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

In the last post, I introduced Intercom with an old example I wrote using VB6.  This post will be a much more modern example using C#.
I’ve also included a “Round Trip” example where the command is initiated via CC3.  By adding this small macro, you now have a command that draws a diamond on the screen.

What this does is as the user to get a point (GP) and then send it via Intercom to the c# application.
Once it gets to the c# code, it takes the string from CC3 (all data sent from CC3 via Intercom is in strings), splits it on the comma and converts the two substrings into doubles.  Then it creates a command string and passes it back to CC3.

Here is a link to the C# portion

Last week a 1760s map of Colonial Massachusetts, by an unnamed “professional cartographer”, was sold by auction at Bonhams in London for £84,000 / $135,000. Perhaps one day CC3 users will achieve a similar amount for their work, though I hope they don’t have to wait 250 years!

I think the most important lesson to learn, though is include the copyright notice when you start the New Map Wizard – imagine not getting a credit after all that time.

It has come to my attention that some of you are, let us say, not exclusive to CC3. You galavant off with other software such as Photoshop, GIMP, or even Fractal Mapper or Dundjinni. Some of you (I hestitate to say this) don’t use CC3 at all! However, in the face of such naughtiness, we turn the other cheek. In many of our products we offer our PNG art, with transparencies, to non-CC3 users, for commercial and non-commercial use.

• Campaign Cartographer 3 includes a full set of overland map symbols for use with any software.
• Dungeon Designer 3 will install its dungeon and floorplan artwork without CC3 installed. Read more here.
• City Designer 3 installs its city building art to a convenient location. More here.
• Fractal Terrains Pro is stand-alone and exports PNG files.
• Our Source Maps series include a stand alone viewer which allows PNG export, as well as PDFs of all the maps, and HTML formatted linked information on all the maps.
• We are rebuilding Cosmographer, Symbol Set 1 and Symbol Set 2 to install their artwork, too.
• Some monthly issues of our annuals include PNG artwork, but in general you really need CC3 to make use of them.

The artwork consists of folders of high resolution PNG files of symbols, along with a variety of seamless tiles.

We’ve just released the June issue of the Cartographer’s Annual 2011, and we’re very happy to present another style created by map-making artist Jon Roberts.

This time we went for a dungeon/floorplan style and the result is really gorgeous again. Take a look at these beautiful maps: Continue reading »

The Profantasy user library is a very old feature of our website, where users can upload their own creations to share it with the community.

Despite its age, the quality of the stuff submitted there manages to surprise me again and again. Check out these great Perspectives symbols create by Pete Ludwig for his post-apocalyptic game:

ProFantasy Software has been producing cartography software since 1993. We’ve got this far by making software we are proud of, and treating our customers well. As a result, we offer a 14-day money-back guarantee, an upgrade guarantee and a ten-year download guarantee.

Our minimum ten year download guarantee
Since 2001, our mail order customers have been able to re-download any product they’ve ordered from us. We want you to continue using your software evenif you change computers, move, or lose track of what you’ve ordered. So, for at least ten years after ordering your software and probably a lot longer you’ll be able to re-download it. In the very unlikely event of download links being unavailable we’ll send you a DVD – this has never happened in ten years.

Our 14-day money-back guarantee
We are confident that you will be pleased with any software you buy from us. If you buy any of our software from our store and it doesn’t live up to your expectations for any reason, we’ll give you your money back. Please let us know within 14 days of receipt of the software that you would like to cancel your licence and get a refund.

Our upgrade guarantee
If a new version of our software comes out within three months of your purchase, you’ll get a free upgrade, within six months, 60% off the full price, up to a year, 40% off. Even if it’s more than a year, we still offer a substantial discount for upgrades up to at least five years.

Speaking of science fiction rpgs and maps done in Cosmographer 3 in our previous post…

I recently had the pleasure to create a trio of maps for the new FATE edition of Brennan Taylors Bulldogs! game. I drew the following encounter, galaxy and deckplan maps with Cosmographer 3: Continue reading »

The May issue of the Cartographer’s Annual 2011 has been available since Sunday. It contains a new style to draw modern road atlas maps, both on a regional or local level:

Modern City Street Map

Mike Riddle, CAD pioneer and creator of FastCAD the software on which CC3 is based, has released a free iPad/iPhone app for FastCAD. It does not support bitmap art – only vector styles, nor does it yet support effects. It’s called CADView.

Campaign Cartographer drawings tend to be much bigger than the usual CAD drawings, and on an iPad 1, detailed overland drawings are a little slow. That said, I’d love to hear how fast CADView is on iPad 2, and get other feedback. Who knows, we might have a full-blown CC3 viewer in a year or two’s time.