I’m sure you all would like to know what is currently in development and when the next add-ons for CC3+ will arrive. Well, I can report that Cities of Schley is very close to completion now and that the next Token Treasury is chugging along nicely.

Cities of Schley

Mike has finished almost all the symbols for the set, and is now working on the bitmap textures that we need to go along with them, so the City Designer house tool can create matching buildings.

Sue Daniels has been helping us with creating the roof maps and as you can on the right, they look great. She’s also suggested a great way to give you more variety in the roof shapes without compromising the shadow’s on the city map (as mirroring a symbol within CC3+ would do).

Token Treasury 2

Seeing that there is still a vast army of fiends and critters lurking in the shadows to pounce on hapless heroes, we’ve decided to drag a few more into the light of the virtual tabletop.

Rich Longmore is creating another set of monster tokens and I’m always delighted when a new one charges through the doorway (or slithers through a crack in the wall).

We do have a few slots for new monster available in the list, so if you have something special that you would like to see as a token, let us know in the comments below!

While Campaign Cartographer offers a wide range of different drawing styles to use, sometimes you just want that special look that anybody else uses, and few things are more rewarding than creating your own unique mapping style. We have covered some of the process of doing this in the first Annual Volume, but quite a few features have been added to CC3+ since then and the Annual issue couldn’t cover all possible options in high detail.

So I thought that a publicly-available article series might be a good way to document the process step-by-step and in higher detail than an Annual issue can. It should also give everyone the opportunity to pitch in with questions along the way. So, let’s get started…

1. What map type to use?

The first decision to make is what type of map style we want to create. A city style? One for floorplans? I know what I’m going to do for this article, my favorite type of maps: an overland maps style.

Let’s take a look at what styles are already available in CC3+. To do this you need to open the CC3+ program data folder in Windows Explorer: C:\ProgramData\ProFantasy\CC3Plus. If you installed CC3+ in a custom location, you will need open that folder. If you don’t see the ProgramData folder at all, it may be “hidden” in Windows 10. Make sure to activate the option “Show hidden files/folders” in Windows Explorer and it should appear.

Now navigate to the Templates subfolder, then Overland Maps, then Wizard. Here you see all the different overland wizard templates listed. Each template consists of three files: The CC3+ template (FCT extension), a preview bitmap (the PNG file) and a short text info file (TXT). For most of the file you will see two sets of 3 files, one for metric units and one for imperial ones. As the template forms the basis for a map style, we will need to create a new set.

2. Creating a New Wizard Template

I find it easiest to start a new style based on an existing one. It might only be vaguely similar, but copying an existing style makes it easier to not forget necessary bits and pieces and gives you a set of styles to start from. That means we need to decide what style we want to create at this point. I am thinking January’s World’s of Wonder style would look good in black-and-white, so I decide to create such a style for this article. I locate the three files (for imperial units) in Explorer as shown on the right.

Select the three files and use the clipboard to copy them (ctrl-c, then ctrl-v). Windows will rename these copies by appending “- copy” to the filename. Rename all three to the name of your new style (e.g. Annual Worlds of Wonder BW.*). Make sure the file names are all exactly the same, except for the file extension. We won’t worry about the metric version of the template yet – we can create that much later when most of the work is done.

3. A New Drawing Tool folder

After the template, the next important part of a style is the set of drawing tools to go with it. Again, we can create a new one by copying an existing set. Navigate to the ProgramData\ProFantasy\CC3Plus folder again and then go to System\Drawtools\. You will see a folder for each drawing style. Again, create a copy of the folder “Annual Worlds of Wonder” and rename it to “Annual Worlds of Wonder BW”. We don’t need to worry about the files in the folder at this point.

4. Setting the Template to the new Drawing Tools

Now it’s time to open CC3+ for the first time. Navigate back to the Templates/Overland Maps/Wizard and double-click the template file Annual Worlds of Wonder BW.FCT to open it in CC3+. Naturally it still looks exactly like the Worlds of Wonder style, as it’s just a plain copy of it. Select File > Drawing Properties from menu to open the Drawing Presets dialog. In the Drawing Style section select the new “Annual Worlds of Wonder BW” from the list. Basically this tells CC3+ which folder to choose the drawing tools from when you click the drawing tools buttons on the left-hand toolbar. If we now make changes in this template on the its drawing tools, they won’t affect the original Worlds of Wonder style but be restricted to the new Worlds of Wonder BW style instead.

