The March Annual is now ready for download and your enjoyment. The Temple of Bones is an isometric dungeon style created by TJ Vandel and meshes seamlessly with earlier work by Herwin Wielink and the upcoming Perspectives 3 (in beta testing right now).
The issue is now available for CC3+ from the registration page for all subscribers. If you haven’t subscribed to the Annual 2016 yet, you can do so here.
With 2016 upon us, we’ve been working hard on Perspectives 3 and it’s in late beta with no significant problems so far. The new Annual is in its second month and our users have once again amazed us with their cartographic talents.
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So, where is that Perspectives 3 you are talking about so much, you ask, and rightfully so. The truth is, I was a bit hasty with my previous assessment. We ran into some hiccups with the central Perspectives dialogs and to sort them out before we could move on. The good news is, we’ve now got the beta version out to the testers now. I’m now working on the documentation (Essentials guide and help files), but we might still do a pre-release for alpha users before Perspectives 3 gets its full public release. Watch this space.
You can see in the dialog screenshots (click them for larger versions) that we’ve significantly enlarged the previews for the isometric rooms and buildings. We’ve also simplified the setup. Where in Perspectives Pro you had a separate color setting that combined with Perspective and House settings in a way that could be a bit confusion, now the color settings are built into the others. That became possible because the wall shading is now handled through shaded polygon entities, instead of different colors. That also means that you can adjust lighting and shadows globally on the map, in a similar way to City Designer 3’s roof shading.
Here’s a little preview of the other Perspectives 3 bitmap style, created by Kai-Uwe Wallner. It is based on the artwork for Dungeon Designer 3, and Kai-Uwe did a magnificent job in converting the dungeon artwork by Dave Allsop into 3d objects. Because he created full models of the objects, we were able to create 8 views of each symbols, doubling the number of orientations you can show them on the map.
Here is the Evil Idol symbol from the Statues catalog in its 8 variations:
Apart from Perspectives 3 the Cartographer’s Annual 2016 is now full underway with the Here be Monsters and Empire of the Sun styles available for subscribers. But the coming month needs their attention too. Next month will see an isometric style, compatible with both the Herwin Wielink Isometric Dungeons from the Annual and Perspectives 3 itself. And then we have some historical houses/villas/manors floorplans in the work, as well as a woodcut-style for overland maps.
Also – even if it is hard to believe – the year’s conventions (GenCon in August and Spiel in October) already need attention. GenCon hotel bookings for exhibitors is coming in only a couple weeks, and that is a stressful time, as rooms are becomings increasingly sparse in downtown Indy. For Spiel, we are looking in what kind of anti-harassment policies are in effect at German conventions, a topic that’s not been talked about much here.
With that I leave you with a bit from the current Perspectives example map that is on my screen, a little farm or village scene created mainly with the Isometric House tool.
Hi folks, it’s been a while since we last took a look the maps the community users post in the forum, so let’s not dawdle any longer and get to it.
qwalker posted a lot of wonderful maps from his Myrirandios world, inlcuding the John Speed style city map of Alodosis and the Crazy Camel Inn mapped in DD3. And the best thing? You can download his maps in FCW from the forum thread too.
Continue reading »
We have the Feburary Annual issue ready for you to download and enjoy: the overland style Empire of the Sun. It’s a wonderful design by TJ Vandel that lets you create overland maps in a quasi-historical style reminiscent of Japanese and Chinese cartography. With more than 350 symbols, the style allows you to easily put together varied landscapes and coastlines.
The February issue is now available for CC3+ from the registration page for all subscribers. If you haven’t subscribed to the Annual 2016 yet, you can do so here.
The Vintyri Project released their enormous content collection for City Designer. Here is the announcement from Mark Oliva.
We now have completed release of the entire Vintyri (TM) Cartographic Collection for ProFantasy’s Campaign Cartographer 3+ and 3. This is a collection 974 CC3+ and CC3 raster symbols in the VH, HI, LO and VL resolutions and 122 fill styles along with templates and drawing tools, also in the VH, HI, LO and VL resolutions. Additional templates and drawing tools can be downloaded and installed by users of City Designer 3 and Dungeon Designer 3 with CC3+ or CC3.
The cartographic collection can be used with CC3+ or CC3 alone, but it is of full benefit only to users who also have ProFantasy’s City Designer 3. The collection is fully integrated into CD3. It uses CD3 roof shading, street alignment, demographic building coloring, automatic layer assignments, etc.
The Vintyri Cartographic Collection is released for private and commercial use under the Open Game License 1.0a. It is a free program. The Vintyri Project is a non-profit, non-commercial organization. We sell nothing. We neither solicit nor accept donations. We do no kickstarters. We’re strong supporters of open source gaming.
