This week is Spiel time, i.e. the world’s biggest boardgame consumer fair takes place in Essen, Germany. ProFantasy has been exhibiting there since at least 2000 and it is always great fun, if also a busy and tiring time.

For this year, the organizer (Merz Verlag) has vastly improved the available documentation and guides. The “Spiel Guide” is an actually useful piece with the hall plans and all exhibitors listed alphabetically by hall. Hopefully that should make it easy to find our booth 6G113, which is smack in the middle of hall 6. If you are looking for board games, it also contains a list of all the new games announced for Spiel.

Yours truly (Ralf) will be there and I’ll be happy to demo you any of the software, give you a glimpse at the upcoming Token Treasure and Cities of Schley, or just chat about maps, map-making and gaming in general. Hope to see you there!

The October issue of the Cartographer’s Annual 2018 is now available and treads new paths for us. For the first time we’ve produced an hour-long tutorial ourselves to show you how to create an overland map from start to finish, using the Mike Schley Overland style. Also included is the detailed tutorial made we created in the video.

As this is a first for us we are very much interested in your feedback. Is the presentation at 1080px (make sure to use full-screen) okay? Do you need more detail for the commands used? Would rather see long tutorials like this, or shorter pieces explaining individual commands?

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

Welcome to the July newsletter, dear cartographers! While we are now preparing our yearly pilgrimage Gen Con – the Best Four Days in Gaming, we also have a lot of news for you. Dioramas 3 has now been released, and with the WW2 Interactive Altas we have updated the last of our product line to work with CC3+. Finally, the July Annual with its Dioramas 3 example and tutorial has been released. Our authors are no less busy: Remy Monsen explains how to dynamically show and hide features in a CC3+ drawing, while Pär Lindström discusses his experience of creating Annual issues and Sue Daniel digs into (or should we say “climbs unto”) roof architecture with her tutorial on creating realistically shaded onion domes.

News

• Dioramas 3 has been released. You can download several example sheets and try you hand at paper modeling if you want to give it a try!
• World War 2 Interactive Atlas is now compatible with CC3+.
• The July Annual issue is available.
• Find ProFantasy Software at GenCon at booth #1317.

Resources

• Remy explains how to show and hide map features in CC3+.
• We represent July’s Maps of the Month, a selection of interesting or beautiful (or both) maps from the user community.

Articles

• Sue Daniel teaches us how to construct a roof that looks like an onion dome from above in City Designer 3.
• Pär Lindström shares his thoughts on creating Annual issues for ProFantasy Software.

GenCon 2018 – the Best 4 Days in Gaming – is coming up next week, and of course ProFantasy will be at the show.

Stop by at booth #1317 (we are sharing the booth with Pelgrane Press) to check out the new Dioramas 3, get a glimpse of what we are working on, or just chat with Simon, Ralf or Doug. We are looking forward to seeing you there!

Here it is: the full release of Dioramas 3. Pimp your game and create your own paper models with hundreds of new bitmaps and symbols to choose from.

Design your model in real-world scale and then print at whatever modeling scale you want to build. Pick a pre-defined model from our large range of samples and adjust it to your requirements, or build something new completely from scratch.

Dioramas 3 includes instructions for printing and assembling your paper model so you don’t need any prior experience in paper modelling and the included examples give you plenty of material to practice on.

Dioramas 3 is available as an upgrade from Dioramas Pro and features the following new material:

• Two new bitmap drawings styles in addition to the updated vector style.
• 275 new bitmap textures (compared to 22 in Dioramas Pro)
• 700 bitmap symbols of doors, windows and other wall features
• Loading/saving of diorama panel settings (no more setting them up for each new panel)
• Sheet support for Dioramas tools

Get Dioramas 3 now from the ProFantasy online store. Or log into your registration page to grab the upgrade from Dioramas Pro.

If you want to try your hand at paper modeling with craft knife and glue before you jump fully into Dioramas 3, we have two examples buildings for you to download in pdf format.

Sage’s Tower
The reclusive sage dwells in this lonely tower somehwere on the outskirts of cilized lands. What will the adventurers find inside when they arrive to get his advice?

Village House, Church and Tower
A tiny village nestles into hills, sporting a few houses, a church and a lonely tower, guarding the townsfolk from marauding orcs and goblins.

Welcome to the June newsletter, dear cartographers! We take a look at the progress of Dioramas 3, and Remy helps us Understanding Styles in CC3+. Mike Schley writes about Mapping Narratives and Pär Lindström finishes his series with the third article on overland mapping. Finally, check out new Maps of the Month from the user community.

News

• Dioramas 3 is coming along nicely and should be in beta testing soon. Take a look at what’s on the Cartographer’s Desk to complete it.
• The June issue of the Cartographer’s Annual 2018 is available.

Resources

• Remy explains the concept and details of drawing styles in CC3+. Check out this especially useful article!
• Check out some highlights of community-made maps in our Maps of the Month selection.

Articles

• Pär Lindström finishes his tutorial about drawing overland maps in CC3+.
• Mike Schley talks about Mapping Narratives, giving as an exclusive look into his thought processes when designing his beautiful maps.

Welcome to the May newsletter, dear cartographers! We have news on the Source Maps series this month, another update for CC3+, two detailed articles on scale and scaling of maps by Remy Monsen and Glynn Seal, the second part of Pr Lindström’s series on overland maps and Maps of the Month from the user community.

News

• The Source Maps series of products (Castles! Temples, Tombs & Catacombs! and Cities!) are now compatible with CC3+.
• Update 17a is available on the registration page to bring your version of CC3+ up to 3.84.
• The May issue of the Cartographer’s Annual 2018 is available.

Resources

• Remy takes a detailed look at scaling maps in CC3+.
• Check out some highlights of community-made maps in our Maps of the Month selection.
• Joshua Plunkett has added a lot more video tutorials on his YouTube channel over the recent months.

Articles

• Pär Lindström continues his tutorial about drawing overland maps in CC3+.
• Glynn Seal gives us a Sense of Scale in his article on the role of scale of maps.
  Comments Off on May: Source Maps, a CC3+ Update and Map Scaling

The February mapping competition, as announced back in January, has now officially started.

Hoping to see lots of people contribute to this event.

And remember, this is open all CC3+ users, new and old alike. You don’t have to be an expert or an artist, there are prizes both for best map, as well as randomly drawn among all participants.

Head over to the forum and read the forum post for the full details.

All maps will also be showcased in that thread as they are submitted, so keep an eye on it to follow the competition.

Big thanks to ProFantasy for sponsoring this contest.

So far, the community atlas has been a huge success, with over 110 maps added so far. These maps are available for anyone to use for personal use, and can be downloaded in either the native .fcw file format of CC3+, or in high resolution png image files for use without CC3+.

In February, it turns one year old, and in celebration of that occasion they will hold a mapping contest.

Put simply, all maps submitted in to the atlas during the month of February will be participating in the contest, where you can compete to win one of three $30 ProFantasy Store vouchers. You can check out the rules and conditions the announcement over at the forum, where you should find all the information needed to participate.

You do not need to be a forum member to participate, that post is open for everyone to read, and also contains contact information for participating via email. The forum post will contain the official copy of the rules however.

Note that while this competition is open to everyone, the community atlas is in Campaign Cartographer 3+ format, so you will need to use CC3+ to make your map. You are however welcome to use any of the official addons for CC3+, as well as the four community addons, so you should have a wide range of map styles to choose from in your map, and you can of course combine these as you choose.

Read the forum post for the full details.

Big thanks to ProFantasy for sponsoring this contest.

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.