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Overview

Fractal Mapper v6.0 from nbos software is a complete rpg mapping package for about $30. Because of its versatility and wide range of features the only serious competitor to it is Campaign Cartographer 2 (profantasy.com), although the freeware program Autorealm (gryc.ws) is a similiar CAD suite, albeit with less features. I will use these two programs as reference points for comparisons. Nbos software claims that Fractal Mapper is equally capable of designing large-scale campaign maps, city maps, and even small-scale dungeon and floorplan maps. It includes a large variety of mapping symbols ranging from terrain (i.e., mountains and trees) to buildings and interior items. In addition to the actual mapper the package comes with nbos online (a map sharing utility) and the Fractal World Explorer (randomly generates 3d terrain).

Features

You can find a full list of features on the nbos website (nbos.com). Here's a brief summary:

Creates fractal terrain for realistic coast lines, continents, and other natural terrain formations.

Includes symbols for overview maps, cities, and floorplans.

Allows vbscript-style scripting through the use of the GoblinAPI

Uses vector graphics to allow for scaling of maps

Allows creation of custom drawing tools for specific shapes, terrain formations, room types, buildings, etc.

Maps can be linked to other maps

Notes can be attached to objects and printed using the gazeteer

First Impressions

After purchasing Fractal Mapper v6.0 from rpgnow.com I loaded the setup file and installed the program. The installation was quick and painless, no problems encountered with it (as a quick note the test machine here is an AMD Athlon 1.4ghz w/ a GeForce3 ti500 video card running WinXP). I fired the program up and was greeted with an interface that was more reminiscent of Autorealm than of Campaign Cartographer. I should note that I consider this a good thing, as the interface for Autorealm is much less daunting to those unfamiliar with CAD programs. Along the left side of the screen you'll find a number of very easy to use tools, including fractal shapes, fractal lines, regular lines, buildings (yes, there is a tool specifically for drawing buildings), freehand drawing, and even hallways. There are also custom tools for drawing dungeon rooms and hallways, rivers, cities, and taverns. I'll touch on the uses for the custom tools later.

I started playing around with the program right away, since real men clearly don't need manuals. When I did this in Campaign Cartographer, however, I was greeted by slews of error messages, invalid placement warnings, and ugly or boring maps. My experience was Fractal Mapper was much simpler and much more enjoyable. In about five minutes I was able to create this, an incredibly simple, but moderately attractive, map. While it may not be very interesting, it was done in the first five minutes of use without even glancing at the manual. By now I've already seen a number of maps created by other users that are close to professional publishing quality. On the nbos software features link I provided above you can find a few of these samples. I also found that maps and symbols loaded much more quickly than in Campaign Cartographer.

A Deeper Look

Once I was finished playing around I started browsing the manual, but after about ten minutes I realized that not much more than a quick glance over a few commands was necessary. Yes, Fractal Mapper is that intuitive. So rather than blabbing about the (not quite stellar) manual I'm just going to go into more detail about some of the important features.

The most important feature of fractal mapper is, of course, the fractals! And there's no doubt about it, the program shines here. As you can probably see from the sample map above the coastlines are jagged and fairly realistic. There are other creative uses for the fractals, however, such as making areas of inland terrain (such as deserts or mountains) without needing unnaturally straight or round borders. They are also extremely useful for creating realistic looking caverns (something difficult to do in most computer drawing suites). You can set the "fractal factor" on a range of zero to ten, allowing you to create perfectly straight lines or completely jagged ones. Fractal lines work very well for rivers and roads.

You can also create angled rectangles (as opposed to creating a rectangle that is perfectly horizontal or vertical and then rotating it). which allows for easy creation of dungeon or floorplan hallways. As a matter of fact, a dungeon hallway tool based on the angled rectangle tool exists in the program and works very well. By placing the hallway "above" the rooms in the dungeon you can create seamless connections. And that brings me to the subject of custom tools, a very cool part of Fractal Mapper. Custom tools are based on the regular mapping tools but have additional GoblinAPI code that allows them to do more. One that has yet to cease to amaze me is the city tool, which places a randomly sized "city dot" on the map and then places a randomly generated name next to the dot. In addition to this, the name is automatically stocked with notes detailing the composition of the city and a quick description. Need to build a region with a few small towns quickly? This is the way to do it.

And if you're wondering exactly what the GoblinAPI is, it's a scripting language based on VBscript. It makes things like the inspiration pad (a script-based random name generation tool available through a menu in the program) and the random city generator described above possible. If you're willing to learn the language (it's not difficult!) the possibilities are, as NBOS' website says, endless.