We have prepared a 30-page, free bookmarked PDF Vintyri Cartographic Collection Installation Guide that will show you step-by-step with screen illustrations exactly how to do things right. PLEASE use the installation guide. A number of users didn’t when installing the preliminary releases. We got to read their tales of woe by private E-mail. Think of the old acronym from the early days of PCs: RTFM! (which meant “Read the @!&* Manual!). Save yourself hours of work unmangling a mutilated CC3+ or CC3 installation. It’s easy to install the collection, but you have to do it right. You can get the free installation guide here:
https://www.vintyri.org/downloads/vccp_install_guide.pdf (11 MB)
The PNG graphics that make up the symbols and fill styles have a total download size of 4.4 GB. Because several users have reported problems downloading huge files, we have split the symbol and fill style downloads up into 13 smaller ZIP files. We know that this is irritating for users with very stable high-speed Internet connections, but it’s necessary to make the cartographic collection to all users.
After downloading and installing the collection, the \Data Folder\Documentation folder will contain a 202-page bookmarked PDF book entitled Vintyri Cartographic Collection Guide for CC3+ and CC3. We released an earlier edition of this book several years ago for Fractal Mapper (TM) 8 and Dundjinni (TM), and we received a lot of feedback from users who found it to be extremely useful. This new edition is filled with brand new content and is tailor made for users of CC3+, CC3, CD3 and DD3. Even if you’re not particularly interested in most of its content, we STRONGLY urge users to read the back sections regarding known issues and restoring the CD3 integration!
During our test phase, both we and our testers found issues in both CC3+ and CC3. These issues have been reported to ProFantasy, and we’ll let ProFantasy decide whether they’re bugs. Regardless, these are issues where CC3+ and CC3 did not perform in the manner we thought that they should and where they created some genuine problems while mapping. We managed to duplicate these problems on a new PC upon which the Vintyri products never have been installed, so we’re rather convinced that these issues are with CC3+, CC3 or CD3 and not our software. Be that as it may, the collection guide explains these problems and how to solve them or work around them, if possible. If not, the book tells you how to avoid them.
The topic of restoration also is important. It’s possible that reinstallations, the installation of CD3 or DD3 after the Vintyri installation and/or future ProFantasy products might overwrite Vintyri files. The section on restoration tells you what to do in such a case to have both the ProFantasy and Vintyri products working properly.
To go directly to the download site, go here:
http://www.vintyri.org/vintyri/vccindex_cc.htm
Mark Oliva
Webmaster, the Vintyri Project (TM)
Internet: http://www.vintyri.org
E-Mail: info@vintyri.org
The Vintyri Project is a non-commercial service
Another year has passed, another Annual subscription is complete and we are seamlessly moving into the next year. A Happy New Year to you all. 2016 here we come!
Pär Lindström starts the new year with his large-scale overland style Here Be Monsters. All manner of weird and amazing sea creatures are now ready to populate the edges and corners of your maps, and show the terror the uncharted open ocean would hold for early mariners. Here Be Monsters, indeed!
The January issue is now available for CC3+ from the registration page for all subscribers. If you haven’t subscribed to the Annual 2016 yet, you can do so here.
Like most years, we publish a free bonus issue for the current Annual around Christmas. This time you’re getting a collection of six high detail battle maps created with the techniques described in the December issue.
Raft the tumultuous Razoredge Gorge, defend the walls of Tenrock Hold, and sneak along a Forest Path to ambush your enemies in their Forest Camp. Edit and adjust the maps in CC3+ to your own needs. This bonus issue is a free download, you don’t need to own the Annual 2015 to use it. Just head over to the Annual 2015 page for the download links.
We’ll shortly offer current Annual subscribers the option to re-subscribe to the Annual 2016. If you want to take advantage of the reduced rate, you can still quickly subscribe to the Annual 2015 here.
The December Annual is now available for download. Check out an 8-page mapping guide on creating deluxe battle maps, with tips and tricks on merging different map styles into one, adding new sheets and effects for features like cliffs, water, height transitions and multiple floors, and using lighting to give your maps that bit of extra polish.
The December issue is available both for CC3 and CC3+ (sample FCW files CC3+ only). You can download both setups from your registration page on the Subscriptions tab. If you haven’t subscribed to the Annual 2015 yet, you can do so here.
We are making good progress on Perspectives 3, November means Black Friday sale, and the December annual is demoing. Definitely sounds like the year is coming to a close, doesn’t it? Let’s take stock with this month’s newsletter.
From 27th November until 1st December Tuesday morning, all of our cartography software is available at a 30% discount, including bundles and upgrades.
Use this voucher in the checkout to take advantage of the offer: BLACK@30%.
Get full versions in the store, and upgrades from your registered users page.
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