Routes and pins

Part of Map Making Tools

Routes and pins

The Routes and pins tool places the points and lines of your map. Pins are the places that stand at a point: cities, towns, castles, ports, ruins, landmarks. Routes are the roads, sea lanes and river trade routes between them. Generate can place them all for you; this tool places and edits them by hand. A route is a chain of waypoints on the map's cells, joined by legs, and the module finds each leg for you, following the terrain and keeping to the ground the route's transport can use, so a road winds round a mountain and never crosses the sea. The Travel tool times journeys along the map's routes, by their transport, whether Generate made them or you drew them.

Routes and pins in Route mode: the Pins and Routes lists, the roads of the Red Hills, and the King's Road in the inspector.

This tool was called Infrastructure before v4.0.0 (its id is still infrastructure), and pins were called points of interest. Routes drawn with the old node tools are converted when the map is opened: they are traced along their old lines, as closely as the cells allow, and can only be edited with the tools below.

The panel

The panel has two sections, each showing how many items it holds:

• Pins: every pin, with its eye, its icon in its colour and its name.
• Routes: every route, with its eye, a sample of its line and its name.

Click a row to open the pin or route in the inspector. Each row's actions are:

• the eye, which cycles the item between visible to everyone, visible to the GM only, and hidden;
• Focus view, which zooms the map to the item;
• Delete (after asking).

A generated pin or route also has a lock button: a locked item is kept when you generate again (see Generate). In a studio less than 1,400 pixels wide, a row's actions show only on the row you point at, the row with focus and the chosen row, over the end of its name, so the names keep their room.

Above each list, a search field and two filters narrow it: Search by name, Made by (Any origin, Generated or Hand-made), and Kind of pin (by pin style: Capital, City, Town and so on) or Transport (Road, Sea or River). While one is on, the list says how many items match ("12 of 2,784 match").

Each section's title also has Select items for mass edit (see Mass edit). An empty list says what to do to fill it.

Below the lists, the state block starts and stops editing: Start placing and Stop placing in Pin mode, Start drawing and Stop drawing in Route mode. Next goes to Labels.

Every change is one step of undo.

The bar

The bar starts with two buttons, Pin and Route, which choose what you work on. The rest of the bar depends on which is chosen. Switching between them keeps editing as it was: while editing, the other one starts in its editing mode (Place or Draw); while viewing, it stays in Select.

Pin mode

• Select: click a pin to open it in the inspector; click away, or press Escape, to close it. Nothing is placed or moved.
• Place: click the map to place a pin. Choosing Place starts editing.
• Pin style: the style the next pin gets, or No style. Choosing a style shows its icon in Select icon.
• Select icon: the icon the next pin gets, from a grid that opens below it. Choosing an icon sets Pin style to No style, so the next pin is the plain default pin (white, at the default scale) in that icon.

A pin's colour and scale are set in its inspector, not on the bar.

Route mode

Mode	What it does
Select	Click a route to pick it and open it in the inspector; its waypoints show as handles. Double-click a route to open it too. Escape lets go of it. Nothing is drawn.
Draw	Click to add a waypoint, joined to the one before by a leg found the bar's way (Path). Drag to trace a stretch: when you let go, the stroke's bends become waypoints (as many as Detail keeps), each joined on like a click's. Clicks and strokes can be mixed in one route, and the leg the next click would add is previewed as you move. Right-click, Enter or a double-click finishes the route (it needs two waypoints or more) and opens it in the inspector. A new route is called Route until you rename it, and its name starts in the Road label style (a sea route's in Sea lane). Backspace, Ctrl+Z or the Undo button takes the last click or stroke back (undo works on the route being drawn until it is finished). Escape abandons it.
Waypoints	Works on the picked route (click one to pick it). Drag a waypoint to move it; its two legs are found again as it moves. Shift+Click the route to add a waypoint there (and drag it straight away). Ctrl+Click a waypoint to remove it. Alt+Click an inner waypoint to split the route in two there. Drag an end waypoint onto the end of another route and let go with Alt held to join the two into one (a plain drop only moves the waypoint there, so roads of different styles can meet at a junction and stay separate).

Choosing Draw or Waypoints starts editing; choosing Select stops it. On a narrow bar, Waypoints folds into More.

