Fantasy Map Icons

[Johnny Cosmo]

After hand-drawing numerous maps of my main continent, I have finally created a nice, realistic land-mass. I scanned it and traced it, tinkered around with the colours and textures, and am now looking for some free fantasy map icons that I can load into my image editor and place. Anybody got any suggestions?

 

[Ravana]

My last map was a scan of a hand-drawn one imported to PowerPoint, after which I used the normally-available icons (stars, circles, scrolls, etc.) to add details. (Then exported it again as a .jpg, which both reduced the file size about 90% and made it possible to post it here. ) Not exciting, nor particularly "fantasy-ish," but I was going for functional. I'm sure there are abundant libraries of icons available for PowerPoint to add some more interesting ones.

That having been said... my current revision (of the same map) is being done in Microsoft (ick) Paint (not well-suited, but it came with the box...). If anyone comes across a library of icons that can be imported to this, I'd be interested in them, too.

 

[Johnny Cosmo]

There are a few basic ones here, that just come as PNG files that you could just copy, paste, and resize. The calligraphy set is really nice, but I'm looking for something more. Castle icons, town icons, city icons, landmarks, etc.

 

[Aegle]

I've actually had this project in the last year or so. There are various objects you can implement from brushes, on Deviantart. Just do a map brush search.

 

[Johnny Cosmo]

@Aegle: I didn't think of that, thanks! Found this, which is absolutely perfect.

@Ravana: There's a link to just the image pack in the description which you could copy and paste into paint if you wanted. It'd take more work, but it might be worth it. If you wanted to use GIMP (which is a free, more advanced image editor), then there is also a version for that, a little further down in the description.

 

[Ravana]

Thanks, I'll check it out.

I'll probably move to GIMP or something similar eventually; I just started using Paint because it came pre-loaded on the new comp and I found it while poking around seeing what was there. Some parts of it worked really well (doing the terrain was a breeze); unfortunately, it's becoming considerably more difficult to use as I increase depth of detail. (For some reason, once I close it and reopen it, the "fill" function won't actually fill to the edges of previously generated border lines, so I have to paint those parts in by hand. Bummer: everything really was going smoothly at the outset.... )

 

[Aegle]

You want a REALLY good mapmaking program? (And I've waded through Campaign Cartographer!)


Try this: Download - Wesnoth

It's a game with a built-in mapmaker. The download is quite small and barely-there. The map itself resembles Zelda maps, etc. You just go into map editor, after downloading. I have further instructions on actually downloading the image to your HDD to be edited for landmark text. I adore this mapmaker. It's so unbelievably easy- a monkey could create a map with this! (Don't take it the wrong way, it's just that I don't want to spend weeks on a map. Haha!) If you can drag your mouse along the screen, you can literally create maps with this editor. I prumis. ;*) (Intentionally misspelled!)

Here is my very first map, for my RPG I was discussing in the RPG section of the forum here.

http://aeglewaygate.com/images/Lavellan3.jpg

Now then, I know some prefer to handcraft their worlds and whatnot, I hope I'm not stepping on anyone's toes by posting this. I have nothing but utmost respect for artists. <3

 

[Hans]

You want a REALLY good mapmaking program? (And I've waded through Campaign Cartographer!)


Try this: Download - Wesnoth

I agree, this is a very good map maker -- for exactly one kind of maps.
Everyone who ever played a game of Wesnoth will recognize it. Further more, whenever you want something that program was not made for you are entirely stuck. Things like borders, mountain pass, or huts that do not have the same size as every mountain, anything that does not fit exactly in one hexagon.

If this program does what you want use it. It really is good for it's purpose. But if you want more you will very fast find it's limits.

 

[Aegle]

The mountain passes can be easily altered by certain icons symmetrically placed. There are a myraid of icon packages you can download too, to further the options.

It's a good alternative to first map making, atleast to get the visual going.

 

[Knoxxxster]

Thank you for the link!