On Jan 14, 2008, at 10:34 PM, bsmith wrote:
I would say Photoshop skills will give you the biggest single
advantage in designing modules. Knowing how to crop, re-size, use
layers, automation etc. is huge. At least 90% of my time designing
modules has been spent entirely in Photoshop.
Second, Visual Basic scripts. Windows has it, it's simple, does the
kinda stuff Perl does but there's no need to install anything. Use
it to write scripts to automatically import, name and sort counters;
You should be spending the least amount of time as possible using
the module editor itself.
On the Mac side, you have pretty much the same options for Photoshop
and Gimp. Unix shell scripting using the Terminal application
provides one method of automation for tasks, especially when combined
with the free ImageMagick tools.
I've used that technique to provide support for electronically cutting
out counters from the artwork files for a game. It involves a bit of
work figuring out the counter alignment, but then it can process the
counters automatically. This proved quite useful for supporting the
production of Vassal (and Cyberbox) modules during the development
phase when counters were changing with some regularity.
One way to save some money on the PhotoShop side is to go with the
more limited PhotoShop Elements package, which IIRC runs around $100.
It has more than enough features for doing the maps.
Now, if you want to hand draw maps, I think Illustrator is a better
choice, but it is a bit pricey. There is Inkscape <http://www.inkscape.org/
, an open source vector drawing tool as well, that could be used
instead.
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