How it works

I've had Fractal Mapper for only a few days, but I've already learned almost everything about it and I'm using it to redo all of my handdrawn campaign maps. Despite a few problems that I've encountered with continual use (see below) it works incredibly well. The first thing most people will probably try to do is create regional, continental, or even world maps. Fractal Mapper handles this significantly better than Autorealm and almost as well as Campaign Cartographer. With some careful work the final product can be attractive and very usable, although I have used my favorite graphic program to soften exported images and remove pixellation. I should note that I've had to do this on Campaign Cartographer as well, although Autorealm's simpler symbols and graphics don't produce quite as much pixellation. Despite this, overland maps still end up with a high degree of quality and polish. What's amazing, however, is how well Fractal Mapper can handle dungeons, cities, and building floorplans. It was a cinch to create floorplans for important buildings in my campaign's primary city. Even more importantly, the final product looked good enough that I didn't mind using the maps as player handouts. It's equally simple to create nice looking city maps and easy to read dungeon plans.

The downside

While they are not all apparent on the first (or second, or even third) use Fractal Mapper does have a few bugs and oddities. First of all, selecting objects can be frustratingly difficult. In the case of overland maps you'll need to make the layer the landmass is on non-selectable or else it becomes almost impossible to select anything on top of it. Thin items, such as roads and rivers, are difficult to select no matter what you do. Resizing objects is also more painful than it needs to be since the selection box does not expand until after you release the mouse button, making it difficult to judge how far you've scaled the object. Changing the shape of landmasses, roads, rivers, or anything else is difficult for this same reason. My only other complaint is that it's impossible to edit text. Editing an existing text box simply creates a second text box with the edited text, forcing you to delete the first (which can be difficult because of the selection problems noted above).

I will also say that I've experienced two crashes in about four days, but both of these occured after using the program for hours upon hours while having many other programs (and a large number of internet explorer windows) open. I haven't been able to reproduce the situation that caused either crash, leading me to believe it may have been related to low memory caused by the sheer number of applications running.

Conclusion

Fractal Mapper isn't perfect, but it's pretty close to being my ideal rpg mapping suite. It is not as powerful as campaign mapper, but what it lacks in features and options it makes up for in ease of use. Even with over a year of time spent with Campaign Cartographer 2 and mere days spent with Fractal Mapper I find it endlessly simpler and more enjoyable to work with FM. In terms of substance, Fractal Mapper is about the best thing around - and it'll cost you $40 less than the base Campaign Cartographer program (let's not even discuss the price of the add-ons). Style was given a lower rating because of the occasionally pixellated output, bugs, selection difficulty, and crashes. I cannot stress enough, however, that these problems do not make this suite any less useful. They are easy enough to overcome and the potential of FM more than makes up for them.

