Welcome to the February newsletter! Apart from an update to Fractal Terrains and a new column by Remy Monsen, we have two cartography articles from our Annual contributors – a feature we will continue in future months.

News

• A new version of Fractal Terrains 3 is available: 3.0.21 which improves the Finding Rivers function, ensuring they always appear. You can download an update from your registration page.
• The February issue of the Cartographer’s Annual 2018 is available. The symbol pack Dungeon Walls allows you to create detailed and varied walls for your underground complexes.
• The January issue of the Annual 2018 offered a hex-version of Mike Schley’s overland style from CC3+.
• The Community Mapping Project is running a mapping competition. Anyone submitting a map to the project in February participates, so there is still time.

Resources

Articles

• Christina Trani describes her process for creating the battle-maps for March’s Annual issue The Curse of the Lich-king.
• Sue Daniel shows how to use GIMP to create parchment textures for use in CC3+.

I am delighted to accept an invitation from Profantasy to present the methods I use to make parchment and parchment scrolls for use as backgrounds in CC3. I hope that you will find the information useful.

Both these methods require you to have and make basic use of the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP). GIMP is a free application and can be downloaded from this page: https://www.gimp.org/

Once you have installed and opened the software, it will be easier for you to follow this tutorial if you set it up so that it looks similar to the screen shots I’ve included. To do that click the Windows menu, and then Single Window Mode.

Your screen should now look like this:

(You won’t have the Script-fu menu item, since this is an add-on I’ve downloaded separately to the main program.)

PART 1 – Making the parchment
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by Christina Trani

High in the peaks beyond the Hills of the Seven Sisters is the luminous, dark tower said to be the home of an evil Lich King, named Drech Za’Uul. A dark, cursed land beyond the shores of the Brimspire River, few dare cross to stop the wizard and his evil doings and none have survived and returned to tell tales. Ghosts, ghouls, and wights feed on souls who get lost among the Forest of the Dead. Hordes of zombies and skeletons wander the Hills of the Seven Sisters. Who dares seek the hidden Phylactery of the Lich King and destroy it, so once and for all the evil Drech Za’Uul can be killed and free the land from this curse of evil and darkness?

When I was first approached by Ralf to do an issue for the ProFantasy Annual, I realized quickly that I had no talent in drawing, so I set out to create a series of maps for an adventure featuring a Lich King.

The maps, I knew first off, should be created with just the core products, CC3+, DD3 and CD3. Considering I am known for being one of the faster mappers among the ProFantasy Forum users, I am also known for my use of the photorealistic symbols provided by the free CSUAC, Bogie’s, Dundjinni Archives downloads, and other purchased artwork, so going back to basics and using only the core products would most certainly be outside my comfort zone of mapping.

Always up for a challenge I set out to create a regional map first. As some of the forum members may recall, I often mention overland and regional mapping is “not my bag” and quickly found myself frustrated and deleting a lot of maps. Then, while perusing the forums, as I do daily, a fellow member made a map using the 2011 Overland Perspectives Annual and posted it. Well, his map inspired me to try that perspective using the Mike Schley and Herwin Wielink styles and came up with The Realm of the Lich King. In this map, I muted the color palette using the Adjust Hue/Saturation effect to get the look I was hoping for with this perspective style.
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We used to collect all the user-maps posted on the Profantasy community forum in one post to show them in the blog, but frankly we have to admit the community’s output has become too large for us to keep up. Especially since the inception of the Community Atlas Project and the setup of the CC3+ Facebook User Group the number and quality of maps has skyrocketed.

So instead of trying to keep up with the flood of quality material, we’ll pick out a few highlights each month that caught our eyes and post them here. This does not mean these are the best maps out there or any other maps are worse! We might easily have missed some and we also try to pick out unusual stuff and maps by new users. So take this just as a start, pointing you to the places where more of these awesome maps may be found, and as an invitation to participate by sharing your own work.

The Emerald Crown Forest

ScottA created this maps for the Community Atlas project, using Herwin Wielink’s overland style straight out of CC3+.

Interstate Hotel Horror

For the monthly Cartographer’s Guild contest, Quenten Walker mapped a pub from his hometown on Flinder’s Island and used Pär Lindström’s Horror House style from 2016’s Annual to flesh out the rooms.

