07 Aug, 2009, Igabod wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
Alright, I know some of you builders out there like to draw up your areas on graph paper before you start building. Some of you just draft it on notebook paper or printer paper though if you are too cheap (like me) to buy graph paper.

Well, I found a website that has graph paper available to print for free. It has numerous different types of graph paper too.

Cartesian (standard grids)
Engineering
Polar
Isometric
Logarithmic
Hexagonal
Probability
And smith chart

You can select the size and everything. It's really nifty. The website is http://www.printfreegraphpaper.com check it out.
07 Aug, 2009, Ssolvarain wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
Wouldn't the cost of ink make it easier to just buy some graph paper?

And I use MS-Paint for my area designing, when I design areas at all. Some are just made up on the fly.
07 Aug, 2009, Igabod wrote in the 3rd comment:
Votes: 0
Ink isn't that expensive, toner is however so your point is taken. I printed out a bunch of it on my office printer though so it's free for me. The owner of the hotel I work at might get a little upset at me printing 150 sheets of graph paper, but since it's only very light lines and no shaded in areas it shouldn't use very much toner.

As for your MS-Paint areas, I'm horrible at using paintbrush or any of those similar programs so graph paper is the way to go for me. I'm not a builder really, but I've done some areas in the past. Most were done on the fly cause I didn't know enough about it at the time to know to plan ahead. My more recent projects however were done on printer paper. I'd have had a much easier time of it if I'd been smart enough to use graph paper though. I hate drawing straight lines…
07 Aug, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 4th comment:
Votes: 0
Toner is more expensive by unit but far less expensive per page printed, if I remember correctly. You could get a rough idea though by seeing how many pages your toner is supposed to be able to print, add that to the cost per page of your paper, and compare to the cost per page of graph paper. I wouldn't be surprised if the purchased paper were cheaper, actually, unless it's printed on particularly nice paper or something like that.
07 Aug, 2009, flumpy wrote in the 5th comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
Toner is more expensive by unit but far less expensive per page printed, if I remember correctly. You could get a rough idea though by seeing how many pages your toner is supposed to be able to print, add that to the cost per page of your paper, and compare to the cost per page of graph paper. I wouldn't be surprised if the purchased paper were cheaper, actually, unless it's printed on particularly nice paper or something like that.


.. or when printed using the office printer eh* :D


*nb I do not condone the use of office stationary for any purpose other than work :rolleyes:
07 Aug, 2009, JohnnyStarr wrote in the 6th comment:
Votes: 0
The crummy thing about graph paper from the store is that it uses cheap blue ink.
Which if you've never had the misfortune of spilling a few drops of water on it it will bleed away.

I think it would be cool to print off the hexagonal shaped graph, like a Battletech game board or D&D. That of course would only be useful if you had multi directions such as Northwest ETC.
07 Aug, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
staryavsky said:
The crummy thing about graph paper from the store is that it uses cheap blue ink.
Which if you've never had the misfortune of spilling a few drops of water on it it will bleed away.

I don't know where you buy your graph paper, I've never had this problem…

One thing I've found though is that in general paper I purchased in France was of much higher quality than paper purchased in the US. Most US paper in notebooks etc. is so thin that pen writing is visible from the other side of the page, which is highly irritating when you want to write on both sides of a page…
08 Aug, 2009, boblinski wrote in the 8th comment:
Votes: 0
I use zMapper.. it costs to buy.. but once you have it it's great, and there's a 30 day free trail.. zMapper (zuggsoft)

The zMud client actually comes with a completely useable mapper too which you can use to make your maps..

(I was going to upload a screenshot of one of my maps, but cannot figure out how to upload images from my harddrive.. heh)
08 Aug, 2009, Tyche wrote in the 9th comment:
Votes: 0
Here is another one:
http://incompetech.com/graphpaper/

If you're feeling spunky you can also write your own.

#!ruby

class Hexagon
attr_reader :h, :r, :s, :a, :b

def initialize s
@s = s
angle = Math::PI * 30 / 180
@r = (Math.cos(angle) * s).to_int
@h = (Math.sin(angle) * s).to_int
@b = s + 2 * @h
@a = 2 * @r
end

def hex_to_pixel x, y
return (x * 2 * @r + ((y & 1) * @r)), (y * (@h + @s))
end

def mapsize x, y, b
return x * 2 * @r + @r + b, y * (@h + @s) + @h + b
end

def pointset x, y
bx, by = hex_to_pixel x, y
points = [
[bx + @r, by],
[bx + 2 * @r, by + @h],
[bx + 2 * @r, by + @h + @s],
[bx + @r, by + (2 * @h) + @s],
[bx, by + @h + @s],
[bx, by + @h]
]
end
end

a = Hexagon.new 80
sizex, sizey = a.mapsize(10,10,10)

require "GD"

# create a new image
im = GD::Image.new(sizex,sizey)

# allocate some colors
white = im.colorAllocate(255,255,255)
black = im.colorAllocate(0,0,0)
red = im.colorAllocate(255,0,0)
blue = im.colorAllocate(0,0,255)
burlybrown = im.colorAllocate "#DEB887"
goldenrod = im.colorAllocate "#DAA520"

10.times do |x|
10.times do |y|
p = GD::Polygon.new
ps = a.pointset(x,y)
6.times {|i| p.addPt(ps[i][0],ps[i][1])}
p.offset(5, 5)
im.polygon(p, black)
fx, fy = a.hex_to_pixel(x,y)
fx += 2 + 5
fy += 2 + 5 + a.h
case rand 3
when 0
im.fill fx, fy, blue
when 1
im.fill fx, fy, burlybrown
when 2
im.fill fx, fy, goldenrod
end
im.string(GD::Font::GiantFont, fx, fy, "#{x},#{y}", red)
end
end

# make the background transparent and interlaced
im.transparent(white)
im.interlace = true

# Convert the image to PNG and print it on standard output
im.png STDOUT


13 Oct, 2009, Trip wrote in the 10th comment:
Votes: 0
I tend to scribble the rough draft for an area on whatever scrap paper I have handy. But for putting the pretty version together Visio works great.

I've never had this problem on normal graph paper, but printed out versions have a tendency to erase the graph along with anything else I'm erasing.
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