Ptolemy Maps for New Vegas

Back in 2005, a man named Alan Broad developed a program called Ptolemy for creating a high-quality, detailed map of Morrowind's Vvardenfell and all the locations thereupon. This program, being purpose-built for games like The Elder Scrolls, not only came with the map but served as a tool for creating game maps from bitmap images. It included a simple but robust suite of tools for creating and organizing locations based on their type, faction, importance &tc.

But until now, I'm not sure anyone ever used the program (obscure as it already was) to create more maps, despite Broad's efforts to create such a handy tool. Having gotten back into New Vegas recently, I got the urge to create a map that would catalog the world of New Vegas and the curiosities therein, and realized that I had the means to do so in Ptolemy.

By taking very large, high-resolution images of the world maps of New Vegas and its expansions, I have done exactly this. The maps not only detail every location to be found in the game (including many unmarked locations), they also detail the locations of anything I deemed of unique importance: one-of-a-kind weapons/armor/clothing, skill books, and snow globes. The expansion maps also include oddities peculiar to them, such as the vendor holotapes of Dead Money and the warheads of Lonesome Road.

There are actually two maps of the Mojave Wasteland itself: one of only the locations, and a separate map detailing the collectibles. I created two maps because a single map containing both would be extraordinarily cluttered, and because I was already pretty deep into creating the collectibles map when I realized I could have put them on a single map and toggled certain categories on and off to keep things nice and neat. Hindsight is 20/20, and all that.

Because the Mojave Wasteland map is so much larger and well-populated than the others, the collectibles map also has its items, particularly the weapons and clothing/armor, broken down into finer subcategories: equipment which is found "free," and may be simply picked up or looted from an NPC which is ALWAYS hostile; equipment which is carried by an NPC that may or may not be friendly to the player; and equipment which may only be obtained via quests.

Collectibles on any of the maps will be marked with a simple format indicating the name, followed by the location, followed by either the NPC who carries it or the quest which must be completed to obtain it. For instance, the unique grenade machinegun Mercy is found in Dead Wind cavern, and is simply lying on the ground. Therefore, its tag reads, "Mercy; Dead Wind Cavern." Meanwhile, Ambassador Crocker's Suit is worn by the man himself, and thus its tag reads, "Ambassador Crocker's Suit; NCR Embassy; Ambassador Crocker." Finally, the unique hunting shotgun Dinner Bell can only be recieved by completing a quest given by Red Lucy, and it's