My apologies for the title, but Wercator is back!
Starting with version 0.5, Wercator is a complete rewrite in C++, with many changes behind the scenes to improve maintainability and extendibility.For those of you who haven't encountered Wercator before, it's a Gimp plugin that takes BfW maps and renders an "ink and parchment" version, usable for campaign images, as well as non-BfW uses such as role-playing games.
Wercator now supports all three BfW map formats (old/1.2, the new 1.3 maps, and the even newer 1.3 maps with a header), as well as a number of shiny new knobs. See the list below for details. The focus of version 0.6 is mostly on functionality; version 0.7 will primarily address art-related issues (improving brushes, adding brush sets, expanding the parchment selection, etc.). While I do have a few more features planned, Wercator 0.6 is nearly feature-complete.
0.6.1 is identical to 0.6, except for the inclusion of various generated files to remove a dependency on bison and flex. If you were able to compile 0.6, don't bother with 0.6.1.
0.6.2 adds an option to the Config tab to vary the amount of debug information printed to the terminal. If you're having trouble, set this to DEBUG4 and send me the result. In addition, there's now a '--disable-optimization' configure flag; if you're seeing random crashes, and don't have the time / inclination to go back and forth trying to diagnose them, turning off optimization might help. 0.6.2 also patched a number of bugs related to differences between gcc 4.1 and 4.0.
0.6.3 attempts to patch some problems seen on platforms I don't have access to; see the rest of the thread for details.
The web interface to Wercator has been completely rewritten, and is available at http://www.sellner.org/wercator. It doesn't expose a few of the more esoteric options of Wercator, but should do the trick for most users. Please report any problems with the web interface (or with the rendered maps) in this thread. It is currently using the development version of Wercator as its backend, which will eventually be released as 0.7.0.
I'm taking the same stance as the BfW developers with respect to releases: I will release a source package that should build everywhere, and will post any binaries provided to me by users on the Wercator website. Wercator development occurs on Ubuntu Dapper Drake with Gimp 2.2.11 and Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon with Gimp 2.4.2; I would appreciate any feedback (or patches!) about compilation problems on other platforms. This is my first foray into autotools-land, and I haven't written code intended to compile on Windows in a long time, so it's likely that there initially will be problems with non-Linux platforms.
See http://www.sellner.org/wercator/download.html for requirements, download links, and up-to-date installation instructions.
NOTE: Due to limitations in the Gimp plugin API, you need to either have the paintbrush or a non-drawing tool (e.g. not pencil, pen, blur, eraser, etc.) selected when you run Wercator, or coastlines, roads, and castles will not turn out well (if at all).
What Wercator 0.6 is / has:
- * Functionally complete map rendering. There may be tracing artifacts, but there shouldn't be many.
* Support for BfW 1.2, 1.3.0-1.3.9, and 1.3.10+ map formats
* Complete brush set
* 8 parchment backgrounds
* Damage to the edges of the map
* Damage or stains applied to the contents of the map.
* Rendering of a wooden frame around the map
* Rendering of 3 inked borders: Greek key, braided, and square wave
* Multitiles: larger brushes that are used only when a specified pattern of tiles is found. In this release, the only multitile is a compass drawn on a 7-hex "metahex" of sand, grass, or water.
* Brush jittering of smaller terrain brushes to further break up the hex grid
* "Grunging" of coastlines
* Forcing of output image to a particular size or aspect ratio through either brush placement or distortion.
- * More pen-like treatment of traced lines 0.7
* Wrinkled / creased parchment 0.7
* Additional brush sets 0.7
* Parchment generation 0.7
* Web interface 0.7?
* Optimization 0.7 or 0.8
* Additional front ends ???
See the help file for details, but I could use help with the following:
- * Debugging: Please let me know about compilation, installation, and rendering problems!
* Brush sets: Wercator will provide support for multiple brush sets with version 0.7. vonHalenbach has volunteered to create one, but the more the better. Each brush set should have a distinctive feel (e.g. elvish, orcish, crude, calligraphic, etc.).
* Packaging: I could use some volunteers to build binaries for new versions of Wercator for (insert your platform here).
* Front ends: Wercator is highly modularized, and separates all map parsing and path generation from the actual rendering into several C++ static library. It should be relatively easy to add additional frontends, assuming a plugin/extension system is readily available for (insert your graphical tool of choice here). Inkscape springs to mind.
I may eventually look at alternative frontends, but would love to have others take the lead.
