There are several mapping tools available for world builders. Though pen and paper are often the simplest choice, mapping and drawing programs offer many advantages like reproducability, ease of editing and automatic generation of some features.
The maps of the Domus project were done using free/shareware programs only. The initial heightfields and climate maps were done using a teutonic plate simulator called Planet. They were further edited with Terrain maker after which the flow of rivers was analysed with the HF-lab. The color maps were done from the height fields using a little C-program called gif2map and the rivers were added on top with another little C-program called rivonmap. Both of these are my own devising and will be available from this site RSN. Finally the views from space were grabbed from a VRML-browser (webspace) after the maps had been projected on a sphere as a texture. The texts were added using simple paint programs like the xpaint.
Tools on web:
Free/shareware programs:
Commercial programs:
Related pages: