
[Q] What format is Galactic saving those world maps in... I'd like
to print them & transfer them to .gifs for my web pages.

[A] Galactic uses a subsidiary program called Hexworld to do its world
mapping. You can enter Hexworld by hitting F4 on the subsector map.
Hexworld saves it's maps in a coded text format, and it puts these
maps in the <galaxy>\<sector>\hex directory, using p<hex#>.hex as the
file name. Just to show an example of one of these files, here's
var1\gythios\hex\p2638.hex:

Thorp
GGGGGGGGGGGGPPGGGGGGGGGGGGGPGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG
PGGGGGGGGGGGGGPPGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGPPGGGGGGGGGGGGGPGGGGGGDGGGDGGG
GGGGGGDDDGDDGGGGGGGGDJJDDDGGPGGGGGDJJDGDDDPPGGGGGDJJDDJDGDJJJJJDDDGGPP
GDJJJJJJJDGGGPGDDDJDDJBJDGGGGGGGDDGDJJDGGGGGGGGGDDDDDGGGPGGGGGGGGGGGGG
PPGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGPPGGGGGGGGGGGGGPGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG
GGGGGGGGGGGGGGPGGGGGGGGGGGGGPPGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGPPGGGGGGGGGGGGGP
GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGPGGGGGGGGGGGGGPPGGGGGGGGGGGG
Start at hex 149 
150 Downport:thorp1.txt

The first line, "Thorp", is the name of the world. The next seven lines
each contain seventy characters, comprising a total of 490 characters
when taken all together. These 490 characters represent the colors of
each of the various hexes on the map (there being a total of 490 hexes
on the map). The colors are coded as follows:

    A  Black    E  Red       I  Dark Grey     M  Light Red
    B  Blue     F  Magenta   J  Light Blue    N  Light Magenta
    C  Green    G  Brown     K  Light Green   O  Light Yellow
    D  Cyan     H  White     L  Light Cyan    P  Bright White

The natural question, of course, is which hex is which? You can figure
this out by going into Hexworld (by using F4 from the subsector map) and
hitting the F1 key once you are there. There should be a little
"Hex:000" on the left side of the map display. The "000" part will keep
changing as you move around the map using the arrow keys. In this way,
you can get a feel for the ordering of how the hexes are numbered.

Just as a hint, it starts out as something like this:

           29
       15   30
   01   16   31
    02   17   32
     03   18   33
      04   19   34
       05   20   35
        06   21   36
         07   22   37
          08   23   38
           09   24   39
            10   25   40
             11   26   etc...
              12   27   etc...
               13   28 
                14

The next line, "Start at hex 149", tells the program where to initially
locate the circle that you use to move around the map.

"150 Downport:thorp1.txt" simply writes "Downport" at hex #150 and
attaches "thorp1.txt" to that location. You can put quite a few of these
location markers on the map, and they don't all have to have files or
menus attached.

If you're looking for an easy way to turn these Hexworld maps into gifs,
there are a couple different techniques you can try out:

Henrique Vianna (snoopy@ufpel.tche.br) has written a program called
"Capture It!", which is a screen-capturing utility that runs in the
background under DOS as a terminate-and-stay-resident program.
"Capture It!" is available at the SimTel archive:

 ftp://ftp.uoknor.edu/pub/simtelnet/msdos/screen/capture22.zip

Included in the package is a program that converts the screen
captures to GIF format. From there, you can probably load your
GIFs into some paint-program and do your printing that way.

Another method is to use the grab.com and graphcnv.exe utilities,
which are part of the WordPerfect 5.1 package (they probably exist
in some other versions as well). If you have WP51, type "grab /h"
and "graphcnv /h" for more information.

Yet another method, which nearly everyone has at their disposal, is
to access Galactic via a DOS-Window from Windows, then to take a
screen capture via the Alt-PrintScreen function, and then to
Edit/Paste the map into some other Windows program. If you have an image
editing program such as Corel or Paint Show Pro, that would probably do
the job and should even let you convert the map into one of the various
standard image formats, but if you're just looking to print the map, you
could probably just paste it into "Write", which is under the
"Accessories" program group, and use the print function from there.

If you come up with any other methods which you think are pretty
straight-forward and fairly accessible for most people, please let
me know about them. Also, if you happen to know a lot about GIF-encoding
and want to write another program to handle all this (for instance, a
program that Hexworld could call to transfer the map into gif or bmp or
even jpg format) let me know. I'll be happy to assist in any way I can.

