Sunday, May 4, 2008

Necessity is the mother of (re)invention

Sometimes negative events can have positive and unforeseen consequences; the technical term for this is, I believe, either "serendipity" or "that was actually kinda...good."

Case in point: me. More specifically, the main map for my fantasy game. I spent many, many hours over a week or so putting it together in Campaign Cartographer 3, sweating over this and that, and generally trying to make it so it was useful, informative, and attractive. And when I was pretty certain I had it right (at least the area where the big kingdom had been, which was the most important part) I decided I'd move on to the smaller area map of the lands still under enlightened control. In order to do that I wanted the main map open so I could look over on it and see what went where, so I pushed that down to half a window so I could have the new map open on the other half of the screen and just look back and forth. Good idea, right?

Well apparently not, because doing that immediately crashed the program, and every time I tried to start it up after that, it tried to open the map in the half-screen window and instantly crashed again. So, I lost my map?

Not so fast, thinks I, I can see if I can open it in Campaign Cartographer 2, which is a less functional version of the same program. So I open it and, of course, it immediately destroys all the cool CC3 things like bitmap fills and sheets and I lost EVERYTHING on the map except an outline of the continent against a white background. Dude.

So anyway I managed to re-import it into CC3, but all the data that had been lost stayed lost so I was almost back to square one. After an evening of fucking around with it I managed to restore a lot of the data, but I was so angry and what was lost was so valuable and difficult to replace that I decided (in a fit of pique that is characteristic of me) to just start the whole goddamned thing over again. So I did...

And it turned out infinitely better. It was prettier, smoother, more useful, better for the game, AND it took me very little time to do as compared to the original. Don't believe me, look for yourself. This is the first map, this is the new version. Now, again, I hadn't even filled in the northern area on the first map, a lot of detail was lost on it, and the second one has a lot more layers and information, but still...STILL! The first one is functional and doesn't outright suck, but the second one is something to actually be proud of. I'm happier with it on all levels and it will make for a better game.

I guess if I were more of a kitten poster person I'd make some comment about making lemonade and all that, but I believe that if God gives you lemons you find a new god. So maybe the takeaway lesson from this is that sometimes things really are better the second time around.

And let this be a lesson to me: just because I write it doesn't mean anyone gives a damn.

1 comment:

Mark said...

"but I believe that if God gives you lemons you find a new god"

And beer came out of my nose.

I love the new map, but as far as a can tell, you've lifted this whole thing from a book about Cobbits.

Keep up the good work, my liege.