Many of you are probably aware of this program, but I just found and purchased the software recently and I am still WOWed by it.
It's called Fractal Terrains, and what it can do is automatically generate a random world map, complete with elevation data, Temperate Growth zones, Annual rainfall zones, and temperature zones. And the maps are beautiful. I printed out some maps for a survey mission for my players and they were really amazed by them.
You can give the program parameters such as % of water on the surface, highest and lowest elevations, continent size, world diameter, etc... Then you just let it do its thing and Voila, you have a world all made for you. While in the program, you can measure distances between points, view the world in all sorts of formats, and export the data to other programs like CC2(CAD for gamers) or Jpgs or whatnot so you can overlay other graphics on top of the images. You can even export all the elevation and other data with the map and have CC2 create legends and distance bars according to how zoomed in the image you exported was.
I don't mean to sound like an ad for it, but I had been looking for something to get out of the plain ol' hex world maps, and I imagine other folks here would like it too. You can download a demo of it at http://www.profantasy.com
Enjoy folks!
It's called Fractal Terrains, and what it can do is automatically generate a random world map, complete with elevation data, Temperate Growth zones, Annual rainfall zones, and temperature zones. And the maps are beautiful. I printed out some maps for a survey mission for my players and they were really amazed by them.
You can give the program parameters such as % of water on the surface, highest and lowest elevations, continent size, world diameter, etc... Then you just let it do its thing and Voila, you have a world all made for you. While in the program, you can measure distances between points, view the world in all sorts of formats, and export the data to other programs like CC2(CAD for gamers) or Jpgs or whatnot so you can overlay other graphics on top of the images. You can even export all the elevation and other data with the map and have CC2 create legends and distance bars according to how zoomed in the image you exported was.
I don't mean to sound like an ad for it, but I had been looking for something to get out of the plain ol' hex world maps, and I imagine other folks here would like it too. You can download a demo of it at http://www.profantasy.com
Enjoy folks!