Did you know that CC3+ (including all addons) contains over 1000 commands in total? And that new ones gets added with just about every update?

Today, we’ll have a quick look at two of the somewhat more recent commands; Select nearby symbols and Delete nearby symbols. Both these commands are intended to help you manipulate symbols that are near another entity. This can for example help you clean up symbols that are too near a river, or help you select all the houses along your main street, for example so you can change their varicolor.

Below is an example of a forest with a river running through it. On the left image, the trees are obstructing the river, while on the left one, Delete nearby symbols have been run to automatically delete the trees near the river.

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The 12th year of the Cartographer’s Annual is coming to a close and as usual we have a bonus issue available for our subscribers, while another issue is made freely available to the public.

The bonus issue contains a set of almost 200 bitmap symbols by Sue Daniel, adding a wide range of high detail domed roof symbols which can be used in City Designer 3 or on their own. It meshes perfectly with the city styles already published in 2018’s Annuals, adding even more variety to your cityscapes.

We didn’t want to restrict October’s video tutorial to Annual subscribers only, so we’ve made that issue freely available to anyone. The download can be accessed from October’s web page, and the video is now public on our YouTube channel.

Cartographer’s Annual 2019

At the same time, subscription to the 2019 Cartographer’s Annual (Vol. 13) is now open. We think we have some great material in store for you, starting with a beautiful overland style in January, isometric city symbols in February and a detailed science fiction location in March. Check out the previews on the 2019 Annual site.

If you are a current subscriber or were subscribed in 2016 or 2017, you should have received an offer to resubscribe at special discount price via email. If you want to start fresh with 2019’s Annual, you can
subscribe at our pre-release price. The first issue will become available at the start of the new year.

Subscribe here for another twelve months of mapping goodness!

We’ve been working hard on the new Token Treasury product line and are happy to make the first set available as a pre-release offer.

We’ve expanded the range of monsters in the first set to 100, and created them both in a round and a square variant, so you can choose you’re preferred token look. Both come with a set of frames depicting the monster’s combat role (melee, ranged, magic-user or captain). These can be freely mixed and matched, creating hundreds of possible combinations.

The CC3+ version of the token set comes with everything neatly organized in sets of symbol catalogs and contains templates on which you can easily combine monsters and frames and then export them to you jpg or png format for use in the virtual tabletop software or your choice. Of course you can also simply plop them into your Dungeon Designer 3 map!

The pre-release version will install only if you own Campaign Cartographer 3+, but the full version (to be released early next year) will offer you the option to install it separately, for direct use in any virtual tabletop software or the graphics package of your choice. There will be no need to re-purchase the full version; you will receive a new setup file. There may be a few other changes and additions in the full version.

The Token Treasury – Monsters is now available at a special pre-release discount of 15%. Just follow this link to order it.

A new version of CC3+ is available now, fixing a few bugs and preparing CC3+ for the next releases.

Version Notes

CC3+ Version 3.89
=================
– Fixed grids not aligning correctly to snap points
– Fixed drawing tools not displaying preview
– Fixed Common sheet not being selectable in sheet dialog
– Fixed TEXPORT, TFIND, and TREPLACE not showing dialogs

CC3+ Version 3.88
=================
– Fixed bug with wall-cutting symbols not working properly

For the end of the year we blast off into space and the future with the Deckplan Geomorphs tool pack. Inspired by the work of Robert Pearce on Yet Another Traveller Blog, we’ve created the tools that allow you to create geomorphic deckplan tiles.

Of course we’ve also included a set of examples that you can modify or use straight out of the box to create large starship or space station layouts by simply assembling the tiles into various configurations. It’s as easy as importing a file, rotating it and placing it on the template adjacent to previous tiles. With Cosmographer 3, you can even just continue working on such a constructed deckplan with the normal starship tools.

Keep your eyes open for the upcoming 2018 bonus issue (by Sue Daniel) and the opportunity to resubscribe for the 2019 Cartographer’s Annual in mid-December.

You can subscribe to the Annual 2018 here. If you are already subscribed, the November issue is now available for download on your registration page.

Welcome, mappers, to the November newsletter. We have a focus on city mapping this month, with video tutorials by Joe Sweeney, an article by Jay Johnson and the topic of the November Annual.

News

• From this Thursday, November 22nd, until 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.

• ProFantasy will be at Dragonmeet in London, on December 1st.
• The November Annual is out with the wonderful Asian Town style by Sue Daniel.

