Battlemaster Maps

So, you wanna "give back to the community"? Wanna, "give Tom a break"?

Wanna stop playing the same maps again with just different region names?!?

---

Good! Then this is the page for you! (Yes, you. No, don't turn around like that. You clicked here, you're going to read this! What did I say? Get your pointer off the Back button!)

Ok! First things first!

Tom is very particular about his maps. Before you post to the discussion list about how you made this great map, consider that there is a reason why Tom recycles maps.

Yes, he has probably seen your map-editor somewhere and doesn't like it. As a matter of fact, there is only one map creator that he likes. And that brings us to the first headline:

Tom likes the Age of Wonders Map Creator. He's made all the continents with it.

There, its been said. Henceforth, Age of Wonders will be referred to as "AoW".

However, if you don't have AoW you can fudge it a little by copy and pasting different areas of an existing map and then altering/combining the different parts to make it look like it's a completely new map.

(Before you ask; Yes, it has been done.)

Let's say you make a map, its all foresty, watery, snowy, and sandy. Now what? Well, this brings me to the second headline:

Borders, how to make them, how to ruin them.

Tom's words from the discussion list:

 The borders are on a transparent layer, red colour, 5-pixel width
 brush, apply blur filter when done, set opacity of the layer to 60% or
 so.

 The region names are Genoa* font, 48 px, Alien Glow script-fu, remove
 background, merge layers, scale to 50% in size, paste into its own
 transparent layer. Mabye it was 40px - verify against an existing map.

There is a program that Tom uses to make the borders. It's called, (get ready for the next headline!):

*Was later changed to Caligula.

GIMP

The program can be downloaded for free here. Once you've got GIMP and your map, you can get to work. If you've used a Photoshop type program before, GIMP should come natural to you.