Please tell me that these maps for ATST are FAR from done!!!

These currently downloadable maps are a joke. REALLY bad... Just slivers of the new world map that can only be magnified to one setting, which is too small to even tell where you are while the unmagnified sliver is nearly impossible to read - the print on the details, such as names of passes, etc. is just too small.
There is that great map on Pearls of Weber "powered by Zoomify" that works really well. Why has it been that that wasn't simply updated? Either that or something like it...
The author's note at the end of the book promises more in the way of maps and character directory... and asks us to give him a month or so... OK... even if that's kinda lame, given the cost of the book and how long TOR has had it... but better late than never. However, if the maps I just found on the downloads page are the final product, that's just unacceptable since they're basically useless. Please give us a progress report from a knowledgeable source asap.
Thanks. It's a great yarn, but maps and stuff are a crucial part of the ability to tell such a complicated story. If they weren't going to be published as part of the hard cover, the online stuff should have been ready at the same time as the book was released. As it is, I feel like I'm being punished for buying the book too soon... Please tell me that there are improvements to come!
Best to all,

He said to give him another month or so - personally I think it won't happen until after Christmas - David's life is too full.

Ahh...

They're JPEG files. Open them in an imaging program.

Heck, open them in Paint - it's more than adequate for the job as long as you are happy with one open at a time.

ther19 wrote:These currently downloadable maps are a joke. REALLY bad... Just slivers of the new world map that can only be magnified to one setting, which is too small to even tell where you are while the unmagnified sliver is nearly impossible to read - the print on the details, such as names of passes, etc. is just too small.
There is that great map on Pearls of Weber "powered by Zoomify" that works really well. Why has it been that that wasn't simply updated? Either that or something like it...
The author's note at the end of the book promises more in the way of maps and character directory... and asks us to give him a month or so... OK... even if that's kinda lame, given the cost of the book and how long TOR has had it... but better late than never. However, if the maps I just found on the downloads page are the final product, that's just unacceptable since they're basically useless. Please give us a progress report from a knowledgeable source asap.
Thanks. It's a great yarn, but maps and stuff are a crucial part of the ability to tell such a complicated story. If they weren't going to be published as part of the hard cover, the online stuff should have been ready at the same time as the book was released. As it is, I feel like I'm being punished for buying the book too soon... Please tell me that there are improvements to come!
Best to all,

I just read a note about jpeg files so I think I'll try that and, I saw David's note about give it a month or two in the comment at the back of the book but, I also am a bit underwhelmed by the maps. Elsewhere I asked for information on the land mass that shows up to the east of Half Moon Passage and the (evident) land mass north of Icewind Sea but that may be simply my OCD.

C. O. Thompson wrote:I just read a note about jpeg files so I think I'll try that and, I saw David's note about give it a month or two in the comment at the back of the book but, I also am a bit underwhelmed by the maps. Elsewhere I asked for information on the land mass that shows up to the east of Half Moon Passage and the (evident) land mass north of Icewind Sea but that may be simply my OCD.

In other threads, the Author has talked about the "master" map he has been working from. It's, I think, a two dimensional Mercator projection. So he may give us a extremely large jpeg map like he has before (MTnT > 17MB ) covering the entire Safehold world.

The Author has been using some kind of mapping software since the start of the Safehold story. He has discussed how he would like to transform his 2-D map into a 3-D globe, but he's still working on it. For one thing, just the difficulty of finding and choosing a viable software platform is, to my mind, a big problem.

