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I know the original map art and Hexdraw templates are available, but was wondering are the new map art and hexdraw templates available as well?

Merrick

ORIGINAL: mb4329

I know the original map art and Hexdraw templates are available, but was wondering are the new map art and hexdraw templates available as well?

Merrick

Good question. I was wondering this myself.

The new maps from the players addition are built up using a completely different mechanic when rendered by William. There is not HexDraw templates or art for those. It is one area we are looking into for Southern Storm to see if we can provide some way to do your own maps. Right now the old HexDraw stuff works in-game still. Part of the price to pay for the better looking maps was going to a more "hand drawn" system. Granted William is not totally hand drawing the maps, but the methods and software are make it basically that way right now. I'm sure he can explain it better.

Does it make sense to pick up hexdraw or is 2.1 going to go to something else?

Hexdraw is just one way to make maps for FPC. Maps can be make from many sources. In fact you can scan a real map, resize it and cut it to fix into FPC. I once scanned a map from one of my favorite wargames of that scale and was able to get it to work in FPC. The bottom line is that you don't need Hexdraw to make maps. We used it to make the initial maps for the release.
 
Unless a miracle happens, there will not be a map editor released with Southern Storm. It is a project way down on our wishlist. We would like to see a map editor, but it is going to require a herculean effort on Rob's part to code. At this stage we would rather spend our time on improving game play and scenario deign. 
 
So I see no problem with using Hexdraw to make your maps. We feel very fortunate to have a talent like Williams making the official maps for the game. None of us have such talent--the reason why we used Hexdraw in the first place. I still use Hexdraw to make some of my own personal maps.

ORIGINAL: mb4329

Does it make sense to pick up hexdraw or is 2.1 going to go to something else?

For 2.1 Southern Storm, our aim is to stick to 'Hexdraw compatible' maps as input for the Map Values editor. This in order to enable anybody on the team (and outside the team) to create a map.
Once the Map Values editor has created the .fp9 file, any map graphics of the same dimensions can be shown in the game (the same HexDraw map, or satellite images from Google maps, photo copies of paper maps, etc). I do create a second map to show in-game, and spend a good amount of time on it.

Note that for Southern Storm, the terrain types and colors understood by the Map Values editor are being extended to support a larger variety in terrain, and become even more mod-friendly. More on that down the road.

Although HexDraw works for 2.09 and will work for 2.1, I have switched from HexDraw to QGis for creating the 2.1 input for the Map Values editor. I wasn't too happy with HexDraw's performance and limitations for large maps, and I hated the hassle going from HexDraw output via downsizing and clipping to Map Values editor input. Although, in hindsight, I could have automated that using ImageMagick, as Harry has described. Or created HexDraw templates that are on the same scale as expected by the Map Values editor.

QGis is a free software tool for editing and rendering maps based on digital elevation data, OpenStreetMap input, and your own annotations. It can be configured to output maps at the dimensions expected by the Map Values editor (128 px / km, with 128 dots per inch, so 1km:inch = 1:39370) and styled to render elevation, forests, etc. in the colors expected by the Map Values editor. Using the MMQGIS plug-in, you can even have a hex-grid overlay with exactly the right dimensions.
The main downside of QGis is the complexity of the tool (way too many options) and the need to learn about OpenStreetMap data in order to filter the right elements to display on the map. And OpenStreetMap data is often incomplete, doesn't nicely line up with hex grids, and doesn't always reflect 1989.

So, yes, HexDraw will continue to work (although we might have to provide new templates for 2.1). And there are alternatives.

William

Hi William,

Thanks for the info. I'll take a look at QGIS, but suspect I don't have the bandwidth right now to learn another GIS package. May just have to fall back on Hexdraw since in some ways it seems simpler, but I appreciate the information.

Regards,
Merrick

Hi William,

So QGIS does seem to be the way to go. Played around with it and it was pretty quick to figure out. Did have a question how you determine the dimensions you need for MMQGIS to generate the grid?

Regards,
Merrick

Hi Merrick,

good to see QGIS and you getting along well.

Here are the 'magic numbers' for the MMQGIS plug-in hex grid (right), and the numbers to use for the QGIS print composer to 'export as image' in exactly the right resolution and size for Flashpoint Campaigns (assuming the default map size of 46x30 hex map covering 20x15km).
The blanks fields in the MMQGIS dialog will have proper values by default, and don't need to be blank - I just removed some info from mine.
You can change the values to cover larger pieces of terrain and create larger maps, obviously; just stick to the 128dpi, scale 1:39370 and 500/433 hex grid spacing to match the game's expectation of 500m / 64px.

William

Thanks William. Had used DMS for the project which was the issue. Once I saw your settings I had a head slap moment. Creating a new project using UTM which should solve the issue of the MMQGIS units being in degrees.

Regards,
Merrick

Do you have a link to QGIS?

Sure it can be found here:

http://qgis.org/en/site/