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Fractal Mapper 9
One of these days, Ed is bound to be sitting there twiddling his thumbs and not knowing what to do, and when those days come, I'm certain he's going to say, "It's time to make FM9." So I thought maybe we could help him by getting a thread topic going here that tells him what we'd like FM9 to do.
Threads like this are one of the things that forums do best, because they pocket the topic at a single location. This thread also has another potential benefit: Some of us may have things that we want FM8 to do that it actually does already. When that happens, we can give each other advice.
1. Improve Special Effects controls
The special effects are great but a bit underdeveloped. The sliders are OK, but there ought to be a place where a numerical value can be entered, so that one can set precisely the same degrees of scale, brightness, intensity, etc., for various objects on various layers. Getting the necessary precision is difficult to impossible when sliders are the only tool for making settings.
2. Improve Special Effects range
There are several areas where there simply is too little range behind the sliders on the special effects. Examples: Textures, when used with dark colors, often barely show up on paper, even when the highest intensity is used and printing is done with a very high quality color laser printer. When using fill effects on small objects, the scale can't be reduced sufficiently. This is a big problem when making raster symbols with FM8. When making a 5x5 foot object, we often have to open a 25x25 foot sheet just to be able to scale down the fill of the object properly. One then has to cut a lot of white space off afterward in the PNG export file.
3. Add a blend special effect
This even could be an additional option under blur. When two adjacent objects of different color are marked, this effect would create a smooth transitional blend between those colors.
4. Clean up the blur effect.
Blur often produces the cleanest result with Display Quality set to Highest/Special Effects Low Res. Unfortunately, thzis setting often is too low in quality for other objects in a map. When bounced up to Special Effects - Medium Res, the blurred objects often tend to begin pixelating. When moved farther up to Special Effects - High Res, foreign object effects with sharp, non-blurred edges often appear. (I'm sending Ed a sample of these phenomena.)
5. Add transparency to the ability of Fill styles.
PNG fills with transparent elements appear with the transparent parts black. Transparency should be supported in fills. One can work around this problem to a certain degree by creating new textures, but that solution is very limited. This is the only area where I think that Dundjinni™ comes out ahead of FM8.
6. Connecting symbols would be great.
Since switching a year and a half ago from CC3 to FM8, I've never been able to miss CC3 at all, but connecting symbols on raster level are one CC3 feature I miss dearly. They're fantastic for making roads, paths, rivers, even railroad tracks, etc. Of course, I realize that may be impossible within Fractal Mapper's program framework to do that. It might be a property taken from the FastCAD engine that CC3 uses. In that case, forget the suggestion. The CAD engine bogs CC3 down. We don't need that in FM9.
7. Fractalization needs more range.
I should be able to make long, relatively thin filled fractal polygons that serve as rivers, roads, etc., and add an elemental of fractalization to them, but even at the setting 1, their proportions become unbelievably distorted.
8. How about the ability to draw good, raster-filled, fractalized lines?
Threads like this are one of the things that forums do best, because they pocket the topic at a single location. This thread also has another potential benefit: Some of us may have things that we want FM8 to do that it actually does already. When that happens, we can give each other advice.
1. Improve Special Effects controls
The special effects are great but a bit underdeveloped. The sliders are OK, but there ought to be a place where a numerical value can be entered, so that one can set precisely the same degrees of scale, brightness, intensity, etc., for various objects on various layers. Getting the necessary precision is difficult to impossible when sliders are the only tool for making settings.
2. Improve Special Effects range
There are several areas where there simply is too little range behind the sliders on the special effects. Examples: Textures, when used with dark colors, often barely show up on paper, even when the highest intensity is used and printing is done with a very high quality color laser printer. When using fill effects on small objects, the scale can't be reduced sufficiently. This is a big problem when making raster symbols with FM8. When making a 5x5 foot object, we often have to open a 25x25 foot sheet just to be able to scale down the fill of the object properly. One then has to cut a lot of white space off afterward in the PNG export file.
3. Add a blend special effect
This even could be an additional option under blur. When two adjacent objects of different color are marked, this effect would create a smooth transitional blend between those colors.
