I'm a graphic designer and use Adobe Illustrator a lot, which allows me to save as a SVG. But all the directions look like they involve this Inkscape program. Anyone tried building a map in other programs.?

Fizzer does not say not to use other programs.. he recommends Inkscape because it is a basic program which the common person can hopefully pick up and learn, and is free to download..
an additional advantage to this, is that a wider amount of people on the forums will be able to troubleshoot for new players trying to make maps..

Illustrator is fine - anything that makes SVG files will work. The only reason Inkscape is recommended over Illustrator is because Illustrator costs like $600. But if you've already bought it, go for it.

Okay, then I just make each territory its own distinct object? Any other does/don'ts?

Baron, They have to be labeled as Territory_X (the wiki gives the format) and not just given their own distinct object.

Only other rule is that bonus boundaries should abut while territory boundaries within bonuses should overlap.

Yes, its the labelling that's confusing me. The wiki tells you how to do it in Inkscape, but that doesn't translate to AI. You can't assign an object a name unless it has its own layer.

In terms of SVG format, Warlight requires every element (like <path>, or <rect>, etc.) which is supposed to become a territory to have an id attribute with a value of "Territory_N", where N is any integer number.

Also according to the specs of SVG format, id attributes must be globally unique.

If Illustrator doesn't allow you to set id attributes in the application, you could always use external tools to set them, or just open up the SVG in Inkscape only for this.

Quick googling seems to indicate Illustrator calls ids "identifiers", or "XML IDs". That means there should be a method to assign them to anything.

I used Illustrator on my East Asia map.

Drawing is easier on Illustrator than Inkscape.

However, you will need to rename all those territories after you imported the map file into Inkscape.

It took me quite some time and effort to rename all 622 territories on my map.

Drawing is alot easier with Illustrator, at least in my opinon; if you do own it, use it!
I am using it for building maps, with no need to import SVGs to Inkscape at all.

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assigning names (ids) to objects

(e.g. Territory_id)

• Open the Layers-window. Select the layer which is containing your territories.
• click on the triangle on the left to show its contents
• every single path (i.e. territory) is shown as a sub-layer called "<path>"

• double-click on its name (<path>) to change it to something like Territory-1. This will set the SVG id of the object.

• Be careful with special characters, Illustrator encodes them to hex (scheme: _X00_). This includes underscore "_", which will be saved as "_x5F_"

• I recommend to not use undersocres, use a temporary character instead. (e.g. "-")

• After saving to svg, replace "Territory-" with "Territory_" with your favourite text editor.

• handle bonus links alike

• if you use underscores whith Illustrator (not recommended), replace "x5F" back to "_" after saving to svg.

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Saving Warlight-compatible SVG files with Illustrator:

• turn off the option "Preserve Illustrator Editing Capabilities" when saving to SVG.

• You can still edit these SVGs with Illustrator. Layers are saved as groups. I recommend to exclusively work with the AI file. Export to SVG only if you upload to Warlight. Search&Replace to underscores is a console one-liner. ("sed -i -e 's/Territory-/Territory_/g' ./map.svg")

replace "x5F" back to "_" after saving to svg

sorry, of course you should replace "_x5F_" back to "_"

I hope this is helpful for Illustrator users.

Best regards,
Lavaking

I use inkscape but also serif, but serif costs £100 so if you gona get it just for warlight them dont. Lol

I used Illustrator on mine, only because the vectorizing worked better there. I edited and named everything in Inkscape though.

The trace is easier in Illustrator if you have it, but not enough to spend money on the program just for warlight.

Of course not; this is just to collect useful instructions for mapmaking with Illustrator for anyone who is interested in using this software. (forum search for "Illustrator" returns this topic).

but how do you make the paths from one territory to another in adobe

Can you specify what you mean? (e.g. Border overlap) - maybe you read the mapmaking section in the Warlight Wiki and then explain again. Territory connections are always defined later (neither in Illustrator nor in Inkscape) but after map upload.

There are a lot of path tools in Illustrator in order to create matching paths. For instance, use "appearance palette" and multiple contours. When done, convert the object to paths.
For touching territories, draw them with some overlap first, then use "Divide Objects" to remove the overlapping part.

-Lavaking