Also, you may want to look at this page - it's using an out-dated map, but you can see Safehold as a globe (interactive if you download the Celestia application)

Illustrating David Weber's Books Safehold

I just went digging around on this board for something else and ran across RCF's post on health issues. Therefore you find me somewhat chastened and regretful over the grumpiness about the supporting materials not being ready in time for the book's release in my original post. I'm going to try to load the files into a imaging program to get them to zoom more effectively.
However, the fervency with which I request an improved map or set of maps is not much diminished. I'm just willing to wait a bit for it.
To RCF I say, take care. Take it from me, these "issues" do NOT, (NOT I say from experience...), get better with time and many of them benefit little or not at all from the ministrations of doctors and surgeons. So do. Some don't. Some remedies simply bring new stuff into the mix. So take care of yourself. Dude! HIRE INTERNS! My son was an "intern" which would, in his case translate as semi-willing, nearly unpaid, slave... I can think of at least 2 or 3 of his buds with graphic and game design experience who would "kill" for a shot at working with you on maps...
RE VERTIGO - THIS WORKS for some types associated with middle/inner ear malfunction... It's called the Epley Maneuver. It's online. As I recall, the best video is by a guy from something called "House Clinic". It was like magic for me and I couldn't move without the room spinning for 2 weeks... all thanks to a drunk driver decades ago... I'd never heard of it and neither had some of my docs. Old time stuff still works sometimes. Hope this helps.

ther19 wrote:I just went digging around on this board for something else and ran across RCF's post on health issues. Therefore you find me somewhat chastened and regretful over the grumpiness about the supporting materials not being ready in time for the book's release in my original post. I'm going to try to load the files into a imaging program to get them to zoom more effectively.
However, the fervency with which I request an improved map or set of maps is not much diminished. I'm just willing to wait a bit for it.

These are great maps, compared to what we have had for most of the books, Even after MTAT.

Go to the Downloads tab at the top of the forum, click on the map you want, click on the big download button which appears and the map will load in your browser. Right click on the map and choose 'Save link as' or ' Save picture as' and dump it somewhere useful on your disk. It will be a .JPG so when you double click on it, it will open in Photos (Win 10) or Windows Photo Viewer (Win 7) and you can zoom in to your heart's content. All totally standard procedure. There is a LOT of detail on some of these, particularly The Northern Front, (the most useful for the book) and the Temple Lands.

As for the big world map, don't mess about in that silly little Zoomify window, right click the 'One Big file' link beneath it and 'Save link (picture) as' to your hard disk and get a humungous 19 MB jpeg file which you can display full screen on your monitor and zoom in on to a good level of detail.

Hope all this helps.

Unfortunately, they are bitmaps, so they aren't infinitely zoomable. Some of the finest print, for example, just isn't going to be readable. The zoomify version gives just as much detail, in the places where it's present to start with.

The fact that there is such fine print suggests that the original is in a vector format. That's what I'd prefer to see. Unfortunately, good free vector-file readers are rare as hen's teeth [note: I said _good_ - try finding a functional AutoCad reader sometime], and you have to find one that can read the mapping file or a format the map software can generate.

Randomiser wrote:

ther19 wrote:I just went digging around on this board for something else and ran across RCF's post on health issues. Therefore you find me somewhat chastened and regretful over the grumpiness about the supporting materials not being ready in time for the book's release in my original post. I'm going to try to load the files into a imaging program to get them to zoom more effectively.
However, the fervency with which I request an improved map or set of maps is not much diminished. I'm just willing to wait a bit for it.

These are great maps, compared to what we have had for most of the books, Even after MTAT.

Go to the Downloads tab at the top of the forum, click on the map you want, click on the big download button which appears and the map will load in your browser. Right click on the map and choose 'Save link as' or ' Save picture as' and dump it somewhere useful on your disk. It will be a .JPG so when you double click on it, it will open in Photos (Win 10) or Windows Photo Viewer (Win 7) and you can zoom in to your heart's content. All totally standard procedure. There is a LOT of detail on some of these, particularly The Northern Front, (the most useful for the book) and the Temple Lands.

As for the big world map, don't mess about in that silly little Zoomify window, right click the 'One Big file' link beneath it and 'Save link (picture) as' to your hard disk and get a humungous 19 MB jpeg file which you can display full screen on your monitor and zoom in on to a good level of detail.

Hope all this helps.