Basically, have been scrounging for easy to use map making resources and didn't come up with what I needed. That is - a very easy to use reference of a good map that breaks everything down into 15 km hexes. It doesn't need to be perfect - just something "reasonably good".
So after about 3-4 days at this, I decided to experiment more with Google Earth. That at least takes care of the "decent map". It apparently has quite a few options, one of which is the "image overlay" (Under "ADD").
I don't have photoshop as I'm totally retarded when it comes to artwork. I found
http://incompetech.com/graphpaper/hexagonal/ which lets you create graph paper - in a pdf format. As big or small as you like, any color, all that...
I think the Google map scale is based on "per inch" - I ended up setting the graph to be .5 inch per hex (but as you can see below, the yellow line indicates it is not "exact"). I opened up the PDF file, made a screenshot, copied into MS Paint, cropped it, and saved it as a PNG file.
Then, I imported that file into Google Earth - and it let's you adjust the image transparency to whatever you need. So now - the attachment is the finished product. I think the hexagon graph needs a bit of refining - and the size of the finished image needs to be larger, but it looks like this can be a functional mapping method.
Is there anything I'm missing?
On the map I'm working on, Ben set up the original map parameters using (I believe) Bob's LatLong program. Would the above method cause any distortions? If so, how significant would they be?
Anyways... I've found someone else working in a similar direction, but there's significant glitches with what they've done - at http://ec2-46-137-6-196.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com/
There appears to be options to create a code that could just tile the hexagon across the entire map (but could lead to distortions as above). I've also seen reference to where the "hexes" can be a fixed (vs relative) distance. This may be a secondary fall-back measure.
Again - not looking for perfect, just "close enough."
Thanks for any help/input!
