The RPG maps blog has been going for over a year now, and while some articles were topical, most have long term value, so here is a summary of those articles with links. Also, if you want to try your hand at some CC3 programming and scripting, check out the development blog.
Eight months ago I took the digital plunge into a brave new world called “YouTube” and released my very first video tutorial explaining the how to integrate maps created in CC3 and DD3 into RPTools MapTools. Since that time, and after careful reflection, I have come to the determination that the video really does look like something someone does for a first project. Still the advice is sound, and I wish to expand on concept.
In the video I used a PNG, which is a lossless compressed format, but not the best tool for streaming images across the internet. For that you should use JPEG.
Now we are talking about JPEG, if your file sizes are still too large (and I mean over 150K) export your image without a background. You will see an instant reduction in the file size as the computer discards all of that white space in the compression.
Use tiles! Wait not, not the stuff in the bathroom, well, kinda .. ok it’s close. If you want to sacrifice a little artistic direction, you can make tiles by photographing common materials (such as floorboards, walls, doors, furniture, etc) and build your own dungeon like you would assemble a puzzle. This will require a photo editing program such as Photoshop, or Paint .Net, but when you’re done you end up with a dozen tiny files that are repeated to make up a larger picture. The theory is sense these images are duplicated, the user only has to download a three 64×64 squares instead of a 4000×4000 image to cover the same ballroom floor. MapTools allow snapping, for ease of building, along with rotation tools to spin the images and scale tools to change the size.
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Mark has been putting a lot of work into improving our users’ experience on the website. We wanted to make things easier to register, to find things, and let you download all your software there, not just upgrades and patches. We also added rewards and offers, and made tech support easier and quicker. Log in here to see more. If you have any problems, let us know.
Here is what’s on offer.
The new tabbed layout makes it easy to find what you need
You can register for the first time from any order page, or add an new order to your registration at the click of a button
You can see exclusive offers for registered users only
You can download all your registered products, even if they are 10 years old
You can earn vouchers or cold, hard cash (paypal, actually) through our rewards scheme, with instant totals
Support is streamlined, with the most common issues covered, a knowledge base and easy access to personal email support if you need it
Scrying Eye are also in the RPG cartography business, but they provide the end result, not the tools to do the job! Recently, they’ve used our Cosmographer 3 software to create detailed miniature-scale deckplans under license for Mongoose Traveller. James Miller of Scrying Eye talks about Cosmographer 3 and his deckplans at about 5:20 in the video below:
Forum member Nicholas Hopkins created an atmospheric floorplan for a Call of Cthulhu game. Download the PDF.
He says:
I saw a couple of floorplans in some older mission sourcebooks for Call of Cthulhu and wanted to emulate it as much as possible. I am doing a 1920’s campaign so I wanted it to look a little old fashioned, hence the black and white. It is based on the lighted dungeon template so that the shadows fall the right direction and it gives the rooms a little more texture as there are small, subtle shadows towards the corners of the rooms.
I used the Sepia setting under the RGB Matrix effect and it worked very nicely. Because I didn’t want a background of solid black (never seems to print well) I put in a couple of light sources outside the walls to light things slightly and cast some shadows off the corners of the building. There was some odd effects with the light sources associated with doors and windows so I just made a new sheet called Window Block, made sure that things on it blocked the light sources and was below the Wall sheet so it would disappear, and drew a simple line across the openings. Took care of things nicely. The symbols are a mixture of DD3 symbols and SS3 Modern symbols. They all came out nice looking with the effects turned on.
At least 65% of our CC2 Pro customers have upgraded to CC3. Of those who tell us why they haven’t upgraded, the most common explanation is “CC2 Pro does everything I need. Why do I want this fancy new artwork?”
This unsolicited email from William Toporek, posted with permission, explains better than I ever could the reasons for an upgrade. It also offers Joe Sweeney a well deserved shout-out for his video tutorials.
I must say that I see some excellent improvements in the ease of use department. Many of the old CC1 and CC2 “way of doing things” have been streamlined and many of the “quirky” bits that CC2 had when drawing have been fixed. The cutting symbols work better than ever! I really like the Sheets and Effects and especially want to say thanks to Joseph Sweeney for putting together those superb tutorials. I never would have been able to figure out, let alone use the POWER of the Sheets and Effects. Adding shadows and using all those effects to take one map and turn it into many without having to redraw everything is worth the price of the upgrades. CC3 is such a powerful program with soooo many functions I’m glad your company is using those videos to help show off all that it can do. MORE PLEASE!!! I’m still a firm supporter of all your products. I know this was a bit of a speed bump with all these upgrade problems* but I’m happy I did it. I’ve been a customer for well over a decade and was there with you guys from CC1 and the 3.5″ disks. I have to admit that I was a bit hesitant to upgrade to CC3 with the extra cost and I just figured that I didn’t need any more power than CC2 or that I was just satisfied with the style of CC2 but after using it it was well worth it. So much easier to use than before and my maps are just spectacular!
