Draw and edit roads

Draw solid roads and dashed paths through land anchors. Each road keeps its own name and identity at junctions.

Draw a road

1. Open an editable map with land tiles and active map history.
2. Select Roads in the toolbar, or press Shift+R. Use its Type hexagon to toggle Path or Road.
3. Select an anchor, then a neighbouring anchor in the same tile.
4. Continue selecting anchors to extend the route. Press Escape or select Deselect to stop.

Land tiles provide centre and side anchors. Shared sides use one anchor. Water provides no anchors.

Roads bend between anchors. Hover an anchor to preview the next connection.

Meander controls weaving from 0 (None) to 10 (Strong), as with Rivers. It applies to every road and path.

Changing Meander reshapes existing roads and sets the amount for new connections. Junctions stay in place.

A change that leaves land or creates an unconnected crossing is rejected. Undo and Redo restore saved shapes.

A pending start makes no saved change. The first connection creates the road.

Reshape a road

With Roads selected, drag an intermediate anchor to reshape the curve between its two neighbours. Those neighbours stay fixed. The intermediate anchor disappears from the preview unless the new route needs it. Move near another available anchor to snap there.

Endpoints and junctions still snap to highlighted nearby anchors. Every connected section moves together.

If moving an anchor needs extra connections through neighbouring land, the preview suggests supporting anchors as hollow markers. Release to accept the move and its supporting anchors together. One Undo restores the original road.

Drag a segment to reshape it while its endpoints stay fixed. If the curve enters nearby land tiles, the preview plans supporting anchors to connect the route. Hollow markers show those anchors. Existing anchor positions can pull the curve away from the pointer.

Curve adjustments reuse existing control points. Connected curves adjust together to keep smooth joins. Extra anchors appear only when the route needs new connections through neighbouring land. The complete route must remain valid before saving.

Water, occupied anchors, and unrelated road crossings restrict valid routes. If no nearby route works, the preview is invalid and release leaves the saved road unchanged.

A dashed projection shows the proposed shape before saving. Invalid shapes appear red. Release over a valid position to save one edit.

Press Escape or release at an invalid position to keep the original road. Custom curves survive reload and support Undo and Redo.

Dragging a segment starts from a safely smoothed version of that segment. The preview includes smoothing and reshaping together. Drag edits also smooth sharp internal corners when the adjusted curve remains valid. To reset custom bends, open Road settings, choose the road, and select Smooth road. It rebuilds curves from the anchors and normalizes adjoining angles where valid. Anchors and junction connections stay fixed. The complete route must remain valid. One Undo restores the previous shape.

Follow a coast

Coastal routing defaults to Auto for new connections. Two consecutive anchors on adjacent shoreline edges follow the shared coastal corner.

The curve bends inland between fixed anchors. Anchors on opposite sides of a bay do not qualify.

In Road settings, adjust Distance inland and Coastal smoothing while viewing the map. These controls reshape eligible segments of the selected road and save after two seconds of inactivity.

Existing saved roads keep their shape until you change their coastal settings or Meander. Off returns eligible segments to ordinary road curves using the map's Meander value. Undo restores the previous shape.

Junction connections stay fixed. Settings that would leave land or create an unconnected road crossing are rejected.

Cross and connect roads

Drawing across another road creates a connected junction. Drawing pauses at the first crossing.

Select Continue road to extend the same road from the junction. Select End here to stop there.

The receiving road keeps its identity and route. Roads have no direction, so either end can extend.

Extensions and Meander edits smooth bends through ordinary anchors. Junctions keep their existing shape. A bend keeps its original shape if smoothing would leave land or create an unconnected crossing.

Select an existing anchor to extend its road. At a shared junction, choose the road in Road at junction.

Select Fork in the hexagon sub-tool cluster to begin a separate road at that anchor. Road identities never merge automatically.

Loops are allowed. Overlapping an existing segment is rejected without changing the map.

Cross rivers

Roads cannot use anchors occupied by rivers. Roads can cross rivers between anchors. A bridge graphic marks each crossing, without connecting the road and river networks.

Name, change and remove roads

Select a road line. Repeated selection cycles through System, Road, Section and Segment, as with Rivers. The Selection hexagon beside Roads also cycles levels. Its Lock hexagon keeps the current level.

Open Road settings, choose a road, enter its name. The name follows the road in bold body text with a theme-aware halo. Set Font size to resize that road's label. Road and path labels default to size 10. PNG exports include these labels. The Type hexagon changes each selected road identity.

Select Delete selection to remove the highlighted segments. Road selects the entire road; System selects all connected roads.

Select an anchor to use Delete anchor or Split. These remove its touching segments.

Settings open beside the map, or beneath it on narrow screens. The map pans to the chosen name. Close saves pending changes before closing the panel.

Label layout settings move the name along the route or above, on, or below its line. Adjust distance, smoothing and letter spacing while viewing the name on the map. Choose Gentle arc to use the curvature control. Changes appear directly on the map and save after two seconds of idle time. Custom font colours get a contrasting halo; Use theme font colour restores the theme.

Full names use a gentle baseline. Labels can extend beyond a short route. Automatic placement avoids nearby names when possible; explicit positions take priority. Increase the font size for small labels, or move crowded names manually. Saved settings survive reload, undo and redo, and PNG export.

Follow line is the default for routes and Toponym Line labels. Smoothing softens tight turns while retaining successive bends. Letter spacing controls the gaps between characters. Gentle arc preserves the simplified curve, with curvature from 0% (straight) to 500%. Short routes extend the label beyond the line instead of compressing the name; settings explain when this happens. Font halo thickness controls the outline around each letter. It defaults to 2. Saved overrides take priority. Set it to 0 to remove the outline. Background tag adds an optional solid background behind the whole name and defaults to off. Its padding and colour are separate from the font halo. Both have colour controls and theme reset buttons. Changes save after two seconds of idle time and appear in PNG exports.

Surviving pieces retain the original road identity and name. Empty roads disappear.

Road colour

Roads default to white with dark artwork and black with light artwork. Each road or path can have its own colour.

Open Road settings, choose a road and select its Line colour. It previews immediately and saves after two seconds of idle time. Use map default removes that road’s override. General Settings provides Default road colour for roads and paths without overrides. Use theme road colour restores the automatic map default.

The saved colour appears in shared maps and PNG exports. Undo and Redo include colour changes.

Save, undo and export

Each connection or edit saves as one action. A connection that creates a junction includes the receiving road's split.

Terrain changes that remove road segments require confirmation. One undo restores terrain and affected roads together.

Use Undo and Redo to reverse edits. Wait for saving to finish before closing.

PNG export includes committed roads without editing anchors, previews or selection marks.

Waypoint tables, automatic route finding and dedicated road management are unavailable. Bridges, fords and ferries have no special controls.