Grid Cartographer
Grid Cartographer is a powerful map creation and design tool, with many features:
• Square, Hexagon and Tile-map Grid Types.
• Unlimited floor area with named floors and multiple tabbed ‘regions’.
• Quick brush selection with a popup overlay.
• Standard editing tools such as undo, redo and cut, copy and paste.
• Range of selection tools including marquee, paint and wand.
• Text labelling and a quick note system.
• Fog-of-war overlays in several different styles.
• Map themes including blueprint, phosphor and parchment styles.
• 3D view mode for first-person visualisation.
• Avatar cursor to help track your movements as you explore a map.
• Interactive wall levers and treasure chests.
• Custom marker and terrain tile art import.
• Flexible grid setup for limited areas or infinite planes.
Import and Export
- Import TSV maps and room notes from donjon dungeon generator.
- Export maps to PNG, BMP or TGA with powerful filtering options to create a ‘player map’.
- Export maps to OBJ mesh or JSON/XML data for use with Unity, Godot and Unreal Engine.
- Scripting system for exporting to proprietary data formats. (AppGameKit example available)
Game Discussion
Steam User 2
My gameplay time for this game may be low at the time of review, but I have actually purchased Grid Cartographer v.2 and v.3 in the past. With that in mind, I only recently found out about v.4.
GC v.4 appears to have kept all the old features that made it so wonderful, such as an extremely uncomplicated but reasonably powerful system. You can also import lots of custom assets, if you have the time and inclination.
I personally use GC for creating my maps for my online Virtual Tabletop game. I am getting burned out from the amount of prep work involved for making my own maps using other software (like DungeonDraft or Inkarnate), so it is like a breath of fresh air to make effective maps quickly. This product does what it says on the tin: You make maps out of grids, lol. I loved the improved features, like the wand tool. I am happy to see the original developer has kept working so hard on this amazing product!
Unfortunately, I don't know anything about programming, so I cannot comment on the new GC professional game developer mode,
I saw an earlier review stating that the price may turn you off. I completely understand that and I paused for a moment before buying it. Honestly, I knew at least some of what I was getting into and it was my favorite mapping software back in the day.
I'd recommend purchasing if you want to make simple but effective maps quickly.
Steam User 2
Convenient tool the asking price could be a turn off I know for me it was for a long time, but its updated pretty frequently great for making dungeons for TTRPGS or for mapping out old games.
Steam User 0
I think this is a great tool for mapping old CRPGs and even has some particularly nice game link features in that regard, but for the purposes of creating your own TTRPG map I'd say it is very decent and can produce nice-looking maps with very little effort, but it is also missing a couple of features.
Most notably, despite scouring the interface and searching online I can't find any way to make circular rooms beyond a certain size, which seems like a big thing to be missing when even free browser-based mapping tools often have that. I think that and lack of variable size options for things like brushes and markers are the main things I'd appreciate in future updates (if there's any more coming).
More markers would also be nice but more options for non-blocky rooms is really the main thing holding this program back in my opinion.
If there is in fact a way to make true circular rooms besides just putting four half-blocks together (which limits them to a specific size) then please let me know.
Edit to add: I have no idea why but it seems to be running horribly on Linux. It's so laggy it's not really functional anymore.
Steam User 0
An incredibly useful tool if you like to play old crpg's (you know who you are). Also very hand for designing maps if you make games yourself.
Steam User 0
Excellent. Perfectly done. Every detail is thought.
Steam User 0
Excellent!