I posted earlier about converting old Freehand 3.0 files to something more current for a game on Salerno. I finally managed to get an old Win98 machine and converted the FH3 files to Freehand 5.0 and Illustrator 5.x. Unfortunately the machine will not export to BMP or TIFF because of some insufficient memory issue. I got the other 3 maps to export. So I am looking for help exporting the last map.
Not having a current version of Illustrator, I am wanting to see if it will update an old Illustrator 5.x file to something current that I can then export to BMP. It is only one file of a game map we designed a long time ago.
Just a wild guess, have you tried importing the old Illustrator file into Inkscape?
Inkscape will only import Illustrator 9 or newer. If you could get your hands on Illustrator 9 or later, I’ll bet that would be able to convert the file to the format used by 9+.
This has been a real chore, sure I’ll finally get it figured out. Had to buy a Win98 machine on eBay, plus a copy of Freehand 5.0, install, find right drivers for USB drive, then convert FH3 files. Miracle the files (from mid-90s) were still good.
For whatever reason, one of the file would not export. So at the moment, that map is only accessible PDF. Result below. Sure would help to get it to BMP. Game is in alpha playtest using a vassal module, but like to get the playtest map finished. If anyone has Illustrator, I can email the old AI file. I just need a BMP version.
Have you tried LibreOffice? It should be able to import FreeHand 3.0 files and run on newer machines. Also, I believe BMPs (bitmaps) are deprecated in lieu of PNGs for VASSAL. BMPs tend to be very big and PNGs much smaller.