The Wound

Josh Plunkett leveraged Perspectives 3 and the Temples of Bones Annual by TJ Vandel for this awesome isometric dungeon map.

The Dungeon

Jason Payne posted this impressively detailed dungeon map to the CC3+ Facebook group.

The City of Curton

Tony Crawford came up with this incredible city build from from Mike Schley’s overland structure symbols.

It’s time to delve underground, but we want to make sure our dungeon walls are properly build and nicely decorated. Explore a new feature of the Symbols Along command in version 3.80 of CC3+ (see Update 14 here), that allows you to auto-generate walls built from individual symbols.

The February issue “Dungeon Walls” contains 60 new symbols for three different mapping styles, command and symbol settings to make quick and easy use of them, as well as a 4-mapping guide explaining the process. Check out the February style details on the Cartographer’s Annual 2018 website.

You can now subscribe to the Annual 2018 here. Once you have subscribed, the January issue will immediately become available for download on your registration page.

Welcome to 2018 and a new year of the Cartographer’s Annual with lots of mapping goodness! We hope you are as excited as us about delving into the twelfth year of our monthly subscription.

This January we start with a hex-mapping variant of Mike Schley’s wonderful overland mapping style from CC3+. We provide new templates, new versions of the style’s drawing tools, a bunch of hex symbols and take a tour through the creation process of hex-based maps. Check out the January style details on the Cartographer’s Annual 2018 website.

You can now subscribe to the Annual 2018 here. Once you have subscribed, the January issue will immediately become available for download on your registration page.

Another year is coming to a close, and we have a slew of Christmas present in store: A free extension Symbol Set 4, an update for CC3+, the Cartographer’s Annual 2018 is available for subscription and Remy finishes a one-year run of the “Command of the week”.

News

• Symbol Set 4 – Dungeons of Schley gets a free expansions with the Schleyscapes – Forlorn Cottage artwork.
• The Cartographer’s Annual 2018 is now available for subscription. Take a look at the upcoming content here.
• CC3+ Update 14 adds new functions, updates existing ones and fixes a long list of small issues.
• The final two Annual 2017 months are available with a set of Village Battle Maps (November) and the Cthulhu City style by Pär Lindström (December).

Resources

• The Cartographer’s Annual 2017 finishes with a free bonus issue by Sue Daniel.
• We take a look at the highlights of Remy Monsen’s “Command of the Week” series.

Articles

• Guest blogger Randy Ellefson takes a look at “How mountains affect rainfall” in his article on world-building.

Earlier this year Mike Schley kickstarted the first episode of his Schleyscapes series. Aimed at producing an ongoing series of quality gaming maps, in combination with bitmap artwork that could be used in any graphics editor.

As you may know Mike is also the artist behind our own Symbol Set 4 – Dungeons of Schley, and the Schleyscapes art naturally matches the art in that symbol set perfectly. Of course we wanted to make that additional material available for our users of the Dungeons of Schley, and Mike was happy to oblige!

And here it is, the Forlorn Cottage extension to “Symbol Set 4 – Dungeons of Schley”. And the best part? It is completely free for the owners of SS4 – no additional purchase required. You can download it from your registration page as an extra install if you already have SS4 installed, or just use the full setup when you purchase SS4 fresh from the web store. All the new artwork is included.

The SS4 Forlorn Cottage Extension contains:

• 420 new symbols in the SS4 Dungeons of Schley color style
• 14 new bitmap textures for the same style
• 1 “Forlorn Cottage” example map
• 2 SS4 Forlorn Cottage template wizards (imperial & metric)
• Updated SS4 templates incorporating the new bitmap styles
• Updated SS4 symbol catalogs incorporating the new symbols

You can either start a SS4 Dungeons of Schley map and just use the additional symbols, or use the SS4 Forlorn Cottage template to limit yourself to the new symbols.