Resources

• Here is another quasi-random selection of user maps in November’s Map of the Month highlights.
• Remy Monsen presents a variant of the Fill with Symbols and Symbols in Area commands that allows you to exclude entities from the area to fill.
• Joe Sweeney starts a new series of video tutorials on city mapping.

Articles

• Jay Johnson discusses the city mapping techniques he uses for his city of Melekhir.
• Jens Fuhrberg takes us along on his journey of creating a regional map for the world of Taranis.

Dragonmeet, London’s friendliest gaming convention, is held again this year on the first weekend of December (December 1st) in London, at the Novotel in Hammersmith, like last year. ProFantasy will be there and you’re welcome to stop by to check our products, talk mapping or just say hello to yours truly (Ralf).

Look for us next to the Pelgrane booth. Final booth numbers have not been assigned, but the exhibitor’s hall should be small enough that we are easy to find. Look for the maps!

Welcome mappers to the October newsletter: Germany’s big board game convention, Spiel, is only days away, but we take the time to give you, news and resources for your enjoyment!

News

• We have a new free Update for CC3+ available, including a way to re-size the drawing area in an existing map, improved texture selection many small tweaks and bug fixes.
• Profantasy will be at the Spiel games fair in Essen, Germany from October 25th to 28th.
• The October Annual issue is of course available.
• The October community map challenge still accepts submissions for village maps.

Resources

• We present another small selection of user maps in October’s Map of the Month highlights.

Articles

• Remy takes a look at how you can get more out of your fill styles you have available in a drawing style.
• Marilyn Velez shares a treasure map created with CC3+ and an accompanying and story pirates may be telling along with that map.

Remy over on the ProFantasy forum and the Facebook user group is running another community map challenge. It’s not too late to jump in and provide some extra maps to the wonderful community atlas project in the process.

And if you haven’t drawn such a map before, Why not use the opportunity to run through the City Designer 3 Essentials guide and learn to draw streets and houses along the way?

A new update for Campaign Cartographer 3+ is now available. We’ve done a lot of internal work (small bug fixes and improvements), but also improved some user interface issues and added a convenient new feature.

User Interface

Bitmap fill styles will now be displayed in a much larger format in any of the dialogs. That makes it much easier to recognize or judge one of the many detailed bitmap fills available in the template you are working on.

New Command

Have you ever wanted to enlarge or shrink the area of the map you’ve been working on? The new “Resize Drawing Area” command (available from the File menu) will now make this much easier and quicker. Just type in the new map dimensions, and the map border and background will scale to the new size, without affecting any of the content you’ve already drawn. From there you can add new content and enlarge the existing features with the help of the editing tools.

You can download the update from your registration page. It is available among the CC3+ files on the Downloads tab.

Version Notes

Here are the version notes for Update 18:

CC3+ Version 3.87
=================
– Added SCALEMAPEXT and SCALEMAPEXTM commands to scale map template things (MAP BORDER, BACKGROUND, and SCREEN).
– Added TOGL and TOGLF commands to toggle visibility of a specified layer.
– Added JPEGOPT, DWGOPT, EMFOPT, and FCWOPT commands to allow direct access to save options for the major file types.
– Added SYMPTFILTER command to support point filtering on symbol import. This change may reduce artifacts for some kinds of symbol creation.
– Added LISTCMDS command to list all of the available commands in the system (main program and XPs).
– Changed internal image representation to allow for more efficient imaging operations.
– Removed some unused legacy DLLs to reduce disk footprint.
– ZOOMSEL command should work better than it used to.
– Fixed crash with hotspots in symbols when the layer for the symbol reference is hidden.
– Fixed XML parser usage to properly serialize boolean values.
– Fixed rename problem with sheets that could cause effects to be added to the wrong sheet.
– Fixed out of memory error that could happen with certain drawings.
– Fixed memory corruption that could occur when reading an invalid drawing tool file.
– Fixed memory corruption and possible crash when dropping text longer than 4090 characters.
– Now visibly rejects attempts to drop unknown file types onto a drawing.
– Dropping a picture onto a drawing while holding down the Shift key now allows rotating and scaling the image.
– Dropping a picture onto a drawing from a browser no longer generates an old-style image entity.
– Widened the drop portion of fill style preview combo boxes to make it easier to read style names.
– Updated PNG loaders to improve protection against certain malformed image files.
– Built with Visual Studio 2017. Some code elements should be a bit faster.
– MenuConfig utility now offers better support for special path characters (#$@) in file names.
– Options button on Save As will respond better on higher-dpi displays.
– Floating prompt now displays better on higher-dpi displays (has a different visual appearance as well).
– Traveller sector importer now handles the new-style Traveller 5 sector file format.