RPGNow

Sunday, September 30, 2018

I Found My Mapping Program - Illwinter's Floorplan Generator (Win / OSX / Linux)


About 30 minutes of initial playtime with Illwinter's Floorplan Generator

Thanks for all of the feedback. I was presented with lots of mapping tools to explore and I will do so, but for now, I have found my dungeon mapping program - Illwinter's Floorplan Generator.

It hits a few sweet points for me.
  1. It works on OSX (and Windows and Linus too).
  2. Maps made with the core assets can be used commercially. Using "mod" assets, you'd need to confer with the creator(s). I haven't progressed that far. (https://steamcommunity.com/app/630900/discussions/0/1694920442953847793/)
  3. It's inexpensive. 7 bucks on Steam.
  4. It's easy to use and user-friendly (the map you see above I did in about 30 minutes, playing with various features)
Here's a list of features from the Illwinter's Floorplan Generator Steam Page:


Illwinter's Floorplan Generator is a grid-based dungeon and wilderness floorplan creator. The floorplan generator can be used to quickly draw and print an encounter floorplan for your favorite pen and paper roleplaying game. It is very quick and easy to create a simple floorplan, you just select what terrain type each square should be and the program fixes the rest. E.g. a cave wall next to a rocky ground will automatically create a jagged wall, but the same cave wall next to a marble floor would create a much smoother wall because this is likely to be an indoor room with polished walls.

  • About 50 different terrain types to choose from
  • Icons included for the most common objects, e.g. doors, stairs, tables, beds, trees, bushes, pentagrams
  • Color maps or old school black and white style
  • Adjacent terrains interact automatically to create jagged edges, smooth transitions and shadows when necessary
  • Random fractals used to create shapes for cave walls, rivers and other non regular terrains
  • Create a multi-page pdf with the dungeon divided into pages suitable for printing
  • Export dungeon as a single png suitable for roll20 and similar applications
  • Configurable square and paper sizes, (default is 1 inch squares on A4 pages)
  • Outdoor and dungeon shadows with configurable strength
  • Export to your favorite paint program for finishing touches
  • Import your own icons
  • Create new terrain types from imported images
  • Configurable grid, default is to not draw it on top of walls and with thicker lines between pages
  • Grid based, terrain is placed in squares or on square edges (icons can be placed and rotated freely)
  • Shortcuts to quickly put a random door, tree or bush in a square
  • Dungeon layout can be imported from a simple ASCII text file, like this http://www.illwinter.com/floorplan/ss/ascii.jpg
  • Create random dungeons automatically
  • Editor to create rules for your own random dungeon
  • Color dungeons can be converted to Black & White style dungeons automatically
  • Steam workshop support

Better mapping example. Not my work ;)

I have some ideas on the usage of the maps I'll be working on. More on that later.

Edit: I tweaked a bit and learned new features, like hiding secret doors for VTTS




3 comments:

  1. I made this free (if simple) mapping tool using Excel (for anyone that might be interested); video with link:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0P2uDtjLQc

    ReplyDelete
  2. That looks pretty cool - I've been looking for a way to quickly sketch out a map for Roll20 for my next campaign game, might have to give this a look :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Illwinter's Floorplan Generator is awesome! But just FYI - I'm the author of Mipui, a mapping tool that also satisfies your 4 requirements:
    1. It's web-based so it works on OSX (and Windows and Linux).
    2. Maps can be used commercially.
    3. It's free (and open-source).
    4. It's easy to use (in my humble opinion).

    I'm not saying my tool is better than Illwinter's, but for some use-cases it might be appropriate. For example, I could recreate a map similar to yours in just a few minutes:

    https://www.mipui.net/app/index.html?mid=mfu7ihytz0y

    ReplyDelete

Tenkar's Tavern is supported by various affiliate programs, including Amazon, RPGNow,
and Humble Bundle as well as Patreon. Your patronage is appreciated and helps keep the
lights on and the taps flowing. Your Humble Bartender, Tenkar

Blogs of Inspiration & Erudition