4. Clean up the blur effect.
Blur often produces the cleanest result with Display Quality set to Highest/Special Effects Low Res. Unfortunately, thzis setting often is too low in quality for other objects in a map. When bounced up to Special Effects - Medium Res, the blurred objects often tend to begin pixelating. When moved farther up to Special Effects - High Res, foreign object effects with sharp, non-blurred edges often appear. (I'm sending Ed a sample of these phenomena.)
5. Add transparency to the ability of Fill styles.
PNG fills with transparent elements appear with the transparent parts black. Transparency should be supported in fills. One can work around this problem to a certain degree by creating new textures, but that solution is very limited. This is the only area where I think that Dundjinni™ comes out ahead of FM8.
6. Connecting symbols would be great.
Since switching a year and a half ago from CC3 to FM8, I've never been able to miss CC3 at all, but connecting symbols on raster level are one CC3 feature I miss dearly. They're fantastic for making roads, paths, rivers, even railroad tracks, etc. Of course, I realize that may be impossible within Fractal Mapper's program framework to do that. It might be a property taken from the FastCAD engine that CC3 uses. In that case, forget the suggestion. The CAD engine bogs CC3 down. We don't need that in FM9.
7. Fractalization needs more range.
I should be able to make long, relatively thin filled fractal polygons that serve as rivers, roads, etc., and add an elemental of fractalization to them, but even at the setting 1, their proportions become unbelievably distorted.
8. How about the ability to draw good, raster-filled, fractalized lines?
Comments
It's almost like you're sitting here in the office!
It'll probably be a year at least before work on FM9 starts, but I'm always open to ideas.
1. Give us a chance to save the color palettes that we make in the palette bar at the bottom of the screen. Having to remake a custom color bar is akin to an acute case of hemmorhoids. An XML file like EffectsStyle.xml would be a great improvement.
2. Save the Map/Display Quality settings when closing FM8, rather than constantly switching back to Fast with low resolution special effects. That setting worked rather well with vector maps but it's inadequate for raster maps, which is the only kind I make. The complete setback to Fast with low resolution special effects happens only when restarting FM8. When switching from one map to another or opening a new one, the quality setting remains unchanged, but the special effects resolution always reverts to low. This is a nuisance. On a substantial raster map, it can take a considerable amount of time to switch the special effects resolution back where one wants it from where FM8 wants it. That's even the case with 64-bit Windows and 8 GB memory.
Funny that Mark should post this topic, as I've been reviewing my FM wishlist. I really like the software, the map quality, and the gentle learning curve. But there are some showstoppers that really prevent me from using it exclusively:
1. Ortho mode - I need to draw a line whose endpoint is exactly 0 or 90 degrees relative to the point of origin. It's next to impossible to draw a long horizontal line with endpoints at the same "y" coordinate.
2. Coordinate entry - It would be great to input exact coordinates to ensure precision size. If I need a box of 14 x 12 with a bottom left corner at coordinates (x,y), I don't know how to do it.
3. Attach mode - If I'm making a map grid, I'd like to attach each gridline to the inside edge of the map border, but without an attach mode or the ability to input coordinates, I can't seem to accomplish this.
4. Colour palette - I second Mark's suggestion. It would be great if there was a way to save colour palettes as an external file that I could load up or attach to a specific map.
5. Layer settings - similar to an external colour palette, it would be great to save layer settings externally so that when I create a new template, I can save the layer names, order, and settings with it.
I apologise if any of these functions are already available - I fully submit to public flogging if I'm just being oblivious. :?
However, on the off-chance that I'm not being oblivious, I think these are great additions. I love how FM lets me generate great-looking maps fast, and I love the goblinAPI and IP integration even more. Now if I could just get some precision, I'd be ready to make the switch from CCx complete.
Cheers,
Great suggestions. Let me second all of them. It's also great to see you on board here. Another thing that Fractal Mapper needs is more very accomplished cartographers like you using it.
Here's another batch of wishlist items from my earlier FM8 notes. As before, if these functions are already available, please let me know and accept my apologies for cluttering the forum :roll:
1. Include a map preview in the File | Open dialogue box.
2. Provide visible guidelines when resizing lines, boxes, or polygons (i.e., show the line or edge as you're moving the mouse).
3. Related to that, show an outline of a symbol before placing it.
4. Constrain grid within a defined border as opposed to the entire map (e.g., when I apply a grid, displays on top of any border I've drawn around the map area).