Fractal Mapper v6.0
Fractal Mapper v6.0 Capsule Review by George Legeza on 23/02/02 Style: 3 (Average) Substance: 5 (Excellent!) Fractal Mapper is a cheap and incredibly useful RPG mapping suite that should be more useful than its higher priced competitor. Product: Fractal Mapper v6.0 Author: - Category: Mapping Software Company/Publisher: NBOS Line: Generic Cost: ~$30 Page count: n/a Year published: ISBN: SKU: Comp copy?: no Capsule Review by George Legeza on 23/02/02 Genre tags: Fantasy Science Fiction Generic	Overview Fractal Mapper v6.0 from nbos software is a complete rpg mapping package for about $30. Because of its versatility and wide range of features the only serious competitor to it is Campaign Cartographer 2 (profantasy.com), although the freeware program Autorealm (gryc.ws) is a similiar CAD suite, albeit with less features. I will use these two programs as reference points for comparisons. Nbos software claims that Fractal Mapper is equally capable of designing large-scale campaign maps, city maps, and even small-scale dungeon and floorplan maps. It includes a large variety of mapping symbols ranging from terrain (i.e., mountains and trees) to buildings and interior items. In addition to the actual mapper the package comes with nbos online (a map sharing utility) and the Fractal World Explorer (randomly generates 3d terrain). Features You can find a full list of features on the nbos website (nbos.com). Here's a brief summary: Creates fractal terrain for realistic coast lines, continents, and other natural terrain formations. Includes symbols for overview maps, cities, and floorplans. Allows vbscript-style scripting through the use of the GoblinAPI Uses vector graphics to allow for scaling of maps Allows creation of custom drawing tools for specific shapes, terrain formations, room types, buildings, etc. Maps can be linked to other maps Notes can be attached to objects and printed using the gazeteer First Impressions After purchasing Fractal Mapper v6.0 from rpgnow.com I loaded the setup file and installed the program. The installation was quick and painless, no problems encountered with it (as a quick note the test machine here is an AMD Athlon 1.4ghz w/ a GeForce3 ti500 video card running WinXP). I fired the program up and was greeted with an interface that was more reminiscent of Autorealm than of Campaign Cartographer. I should note that I consider this a good thing, as the interface for Autorealm is much less daunting to those unfamiliar with CAD programs. Along the left side of the screen you'll find a number of very easy to use tools, including fractal shapes, fractal lines, regular lines, buildings (yes, there is a tool specifically for drawing buildings), freehand drawing, and even hallways. There are also custom tools for drawing dungeon rooms and hallways, rivers, cities, and taverns. I'll touch on the uses for the custom tools later. I started playing around with the program right away, since real men clearly don't need manuals. When I did this in Campaign Cartographer, however, I was greeted by slews of error messages, invalid placement warnings, and ugly or boring maps. My experience was Fractal Mapper was much simpler and much more enjoyable. In about five minutes I was able to create this, an incredibly simple, but moderately attractive, map. While it may not be very interesting, it was done in the first five minutes of use without even glancing at the manual. By now I've already seen a number of maps created by other users that are close to professional publishing quality. On the nbos software features link I provided above you can find a few of these samples. I also found that maps and symbols loaded much more quickly than in Campaign Cartographer. A Deeper Look Once I was finished playing around I started browsing the manual, but after about ten minutes I realized that not much more than a quick glance over a few commands was necessary. Yes, Fractal Mapper is that intuitive. So rather than blabbing about the (not quite stellar) manual I'm just going to go into more detail about some of the important features. The most important feature of fractal mapper is, of course, the fractals! And there's no doubt about it, the program shines here. As you can probably see from the sample map above the coastlines are jagged and fairly realistic. There are other creative uses for the fractals, however, such as making areas of inland terrain (such as deserts or mountains) without needing unnaturally straight or round borders. They are also extremely useful for creating realistic looking caverns (something difficult to do in most computer drawing suites). You can set the "fractal factor" on a range of zero to ten, allowing you to create perfectly straight lines or completely jagged ones. Fractal lines work very well for rivers and roads. You can also create angled rectangles (as opposed to creating a rectangle that is perfectly horizontal or vertical and then rotating it). which allows for easy creation of dungeon or floorplan hallways. As a matter of fact, a dungeon hallway tool based on the angled rectangle tool exists in the program and works very well. By placing the hallway "above" the rooms in the dungeon you can create seamless connections. And that brings me to the subject of custom tools, a very cool part of Fractal Mapper. Custom tools are based on the regular mapping tools but have additional GoblinAPI code that allows them to do more. One that has yet to cease to amaze me is the city tool, which places a randomly sized "city dot" on the map and then places a randomly generated name next to the dot. In addition to this, the name is automatically stocked with notes detailing the composition of the city and a quick description. Need to build a region with a few small towns quickly? This is the way to do it. And if you're wondering exactly what the GoblinAPI is, it's a scripting language based on VBscript. It makes things like the inspiration pad (a script-based random name generation tool available through a menu in the program) and the random city generator described above possible. If you're willing to learn the language (it's not difficult!) the possibilities are, as NBOS' website says, endless. How it works I've had Fractal Mapper for only a few days, but I've already learned almost everything about it and I'm using it to redo all of my handdrawn campaign maps. Despite a few problems that I've encountered with continual use (see below) it works incredibly well. The first thing most people will probably try to do is create regional, continental, or even world maps. Fractal Mapper handles this significantly better than Autorealm and almost as well as Campaign Cartographer. With some careful work the final product can be attractive and very usable, although I have used my favorite graphic program to soften exported images and remove pixellation. I should note that I've had to do this on Campaign Cartographer as well, although Autorealm's simpler symbols and graphics don't produce quite as much pixellation. Despite this, overland maps still end up with a high degree of quality and polish. What's amazing, however, is how well Fractal Mapper can handle dungeons, cities, and building floorplans. It was a cinch to create floorplans for important buildings in my campaign's primary city. Even more importantly, the final product looked good enough that I didn't mind using the maps as player handouts. It's equally simple to create nice looking city maps and easy to read dungeon plans. The downside While they are not all apparent on the first (or second, or even third) use Fractal Mapper does have a few bugs and oddities. First of all, selecting objects can be frustratingly difficult. In the case of overland maps you'll need to make the layer the landmass is on non-selectable or else it becomes almost impossible to select anything on top of it. Thin items, such as roads and rivers, are difficult to select no matter what you do. Resizing objects is also more painful than it needs to be since the selection box does not expand until after you release the mouse button, making it difficult to judge how far you've scaled the object. Changing the shape of landmasses, roads, rivers, or anything else is difficult for this same reason. My only other complaint is that it's impossible to edit text. Editing an existing text box simply creates a second text box with the edited text, forcing you to delete the first (which can be difficult because of the selection problems noted above). I will also say that I've experienced two crashes in about four days, but both of these occured after using the program for hours upon hours while having many other programs (and a large number of internet explorer windows) open. I haven't been able to reproduce the situation that caused either crash, leading me to believe it may have been related to low memory caused by the sheer number of applications running. Conclusion Fractal Mapper isn't perfect, but it's pretty close to being my ideal rpg mapping suite. It is not as powerful as campaign mapper, but what it lacks in features and options it makes up for in ease of use. Even with over a year of time spent with Campaign Cartographer 2 and mere days spent with Fractal Mapper I find it endlessly simpler and more enjoyable to work with FM. In terms of substance, Fractal Mapper is about the best thing around - and it'll cost you $40 less than the base Campaign Cartographer program (let's not even discuss the price of the add-ons). Style was given a lower rating because of the occasionally pixellated output, bugs, selection difficulty, and crashes. I cannot stress enough, however, that these problems do not make this suite any less useful. They are easy enough to overcome and the potential of FM more than makes up for them.