OWM Suggestion Megathread

[patapolo]

I scoured the forums and I couldn't find a singular suggestion thread, so I decided to take it upon myself to make one for this program (which, is the answer to my mapping prayers, especially since there's been a bad streak of luck for pen and paper mapping programs, see Dungeonforge)

As for suggestion or two off the the top of my head:

- Have a sort of vector selecting tool (as in something that allows you to specifically select a particular section of a landmass/object, and deselect what you do not need from said landmass/object). An example of this would be getting the ship icon, and selecting half of it, and rotating it to make it seem like that it's sunk in the water.
-Be able to add custom objects from your own images into the collections for map icons (as in, if for example, you have a drawn symbol for a federation, and you want to put it on the map on a landmass to indicate that they own it)

I'll hopefully think of more as time goes on by, but in the meantime, leave your suggestions below so that the hopefully the OWM map crew can look over it.

[Kanchou]

I scoured the forums and I couldn't find a singular suggestion thread, so I decided to take it upon myself to make one for this program (which, is the answer to my mapping prayers, especially since there's been a bad streak of luck for pen and paper mapping programs, see Dungeonforge)

As for suggestion or two off the the top of my head:

- Have a sort of vector selecting tool (as in something that allows you to specifically select a particular section of a landmass/object, and deselect what you do not need from said landmass/object). An example of this would be getting the ship icon, and selecting half of it, and rotating it to make it seem like that it's sunk in the water.
-Be able to add custom objects from your own images into the collections for map icons (as in, if for example, you have a drawn symbol for a federation, and you want to put it on the map on a landmass to indicate that they own it)

I'll hopefully think of more as time goes on by, but in the meantime, leave your suggestions below so that the hopefully the OWM map crew can look over it.

Very glad to hear Other World Mapper is the kind of program you were looking for!

I made the thread "sticky" so others can give long term suggestions/feature requests such as these. Just as a note, small requests for additions can be added to the beta forums thread for that purpose and we'll try to add it to the program in one of the next releases.

On your suggestions:

1) The artwork/icons are just png's (or bmp's, tiffs, etc with our next release) so we don't modify them within the program (you could find the icon in OWM's folder and create a new modified icon from it if you wanted).
For the items drawn within Other World Mapper (i.e. landmass, region, etc), what did you have in mind? Right now you can use the partition tool to split items is that's what you mean.

2) If you mean adding your own artwork (your own "png" for instances) you can already do that manually by adding art folders inside OWM's program folder (the help document has a short tutorial). However, with the next release we will be adding an art managing tool to make it easier for you to select folders or files to create your own sets.
Is that what you meant?

Thank you! And please keep the feedback coming!

- Alejandro

[patapolo]

I scoured the forums and I couldn't find a singular suggestion thread, so I decided to take it upon myself to make one for this program (which, is the answer to my mapping prayers, especially since there's been a bad streak of luck for pen and paper mapping programs, see Dungeonforge)

As for suggestion or two off the the top of my head:

- Have a sort of vector selecting tool (as in something that allows you to specifically select a particular section of a landmass/object, and deselect what you do not need from said landmass/object). An example of this would be getting the ship icon, and selecting half of it, and rotating it to make it seem like that it's sunk in the water.
-Be able to add custom objects from your own images into the collections for map icons (as in, if for example, you have a drawn symbol for a federation, and you want to put it on the map on a landmass to indicate that they own it)

I'll hopefully think of more as time goes on by, but in the meantime, leave your suggestions below so that the hopefully the OWM map crew can look over it.

Very glad to hear Other World Mapper is the kind of program you were looking for!

I made the thread "sticky" so others can give long term suggestions/feature requests such as these. Just as a note, small requests for additions can be added to the beta forums thread for that purpose and we'll try to add it to the program in one of the next releases.

On your suggestions:

1) The artwork/icons are just png's (or bmp's, tiffs, etc with our next release) so we don't modify them within the program (you could find the icon in OWM's folder and create a new modified icon from it if you wanted).
For the items drawn within Other World Mapper (i.e. landmass, region, etc), what did you have in mind? Right now you can use the partition tool to split items is that's what you mean.

2) If you mean adding your own artwork (your own "png" for instances) you can already do that manually by adding art folders inside OWM's program folder (the help document has a short tutorial). However, with the next release we will be adding an art managing tool to make it easier for you to select folders or files to create your own sets.
Is that what you meant?

Thank you! And please keep the feedback coming!

- Alejandro

Thank you Alejandro for the sticky as well the feedback, I'm especially glad that you guys are working hard on this with the community to make it awesome

1)I messed around with the Partition and it worked akin to what I was asking for, so you guys are way ahead on me on that!

Also, as for what I have in mind, a select/deselect tool (akin to Paint Tool SAI where whenever you select something, it's highlighted a light purple color and whenever it's selected, the purple goes away and you the selection lines for it) would be useful if we wanted to work on a particular landmass without accidentally having it leak out to other parts of the map.

2) That is exactly what I meant, having a sort of art asset management tool would be amazing, especially in-case you want to add some assets, but don't want to bugger up all the file names with core files and mess everything up.