5. Ability to input line width as a number or percentage of map scale.
6. Ability to paste objects between maps, maintaining scale (i.e., I want to open two FM sessions and paste objects from one to the other).
7. Ability to edit layer names via keyboard shortcut in the Layer Settings dialogue (e.g., use F2 instead of double-clicking). Admittedly, this is a nit-pick, but seems there should be an easier way to do this.
8. Prevent drop-down selections from changing when arrow keys are used. Try this: select a layer from the layer selection drop-down. Select an object with the mouse, then use the arrow keys to move that object. Note that the current layer is different from what you selected. Not a major issue, but you need to reselect the desired layer before placing another object. Just an extra step that I'd like to get rid of.
I realise that, individually, these are minor items. But from a UI standpoint, it would make map creation a bit faster and (for me at least) less error prone. Thanks for reading.
Cheers,
1) When changing the size of map symbols there should be an option to lock the aspect ratio (perhaps even set on by default). The biggest spot for this is when you first place a map symbol. I'd really like to draw out the approximate size of the symbol without distorting it. Right now I place the symbol and then resize it as a two step process.
2) Ability to save and toggle through layer states (visible/selectable/secret) with fast keys. I frequently find myself making all but one layer unselectable to better edit complex maps. The ability to toggle back and forth with the press of a F# button, instead of going to the layer menu each time would be a great time saver.
3) Fractal line 2.0. In my experience, fractal lines don't scale as expected when looking at a map at different zooms. Also, you can only use colors with them, not fills. I'd like to see a new tool, that is essentially a fractal corridor. I'd have the midpoint of the corridor designated by the fractal line and allow the user to designate a thickness (in whatever units the map is in). An additional slider for this tool could be width roughness. At the far left the corridor is always equally wide. At the far right both sides of the corridor would deviate significantly from the midpoint so the width would change along the line. In my mind this would be a great river tool.
I'll add more as I continue to play with this program.
Do you know how the file default.xml works? If the symbol you are using is scaled properly, there should be no need to resize it at all, unless of course you're doing something unusual with it.
2) I'd also like to see some way of commenting an object. This would be similar to a secret text layer, except it isn't something that is ever visible on the map and it would be tied to an existing object. When you right click on an object, one of the options could be comment. This would pull up a pop-up window that lets you type in a bit of text. For example, I make a city map in my game. The PCs go to a tavern in the city and using inspiration pad pro I name it the "chicken and chicken" tavern. I want to remember this for the next game, so I right click on the building, select comment and type in 'chicken and chicken tavern: pcs got into a bar fight here.' This would ideally be stored in a comment database which could be read from within fractal mapper so you could see all the comments in a (maybe searchable) list. By double clicking on a comment in the database it would select the object that comment is tied to in the fractal map so I could find it again easily.
The problems with not being anle to see the name of a symbol have been mentioned in our PDFs, but not here on this forum yet. Thanks for adding it!
http://www.nbos.com/nox/index.php?action=1001&id=294
This plug-in is useful, and it seems to work well. But it isn't the issue to which we were referring. In the graphical symbol selection menu in the lower left part of the screen, one sees only the symbol itself. It would be very useful if there was a way to see the symbol name there. In the small thumbnail of the raster symbols shown there, one often has trouble identifying the correct symbol.
To demonstrate the shortcomings, I made a quick map with scale dimensions of 5760 x 4500 feet. It has a 100 foot grid. It's filed with grass, and it has the same structure twice and the same river twice. The complete map looks like this:
For good raster mapping, we find that the weakest elements are the algorithms and controls for:
1. All special effects.
2. The Fractal Factor.
Starting with the last, the control is exactly the right one, a spinner, but the programmed latitude is all wrong. A raster mapper should - as an example - be able to draw a river on a large scale map, perhaps as a fractal polygon, and then fractalize it. The current algorithm, however, even at a factor of 1, will fractalize such a river on a map of larger scale all out of proportion, making the fractalization useless. Instead of the scale of 1 to 10, the spinner needs a scale of 1 to 100, with the 1 to 10 or 1 to 20 part of the range offering a lot of latitude between what now is 0 and 1.