Ongoing development and bug-fixing for CC3+ has resulted in plenty of material that we are making available with Update 14 for CC3+. You can download it from your registration page. Try out the new Symbols in Area command and see the the long list of updates and changes:

CC3+ Version 3.80
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– Added SYMFILL, SYMFILLM, SYMFILLOPT, SYMFILLLOAD, and SYMFILLSAVE commands as analogs to the ESC* commands for 2D elements. This feature allows creation of map features analogous to those generated by the FOREST tool, but with frilled edges and sparsely-placed internal symbols.
– Added SYMSORT option to FOREST to provide an option to make the output a little cleaner-looking.
– Added ESCM, ESCOPT, ESCLOAD, and ESCSAVE commands to allow use of ESC in drawing tools in a manner similar to FOREST and to create libraries of ESC options.
– ESC can now use the width of symbols as the distance to place them apart.
– Added MKDIR command to allow creating a directory from a macro.
– Modified bitmap options dialog to support display of dpi and resolution information.
– Updated system so that all list boxes (including owner-draw ones) will use the operating system listbox drawing color rather than color 16 (which gets to be a light gray on Windows 10) or the previous value of color 20 (which can be modified by users).
– Added GETGXRETCODE command to support accepting default values in macros
– Added ZOOMSEL and ZOOMSELM commands to allow zooming to the currently-selected entities.
– Added SETFLATTOOLBARS command to allow setting flat toolbar styles from the command line.
– Added GETVIEWL, GETVIEWW, GETVIEWX, and GETVIEWY macro commands to allow getting the current view window from macros.
– Added GETSELL, GETSELW, GETSELX, and GETSELY macro commands to allow getting the current selection extents from macros.
– Added GETDISTFMT to allow saving the DISTFMT state. This command simplifies use of the GET family of commands by allowing the units formatting to be changed and restored.
– Added PSCALESETUP, PSCALEON, PSCALEOFF, and PSCALEX commands to allow for pseudo-perspective scaling of symbols and entities.
– Added SIMPLIFY command to allow simplifying paths to a specific feature size.
– Added support for mouse scroll wheel on symbol catalog and LIST (i.e. text) windows.
– Added “Save to clipboard” operation to text windows.

– Fixed bug that was preventing regular scrolling from using the thumbwheel in text windows.
– Fixed a memory leak in drawing filled multipoly with many nodes that was causing some complex FT drawings to crash CC3 in a matter of a few redraws (e.g. panning the screen for a few seconds).
– Fixed dpi issues in CCL and GLS dialogs as part of the perpetual dpi-related cleanup.
– Fixed system hang when window size reduced to zero height.
– Fixed system crash when drawing area window is minimized.
– Fixed problem where final partial row of symbol catalog would not draw.
– Fixed GOSHEET command to match behavior of SNEXT and SPREV commands.
– Fixed missing COASTLINE sheet in CC3 standard overland template.
– Changed CC3 standard overland style coastline to solid fill to avoid pixelation error
– Fixed Perspectives House Outlines not show on startup
– Fixed Floor fill style selection in PEROPTB (Advanced) not updating preview)
– Fixed problem with IPROJ not working with entities freshly-drawn from a drawing tool
– Fixed problem with EFFECTSCACHE showing wrong sizes on 64-bit Windows.
– Fixed problem where using a space character in FRX settings names would cause XML parser failure and CC3+ collapse at startup. System now correctly sanitizes FRX names so that they are valid XML tag names. – Fixed CC2 references in labels such as Open dialog filters to read CC3+.
– Fixed problem where IPROJ was changing entity color to unexpected value when shaded polygon option was used.

CC3+ Manual and Tome of Ultimate Mapping author Remy Monsen has been running his “Command of the Week” column all year over on the ProFantasy forum, and it has become one of the most popular topics. As the year is coming to an end, we thought to highlight some of the commands he has looked at, not least to make you aware of this wonderful resource in the first place. So let’s see what our five top picks of the year, which everybody should check out, would be:

1. As one of the basic tools at your fingertips in CC3+, I would say that Coordinates are also one of the most important.

2. The second is also a basic thing and equally important, as knowing how to use the various Selection methods will make you a much more powerful mapper.

3. Sort Symbols in Map is a little more obscure command, but no other can save you as much time and as many nerves as this one.

4. Using Trace is another command that separates the beginning cartographer from the more experienced user. It can be a little tricky to use, but Remy expertly explains it in his post.

5. Finally, Text along a Curve is a personal favorite of mine. Making nice, flowing text labels along rivers and mountain ranges can make the difference between a “normal” map and an outstanding one.

Check out the full list of commands in the index that Remy keeps with every weekly post on the community forum.