Matrix Games Forums

Hi,

will the process of generating new maps change significantly with the release of Southern Storm.
I'm asking, because I'm thinking about acquiring a license for HexDraw and don't want to bet on the wrong horse.

Thanks!

Jens

Jens, I will ask William to answer this. A number of changes have occurred going from Red Storm to Southern Storm with the game engine and the maps.

Hi Jens,

welcome to the forum. Always good to see people interested in making maps.

I feel HexDraw is the wrong horse.

As developers, we* have switched from HexDraw to the combination of a GIS tool and an in-house map renderer to create maps.
For Southern Storm, we are using a larger palette of hex colors and hex side colors to model terrain in more detail and variety; we do not have matching HexDraw styles/art available.
Southern Storm also does no longer support manually changing hex values; all input (and changes) need to come as part of the terrain bitmap being scanned.

The GIS tool (called QGis, it is free and open-source) is more powerful, and allows quicker creation of maps, especially when based on real-world terrain. See this forum thread for a tutorial to create a Red Storm map using QGis.
It also supports quick changes in styling, so you can quickly retarget a map designed for Red Storm to be used in Southern Storm.
QGis does have a steep learning curve though. And doesn't automatically give you a pretty map to present during the game (although you could use one of the many OpenStreetMap/satellite overlays it is able to place on top of the map).
We use an in-house render tool to create the pretty maps.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you have further questions.

(*: mostly me doing the maps)

William

Thanks Willam,

I took a look at the "Mod Guide 1b - Maps and Map Values Creation with QGis" and I have to say, it really looks intimidating at the first glance.
I'll give it a shot next time when I have a few days off. Thanks for the infos.

Jens

ORIGINAL: JensLeugengroot
Thanks Willam,

I took a look at the "Mod Guide 1b - Maps and Map Values Creation with QGis" and I have to say, it really looks intimidating at the first glance.
I'll give it a shot next time when I have a few days off. Thanks for the infos.

Jens

QGis (and the manual) certainly is intimidating, whereas HexDraw is easy to get into.

However, with QGis, once you master the learning curve, things become easier. With HexDraw, some easy things are easy, and some other things that should be easy are as much effort as recreating the whole map. One example being changing the whole map's elevation late in the process.

William