The following screen shot illustrates the problem when one puts on a fractal factor to get a good fractalized shoreline. The fractal algorithm can't deal properly with an object as (relatively) small as this river, less than 50 scale feet wide, within a map 5760 feet wide. It distorts the width of the river to the extent one might expect from a fractal factor of 10, not of 1.
The special effects have the same type of problem. Let's start with the slider control for Scale. It's the wrong tool for precise work. It needs a spinner, like Fractal Factor has, with a range of 1 to 100 that allows a lot of latitude between what now is 0 and the first slider marking. In the following screen shot, we have two rectangles filled with cobblestone. To the left the scale is set to 0, that is, as far left as is possible. The cobblestone to the right is at the first position to the right of zero that the mouse can activate (not the first marked position). There is an extreme difference in scale here, but no latitude available to allow us to set the scale somewhere between.
The final screen shot shows two other special effect shortcomings:
It has exactly the same building and the same river twice. The upper river was given a Feather of 1. It pixilated beyond recognition. The left building was given a shadow. It pixilated lightly, blurring details.
Before there a lot of misunderstandings: This isn't a letter of complaint. I've seldom been as happy with a program as I am with FM8, and that goes for the rest of our group too.
I also am not trying to say that these issues are more important than points that others (or even I) have made in other postings on this thread.
Rather, I can see that FM8 almost is able to produce - with all the advantages of a cartographic program - what others draw painstakingly with Adobe Photo Shop, the GIMP, Paint.NET, etc. You'll have to do a lot of looking to find another cartographic program that can produce the razor sharp images on the tight and close zoom-ins made on a raster map more than a scale mile wide, as shown above.
My point is that it would be great to see FM9 improve these controls so that they can go the rest of the way.
Happy weekend!
The key to a self-affine fractal would be an additional sliding bar for a correlation length. Up until the correlation length, the self-affine fractal follows the current algorithm. For longer length scales, its deviations from the norm saturates. I do a lot of work with self-affine fractals in my PhD work. They do a very good job of describing rough features that, more or less, follow a specified edge. The amount of roughness can be tuned by fractal dimension and the 'more or less' can be tuned by correlation length.
I am not happy with the sharp line breaks in the fractal line feature. The sharply angled breaks do not look well for something like a river or coastline. What I am currently doing is creating the fractalized feature on a temporary layer with clearly visible colors like white background & bright red or fuchsia line. I then go to the finish layer I will be using, i.e. 'water' and trace it with a spline curve line, appropriately colored and proximity snap-to option enabled. If the line is sufficiently short & I can zoom in close enough to pick out most details as I am laying down the trace points over the fractal angle breaks, the next step goes fairly quickly. I select the feature/object I am working with, set the transparency to light/moderate so I can see what I am working with. I then add or delete nodes as required, zooming in to an appropriate detail level. In the end (just in case I make a mistake) rather than deleting the temporary base layer, I simply make that layer invisible & set the finish layer to full opacity.
I hope what I am trying to accomplish is clear?
p.s. - Amen to the 64 bit version! I am hoping that if that came to be a reality, it would mean there could be more nodes within a given objects line?
I would love to see a bit more featureful GoblinAPI. The two things that come to my mind (Both of which have came about as I try to tweak the Random City Tool to allow more variation without having to have 15 different versions of it for different races and sizes):
1: A way to set Tool Options for Custom Tools; i.e. For the Random City Tool, I could make it show a dropbox for city size and City Race (sLang) and by default it would be Random and Danish, but I could set it for maybe always creating a size 3 city and use Elvish names
2: Some way to pass information between scripts. One script brings up a UI that allows you to set certain variables, then a customtool can access the variables set in the UI.
And a third little one that popped into my head as I type this that may already be possible I just haven't looked into it yet: the ability to select a tool by name in script... so you run the UI that customizes the tool, and it auto selects that tool to boot...
Know what else would be nice? Touch screen support.
Again, at least 3 years overdue.
P.S., FM really rocked circa 2007!
I couldn't agree less. I think the interface is excellent.
??? My wheel always works. It sounds like the problem is local.
That's correct, but I wouldn't put this near the top of a suggested improvements list that I might make.
That certainly is an improvement that should be made.
I wouldn't take it away from anyone who wants it, but I wouldn't use it myself.
FM8 is about six years old now, so I think it's reasonable to say that FM9 is due ... and Ed Diana has said that it's on the boards. I can't quite agree that it's overdue. However, if much needed improvements in special effects are included in FM9, I will be quite eager to get my hands on it.
