"Custom Map Making Tutorial (Free!)" Topic

Our club has been making custom maps to run historical campaigns ranging from the Punic Wars to the American Civil War and beyond. We use…wait for it…Microsoft Paint! If you own any PC you have the Paint program on it, and this week we put together a free video tutorial showing step-by-step how to maximize Paint's limited capabilities to make really sharp maps. We use these for historical gaming, but there's no reason you couldn't do fantasy or RPG maps. To be totally clear--MS Paint is NOT the ideal software for map making. Not even close. But it is free and idiot-proof. We've made some really awesome maps with it for wargaming over the years.

YouTube link

Enjoyed it.

ZOMG If you have any intention of making more than one map of this sort, for pity's sake, don't use Paint. The GIMP is free and as the presenter notes, you can make the map in 1/10th the time using layers and opacity.

If you own any PC you have the Paint program on it,

Not if it runs Linux.

Thank you for bringing this.

While the GIMP is more powerful and probably a better choice, this is dead simple. Nice quick tutorial, thanks.

Impressive.

My list of Useful Wargaming Software Links.

For making Maps I use MappingBoard

Hope it helps.

As always, comments are appreciated.

Take care

Andy

Apologies for linking to another game site, but ConSimWorld has a good Boardgaming Maps subject: link There are a lot of very useful links at the top of the page.

Thanks very much for posting the video (and I've subscribed now too). Very useful, and I like that style of map too. However, as someone referred to it earlier I'd probably use GIMP for this because of the layer functions.

That said I'd also endorse the use of MappingBoard, which is a quick and simple programme, particularly for making battlefield maps (e.g. when writing AARs).

Cheers WW

Very cool video.

Finally watched it, and it was interesting, even if I'll never use MS Paint for something like this. PS or AI are just so much easier.

I did like the color listing, which was very useful, and the very simple approach to making woods more than solid blobs of dark green.

Question for the peanut gallery: if you were doing woods with tree art, do you prefer front views of trees or top views?

link

Excellent video – very informative.

Is there a similar tutorial for creating maps with GIMP?