Looking for a Maping program

[Sir Brad]

I'm looking for a Maping program for when I create adventures, ATM I've got a few that produce old school (70's and 80's era) D&D style maps and are ok but you need the program to act as a reader for the more complex ones (curved or irregular walls and such). and they just handle Dungeons also the Files get fairly large quick and they don't spit out an Image I can paste in to a PDF or Word file.

So anyone know of some that are good and if possible Sherewhere? or otherwise inexpensive.

 

[AndrewW]

Any drawing program can handle maps ok.

Inkscape being the one I use: http://www.inkscape.org/

 

[Sir Brad]

Is it just placing "Items" within the field and erasing "Filler" or is it actually Drawing? because I seriously Suck at Electronic Drawing, plus I've had a Electronic Graphic Artist tell me that my Files are way too large for what they represent when using a Drawing program.

 

[AndrewW]

Is it just placing "Items" within the field and erasing "Filler" or is it actually Drawing? because I seriously Suck at Electronic Drawing, plus I've had a Electronic Graphic Artist tell me that my Files are way too large for what they represent when using a Drawing program.

Well, it's a vector based program you can make (or download) symbols and place them wherever you want. Draw in shapes like circles / arcs / rectangeles, ect. Grid based. It isn't a painting program (bitmap). Though it's not just place tile in grid and be done, though can be close to that once you have some symbols to use.

As for size that can depend on the file format. Some Traveller ship deckplans I did for a larger ship (125,000 dtons) where:

11,119,823 bytes (SVG, vector)
9,277,015 bytes (PNG, bitmap with lossless compression)

But those are with 8 decks.

But on the other hand the "little" 3,000 dton Corvette with seven decks is only:

991,560 (SVG, vector)
483,841 (PNG, bitmap with lossless compression)

Depending on needs there may be nothing wrong with larger size files anyway.