Compared to all of the other cartographic programs that I've tried, FM8 still really rocks for me.
I thought this might have been mentioned elsewhere (perhaps on a different thread?), so please forgive me if I'm being repetitive. I have a bunch of texture fills (forests, marsh, desert, hills) that would look GREAT, but they're transparent PNGs that don't display properly in FM.
Cheers,
That's a good point. We're (the three of us who map for the Vintyri Project) putting together our own suggestion list for FM9, and that definitely is one of the items on our list. FM8 supports alpha channel PNG transparency in symbols but not in fill patterns, which certainly is a shortcoming.
Precisely - thanks for clarifying my point. It's the fill pattern support I'm looking for. The forest texture in the image below is what I'm after:
Cheers,
I still want alpha channel transparency for fill patterns, but FM8 can give you the effect you want already:
1) Put the forest fill pattern behind the other objects.
2) Activate only the object with the fill pattern.
3) Use the transparency slider at the bottom right of the screen to set the desired transparency.
In addition, if you have a fill (texture) that you want to be transparent and veiling some objects but not others, you can:
1) Put the objects that shouldn't be veiled in front of the fill pattern object.
2) Put the objects that should be veiled behind the fill pattern object.
3) Activate only the object with the fill pattern.
4) Use the transparency slider at the bottom right of the screen to set the desired transparency.
We've found that these techniques are very useful for blending together different landscape fills. We tend to use this transparency method together with the feather technique under the Blur special effect.
However, these techniques still aren't a substitute for PNG alpha channel transparency in fill patterns. They give one still more versatility and also allow one to use free 3rd party alpha channel transparent textures that óther cartographic programs can process properly but FM8 can't.
Thanks, Mark - I'll try your suggestions and see what I can come up with.
While we're on the subject of FM9, here are a few more feature suggestions (in case Ed isn't feeling challenged):
UPDATE - I realize that the "Effects Styles" I'm asking for are essentially Custom Tools. Maybe a better way to ask this is can FMScript handle special effects (e.g., Blur, Texture, Fill Style, etc.)? Any examples we can crib from?
I might be misunderstanding you, but it seems to me that you can do that simply with the scroll bars on the bottom and right of the FM8 window.
This would be a good addition. One can achieve that to a certain extent by copying the original shape, inserting it and then changing the size of the copy with Ctrl+Q or the menu options Actions/Scale, but the duplicate never quite has the size proportions that one is seeking.
Are you running the current version 8.10f, Build 1380? If so, and if I'm understanding you correctly, you can do just that with the Effects Styles box upper right on the screen.
You're right - that's the functionality I want, but not the interface. The scrollbars are cumbersome and imprecise for panning. Actually, the pan tool in The Keep is exactly what I'm looking for.
You're right - Effects Styles does what I described. Too bad I wasn't clear. Effects Styles apply effects consistently to existing objects - I think what I'm actually asking for is a combined version of Custom Tools and Effects Styles, so that the effects are applied as I'm creating the object. Also, I'd want it to incorporate colour, line style, fractal factor, and layer as properties. Bonus points if you can export the Tool to share as a resource.
Cheers,
I've seen the mirror image tool, but it doesn't work with imported png images.
USER FRIENDLY!!
I am not a draftsman nor a cartographer, I am merely a lowly GM trying to create my own maps, and I find nearly everything to be counterintuitive. I don't need a tutorial, I need a tutor. The tutorials tend to act as though you have some sort of background information that I never seem to possess. Every single thing I have attempted has been difficult, and hassle filled.
I am told by the friend who recommended this that the other programs are worse. At this point, I am too scared to find out.
I am sure I have had other things I have cussed out, but they do not come to mind. All of this said, I have had some success using the program, but every step of the way has been a battle. I literally cannot draw a straight line with a ruler, so freehand is out. My skills run towards mathematics and chemistry. Even little things as to why you can zoom out with a right click, but must select a tool to zoom back in. I had to ask my friend how to zoom back in. I know what I want, but I never seem to be able to find the right menu on my own. For the record, I use statistical analysis software all the time, and never have this issue. Maybe I don't know enough about drafting or cartography, but for this use, should I need to?
I don't know.