If you have your own ideas for creating a style you can already start tinkering with the template and the drawing tool. We will continue in the next article with changing the bitmap fills that the style uses. If you have any questions concerning this article and creating your own drawing style, feel free to do so in the comments below, or – for easier discussion and more help from other users – go to the forum thread I have created for this series of articles.

May is almost over and it’s time to check out some of the beautiful maps contributed by the community over the last month.

Let’s start with Mark Olsen‘s ingenious map of Xemmirrilth – City of the Dragonborn. The shadow work cleverly shows the vertical layout of the city, telling the viewer clearly that you’re looking at a town built inside crater.
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For the first time, ProFantasy will be exhibiting at UK Games Expo in Birmingham this coming weekend.

The show has been constantly growing in recent years and we are excited to see how the gaming community comes together for this event. You will find us in hall 1 at booth 1-697 as show in the hall map below. If you are visiting UK Games Expo, please stop by to say hello, check out our software and just chat a little about mapping!

The May issue of the Cartographer’s Annual is now ready for download and installation. The map pack “Beaumaris Castle” is a complete re-imagining of a classic fortification from Source Maps: Castles! Sue Daniel rebuild the Welsh castle with modern bitmap symbols and textures, and we’ve included all those resources in the issue for your use in other maps and drawings.

Explore the beautifully mapped four floorplan levels, the stunning 3d view of the whole castle and a surroundings maps. Over 100 floorplan symbols, 30 isometric buildings and walls sections, and 33 new bitmap textures can be leveraged for other projects.

If you haven’t done so already, you can subscribe to the Annual 2019 here. If you are already subscribed, the May issue is available for download on your registration page now.

Welcome cartographers to the April newsletter! Shall we have a look what is in store for this month? Of course, we shall.

News

• We have two new Master Mappers among our ranks: Joe Sweeney (for 2017) and Christina Trani (for 2018). Congratulations!
• The Tome of Ultimate Mapping has been updated with a completely revamped list of commands, and new sections on Dioramas 3, the Source Maps products and the Token Treasury.
• The April Annual with Pär Lindström’s Moody Mansions style is available for download.

Resources

• Remy Monsen starts a new series of articles for those who want to program add-ons for CC3+. Take a look, it’s easier than you think!
• We have a new selection of Maps of the Month for April.
• Want to create isometric maps with Perspectives 3? Get inspired by these examples from the user community.

Articles

• Sue Daniel shares some of her mapping secrets in this article on Special Effects with sheets.

The Perspectives 3 add-on has a special place in the Profantasy software library: it is the only one in the arsenal (except for one Cosmographer 3 star map style), which does three dimensional maps – even if it’s not full 3d viewing, but an isometric projection. The resulting map are wonderful to look at, give a great sense of space and really fire the imagination, but they can be a bit challenging to design. While Perspectives 3 makes the basic drawing part easy, the overall planning and layout can be a bit harder.

As a result the community output of isometric maps has traditionally been lower than for classic 2d maps, but recently some beautiful Perspectives maps have cropped out, which we would like to share to inspire more mappers to try their hand and isometric layouts.

Jean-Michel Bravo (aka Joachim de Ravenbel) is the undisputed master (and a master mapper to boot) of the isometric map. He cerate a lot of custom content to use with Perspectives 3, just look at this Egyptian tomb map.


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April is approaching its end and it’s high time to highlight another set of user maps that have been posted over the last month. Enjoy these beautiful artworks!

Lakeside Leg by Erik Korwin Z Ślepowrony Wroblewski

Erik posted this beautiful battle (?) map in the Dungeons of Schley style on the Facebook group. A lovely way to depict the water!

The Continent of Dorina

A brief note about this article

The main reason I have never written about the special effects I use in my maps before now is because they have to be applied differently on each new map I draw. Differences in map style and the random variability of the way I chose to warp the colour scheme each time have made it very hard to nail down any particular method to the point of there being a right or a wrong way of doing it, and it’s nearly impossible to make a definitive set of instructions when nothing is set in concrete. I have often used similar combinations of effects on similar sheets in different maps once I discovered a useful result by experimentation, but I don’t think I have ever used exactly the same settings on any two maps. So what follows is more a train of thought and an explanation of my method as I develop two example maps of the same place in two different styles in tandem. However, and having said that, there are a few simple instructions on how to generate and process sea contours in the first of the special effects to be described.