The settings, which apply to the routes you draw next:

• Path chooses how legs are found. Follow terrain finds the easiest way for the transport, avoiding steep ground; Straight joins the waypoints directly.
• Transport is what the route is drawn for. Road keeps to land and prefers to join roads already on the map, so a new road merges into the network rather than running beside it. Sea keeps to water. A waypoint the transport cannot use (a road's waypoint at sea, say), or that no leg can be found to (a road's waypoint on another continent), is refused with a message; a stroke that crosses such ground has those bends left out. In Waypoints mode a waypoint cannot be dragged to such a place either. Only Re-path and removing a waypoint, which must keep a finished route whole, fall back on a straight line between two waypoints they cannot join properly. The transport is fixed once the route is drawn, since every waypoint of a road is on land and every waypoint of a sea route on water.
• Span water lets a Follow terrain road cross water between its waypoints, as a bridge, causeway or ferry. Each cell of water costs many times a cell of land, so the road bridges a strait or river when going round would be longer and keeps to land otherwise. It can only bridge water about twelve cells wide (roughly 50 map pixels on most maps): a road never goes further than six cells from a shore, so an island out of that reach cannot be reached at all and a click there is refused like any other unreachable waypoint. Wider water is a job for a Sea route between two ports. Its waypoints must still be on land.
• Detail (1 to 60 cells) is how closely a traced stroke is kept. A bend of the stroke becomes a waypoint when the stroke strays further than this from the line between the bends either side of it, and a long run without a bend gains waypoints along it (one every ten times the Detail), so a straight stroke across the map still holds its route near the line you drew. At 1 every bend the map can hold is kept, so the route is the stroke as drawn; higher values keep fewer waypoints and leave more to the path finding, so a sweeping stroke with Follow terrain gives a route that goes roughly that way and finds its own way through the detail. The waypoints a stroke would keep show as handles while you are still dragging.
• Style: the route style the next route gets, or No style (the map's default line). Only the styles for the chosen transport (and those for any transport) are offered. Route styles are managed in Styles and icons.

The bar never changes a route that is already drawn: a route's own look is changed in its inspector.

Nothing of a traced stroke is kept once it is drawn: a route is only ever waypoints and legs, so a traced route edits exactly like a clicked one.

Pins on the map

Pin mode with Place chosen, the Pin style and Select icon on the bar, and a new Landmark open in the inspector.

In Place mode:

• Click the map to place a pin. A pin placed with a style is named after the style (a pin placed with the Town style is called "Town" until you rename it) and takes its look from it; with No style it is named after its icon. The new pin opens in the inspector, with focus left on the map so you can keep placing.
• Drag a pin to move it.
• Hold a pin with the mouse, then Shift+Scroll to resize it, in the same steps as the Scale slider in its inspector.
• Ctrl+Click a pin to delete it (one step of undo).
• Double-click a pin to open it in the inspector.

In Select mode a click on a pin opens it, and nothing moves.

The inspector

Each change in the inspector applies at once and is one step of undo (a text field applies on Enter or when you leave it, a slider when you let go). Double-clicking a slider puts back the value it had when the inspector opened. Escape closes the inspector.

Pin

The header shows the pin's name and pin.

• Name, Description and Visibility (Everyone, GM only or Hidden). In Foundry, a pin's name and description become a page of the scene's journal when the map is exported to a scene (see Export). Descriptions are plain text: the journal page shows what you typed, keeping its line breaks, and any HTML tags show as text. Format the page in Foundry afterwards if you want headings or images.

• Look:

  • Style: the pin style the pin follows, or Custom. Choosing a style fills the icon, colour, scale and label size from it (and the label style, if the pin style names one). Save as… makes a pin style from the pin's look and label size and gives the pin that style.
  • Icon: a button showing the icon; it opens a grid of icons, and a choice applies at once and closes it. Custom icons are added in Styles and icons.
  • Colour.
  • Scale (0.2 to 4).

  Changing the icon, colour or scale by hand sets the style back to Custom.

• Label (folded at first): the pin's label, with its own visibility. See Labels for the label fields.

• Generated (folded at first, for a pin made by Generate): what the place is, its population, cultures and history, the detail levels it and its name are shown from, what generating again will do with it, and Lock. See Generate.

• Focus view and Delete.

Pin styles

A pin style is a named look for a kind of place: an icon, a scale and a colour, plus the size, visibility and label style a pin's label starts with, and the detail levels from which its pins and their names are shown (see Detail level). New maps start with seventeen (Capital, City, Large town, Town, Market town, Large village, Village, Castle, Fortified town, Port, Ruin, Ruined capital, Ruined city, Ruined large town, Ruined town, Abandoned castle and Landmark), which are yours to rename, change, delete or add to in Styles and icons. Generate uses them for the places it makes.

