There are a lot of different ways out there to make maps. After looking at a number of them, and trying a few, I finally made my first set of world maps for Kamirell. I ended up using Wonderdraft, but I'll go through my thoughts on some of the other options, as well as what it is that I think of Wonderdraft.
Firstly, after doing some preliminary research, I had it narrowed down to a few different programs. Namely, Wonderdraft, Azgaar's, Campaign Cartographer, AutoREALM and Inkarnate. Inkarnate, however, was unfortunately never really a serious consideration, because while to does appear to work very well, and could almost certainly have gotten the job done for me, issues with it's terms of service ruled it out for me. While, under that paid version you can retain ownership of your produced maps, the fact that there's any situation where they might just claim ownership make this one a no for me.
Additionally, I will note here that just making the maps yourself, in something like GIMP or Photoshop is a fantastic option, however I am very much not an artistically inclined person, so I'm not going to be addressing that option further. However, if you feel like it's something you'd like to try, it's certainly the best option in terms of being able to customize the map to be exactly as you would like it.
AutoREALM is a pretty awesome little program which is open source, and that's a massive plus for me, but unfortunately it stopped being maintained about eight years ago, and while it still runs, it is extremely buggy and I just wasn't able to use it effectively because of that. Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator is an incredible option, and if you want to get some quick inspiration, then there's no problem. However actually utilizing it to create more sculpted worlds when you already have an idea of what you want comes with a pretty steep learning curve, and for right now I simply wanted to get something together that I can just start using. So as much as I liked it, Azgaar's was out too.
This brings us to our primary two competitors: Wonderdraft and Campaign Cartographer. And really it just came down to watching some clips of them in use, as well as the styles of maps produced. (and yes, I realize they options support custom assets, but I'm definitely no artist, and I didn't feel like spending ages finding a custom asset set someone else had already made) So, while I definitely have nothing particularly negative to say about Campaign Cartographer, I've decided to go with Wonderdraft, at least for now.
All that being said, while I'm definitely happy with my decision, there are also some fairly confusing areas where Wonderdraft seems to fall short. What I refer to as confusing there, however, is not that it's confusing to use Wonderdraft, but more so that it is confusing as to why some extremely basic, and simple, mechanics are outright missing. For example, using ctrl+c and ctrl+v to copy and paste. Instead, you have to got to the selector tool, then go to a side panel where you can click cut, copy, past, etc. Additionally, once a landmass is selected, you cannot resize it without distorting it. There is no way to lock the aspect ratio when resizing a selection. And finally, there is no way to have two maps open at the same time, even in separate instances, and definitely no easy way to copy and paste between them. While there may be solutions to some of these problems, some light Googling did not reveal them.
Despite the problems listed in the last paragraph, among a few others, I do believe that Wonderdraft is a pretty solid program, and I will certainly continue to use it to for the time being. If anyone reading this had any suggestions for alternative tools, better ways to use Wonderdraft or just additional tips for map making, please feel free to add them to the project comment section.
- Michael