This article focuses on two versions of the continent of Dorina shown above in the Mike Schley style (MS) and the Herwin Weilink style (HW). I have chosen these styles because they are available to all CC3 mappers, and because they are so different in nature that the special effects will have to be applied differently to each one. By describing this process and providing the finished FCW files for reference purposes, I hope that those of you who have requested tutorials about how to get similar special effects to mine in their own maps may at the very least gain some useful information and ideas.

The effects I will be working on in this article are oceanic contours, global colour shifts, contrast adjustments, snowfields and something I’ve called ‘midnight’, which entirely changes the nature of the map in a way that makes it vaguely reminiscent of a view seen under brilliant moonlight.

First off, then, I should probably start with the basic stuff – how much I have already warped the default styles to produce the initial maps before we get started on the special effects. Please note that for some reason I set the scale of these maps completely wrong, but it was too late to go back and start again by the time I got to the finishing touches. I didn’t realise until I was adding the scale bar and it was out by a very large factor.

Dorina – MS

The MS style is beautiful in its clean and radiant pastel colours. Unfortunately for me it is those very same pastel shades that make doing the kind of special effect I do quite difficult to achieve on an MS map. While I can appreciate the loveliness of many very different styles my personal taste tends more towards richer, darker colours. If you open the Dorina – Mike Schley.FCW file you will see that the sheets have been dramatically altered, so that while I tried very hard not to take it too far away from the intended appearance as to be unrecognisable as an MS map, I have used lots of Adjust Hue/Saturation and RGB Matrix effects. I have also swapped out some of the textures for others in the same set and changed their colours accordingly. I love the grassy texture of the Marsh_MS fill, and so I have abused it by using it for anything that is at all grassy in nature. There are other fills I’ve substituted, but even though I’ve bashed it about quite badly (and I cringe to think of what the purists would say) all the fills are MS fills and part of that style. There is nothing there that doesn’t come from the Mike Schley mapping style.

Dorina – HW

You might think the HW style is made for me, with my already stated preference for darker, richer colours, but my taste is less subtle and a couple of degrees lighter in tone. I have done exactly the same thing with the HW map as I’ve done with the MS style – lots of colour changing sheet effects aimed at making everything a little brighter than before. I haven’t swapped out so many of the fills, but I do very much like the grassland fill and I’ve used it in several shades on different sheets. There are couple of sheep and cows and a horse that remain from the MS version where there is no HW equivalent.

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The Master Mapper award has been on hiatus for a few years, but certainly not because of a lack of awesome cartographers out there! It’s our fault due to being busy with other things and not being able to make our mind up who among so many great Campaign Cartographer users we should single out. Well, we are certainly going to change that and start out by awarding the honor to not one, but two deserving mappers! For that we are going back a bit in time …

Master Mapper 2017: Joe Sweeney

Awarding Joe Sweeney the Master Mapper title for one specific year is like saying “D&D was the most popular role-playing game this year” – it’s true, but it doesn’t say much! Joe has been a great asset to the community for years, creating templates, maps, free resources and videos.

As Joe has been supporting the CC user community for ages and we felt it was high-time we properly recognized that contribution.

So we just picked a recent year and declared him Master Mapper of 2017 for:

• Helping oh so many mapper with his highly instructive video tutorials.
• Designing templates for highly re-usable dungeon and starship stiles.
• Drawing beautiful maps.
• Hosting and contributing to a tiled texture collection for anyone to use.
• And running a whole Master Mapping Class website.

We can’t thank Joe enough for the support he has provided to the Campaign Cartographer community over the years. You are a true Master Mapper in all meanings of the word!

Master Mapper 2018: Christina Trani

When looking at all the beautiful maps submitted to the community in 2018 we at first felt overwhelmed at all the material. How could we decide on a Master Mapper from among all those great cartographers? But one did indeed stand out when we looked a little closer. There are so many consistently beautiful maps created by Christina Trani (Lorelei on the forum), it became clear to us she is indeed the Master Mapper of 2018.

The Master Mapper award for 2018 goes to Christina for:

• Creating a large number of amazingly beautiful maps.
• Pushing the boundaries of what can be done in Campaign Cartographer, expanding the horizon of all its users.
• Being active in the Facebook user group and the community forum.
• And for supporting and contributing to the Community Atlas project.

Thank you Christina for being such a great part of the Profantasy user community. Please continue amazing us with your beautiful maps and pushing the boundaries of CC3+. Continue being a Master Mapper!

If you want to check out which user have been awarded the title of Master Mapper in the past, check out the Master Mapper page which lists them all.