Quick Start Tutorial - Azgaar/Fantasy-Map-Generator GitHub Wiki

The tutorial is for version 1.1

Fantasy Map Generator is a tool that creates highly customizable fantasy worlds for you. It runs in a browser and does not require any software installation. It’s free and you can use created maps for any purposes including commercial. You can also download a desktop version and run in without Internet connection available.

The tool generates a new fantasy map on opening. The map is auto-generated, but it doesn’t mean that you cannot control the generation. To open the controls click on the arrow button at the top left corner of the screen or press Tab. You can either change the generation parameters and generate a new map, or edit the current map. You can also create a new map from scratch using paint brushes.

The map is generated fully zoomed out. Double click on the map to zoom into the clicked area. Double click again to zoom in even more. The maximum zoom level is 20x, but it can be increased in the options. To zoom out hold Shift and double click. Click and drag to move around the enlarged area.

The same operations can be performed using keyboard. Press + to zoom in, - to zoom out. Use 1-9 number keys to set an exact zoom level. Press 0 to reset zoom to default. Use arrows keys to move around.

By default the map shows the world’s political situation, but it’s not the only available preset. Open the first tab of the menu – Layers – to change the preset. Preset is a set of layers to be toggled on. There are number of presets available by default: political, cultural, religions, biomes, provinces, heightmap, places of interest, and other. You can either select one of the presets or use buttons below to display or hide a particular layer.

To make it simple each layer has a shortcut assigned. Hover the mouse over the layer button to see a tooltip showing what the button does and which key is assigned to it. Check out the Hotkeys wiki-page to get a full list of shortcuts. Click on the plus button next to the presets list to save the current layers as a custom preset. On Generator reload the map preset will be defaulted to the the previously selected one.

Some layers may not be visible if an upper (top) layer is toggled on. You can drag the layer button to change the layer's order.

There are cases when you may want to see several full map-covering layers simultaneously. The only way you can do it is to make the upper layer partially transparent. Open the Style and choose the required layer from the Select element drop-down list and change the opacity slider. Note that this may not work if clipping is enabled.

The same approach is used for styling all map elements. For example if you want to change the color of state borders, select Borders element, then border group (type) and click on the color box to set a new color. Here you can also change border stroke width, its style and apply a visual filter. Different map elements have different styling controls. To restore the default style to all elements click on the counter-clockwise arrow next to the elements list.

The Toggle global filters section below allows to apply a color filter to the whole map.

Some users report performance issues on map dragging and zooming. These are number of tips that will allow you to avoid problems with performance.

• Toggle off layers you are not working on. Especially take care of the Relief Icons layer – it’s the most resource-demanding one.
• If you have a wide screen, open the Generator in a separate browser window, make it much smaller (about 900 x 560 pixels) and re-generate the map. Then zoom in to see the map in detail. It will reduce the rending area and drastically improve the performance.
• Generate maps with Points number = 10K. Points (cells) number highly affects performance.
• Toggle off map and element filters.
• Close all irrelevant browser tabs and applications.
• Use the top-edge browser. As for now the best performance is observed in Chrome. Firefox is also pretty fast, but there are some minor UI issues specific to this browser. Other browsers may not be supported.

If you like the current map you probably want to save it for a later use. There are 5 saving options:

• Save to machine. It is an internal file format that stores all the map data including your manual changes. The file can be directly into the Generator and is used to proceed with the map creation. It's highly recommend to save the map you are working on at least every 30 minutes.
• Save as .png. It makes a screenshot of the currently displayed map fragment. Just an image and nothing more. The png resolution can be set in the Options tab. By default it is 5x of the map size. The file can be opened and edited in any image editor.
• Save as .svg. It is a vector image that can be rescaled to any size without quality loss. The Generator naturally renders maps in svg and hence saving as svg is faster than saving as png. To just open and view a saved file it's recommended to use your browser, not a vector images editor. To edit the file you need special software – the most common variants are Inkscape (free) and Illustrator (proprietary).
• Save as .json. It allows to export map data in format used in GIS software.
• Save to storage. Allows to save the map to the browser storage. Then it can be loaded as a fully-functional map. Press F6 for a quick save and F9 for a quick load.

Please note file saving uses popups, so please allow browser to show popups for the site and ensure they are not blocked by your adBlocker, if you use one. Please don’t worry, there are no ads on the site. The file is getting saved to the browser's default Downloads folder. Press Ctrl + J to open the browser's downloads journal (in Chrome and Firefox).

Let’s move to the settings overview. Open the Menu and click on the Options tab. There are multiple options split into 2 categories. Map generation options require a new map to be applied. Generator settings are getting applied immediately on change.