A pin made with a style takes its look from the style and follows it afterwards: editing the style changes every pin that uses it, so making every town a little larger is one edit. Deleting a style leaves its pins as they are; they just stop following it.

The King's Road in Waypoints mode, its waypoints as handles, and its inspector with the Path, Line and Label groups.

Route

The header shows the route's name and route · its transport. Opening a route picks it, so its waypoints show.

• Name, Description and Visibility (Everyone, GM only or Hidden).

• Path:

  • Transport: what the route was drawn for (shown, not changed): Road, Sea, or River for the river trade routes Generate makes.
  • New legs: Follow terrain or Straight, as Path on the bar. It applies to legs drawn from then on; Re-path all legs applies it to the legs the route already has.
  • Span water, as on the bar. Like New legs, it applies to legs found from then on.
  • Class: Trunk, Main, Minor or None. It records the route's importance for other modules and the exported data, and does not change how the route is drawn.
  • Trace detail (cells): the bar's Detail, shared with it, and what Simplify uses. Changing it is not a step of undo.
  • Simplify drops the waypoints that barely bend the route (those within Trace detail cells of the line between their neighbours) and finds the legs again, so a route traced with too much detail can be loosened in one go. The ends always stay.
  • Re-path all legs finds every leg again in the chosen way, for example after the terrain changed under the route, or to turn a straight route into one that follows the terrain.

• Line:

  • Style: the route style the route follows, or Custom. Only the styles for the route's transport (and those for any transport) are offered, plus the style it already follows. Save as… makes a route style from the route's line (with its transport) and gives the route that style.
  • Colour and Stroke (Solid, Dashed or Dotted).
  • Thickness, in quarter pixels (from 0.25 to 10).
  • Outline draws a thin dark edge along both sides of the line, so it stands out from the map.
  • Smoothing rounds the corners where the line turns from cell to cell.

  Changing a line field by hand sets the style back to Custom.

• Label (folded at first): the route's label, with its own visibility. See Labels.

• Generated (folded at first, for a route made by Generate): its kind (Road, River, Sea or Old road) and class, what generating again will do with it, and Lock.

• Focus view and Delete (after asking).

New maps start with ten route styles: Trunk road, Main road, Minor road, Track, Lane and Old road for roads, Sea lane and Minor sea lane for sea routes, and River trade and Minor river trade for river routes. Where several routes of one transport share a stretch, it is drawn once, in the style of the most important (by class, then thickness).

Mass edit

Pins and routes can each be restyled several at a time. Press Select items for mass edit in the Pins or Routes section's title: a tick appears on each row, with Select all and Select none above the list. Tick the items you want (Select all takes every item matching the list's search and filters), then press Mass edit (its count shows how many are ticked), or Delete to delete them after asking, as one step of undo. Press Select items for mass edit again to stop choosing without changing anything; changing tool does the same. Only one of the two lists can be in mass edit at a time.

• For pins: the pin style (which brings its icon, colour, scale and label settings with it), the visibility, or the icon, colour and scale on their own, and the label's fields.
• For routes: the route style, the visibility, the class, the colour, stroke, thickness, outline and smoothing, and the label's fields.

See Mass edit for how the dialogue works.

Tips

• Roads join roads. A Follow terrain leg treats cells that already carry a road as half their usual cost, so a new road drawn near an existing one tends to run along it and leave it again rather than run beside it. That is usually what a road network wants. When you want two separate roads, add a waypoint or two where the new road should keep its distance (a click mid-stroke, or Shift+Click afterwards in Waypoints mode).
• Straight legs cross water; Follow terrain legs do not unless the road spans water. A road's waypoints must be on land, but a Straight leg goes directly between them whatever lies between, which draws a bridge exactly where you want it. A Follow terrain road keeps to land unless Span water is on, in which case it crosses where the water is narrowest. For a long causeway on a chosen line, draw it as a Straight route and join the Follow terrain approaches to it in Waypoints mode (drag an end onto an end with Alt held).
• To make every pin of a kind larger, or every minor road thinner, change its style in Styles and icons rather than each item.
• Save as… in a pin's or route's inspector turns a look you have tuned into a style for the next ones.

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Next: Labels

Related: Regions, Styles and icons, Map Making Tools, Travel, Export