So you’ve spent months in the library researching your orders of battle (OOB’s) and your tables of organization and equipment (TOE’s) and at last you are ready to start placing the initial forces onto the map. But you’ve forgotten one crucial element—the map! No problem, you say, I know the lay of Evrugo like the back of my hand. So you start to draw the map, referring frequently and carefully to that vague thing you downloaded from an Internet site for the People’s Liberation Movement of Evrugo. But somehow, it just doesn’t look right. The northern peninsula is too fat. And there doesn’t seem to be enough space in the south to fit in those three parallel rivers. You’ve double-checked your measurements, triangulated the position of each city and point along Evrugo’s coast, but every time you fix one problem, it seems to create another.

Mapmaking is like army-making: unless you can compile, digest, and dispense a mountain of mind-numbing data, it requires a certain degree of artistry (what is referred to in OOB design as "fudging") to make a good map. Unfortunately, most wargame designers are neither patient nor artistic. For them, tracing is the only solution. And, as in other situations where you must transfer data from a source to a target, the fewer intermediate steps, the more accurate the result.

Working in a map editor such as The Operational Art of War’s, you face the added challenges of (1) getting your paper map into a computer game map file, and (2) a maddening, uncooperative interface. There is no solution to challenge #2. However, you can mitigate its harmful effects by SAVING OFTEN. This article focuses on helping you with challenge #1: getting your paper-stored data into a computer game map file with as little guesswork as possible. I wrote this article with The Operational Art of War as my example game, but the same procedure applies to adapting physical maps to most games. That is, for any game that has a map editor which doesn’t allow users to directly import scanned map images.

We do this by tracing, directly from your map onto the map editor’s hex grid. I’ll be using a map of Italy for World War II, because that is the map on which I developed this system, and because there are no known maps of Evrugo.

1. Select Your Map.

Try to find a source map that is contemporaneous to your scenario, yet still accurate. This way, you get the roads, railroads, and national borders as they were at the time of the war that you are depicting. I live near the University of California at Berkeley, and even though I’m not a student there, I can go into the map library and make all the copies I want. For World War II, this library has great U.S. Army Corps of Engineer, and German OKH/OKW (World War II military) maps drawn specifically for military purposes, and therefore emphasizing features of military interest.

Strangely, I did not find any contemporaneous military maps of Italy. I only spent a day looking through maps there, so maybe I just wasn’t trying hard enough. But I did find a 1939 Italian tourism industry atlas. It had separate maps for the country’s roads, railroads, and shipping routes, but it lacked a good map of Italy’s terrain. Solution: I used a contemporary (1994) atlas map of Italy for the process described below to draw everything in, but referred to the older maps to verify the existence and/or placement of time-sensitive details like roads, rails and borders.

2. Set the Scale.

The Operational Art of War’s map scale is based on hexes. The scale could be 5 km/ hex, 10, 25 or 50 km across. But your source map is not scaled in hexes, it is scaled in inches or whatever. You need to turn the hex widths into a real-world equivalent, bearing in mind that different computer screens will depict hexes of different widths. To do this, put a piece of paper against the hex grid on your computer screen, and mark the hex borders with a pencil, measuring side to side. Don’t just mark two hex sides, mark a whole column. Make sure that the paper is perpendicular to the hex sides you are marking, that is, that the edge of the paper runs exactly up the column. Now look at the map scale on your source map. You need a map that yields the correct distance between those pencil marks. So if your map scale is to be 10 km/hex, then 10 km on the source map’s scale will need to be exactly the same as the distance between the pencil marks on your piece of paper. Typically, the map scale will mark out 100 or 150 km in 10 km increments. This is where the whole row of hex-side marks comes in. By marking a whole row, you reduce the amount of a measuring error.

When you compare the pencil marks to the map scale, you will almost certainly find a scale mismatch. You could make the on-screen hexes bigger or smaller by adjusting the vertical and horizontal width of the screen display, but it is far easier to enlarge or reduce your source map. (In the discussion that follows, I will refer to enlarging the source map, but your source map may actually be too big, in which case you should read "reduce" wherever I say "enlarge.")

First figure out what the difference is. If our scale is 10 km/hex, and 10 hexes measure 6 inches, but 100 km on the source map scale is only 4 inches long, then the source map needs to be enlarged by a ratio of 6/4, i.e. to 150% of its original size. This is your enlargement ratio. My source map had a scale of 1:1,000,000 and, as it happens, 150% was exactly the enlargement ratio I needed to get 10 km/hex on my 15 inch computer monitor.

3. Make Acetates of the Map.

The best way to make acetates is to use a flatbed scanner and print to a laser printer. Otherwise, plan on spending an afternoon in a copy shop. Make an estimate of how many letter-sized sheets of paper you would need to cover up your source map with the paper overlapping a little. Now multiply that number times your enlargement ratio and add 5. This is how many acetate sheets you will need.

Go to an office supply store and buy acetate sheets for overhead projectors. There are different kinds of acetates—for writing, laser printing, or photocopying. Make sure to get the correct type of acetate for the manner of printing you plan on. Use of the wrong type of acetate in a copier or laser printer may cause it to either jam or melt onto the fuser drum—and you may need to pay several hundred dollars for the repairs!

If your source map is in an atlas, you will find that the copier lid/auto-document feeder is in the way most of the time. Usually these are designed for easy removal. But if you’re in a copy shop, ask an employee to do it for you.

