Drawing Wraparound Maps - Any Tips?

[Gandalf Parker]

Two other hints.
Look for "tiling" in your paint program or a view program. That will give you a wrapped view (or the map editor in Dom3 itself)

For a really large map, the old way of tiling was to split the map down the middle and paste then on opposite sides. Edit the dividing line then paste them back. Then split across the middle left-to-right and do the same.

[Cor2]

You could always cheat and do a flat map but give the provinces on the edge neigbors on the other side.

[Gandalf Parker]

Actually thats what you have to do.
The undocumented command #wraparound is what tells Dom3 to scroll the image. It doesnt set neighbors so the neighbor commands are also needed.

[PashaDawg]

Wow - I did not realize that Dominions cartography was so fraught with risk and adventure!

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Here's a tip, gathered from my mad l33t google skillz (I actually own a book on google, you know).

http://www.stink.com/web/webtile/index.html

I don't know exactly how relevant this is, since seamless web tiles are a lot simpler than maps, but some techniques can probably be imitated.

If you use Photoshop or the GIMP, try drawing the troublesome province in the center of the screen, then offsetting it. The idea is that you're always drawing in the center of the image, but you change what the center is.

http://www.cadtutor.net/dd/photo/seamless/seamless.html
http://www.pixelpoke.com/Tutorial%20...0tutorial.html

I hope some of these links are useful. I can help you with just about any Photoshop, Gimp, MS Paint, or Paint.net question, but I haven't created any wraparound maps. I did think that seamless tile techniques may be useful for you, though.

[lch]

Since the URLs provided have been for Photoshop only, here is some info for GIMP users:

GIMP has special filters useful for mapping under Filters > Map. For example, Filters > Map > Tile makes images tile seamlessly by applying a ghosting effect. Some Filters which generate stuff, like Filters > Render > Clouds > Solid Noise or those under Filters > Render > Pattern do have a "Tilable" option, which will take care that the result tiles seamlessly automatically.

To make your image tilable by hand, you can follow the same steps as in the guides above, look at the Tileable Textures tutorial or the more sophisticated Making Tileable & Seamless Textures tutorial for reference.

[PashaDawg]

Thanks for the advice!