Mapmaker

[rickosborne]

It would be really nice if we had some procedural way of generating map graphics, so we have one fewer set of assets to manage.

I'm thinking something like old-school text-graphics adventure games.

1. Use ASCII art to describe your layout. a. Required: outside layouts with terrain b. Required: indoor layouts with walls & doors c. Required: machines & points of interest d. Optional: path waypoints
2. Include a Key which tells the renderer which tiles to use for which symbols.
3. Vectorize it to SVG.

This is not a small project, unless we can find some amazing prior work, so it may not be appropriate for 1.0.

[rickosborne]

http://potrace.sourceforge.net/

Might be an option

[rickosborne]

If this is going to be coded by hand, here are some thoughts:

• Different tile types have different shape profiles. Grass wants to be round, while walls want to be rectilinear.
• Different tile types have different layering profiles. Buildings don't affect the shape of the ground, machines don't affect the shape of the grass, etc.
• The Key would probably need some way of setting attributes on certain tile types. This building is rotated by this much, this POI is in this color using this symbol, etc.

[rickosborne]

http://autotrace.sourceforge.net/

another option