Greetings, as well as being an avid roadgeek, I am also a Computer Science student and I want to start an open source project which will be a tool where you can draw out your own road map. Most map makers only let you draw on a real-life road map, when in this application, you draw out every single road, river, and municipality. There are not many tools out there like this at the moment, which is why I would like to create one. I want to be able to draw a map by hand something like this:
(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/453727566231109632/876556011656331264/unknown.png)
I believe OpenStreetMap is open source.
Can I draw out my own highways with OpenStreetMap?
http://opengeofiction.net/
Quote from: NE2 on August 15, 2021, 04:17:45 PM
http://opengeofiction.net/
I want to do something that's basically like OpenGeofiction for my D&D game, but hosted on my own server and with control over who can edit (i.e. I only want my players to be able to edit the map, not randos who don't know what they're looking at). Is there any straightforward way of doing that?
One of the players has a GIS background, if that helps at all.
Quote from: Scott5114 on August 15, 2021, 06:23:46 PM
Quote from: NE2 on August 15, 2021, 04:17:45 PM
http://opengeofiction.net/
I want to do something that's basically like OpenGeofiction for my D&D game, but hosted on my own server and with control over who can edit (i.e. I only want my players to be able to edit the map, not randos who don't know what they're looking at). Is there any straightforward way of doing that?
One of the players has a GIS background, if that helps at all.
http://switch2osm.org/ might have useful info.
Quote from: MaddogMicharski on August 15, 2021, 04:01:09 PM
Greetings, as well as being an avid roadgeek, I am also a Computer Science student and I want to start an open source project which will be a tool where you can draw out your own road map. Most map makers only let you draw on a real-life road map, when in this application, you draw out every single road, river, and municipality. There are not many tools out there like this at the moment, which is why I would like to create one. I want to be able to draw a map by hand something like this:
(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/453727566231109632/876556011656331264/unknown.png)
If you do try to develop a map application, make sure that you brush up on your complex geometry. It is essential to have "draw parallel" feature to display divided highways as two parallel line-curves and freeways as three parallel line-curves. I recommend flipping back-and-forth between Bézier curves and straight lines for the drawing tool, and having the map application automatically calculate the placement of the line-type based on a database entry about the road type. Once upon a time, I developed a program that would input GIS and redraw the lines onto a Window view that could be size-adjusted using Microsoft Windows (however, one of my colleagues developed the GIS import feature). It wasn't easy, particularly on a limited budget.
You should also notice that the various mapmakers employ several different tricks to blend different types of roads together. Make it simple and create cells for each scenario, and if the change is at the connection of two curves, have the program calculate the tangent at the end of both curves and split the difference to get the proper rotation.
I think about the best thing you could do, interface wise, would be to shoot for having a program that looks and feels like QGIS and Inkscape had a baby together.