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castiglione
United States
Sunnyvale
California
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Hi, all - I'm trying to design a game map using Inkscape. The map I'm trying to make is along the lines of this one here:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/8804/intruder
I've been playing around with Inkscape to come up with a grid that'll work and I'll need to use a combination of a rectangular and an axonometric grid but I haven't been able to make any headway in doing so. A problem arises when I make the map; the "spokes" of the map are at 120 degrees to each other and the way things work out, only two of those "spokes" actually "mate" with the grid. I've tried a combination of a bunch of different grids to try to solve this problem but I haven't been able to arrive at an elegant solution and it looks like I'll have to just rotate things 120 degrees, do my thing, and then rotate again, etc. but this seems horribly clunky and a part of me thinks there HAS to be an elegant solution to this.
Any suggestions out there?
Thanks in advance!
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Ron W
United States
Georgia
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I've found in being an Inkscape fan, that things aren't always easy and elegant. I think that's what dropping the cash for Illustrator might be for. Sounds like to me that you will have to do the rotation and then do your changes (I'm guessing text/fonts being repositioned). I'm assuming you can't use mirroring Horizontally/Vertically (Press H or V while selected) for the same reason, can you? I'm still struggling to visualize exactly what it is you're trying to do, but figured I'd throw that out there.
Toss an image up here or via PM and I might can help you out when I've got a better idea of what you're needing to do.
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Todd Pytel
United States
Chicago
Illinois
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I'm not sure I understand your problem clearly, particularly what you mean by the spokes "mating" with the grid. What is your grid supposed to look like? Is it a single large grid that covers both the center and the spokes? Or does each spoke have its own grid so that each rectangular room in the spokes fits its grid? Does that make any sense?
Anyway, it's been a little while since I used Inkscape, but I do remember alignment issues could get tricky. There's a puzzle aspect to it - you have to come up with a plan before you start laying things down on virtual paper. Try to figure out what one element can anchor the alignment of everything else and work your way out from there.
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Señor Vanilla
Australia
Melbourne
Victoria
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Just to reveal how basic my Inkscapes struggles are; you have got that "layers" stuff working for you? As in you can make two separate layers with different images on them and then later combine them.
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Pelle Nilsson
Sweden
Linköping
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I never tried anything like that, but maybe if you describe more exactly what it is that doesn't work it is easier for someone to suggest some solution?
It seems from experimenting a bit that it is easy to get grids set to 120 degrees, and this feature seems to have been in place since Inkscape 0.46:
http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/ReleaseNotes046#Grid...
But I didn't try it for long enough to find out if there is anything missing that makes it useless. There are also rotated guidelines that I never tried that I guess could be useful.
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Pelle Nilsson
Sweden
Linköping
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If your map is going to be symmetric like that map is, you could use Clones. Draw one of the three parts, then create a group from it, make two clones of the group, rotate the clones and put them where they should be in the final map, then you can edit (even add objects) to the original group, and they will appear in the clones as well (but properly rotated).
http://www.microugly.com/inkscape-quickguide/#work-groups
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Pelle Nilsson
Sweden
Linköping
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pelni wrote: If your map is going to be symmetric like that map is, you could use Clones. Draw one of the three parts, then create a group from it, make two clones of the group, rotate the clones and put them where they should be in the final map, then you can edit (even add objects) to the original group, and they will appear in the clones as well (but properly rotated). http://www.microugly.com/inkscape-quickguide/#work-groups
Hmm. Actually, if the grids don't work for you, you could use the clone feature even if the map is not symmetric. You could draw the two rotated parts somewhere off-map, then have one clone of each that is rotated and positioned where they should really be. The original part can be edited without messing with rotations, and the end-result will be automatically rotated.
Of course one minus to working with groups is that, afaik, all the objects inside of a group has to be in the same layer. You usually work with more than one layer, so you would need one group per layer, and then one clone per group. Luckily that should only be a problem when setting things up, to create and position all the gruops and clones.
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Joe Wasserman
United States
Portland
Oregon
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Working with clones is a great idea, as pelni mentioned. If each "wing" is going to be similar but not identical, you can still work with clones to get the basic stuff down. Then unlink the object from the clone, and modify as needed.
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castiglione
United States
Sunnyvale
California
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Mymil wrote: Working with clones is a great idea, as pelni mentioned. If each "wing" is going to be similar but not identical, you can still work with clones to get the basic stuff down. Then unlink the object from the clone, and modify as needed.
Thank you everyone with your suggestions! I'll give them a go and I'm pretty sure at least one of them will solve my little dilemma!
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Daniel Wilcox
United States
Marysville
Ohio
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You could try to mess with the snapping settings. It should be quite a simple thing to setup. If you are new to inkscape video tutorials are your friend
 they will give you a chance to learn how inkscape works and cut your teeth on the interface.
http://screencasters.heathenx.org/ -hi quality video tutorials
http://inkscapetutorials.wordpress.com/suggest-a-tutorial/tu... -some more tutorials
http://www.youtube.com/user/Erulisseuiin -some tutorials for Pelle's Inkscape Boardgames Extension.
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Posted Mon Jul 19, 2010 4:36 am
