Battlefield Maps

For thise who have illustrated their battle reports with maps, can you tell me how you did the graphics?

Thanks,

Jeff

My maps are always pretty rough and ready and are meant to be indicative only. I do them in Visio but that's only because it's easily available. MS Paint would do just as well for the quality of map I produce.

I use MS Paint.

I use AutoRealm to make both battle and campaign maps. It is fully featured (icon library, fractal line drawing, object layering, etc.) and it is FREE. It can be found at www.autorealm.org.

Awesome resource! Thanks!

Hi Guys,

I have just read this thread, downloaded "AutoREALS" and can see the great potential of this programme. I have been having a play with the various settings and help files and was wondering if anyone can help me get started?

I just want to make a simple battlemap with some unit positions; where do you start?

Any help would be much appreciated.

It is pretty difficult to teach you AutoRealm via message board. If you want to make battle reports, then you have to create objects which depict terrain and troop elements. The terrain should be relativly simple. For woods, use the Circle icon to create an oval the right size and colour it green. You can even add tree icons. Hills can be made the same way, with concentric ovals indicating the elevations. Use the rectangle icon to create an element. You can use the text icon to add a name, and you can colour it, and rotate it.

Once you have made one element, use can use it as a template to make more. If it consists of a rectangle and text, you can control-click to select both and then click on the group icon. This combines the two objects into one and you can copy and paste new ones. You can then select the new element and easily change the text and/or colour.

That should get you started.

I've used it mainly for campaign maps. Here is one from our last fantasy campaign, showing combats to be resolved after movement has been completed:

Thanks Pavane,

I have sent you a private message of help if you wouldnt mind.

That campaign map is fantastic, how long did that take to produce?

I can bang them off pretty quickly now, say an evening. You can easily copy an existing map, as I did below, for a 4-player Punic War era campaign (Carthage, Rome, Gaul, Macedon).



I scanned the map and pasted it into AutoRealm. I then traced each province with the fractal line tool to make an object. Once all of the provinces were drawn, I delete the scanned map and I am left with the digital provinces which I can colour, border, name as I please. On this map, each province also shows the predominating terrain type (i.e Arable, Littoral, etc.) and the taxation value.

I created my own army icons by scanning an image, say a ship or soldier, and place it in a coloured rectangle. You can see a couple of test counters on the map below Sicily. Use the text tool to show the number of elements in the counter. I then group them into one icon that can easily be duplicated, the colour changed to the appropriate player, and the denomination changed. The counter can then be dragged anywhere on the map.

Awesome!!!

I use photoshop with it's layer-concept over photographes or self drawn maps. Very time-consuming...got to check out the "Autorealms" software instead!
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