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 1
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 3
I've been using this for years. Probably more than a decade now. By far one of the most flexible and easy to use tools. Always happy to support an independent developer.
Steam User 0
If you're into old-school grid-based RPGs and like to do the mapping yourself, it's a great program to use for that, and it has some features and conveniences that you wouldn't be able to get from just using an Excel spreadsheet—much more convenient options for showing doors, the ability to rotate your entire map if you've got "north" facing the wrong way, the ability to run an emulator window inside the program, and so on. The price might be a bit of a turn-off for some people, but it does go on sale from time to time.
There are a few little features I wouldn't mind seeing in the future (for instance, the ability to quickly shift a map in such a way that, for instance, the top row wraps back around to the bottom of a region and everything else shifts up—the sort of thing one might want to do for a map for a dungeon that wraps around on itself), but overall, there's a lot here, and the developer is still working on it (albeit slowly, although the Twitter account suggests that there's been some work on it behind the scenes).
Steam User 0
This is great software if you play old RPG's or any Table Top RPG's. I'm happy with it 100%
Steam User 1
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 1
A must for all old-school rpg-players and aspiring developers alike.