AAR-Kelaan – Hexmapper and More
Dedicated to Leonard P. Zaikoski
A Brief History
AAR-Kelaan software has continued to be made available at the Hexmapper Haven Yahoo Group by Leonard P. Zaikoski who uploaded the software there. Hexmapper Haven Redux also held the software for a time, with Leonard’s blessing, after the group owner of Hexmapper Haven had long been absent and no longer approved new members. Hexmapper Haven Redux has also been closed partly due to declining participation in the group but Hexmapper lives on here at Bree Yark as part of a living history effort and sheer fondness for mapping. Just because its old doesn’t mean its not fun! Keep in mind if you install this software that it was designed in the era of Windows 95 and there will be no updates.
AAR-Kelaan Hexmapper is designed by Leonard P. Zaikoski. Arr-Kelaan’s website had seven GM-oriented programs available for free download, including HexMapper, which lets you create old-school hex maps of your campaign world. Other tools are the Dice Roller, Random City Generator, Town Designer, Campaign Calendar Generator and Random Weather Generator (all with fantasy GMs in mind). You’ll find them here and they require VB 6.0 support to run.
On-line References
For your reference the address of the original AAR-Kelaan website of the tools which has long been closed down is as follows:
http://home.paonline.com/zaikoski/ak/TOOLS.HTM
However, the AAR-Kelaan website can still be found via the Wayback Machine:
http://web.archive.org/web/20080617060445/http://home.paonline.com/zaikoski/ak/TOOLS.HTM
Arr-Kelaan Software
Click on the titles to download the files:
VBR60UN – Visual Basic Support Files
The Visual Basic support files required to run the Arr-Kelaan software. When you install this you may have more recent files on your system, be sure to keep the newer files!
Texts
The following text is partly quoted from the original Arr-Kelaan website:
Create professional-looking 24-bit color hex maps for your role-playing games with an easy-to-use point-and-click interface for painting map hexes. Imports hand-drawn or scanned bitmap images to overlay with hexes. Draws a variety of rivers, streams, roads and text labels (in any TrueType font) directly over your hexes. Saves output as standard, 24-bit color, Windows bitmaps for easy enhancement with other graphics tools. Fully customizable; add your own 24-bit color map hexes to those provided.
Roll thousands of dice with the click of the mouse. Supports all standard dice and includes a d(any number), too. If you’ve ever designed an adventure in which you needed to roll hit points for fifty monsters (50 X 3d8+3), Arr-Kelaan Dice Roller is just the tool for you.
Quickly and easily creates encounter locations and building types (including relative cost and quality) for towns or cities; from tiny hamlets to sprawling capital cities of over 250 locations. Easily customizable with easy-to-edit text input files for controlling location generation.
Using a simple point-and-click interface similar to HexMapper, Town Designer easily creates great looking hamlets, towns, and small cities. Two graphics sets (one color, pictured to the left — and one black-and-white) are included. Other graphic sets can easily be created by the user.
Campaign Calendar Generator 1.0b
Game timekeeping can be a real chore for a busy GM, but Campaign Calender Generator eases some of the grunt work of developing a consistent yearly calendar including weekdays, months (with differing numbers of days), multiple seasons, and multiple moons with varying periods and starting points. Generates RTF tab- delimited text for easy reformatting.
Based on flexible and extensive weather rules, Arr-Kelaan Software’s Random Weather Generator is designed to generate up to one full month (allowing for variable number of days per month) of random weather including continuation of precipitation over several days and special events such as earthquakes or volcanoes.
Installation Support Notes
Each ZIP file contains only the program and necessary supporting files … if you’ve ever installed a VB 6.0 application before, this is probably all you need. These smaller packages do not come with an installer, so please make sure to unzip the HexMapper and the Town Designer with the -d (or Use Folder Names) option; they will end up under a directory called AKS. A Help file is included in all but the Random City Generator.
Download this complete VB 6.0 runtime package and run the setup program if you experience trouble with only the minimum program installations. This package does include a normal ‘setup.exe’ installer.
Problems
During install I get a message that neither msxml4.dll nor mshtml.tlb are available.
The error message I get when installing is:
An error occurred while registering the file
C:\Windows\system32\msxml4.dll
Solution:
Download the VB support files and install them does
the trick. The program will run now!
If you edit and damage the hexlist then Hexmapper will not run; this clean version of the hexlist file may be copied back into the folder and fixes the issue.
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