World Building
Mapcraft is a suite of applications for creating and generating maps for use in roleplaying games. In this case creation refers to the creation of maps by a user who builds using graphical design tools. Generation refers to the automated random generation of maps by a server application.
The main application, Mapcraft itself, is a Java based GUI editor which allows tile based (hexagonal or square) maps to be created. As with Yagsbook, these maps are stored in a way that preserves information about their 'mappiness'.
This editor is designed for the creation of maps in a fantasy or historical game, where at most a single world is being developed.
Recently a new application has been added to the project which provides the facility to generate world maps for a Science Fiction universe. It can randomly generate thousands of star systems, then create a unique map for every world and moon according to their type. It is based loosely on the Traveller universe and method of mapping star systems.