Thanks for all the help getting me back up and running your customer service has been superfast, especially from across the pond. Tell Nigel thanks again for an excellent product. I’m sure he doesn’t remember me from the Gen Cons, GAMAs, and Origins of the late 90’s and early 2000’s when I used to work for Steve Jackson Games but I want to share my appreciation anyways. Just to show some more “love” I’m off to download the Cosmographer 3 and City Designer 3 upgrades right now from your online store! Thanks so much!
*William had some installation issues which we resolved
I started creating a map of the continent of Jaiman on Shadow World® to include in an upcoming Player Guide. I wanted to create a comprehensive map that included all map related layers of data in all the official books: Places of Interest for players and GM’s, Essaence Flows, Climate, Navigator Obelisks, Roads, Cities & Towns, Kingdom borders in different time periods. However the base map was on the continent scale so I felt the “Fantasy Worlds” style from the April ’09 Annual would work best and give a nice simple and clean look.
I made a few changes to the standard Fantasy Worlds style. Given that the entire continent (45 to 70 degrees latitude) would be covered in forest I felt that the obvious borders in the standard forest (that uses a tree symbol fill) didn’t make much sense. Instead I changed the color of the default land fill to make it a darker and more saturated green. I also created two additional bitmap fills – one darker and greener, and one lighter and more yellow. I scattered a handful of polygons about using these fills to give further variation in the landmass, representing denser than average forest, and more sparse forest mixed with grassland.
Jaiman Map Copyright Matt Hanson 2009, based on Terry Amthor’s Shadow World setting , now published through Guild Companion Publications. Shadow World® is a registered trademark of Terry K. Amtho. This map will be available in final form in the upcoming Shadow World® Player’s Guides series.
Our Annuals are designed to give value year after year – as an example, I give this flashback to May 2008 from my livejournal…
Many of us remember, and were inspired by Pete Fenlon’s wonderful maps for the Middle Earth Roleplaying Game. Today, Pete is Chairman and Studio Director at Mayfair Games. In January 2008, with Pete’s permission we released a style pack for making maps in his style as part of the Cartographer’s Annual 2008.
Steve Townshend produced this beautiful map in the Pete Fenlon style.
It uses only specially designed vector symbols combined with CC3’s effects to get the right look.
Style packs are preconfigured so that if you select a tool (for example, rivers, roads and terrain), it looks right for the map style. To create a forest, you just select the forest draw tool, click points for the border, and it does this, adding random tree tops and edge trees.
You building up mountain ranges by selecting a symbol, then placing. They are selected randomly from a collection of symbols. So this was one click per mountain, and the mess at the bottom is a mountain cursor. You can tab through random styles if you don’t like the current mountain at the cursor.
The distinctive ridges are also built up of symbols. On the left, with CC3 effects off, on the right, with them on.
Although the styles definitely make it easier to create maps such as these, Steve Townshend demonstrates that the human touch is still required to get an aesthetically pleasing map – style packs just make it easier to get the desired effect.
In the beginning of this year, I published Dragon Rage, a game by Lewis Pulsipher, author of Britannia.
This release would not have been possible without the use of Campaign cartographer 3, City Designer 3 and the symbol sets.
Dragon Rage is an hex-and-counter wargame, that was first published in 1982 by Dwarfstar Heritage, a now long disappeared miniatures publisher.
When I licensed the game for republication with the author, I first tried to contact the original map artist, but without success.
I investigated several options to have the map re-created, and CC3/CD3 was THE solution to my woes.
Profantasy’s licensing agreement is a killer feature, there is no other map-making software on the market that allows commercial use of the software’s output, and has such high quality and consistent results.
Not only was I able to quickly recreate the original game board’s map with great precision, I was also able to create a second map to use on the board back, offering two games instead of just one!
Here is the original map, of Esirien, a walled city by the sea. in the game, the city is attacked by Dragons and other vile creatures, while humans defend it :
The combination of CD3 vector houses and bitmap symbols was just perfect to highlight the houses that serve as objectives in the game (with blue numbers).
The shading on the walls, trees and houses are on different heights and provide a realistic look to the map.
And here is the second map I created, Nurkott, an Orcish oppidum, attacked by Humans and various creatures :
There’s a review of CC3 over on PlayDevil.com 9/10.
Below is the first map that I made using the software, and it only took me about 20 minutes- a similar drawing in Photoshop from scratch would have taken me several hours!
“…for a budding cartographer there is nothing else quite like it out there. Once you have broken into the software, creating a good standard of map becomes not only easy, but a pleasure, as you behold your beautiful creations, which can be made quickly and simply.”
