Chapters & Quick Start

• Workspace Basics
• Map Settings & Land
• Stamps & Object Actions
• Labels & Place Info
• Text, Fonts, Title Block
• Color, Countries, Grid, & Finish Layers
• Drawing Tools
• Scale, Measurement, & Travel
• Save, Export, & Recovery
• Shortcuts & Hidden Actions
• License, Use, & Contact

1. Demo maps are fixed at 3000 x 2000 px in this build.
2. Use Generate until you have a landmass you like. Use Back to step through earlier generated results.
3. Set World Setup early. Map span, units, biome focus, and moisture bias affect place summaries, scale, measurement, and travel time.
4. Refine land with Draw Land, Erase Land, Rivers, a Reference Image, or Import Landmask.
5. Add names in Labels. Use Suggest Names and Create Labels from List for batches, or Add Label for manual placement.
6. Use Place Info to save notes, types, and population. Right-click a label or map point to open its place editor directly.
7. Load the included symbol folder from Stamps once, then use Object Actions for grouping, alignment, and layer order.
8. Finish with title, scale bar, colors, borders, and drawing tools. Save JSON often. Use Download PNG only for the final image export.

Workspace Basics

• The icon bar on the left switches between the main editing panels. One main panel is shown at a time.
• Preview Zoom changes the editor view only. It does not change export resolution or print size.
• Right-click + drag pans the map workspace.
• Most placed objects can be moved directly on the map: labels, stamps, map points, free text, text boxes, the title block, and the scale bar.
• Object Actions is where you select, group, lock, duplicate, delete, reorder, align, center, and distribute objects.
• Alt/Option-click adds objects to the current selection. Clicking one item inside a group selects that full group.
• Rectangle Select lets you drag a selection box. Ctrl/Cmd + R turns it on quickly.
• Escape closes dialogs and exits most temporary modes such as measuring, local zoom selection, stamp fill, or free text placement.

Map Settings & Land

• Width and Height set the export canvas in pixels. The print readout estimates physical size at 300 dpi.
• Canvas Resize expands or crops the current map without regenerating it. Use the anchor buttons to decide where new space is added or which side is cropped.
• Generate Land in Expanded Area fills new canvas space with generated terrain. Turn it off if you want added space to remain ocean.
• Generate builds a new landmass. Back moves through recent seed history. True All Sea forces a clean blank ocean map.
• Zoom, Roughness, Sea Level, Stroke Size, Mask, Warp, and R.M. shape the coastline and land breakup.
• Lock Land protects the current coastline. While it is on, generation, landmask import, and local zoom are disabled.
• World Setup controls map span, units, biome focus, and dry/wet bias. Those settings feed biome guides, place summaries, the scale bar, measurement, and travel time.
• Draw Land and Erase Land let you paint the coastline directly. Rivers stay editable after placement and can use wider downstream widths or outlines.
• Reference Image is for tracing. Drag it to move it, use the mouse wheel over it to zoom, and hold Shift while wheeling to rotate it.
• Import Landmask replaces the current land. Dark pixels become land, light pixels become water, and the image is fit to the current map size.
• Zoom Local turns a selected rectangle into a closer local map. Use Unzoom to step back out.

Stamps & Object Actions

• Open Library launches the draggable stamp browser. Use Upload for a single PNG or Upload Folder for the full included symbol pack.
• Search looks across the loaded library, not just the current category.
• Click a stamp in the library to place it. Once placed, drag to move it, use the mouse wheel to scale it, and hold Shift while wheeling to rotate it.
• Shift + click deletes a placed stamp. Ctrl + click mirrors a placed stamp horizontally.
• The top stamp sliders control opacity, size, cleanup, and the default start size for new placements.
• Continuous Stamp keeps the current symbol active so you can place several copies in a row.
• Area Fill scatters the current stamp set inside a lasso or rectangle. Density, overlap prevention, and size variation control the spread.
• Favorites, Collections, and Saved Groups persist locally. Collections save selected library symbols for area fill. Saved Groups preserve placed stamp arrangements.
• Object Actions works on selected objects. Use it to lock, unlock, group, ungroup, duplicate, delete, move backward or forward in layer order, center the selection on the page, or align and distribute items.
• Arrow keys nudge the current object selection by 1 pixel. Hold a key to keep moving.
• Turn on Only Stamps in Rectangle Select when you want to lasso symbols without catching labels or text.

Labels & Place Info

• Labels supports two main types: City / Town and State / Region.
• Suggest Names fills the batch box with names from the selected culture. Create Labels from List turns comma-separated names into labels.
• With Auto-place on land on, Nova Terra tries to keep batch labels on valid land and spaced apart.
• Add Label starts one manual placement. Click the map, enter the label text, and the label is created at that spot.
• City labels can be dragged directly. Ctrl/Cmd + click cycles the city dot through left, right, over, and under. Shift + click deletes a label.
• State labels use their own size, spacing, wave, and S-curve controls. Click a state label on the map while working in Labels to adjust its wave settings. Stroke and shadow from that panel apply to all state labels.
• Place Info stores a place name, type, population, and notes for labels and standalone map points. The generated environment summary uses the current world setup and location.
• Right-click a label or map point on the map to open its place editor directly.
• When Place Info is the active panel, clicking empty map space opens a new Map Point entry at that location.
• Show Place Info on Map Hover displays notes and the generated summary on hover. Hover cards never export.
• Settlement List gathers city labels, state labels, and saved map points by type. You can open entries from the list or download the list as TXT.