Now take your source map, and place it on the scan bed/copy glass so as to capture the map scale. Set the zoom level to your enlargement ratio and shoot a test copy on paper. Now take that piece of paper with the pencil marks from your computer screen hexes. Do the pencil marks line up perfectly where they should on the scale? In my map, I was aiming for 10 km/hex, and the scale had 10 km marks on it, so I just needed the pencil marks to line up exactly on the hash marks. If they don’t, bump the zoom up or down a point or two until you’ve got a perfect scale match. Now you’ve got a (revised) enlargement ratio. Remember that number, and make sure that all photocopies are shot at the same scale. Make a copy of the map scale at the revised enlargement ratio, ideally on acetate, but paper will suffice.

Now place the map to capture on one of the corners of the area you intend to draw in the editor. Shoot a test copy on paper. Is the map positioned correctly? Here is where the scanner shines over the copier. You can place your map on the scanner and then preview the shot on the computer screen, adjusting the map’s position until you have exactly the capture you want, before you shoot to acetate. If you are using a copier, you will need to shoot test shots to paper, making adjustments to the map’s position, until you get the map positioned right. This is trial-and-error, and it is made harder by the fact that everything moves in the opposite direction from what you expect. On a copier, you may find yourself shooting about 10 test shots for every acetate. Once you get a paper image of exactly what you want, shoot an acetate.

Once you’ve captured that first corner, shoot an adjacent area. Make sure there is a little overlap—maybe an inch—with the first acetate. Don’t be alarmed if they don’t seem to match perfectly. This is unavoidable. Continue positioning and shooting until you have acetates for the entire area that you plan to draw.

My map of Italy took 17 acetates, and created a map that was six feet long (90+ hexes) and over two feet wide. I generated over 130 pages of paper test shots, all of which cost me 3 hours and $20 (including $11 for the acetates).

Now we’re ready to draw a map. First, take that map scale you copied at the revised enlargement scale, and lay it against a blank hex grid in the scenario editor. Does it show that the hexes are the right width? If they’re off a little, do not fear. NOW you can adjust the hex size a bit to match the map scale, using the horizontal and vertical size adjustments on your monitor. First adjust the vertical width until the hexes fit to the scale. Then adjust the horizontal width until the diagonally-measured hex widths are correct. Note that doing the horizontal width first will screw up the vertical width, but not vice versa, so you must set the vertical width first.

Place that first acetate from a corner of the map over the computer screen. Static may hold it in place, but help mother nature with a couple of pieces of scotch tape. Be careful not to put tape over important map features as the tape tends to peel off the toner.

Make sure that either the latitude or longitude lines on the acetate overlay run parallel to a line of hexes. Remember (or even write down) this relationship, e.g. "latitude follows the 2 o’clock hex column" means that North would be at about 1:30 on a clock face. By sticking with this, you can maintain consistent orientation throughout all of the map overlays.

Cut out a piece of Post-It^® note, ½ inch on the side, where there’s sticky stuff on the back. This is your "marker." Place the marker onto the acetate, and squarely over a hex on the Editor grid. That will be your "reference hex." Now move the mouse pointer onto the reference hex and read the hex coordinates at the bottom of the screen. Write the hex coordinates on the marker.

Now, you are ready to start drawing the map, and after all your spade work, tracing the map features into the editor will be quite a breeze. Be sure to have the source map nearby as a handy reference. You will need it on occasion to distinguish roads from railroads from rivers from coastlines. When you accidentally bump the edge of the editor area, it is relatively simple to bump it back so that the reference hex is under its marker. Start by drawing big things like coastlines and borders, and then fill in details. Remember that, if your source map is not from the period of the scenario, to check your historical maps for the placement of time-sensitive features like railroads, roads and borders.

When you finish with an acetate, line up the next acetate on the edge of the first one, and carefully tape them together. Now scroll the editor map until the reference hex is at the edge of the viewing area. Reposition the overlays, using latitude/longitude lines for orientation, and the reference hex for positioning. Now choose a new reference hex, move the marker to it, and write down the new grid coordinates on the marker. You may need to repeat this little dance once or twice to get the new acetate fully positioned. Once the new overlay is in place, tape it to your monitor and remove the prior overlay.

Repeat the above actions for the whole map.

Don’t forget to save often as you work. In case you haven’t discovered it already, in The Operational Art of War, every once in a while, you will try to click in a railroad and the editor will cover the entire map with railroads, and refuse to undo. This is when you must go back to your last save. Other games generally have their own work-ruining dangers, and of course human error, operating system crashes, and power losses do happen, as well.

If you follow this system, you should wind up with a map that looks like it is supposed to, without you’re having to measure every geographic feature from two or three different points, and without having to guess. You might even find it fun. I wish the expense wasn’t so high, but I can’t see any way around this. Remember though, that a laser printer page costs you about 2.5¢ per page in toner and paper, compared to about 5¢ per page at the copy shop/your office copier, and far fewer test printings should be required. So if you can scan & print, that will save you some. Also, if you are more spatially adept (or patient) than I, you can probably reduce the number of test shots. But don’t laugh at my ratio—it's harder than it sounds! You can also save money by buying the acetates at an office supply store, rather than buying them at the copy shop—about 55¢ at the former, and about $1.50 at the latter.

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