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.
Initially, Mapcraft was just a Java Swing 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 - WorldGen 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. Currently, this is where most of the development is focused, in particular in modelling the economics of the universe that is mapped.
Work on MapcraftWeb has started. This is a port of the original Swing based Mapcraft application to the web. Currently, it is possible to create, edit, retrieve and draw very basic maps. However, there's currently no interface other than the Java API, so editing maps is currently very painful.
