Ask HN: How to develop GIS program for fantasy maps?

9 points by Otternonsenz 3 years ago | 6 comments

In working with data from real world GIS map programs as part of my day-to-day workflow, my daydreams go into the maps I’d actually like to be looking at, which are those from the home brew TTRPGs that I’m a part of.

If I wanted to make a simple program to help Dungeon Masters make and store map data to use in app or elsewhere, where do I start?

It just feels like any existing application is overkill (be that price or features for real world applications) for this use case; Plus my only experience developing is mostly front end work with HTML, JavaScript, and PHP to glue stuff together.

I’m willing to learn any language or do deeper research to figure it out myself, but unsure of where to begin. Thanks for any and all input!

spaceywilly 3 years ago |

This may be helpful. What you’ll probably want to do is make an image of your map and place it somewhere on earth in a GIS program, then your image becomes a custom map layer and you can add additional data to it.

https://rossthorn.github.io/interactivefantasymaps.html

Otternonsenz 3 years ago | |

This is very much up the alley of what I was looking for. Thank you!

rl3 3 years ago |

You may be interested in this:

https://www.legendkeeper.com/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31612007

Otternonsenz 3 years ago | |

Actually very up the alley I’m thinking, but still would like to scratch the itch of rolling my own solution.

Definitely checking it out and might have to subscribe for a bit!

matthewjames 3 years ago |

What kind of features would this hypothetical product need from your community to be useful? To have a small paid tier such as a small fee per map/month/year?

I have done a lot of geospatial app development.

Otternonsenz 3 years ago | |

Ideally: -Sketching/CAD tools for geographic features (I can imagine a 2D view for more cartographic top view, but being able to translate elevations to a simple 3d view to allow reference for myself and other concept artists in the group to build off of), could also imagine a way to buy prints of their maps and gain revenue from that.

-Ability to populate city level information (where the nearest inns are, closest blacksmith, etc ) from database

-Definitely a light paid tier, cause my ideal consumer profile is DMs like my friends and I who may pay for D&D Beyond, but aren’t trying to add another subscription to the roster. Everyone has access to the tooling, but maybe the paid tier is for storage and online sharing?

-Ability to print to PDF or take the files into other formats

All I could think of at the moment