intfiction.org

What ho,

This is a bit of a cut and paste from rec.games.int-fiction for those who prefer this fine forum over the newsgroups.

I'd like to announce the 1.0 release of Trizbort for Windows. Trizbort is a simple point and click IF mapper which lets you drop rooms onto an infinite* canvas and connect them together with simple connectors which bind to room edges. Rooms can each have a list of objects which "docks" to any room edge or can appear inside the room. Colours and fonts can be customised, and the whole shebang can be exported as a PDF file or PNG image for posterity or printing.

Rather than ineptly cribbing from its solitary web page any further, I'll just direct anyone there who would like to try it. 

http://trizbort.genstein.net

The page also hosts a wide range** of sample maps in Trizbort, PDF and/or PNG format.

It's a lot simpler and less powerful than it may sound, but it hopefully doesn't suck so mightily as to make anyone actually weep. Feel free to let me know here or at the e-mail address which can be found via the bottom of the aforementioned web page.

That's all really. Thanks for reading.

    -eg.

(* Quite large. Experiments to test the bounds of Trizbort's universe may result in singularities, rains of surprising wildlife or, rarely, messages from the powers that, much to everyone's shagrin, Trizbort appears to have encountered an unexpectedly sticky calculation and has had to be shut down.)

(** For given definitions of "wide" and "range". More specifically, wrong ones.)

What an interesting tool. I trust you plan on adding features and such? Because as it is, it won't get me to stop using GUEMap... but it might, because I like it, and because I like supporting new projects, and because I'm a bit tired of the random errors that crash GUEmap when I delete a room (50-50 chance that it will crash).

There's a few features that you really have to add before it becomes as easy to use as it should. Think about the following features from GUEMap that make using it so much easier:

- Pressing a numerical keypad button while a room is selected automatically creates a room in the appropriate direction (i.e., east for 6, north for 8, and so on), and we can optionally fill in its name at once instead of having to select it to add the name. If there already IS a room, then the selection moves to the appropriate room.

- Creating up and down connections is possible, as well as in-out connections and dotted lines, and it does not require creating *then* editing the connection (or mode toggling).

- It allows for taking notes, which is different from your - very useful - object list. It also allows for taking notes on the entire map. I tend to use it like a notebook, which is most handy.

These are the features I think are necessary for a practical and useful mapping tool, and it's the first time I have to chance to tell an author, in hopes of seeing them implemented. So I'm taking that chance. I like the style. I would like to use it more.

Thanks Peter, that's very useful to know. Believe it or not I never discovered any key-based room creation/navigation in GUEMap; I gave up before resorting to pressing keys or (gasp) reading documentation. I'll definitely bear those features in mind for the next release if they're useful. Comments/notes are definitely on the cards. I've got a prototype of similar room creation/navigation working happily already, but I'm not sure how to back it up with usable UI yet. Experimental UI designs have come up a bit short of any good. I could add the feature just as keyboard only, but that feels wrong, as I'd like Trizbort to be as amazingly obvious to use as possible.

-eg.

I also gave Trizbort a try. I found in useful in many ways. The greatest hindrance for me was the inability to designate up/down map connections in a clear way.

Thanks for the feedback. Apologies for the lack of documentation. If you double click a connection, or select (click) it and then choose Properties from the Edit menu, you can set it to be an up/down, in/out connection or add your own custom text at the start, end or middle of the line. You can also choose the line style, though this is available on the tool bar as well. Or perhaps you already found this and it wasn't any use to you?

I hadn't discovered these features. They would have solved the majority of my problems. I'll try it. I never used GUEmap or any other IF mapping software, so I don't have any expectations about what it should do.


Yes, I've been using the line style settings. I've been a solid line to indicate a traditional two-way connection, and a dotted line to indicate a one-way connection, using the arrows especially when the rooms don't line up neatly, to indicate the direction of one-way paths. However, now I'm thinking that a better method would be to always use the arrows to indicate the direction(s) of possible travel, so a two-way connection would have arrows pointing to both rooms, and a one-way connection would point toward the room that the player can enter in that direction. That would free up dotted lines for special cases, such as portals that can be entered without traveling in any direction and lead to another room. I haven't tried this method on Trizbort, yet, so I don't know if I'd be able to make it work.

I've been mapping one of the many ports of the original Adventure with Trizbort. Here are my very rough maps, representing different levels based on altitude, since I didn't know how to make up/down connections. I wish it were possible to eliminate all the whitespace when exporting to an image file.

(Although I don't think anyone would be very concerned about being spoiled for Adventure, I hid the pictures behind spoiler tags just in case, and also not to clutter the thread.)

I've never used any other IF mapping software in earnest either, mostly since I couldn't work out how to use it. Trizbort is pretty undocumented, for which I apologise, but one thing is true: there's nothing you can do with it that you can't find on the main set of menus. Edit->Properties on rooms and connections is probably the most "hidden" feature.

That's in fact pretty much what I intended - sorry if it's not obvious (which it clearly isn't). The only difference being that two way directions have no arrow, whereas one way directions have one arrow. The Infocom printed maps used to do this, and those are the conventions I've been following since I rather like them.

Yes, that's my bad. A somewhat arbitrary amount of white space is added all the way around the image since it's very possible to route connections between rooms in a way which otherwise would get cut off by a tighter crop. If I'd been less lazy I'd have implemented a proper algorithm for this. You can of course trim this in any paint package, though I appreciate this is less than ideal.

-eg.

I just started using this (not for IF, for mapping mud zones actually) and it's really nice! I love that making maps is easy and quick, the UI feels very smooth, and mass-editing via the XML file is simple to do.

One thing I'm curious about is if anyone has noticed a performance drop on their CPU when this is running; it seems like this busy waits when it's running but I don't know if that's a big deal or not.

I use the tool and is pretty happy abouty it...
But I would have liked it better if it was possible to get in touch with the guy who created it...

_________________
Work in progress: D-Day (Adrift V.5)

Yes, its the reason that I don't use this tool. It uses 90-100% of CPU time...