• Map size: the size of the map canvas. By default the map size is the browser window's size, but it can be changed to any value. The button on the right expands the size back to the window size. Please note that there is no way to change the map size after the generation.
• Map seed: a number defining random values generation. If options and map size are the same, two maps generated with the same seed will be exactly the same. Obviously, the map seed cannot store user’s changes, so please don’t use the seed number as a save function. The small button next to the seed allows to browse through generated seeds and restore previous maps.
• Points number: the number of generated points and cells. The more points are generated, the more detailed is map. Points number highly affects performance, so the only recommended value is 10K.
• Map name: the name of the map or the world. It's getting added to the names of downloaded files. Click on button with arrows to re-generate the name.
• Map template: the set of rules to be applied on heightmap generation. Basically a type of the landmass: high island, continents, archipelago etc. You can create your own template or change the existing in the Template Editor (part of the Heightmap Editor tools).
• Cultures number: the number of cultures to be generated. Cultures can be edited via the Cultures Editor.
• Cultures set: a set of cultures to be used for map generation. Can be a list of real-world based or fantasy cultures.
• States number: the number of countries/states to be generated. States can be edited via the States Editor.
• Provinces ratio: the percentage of burgs that will form their own province. Provinces are sub-units of states and can be edited via the Provinces Editor.
• Size variety: defines how much states area should be different. The lower value, the more uniform state areas are.
• Growth rate: defines how far states and cultures will expand into neutral lands on generation. The lower value you have, the more lands will stay politically neutral.
• Towns number: the number of towns to be generated. Towns are non-capital settled areas (burgs). If there is not enough suitable space to put a requested number of towns, the Generator will place only a limited number of towns.
• Religions number: the number of religions to be generated. Controls only the number of organized religions cults as in any case each culture will have its own traditional (folk) religion. Religions can be edited via the Religions Editor.

Generator settings:

• Onload behavior: define what should be done when Generator is opened: a new map generated or a previously saved map is auto-opened.
• Interface size: size of the control panes. If the GUI size is too small, please also check out browser's zoom level (Ctrl +, Ctrl -).
• Tooltip size: size of the tooltips displayed at the bottom of the screen.
• Transparency: opacity of the control panes.
• PNG resolution: relative size of the png image saved. 1 means the downloaded image will have the same resolution as map size, 2 – 2x the size and so on. PNG resolution highly affects saving performance.
• Zoom extent: minimal and maximal zoom levels. Click on the button on the right to restore the default values.

There is also the Reset to defaults button. The button cancels all user changes and refreshes the page.

Click on Configure World to set up map position on a globe and climate. Toggle biomes, precipitation or temperature layers on to see how configuration changes affect the map.

The Globe on the right shows relative position of the map as a brighter area. The map position is calculated based on two inputs: Map size and Latitudes. The North is always on the top, the West is on the left and so on. Map size defines a relative size of the map to the whole world. With 100% size the generated map will cover all the world; with 50% - half of the world and so on. If the size is not 100%, the map can be shifted towards North or South. The shift is controlled by the Latitudes input. With Latitudes equal to 0 the map North edge will be at the North pole, with 100 - South edge will be on the South pole, with 50 - the world equator will lie through the center of the map.

The map latitudes affects the temperature gradient and winds applied to the map. You can change the temperature on Equator and Poles and it will be re-calculated based on map position on a globe. To change winds use the arrows on the right. Please note that wind is also latitude-dependent.

The precipitation value defines how much vapor clouds can bring and spread across the map. The bigger the precipitation value, the greater number of rivers and fewer deserts you get. With zero precipitation the entire world will be an unlivable desert.

If you don’t like the heightmap generated automatically, you may edit it or even create a new one from the scratch. Open the Tools tab in the menu and click on Heightmap. Now you need to select an edit mode. All secondary data (rivers, burgs, states, markers and so on) depend on the heightmap, so changing the height manually will break the default generation logic. The best practice here is to use the Erase mode, create the heightmap you want and let the system to re-generate the secondary data. It will remove all the changes made for burgs rivers and so on, but it will guarantee the smooth generation.

If you want to perform just a minor change, select the Keep mode. You won’t be able to change the coastline, but all the data, including manually placed relief icons and rivers, will be kept as it is. So it’s more like a visual change without changing the underlying data.

If you have done some changes and still need to amend the coastline, you may use the Risk mode. As the title says, it’s not safe and can cause some issues. So please use this mode only if you really need to.

Heightmap editing process has multiple build-in tools. These tools won’t be covered in this tutorial, just note that they allow you to use brushes to "paint" the map, to edit and apply heightmap template and to convert any image into a heightmap.

The Heightmap Editor tools are not the only available ones. From the same Tools tab you can also open Biomes, States, Provinces, Diplomacy, Cultures, Namesbase, Zones, Religions, Burgs, Units and Notes editors. All these Editors work in a different way and won’t be covered in this tutorial.

The same tab contains tools to re-generate map elements. If, for example, you have added and moved some burgs, the burgs won’t be connected with roads anymore. You can click on initiate routes regeneration to get them connected. You can also re-calculate State Labels positions, relief icons, population, rivers, burgs and states.

The next Tools section allows adding elements like burgs, labels, rivers, routes and markers. Select the tool and then click on the map to add an object. Hold Shift and click multiple times to add several objects.

The last section, which is collapsed by default, provides some info about the map cell your cursor is over.

Individual map elements such as rivers, routes, relief icons, labels, markers, burgs and labels can be edited on mouse click. The editor screen that is opened is different for each element and it’s also out of this tutorial's coverage.

That was a brief overview of the main Generator elements and approaches. It’s not full by any meaning and just serves as a starting point. You can always find more details and help on our supportive Discord server and Reddit community.