Howdy do.

I am desperately looking for good cyberpunk city maps! Desperately! I have found a few but I am wondering if you guys have found more.

What I am looking for are either maps of Seattle / New York / Chicago or whatever that involve streets and the like but are not just blank white. Heck, I'd take even just blank as long as they were 'up to date' with the 2050-2060s (or were easily modifed to be so).

One to One veracity for SR based locations is not really necessary. To be entirely honest the correlation between locations and their supposed canon occupants for me and my players is entirely a dream, a joke etc. We only know that "Mitsuhama" exists as a name from a book, not that their facility borders the Aztecs or whomever. It doesn't matter to me - I can fill in the details and drama and the like. What I need are maps that are filled with good cyberpunk detail that I can extrapolate into a meaningful cityscape to run a game in.

Go to, forumdwellers! SEEK!

Is Google Earth still free (as in beer)?

Google Earth was never beer free... you need licenses to use their stuff (which is why they aren't used more in the gaming world) NASA has WorldWind, which is a full free product.

As a side note, I believe there will be an up to date map of Manhattan in an upcoming NYC e-book. Seattle is still pretty current to older 2nd edition maps as well, not a whole lot has changed.

Is there any reason this doesn't work for you?


Um. The basic edition of GoogleEarth says FREE right next to it. I haven't actually downloaded and used it, but it appears that the Plus and Pro versions just add additional toolsets for research and development.

I just use google maps, take screen shots with any off a number of free apps and print them on graph paper. If you want to get real fancy you can edit them using photoshop or equivalent. I find they print a little better if you crop / resize and reduce the opacity to about 90%.

I have used Google earth for a while now to run my games. They are all primarily online (via ventrillo), so its easy enough to sling emails with the run coordinates in it and have my runners look up the coordinates on their copy of the program.

Free as beer usually means you can run and reprint things to your heart's content and use them for publication. I'd read the Google Earth license. Its a good tool yes, and for most of what you all are using it for you are good to go. Being someone who does maps on a more professional basis, I know that if I used images and prints from Google I'd be in violation of their terms. Thus it's not "free as beer", it's more "free but don't let us catch you publishing that shit on the web or anywhere else but for personal use".

On theotherside like I said, WorldWind is full open source in their movement, and you can even get a server together for yourself (if you feel so inclined) and go to town.

I use google maps myself. The buildins are different but mostly the road systems are unchanged. I figure after VITAS and everything major infrastucture overhalls are even lower priority today and they're happy if the bridges aren't falling.

Also google maps has the terrain function which is very nice.

OHHHHHHHHHHHH...

...I had assumed that was a couple typos on "has never been"...

Also some of the books have maps for Seattle where major features are listed, and some stuff like that.

I think the older 2nd edition ones had a lot more detail though.

And I want to say that some book with CP2020 had a really detailed map of night city. At least the downtown area.

About google earth being free the TOS is very specific. Whatever you do with it must be free to the end user. If you don't charge your players to play at your table you can do anything you want.

For SR maps of flooded cities, there's a tool somewhere with which you can raise sea levels on Google Earth, "flooding" the map accordingly.

You might try Yahoo maps too. Or the local chamber of commerce/tourism board site.

Nope, that's free as in speech.
Free as in beer just means you can use it without paying.

While a lot of people are suggesting using various online mapping tools, I am kind of curious what you mean by "involve streets and the like but are not just blank white." Could you share a map that you have found that meets your requirements, so that we may understand what it is that you're looking for? It sounds like you're looking for more than simply a street-map, perhaps something a little more atmospheric?

If I am understanding this right, Google Maps under the "Maps" button would be "just blank white"

Google Maps under the Satellite button might be what the OP is referring to. I just peeked at Seattle, and around the Space Needle you can easily see 6-inch objects on the ground.

Im not asking about Googlemaps.

I know how to use it. I have used it.

What I am looking for is cyberpunk ART that is not a cityscape, but an actual top down map of a sprawl.

I can add in labels and/or adapt it to better fit the SR setting if it is not from the SR setting as is.

Imagine the Shadowland maps but with actual detail, larger format etc.

You can use My Maps in google maps to add labels and shit... This is the map for my Manhattan campaign

Ah, I understand now. I don't think I've ever come across something like that. You mentioned in your first post that you had a few, but were looking for more. Would you be willing to share those you already have? I'm curious and intrigued.

Okay, so I'm totally not getting how Google Maps does not provide you EXACTLY what you just described.

Hey wants artwork. He wants form over function.

DV8 is dead on. Form over function, PLEASE!

While I would love the function of Google Maps / Google Earth there are tons of little details that derail me... Where is the Arcology? Are those parks still there? Seriously? What about large corporate campuses? Theres just a ton of remodeling that I want to do that would update to 2060 the core Gmaps datafiles. If I could get the multiple levels of zoom but with the ability to change the base maps I'd be in heaven.

RE: my own maps. I just changed out my PC (and with it the HDD) so I will have to try and dig up on the old disk the maps. I tried to relocated some of the files off of the internet but good god... needle in a stack of needles. Deviant art is the kind of thing that I had time to browse through over hours and lazy days in college but no more.

Someone here, I don't quite recall who, made this Google Map which shows the arc as well as the AZT pyramid and several other things. I know it won't suffice, but I wanted to throw it out there anyway.


If you ever come across them, hook me up.

Jean Gottmann, Megalopolis (1961)
Jean Gottmann, Since Megalopolis (1990)

http://ec.europa.eu/research/leaflets/urba...h/index_en.html

What you are looking for is the Google Maps API. With a little digging you can find out how to :
[*]Make you own overlays for the google maps site;
[*]Embed a java map object into a Flash doc
[*]Embed a java map object into an HTML doc.

If you go for the embedding, each layer of zoom pulls it own tiles. There are scripts to pull the standard tiles from google, pull your own over lays or blend the two. While those option are super sexy, they aren't easy at all. I'm not sure how much of a web-programmer you are. If you have skills you could really rock out.

PM if you get started on any of this. I've done a little work and am totally willing to share my work.