In the time since the last post or so, I've thought some more ideas(not sure if they'd be applicable here or not), involving the map layering system: possibly having more layering options like the ability to "flatten" a layer down (because having 50 or so layers active seems to really affect performance for larger maps, half the time I'm afraid the program will crash if I edit a layer then). Also, a "merged" layer option would be good as well, so that a particular set of assets is grouped.

Movement options between layers in the layers menu would also be helpful, as sometimes when I put down an asset like a world compass, it sometimes GOES under, and I have to fish for the pixel that'll let me get the right-click so that I can pull it forward.

Thank you for everything!

[Kanchou]

Thank you Alejandro for the sticky as well the feedback, I'm especially glad that you guys are working hard on this with the community to make it awesome

1)I messed around with the Partition and it worked akin to what I was asking for, so you guys are way ahead on me on that!

Also, as for what I have in mind, a select/deselect tool (akin to Paint Tool SAI where whenever you select something, it's highlighted a light purple color and whenever it's selected, the purple goes away and you the selection lines for it) would be useful if we wanted to work on a particular landmass without accidentally having it leak out to other parts of the map.

2) That is exactly what I meant, having a sort of art asset management tool would be amazing, especially in-case you want to add some assets, but don't want to bugger up all the file names with core files and mess everything up.

In the time since the last post or so, I've thought some more ideas(not sure if they'd be applicable here or not), involving the map layering system: possibly having more layering options like the ability to "flatten" a layer down (because having 50 or so layers active seems to really affect performance for larger maps, half the time I'm afraid the program will crash if I edit a layer then). Also, a "merged" layer option would be good as well, so that a particular set of assets is grouped.

Movement options between layers in the layers menu would also be helpful, as sometimes when I put down an asset like a world compass, it sometimes GOES under, and I have to fish for the pixel that'll let me get the right-click so that I can pull it forward.

Thank you for everything!

Hello!

Sorry for the late reply, we are getting into Beta 3 crunch time now

1) I understand now! That makes a lot of sense, particularly when adding symbols/features. We'll try to fit it into the near time schedule.

2) The 50+ layers were they all features/symbols? We should be able to add an option to merge symbols into one and have an option them to un-merge them. Maybe we can tie that in with the group/ungroup.
Also, can you send me that map? We've been working on improving performance for beta 3 so I'd like to have another benchmark.
acanosa@threemindssoftware.com

3) You can select specific features from the layers window and You can move the layer order from the layers window dragging up and down within the same group/category.
We may also look into some highlight option so it's easier to tell what you are about to select.

Thank you for your feedback!

- Alejandro

[patapolo]

Thank you Alejandro for the sticky as well the feedback, I'm especially glad that you guys are working hard on this with the community to make it awesome

1)I messed around with the Partition and it worked akin to what I was asking for, so you guys are way ahead on me on that!

Also, as for what I have in mind, a select/deselect tool (akin to Paint Tool SAI where whenever you select something, it's highlighted a light purple color and whenever it's selected, the purple goes away and you the selection lines for it) would be useful if we wanted to work on a particular landmass without accidentally having it leak out to other parts of the map.

2) That is exactly what I meant, having a sort of art asset management tool would be amazing, especially in-case you want to add some assets, but don't want to bugger up all the file names with core files and mess everything up.

In the time since the last post or so, I've thought some more ideas(not sure if they'd be applicable here or not), involving the map layering system: possibly having more layering options like the ability to "flatten" a layer down (because having 50 or so layers active seems to really affect performance for larger maps, half the time I'm afraid the program will crash if I edit a layer then). Also, a "merged" layer option would be good as well, so that a particular set of assets is grouped.

Movement options between layers in the layers menu would also be helpful, as sometimes when I put down an asset like a world compass, it sometimes GOES under, and I have to fish for the pixel that'll let me get the right-click so that I can pull it forward.

Thank you for everything!

Hello!

Sorry for the late reply, we are getting into Beta 3 crunch time now

1) I understand now! That makes a lot of sense, particularly when adding symbols/features. We'll try to fit it into the near time schedule.

2) The 50+ layers were they all features/symbols? We should be able to add an option to merge symbols into one and have an option them to un-merge them. Maybe we can tie that in with the group/ungroup.
Also, can you send me that map? We've been working on improving performance for beta 3 so I'd like to have another benchmark.
acanosa@threemindssoftware.com

3) You can select specific features from the layers window and You can move the layer order from the layers window dragging up and down within the same group/category.
We may also look into some highlight option so it's easier to tell what you are about to select.

Thank you for your feedback!

- Alejandro

Not a problem, it's understandable that you'd be busy during crunch time, otherwise it wouldn't be much of a crunch time, wouldn't it ?

But yeah, I am so thankful for all the responses towards the ideas, I'm loving that I'm helping this program become even better and better! Keep up the good work, especially on those March Update videos (which do also double as a pseudo-tutorial on the features that might not be too apparent in the program).

I'll send the copy of the world map I have ASAP, hope it helps!

[Kanchou]

Not a problem, it's understandable that you'd be busy during crunch time, otherwise it wouldn't be much of a crunch time, wouldn't it ?

