Software for R-Maps

[Doyce]

By feeding PieSpy (an IRC bot used to visualize social networks) with the entire texts of Shakespeare plays, it became possible to produce drawings of the social networks present in his plays - it is now possible to visualize the relationships between the characters in his works.

I have to think this is an R-Map dream come true.

Has anyone else run into a good software program for graphically representing R-Maps?  I've tried several family tree programs with no luck... the relationship types don't cross-reference enough.

[GreatWolf]

I've used Visio to graph out an Alyria storymap (which is similar to a relationship map).

Seth Ben-Ezra
Great Wolf

[Paul Czege]

Hey Doyce,

I've tried several family tree programs with no luck... the relationship types don't cross-reference enough.

Was one of them http://www.genopro.com/">GenoPro? My fiancé's brother recently did a family tree using it, and I was pretty damn impressed with how intuitively easy and robust it was. It has functionality where you can customize what pieces of text show for the various folks in the tree, so if you just want to show the person's name and the comments text you can do that. It seemed well-suited to relationship maps, and so I've been itching to try it out for that purpose since he showed it to me. It's freely downloadable, and doesn't seem crippled at all. You can print the maps. And you can save them in the software's proprietary file format...which got me thinking how cool it would be for someone to start an online library of downloadable relationship maps.

I'll admit that the PieSpy graphics look great. I quite like the aesthetics of all the triangles. But for Sorcerer-style r-maps, we're talking about relationships of blood and sex, and not graphically summarizing all interactions. Is it possible to enter relationships manually into PieSpy to generate the same kinds of graphics?

Paul

[age_of_dissent]

My final year project at university was originally an application for this purpose. Unfortunately it got sidetracked into a tool to automate some bits of character generation for more maths-intensive systems. The graph functionality is returning now. Its too late for the actual project, but I don't like to leave a creation incomplete.

If anybody is interested, I'll make it available once the code is a bit neater.

[Doyce]

I'll definitely have to try GenoPro -- it looks quite promising and wasn't one that I've tried before.

[Trevis Martin]

I usually use OmniGraffle, which is an easy diagramming program.  Its probably a little more manual than a family tree program but I prefer the freedom.  

This app you mention looks interesting.  I'll have to look into it.

regards,

Trevis

[Malechi]

http://freemind.sourceforge.net/

FREEMIND looks to be the answer to your R-Mapping Software Search...

Jason K.

[Christopher Weeks]

There is a ton of software for Concept Mapping that would work handily.  Do a search and you'll find more than you want to evaluate.

Chris

[Ville Takanen]

The freemind tool seems to be very good tool. Considering its sourceforge statistics, here could be an excellent opprtunity to gain a r-mapping software that has some tailored in tools for rpg's.

Development Status: 4 - Beta
License: GNU General Public License (GPL)
Activity Percentile (last week): 99.6355%

Here we see that the program is on beta stage, freely changeable, and currently under active developement. I bet the developers would love to have feedback form rpg audience usin their tool. (and have that same audience debug it for them incidentally).

[Norbert G. Mataus]

Hi there!
Not so long-time lurker posting for the first time here (after my old account got closed due to inactivity...)
I've discovered a really great program for R-map design. It's name is Diagram Designer, it's free and enormously flexible:
http://meesoft.logicnet.dk/

I like it a lot. :)

Norbert

[Alexandre Santos]

You could also simply use any vector graphics application:

Inkscape, Openoffice's Draw

There's less automatism, but more freedom.

Now if you really have a lot of data, you could think about using a database.

[Ron Edwards]

No more posting to this thread. It is over two years old.

When a new person replies to an older thread, do not reply to it.

Best, Ron