Text, Fonts, Title Block

• Text Boxes are for legends, notes, or paragraph text. Add a new box, then click the box on the map to edit its selected-box settings.
• Free Text is for loose words or decorative lettering. After placement, drag it on the map, use Spacing and Curve to shape it, and use the mouse wheel over the text to rotate it.
• Universal Font applies one shared font to labels, place info, title block, text boxes, and free text.
• The title block can be edited from the panel or dragged directly on the map. The Left and Top controls are useful for precise final positioning.
• The scale bar is also draggable on the map. Its size, width, and displayed unit are controlled from the Scale Bar panel.
• Font previews work inside the editor, but exported fonts depend on what is installed on your computer. Install the font on the computer first if you need it to export correctly.

Color, Countries, Grid, & Finish Layers

• Universal Ink Color changes most linework, labels, borders, stamps, and decorative drawing objects.
• Country Colors lets you add named countries, pick a current country, paint or erase that country's land area, then Commit the preview into the country layer.
• Paint adds a separate land-only paint layer. Use the color-set dropdown for biome palettes such as forest, grasslands, desert, tundra, polar, wetlands, highlands, savannah, volcanic, and coastal.
• Clear Draft discards the current uncommitted country paint preview.
• Country opacity, blur, width, and brush size control the border look as you paint.
• Grid can be square or hex. Use manual pixel spacing or switch Auto Sync Grid on so the grid follows the map scale more closely.
• Texture, Map Border, Ocean Lines, Ocean Dot Pattern, and Ray Lines are optional finish layers.
• Paper texture is preview-only. Export the clean map first, then add paper aging in the overlay app if you want a print finish.
• Ocean dot patterns can slow the editor on large maps. Turn them off while working if performance drops, then turn them back on before export.
• Ray lines can block normal editing. Lock or turn them off before selecting or placing other map objects.

Drawing Tools

• Line Smoothing affects the softness of many drawn strokes.
• The section covers banners, lines, roads, waves, zig zags, arrows, routes, callouts, shapes, fences, walls, fortifications, bridges, hatching, gears, compasses, and brackets.
• Draw starts a mode, Stop exits it, and Clear removes that tool family from the map.
• Most drawing tools stop after one completed object unless that tool has a continuous mode enabled. This reduces accidental extra strokes.
• Hold Shift while drawing many line-based tools to keep the stroke horizontal or vertical.
• Hold Alt while drawing shapes, gears, compasses, or brackets to draw them from the center instead of from a corner.
• In straight or 90-degree line mode, click each corner, click near the start point to close a shape, press Backspace to remove the last corner, and press Enter to finish an open path.
• Hold Ctrl in 90-degree mode to snap corners to a square grid.
• Placed drawing objects remain editable and are saved in the JSON file with the rest of the map.

Scale, Measurement, & Travel

• The Scale Bar follows the current world span. Pick the unit, total length, subdivisions, and bar width to match the type of map you are making.
• Straight measures direct point-to-point distance. Path measures a route you draw and also reports straight distance.
• Measurement, travel time, biome behavior, and scale calculations all depend on World Setup.
• Travel Time can use a measured route or a manually typed distance. Then choose a travel method, route type, and hours per day to estimate elapsed time.
• If you use an auto-synced grid, the grid can be tuned against the scale bar so each square represents a consistent world distance.

Save, Export, & Recovery

• Save downloads the fully editable JSON map file.
• Load restores a saved JSON map.
• Download PNG exports the finished image for print, posting, or delivery.
• Autosave keeps one rolling recovery draft on the current device. Use Restore Recovery or Clear Recovery when needed.
• Save before large operations such as landmask replacement, local zoom, big stamp fills, or major layout changes.

Shortcuts & Hidden Actions

• Right-click + drag pans the workspace.
• Right-click a label or map point to open its place info editor directly.
• Ctrl/Cmd + Z undoes. Ctrl/Cmd + Y or Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + Z redoes.
• Ctrl/Cmd + C and Ctrl/Cmd + V copy and paste the current object selection.
• Delete or Backspace removes selected objects when you are not typing in a field.
• Ctrl/Cmd + R turns on Rectangle Select.
• Shift + click deletes many placed items such as labels, stamps, free text, and text boxes.
• On placed stamps, the mouse wheel scales and Shift + wheel rotates. On free text, the mouse wheel rotates the text. On the reference image, the wheel zooms and Shift + wheel rotates it.
• When Place Info is the active panel, clicking empty map space creates a new standalone map point instead of doing nothing.

License, Use, & Contact

• You can use Nova Terra for personal work, client work, books, games, products, and other commercial projects.
• You can print, publish, post, and sell the finished maps you create with the app.
• Do not resell, share, or repackage access to Nova Terra itself.
• Questions, licensing, and contact: Artrealmsshop@gmail.com · Doug Turner · Terms of Use