But yeah, I am so thankful for all the responses towards the ideas, I'm loving that I'm helping this program become even better and better! Keep up the good work, especially on those March Update videos (which do also double as a pseudo-tutorial on the features that might not be too apparent in the program).

I'll send the copy of the world map I have ASAP, hope it helps!

Thank you!

Glad you liked the videos . Stephanie and Katie should be making more update/tutorial videos as we get pass the Beta 3 mad week and get some sleep.

As I wrote back via email, we are using the map to test performance improvements for Beta 3. There are some that will be a part of Beta 3 and some that may need to wait if we have issues with them during regression testing. Either way, we will be spending quite a bit of time working on performance improvements so V1.0 handles faster.

Thanks!!

- Alejandro

[phoenix1701@gmail.com]

Hey all! Chiming in here with my own feature request. Let me know if there's already a way to do this, but I couldn't find one.

Many of the maps showcased on Kickstarter (as well as the maps I want to create) have forests, mountain ranges, etc. created using symbols. For example, take this (very hastily made) map:



To create the mountain range in the east, I switched the Feature tool placement mode to "Scatter", then selected each individual mountain symbol, scattered a few of those on the map, and then moved on to the next one, trying to estimate about how many symbols I'd end up with and place down only enough symbols of any one type to make up the appropriate fraction of the total. I had to do it this way for two reasons: the "fill path" mode for the Feature tool (which is what I'd rather have used, because it would let me adjust the boundaries of the mountains later) only allows one symbol to be instantiated on the map, and then only in a tile or brick formation (not a random scatter).

So here's my feature request: make it possible to paint feature sets onto the map such that a symbol within the set will be chosen at random each time one is added, and extend that functionality along with the "scatter" placement option to the "fill path" mode.

Here are the options I suggest providing for symbol set placement:

• List of included symbols
• Opacity
• Min and max scale (uniformly distributed at random for each symbol drawn)
• Min and max rotation angle (uniformly distributed at random for each symbol drawn)
• Flip horizontal/vertical
• Spacing (radius within which the next symbol will be drawn -- consider using Bridson’s algorithm for Poisson-disc sampling here)
• Symbol picker distribution (options are "uniform" or "normal" -- uniform picks all symbols with equal probability, normal uses a normal distribution to bias towards symbols in the middle of the list, so if your symbols are arranged from largest to smallest, you'll get mostly medium-sized mountains with a few rare Everests and molehills)

These options could also apply when using the "fill path" mode if more than one symbol was chosen.

What do you think?

[Kanchou]

To create the mountain range in the east, I switched the Feature tool placement mode to "Scatter", then selected each individual mountain symbol, scattered a few of those on the map, and then moved on to the next one, trying to estimate about how many symbols I'd end up with and place down only enough symbols of any one type to make up the appropriate fraction of the total. I had to do it this way for two reasons: the "fill path" mode for the Feature tool (which is what I'd rather have used, because it would let me adjust the boundaries of the mountains later) only allows one symbol to be instantiated on the map, and then only in a tile or brick formation (not a random scatter).

So here's my feature request: make it possible to paint feature sets onto the map such that a symbol within the set will be chosen at random each time one is added, and extend that functionality along with the "scatter" placement option to the "fill path" mode.

Here are the options I suggest providing for symbol set placement:

• List of included symbols
• Opacity
• Min and max scale (uniformly distributed at random for each symbol drawn)
• Min and max rotation angle (uniformly distributed at random for each symbol drawn)
• Flip horizontal/vertical
• Spacing (radius within which the next symbol will be drawn -- consider using Bridson’s algorithm for Poisson-disc sampling here)
• Symbol picker distribution (options are "uniform" or "normal" -- uniform picks all symbols with equal probability, normal uses a normal distribution to bias towards symbols in the middle of the list, so if your symbols are arranged from largest to smallest, you'll get mostly medium-sized mountains with a few rare Everests and molehills)

These options could also apply when using the "fill path" mode if more than one symbol was chosen.

What do you think?

I think you read our minds ;P. We setup the feature tool patterns and the fill feature tool so we could do exactly that with a future change. We've been trying to balance what we promised with the Kickstarter vs. additional features that would make Other World Mapper more user friendly (like the UI rework we did between Alpha and Beta). Functionality beyond the Kickstarter sets us back (we've had a few complaints about feature creep - though we deemed those a necessity after some really good feedback we got from our alpha/early beta backers).

There are several features from the campaign that would probably have less of a priority than this, but the campaign text holds us to our word .

So I can tell you we are planning to add that functionality, but I cannot confirm where that would fit into the schedule at this time.

The Poisson-disc sampling is a very good suggestion! That's not something we had planned, so I'm very happy that you mentioned it and makes me think we could have the random algorithm being an option too so you can choose between a few different ones.

Please keep the awesome feedback! Everyone's suggestions have already made OWM a lot better than it would have otherwise been.

Thank you!!

- Alejandro

[phoenix1701@gmail.com]

Thanks Alejandro! I'm really glad to hear that this is on the roadmap, and I totally understand about trying to balance priorities with the stated campaign goals. Thanks to you, Stephanie, and Katie for an excellent app that seems to only be getting better.