mean ;-)

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Also, questions. I love answering graphics questions, especially if I have to learn something in the process.