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
First a warning – The .FCW file format is BINARY! If you do not feel comfortable playing with bits and bytes, this may not be for you. But if you do enjoy this type of challenge, the .FCW file format is one of the best ways to output to CC3. Imagine you have a random maze generator and you want to output it to CC3. You could export a script. It would redraw your maze one line at a time. But there are also some problems with scripts:
You have to run them. This may sound obvious but consider that you have to either know the text command to open and run a script file, or you need to know where in the menu system it is.
Scripts are slow. CC3 will have to take your script and run it line-by-line. Its as if you had set down and typed in the commands directly into CC3.
Scripts are not exactly fragile, but they are not very robust either. And, if your script fails, your users are the ones that are going to get frustrated.
Where as if you exported a .FCW file, simply the action of opening the file is all that is needed. So … if you are still with me, here we go!
One last twist – the .FCW file could be compressed.
The .FCW file format is made up of many different “Blocks” of data. The first 4 bytes of each block (except for the first block) contains the number of bytes that the following block contains. It starts with the FileID block. The FileID block is the only block that is guaranteed to be uncompressed. This 128 byte block contains quite a bit of general info on the file. It identifies what type of file it is to other programs, and the version and sub-version number of the file format is was built with. Last, but not least, it informs the reader that bytes after byte 128 are compressed or not. (To save an uncompressed file, after you have clicked “Save As …”, you will be presented with the save file dialog. If you click on the options button, you will be presented with a small dialog box. Uncheck the “File Compression” option)
For this first blog post on the .FCW file format, I will show you how to read a binary file into a byte array and how to display it, byte-by-byte in a textbox similar to all the binary editors display it. Being able to look inside a binary file will come in very handy in the future. Last but not least I will show you FILEID object.
Code Snippet – How to read an entire file into a byte array
Once the file is read into a byte array, I pull the first 128 bytes out of the file byte array, using an extension method to Arrays to create sub-arrays.
Code Snippet – SubArray extension method
publicstaticclassExtensions
{
publicstatic T[] SubArray<T>(this T[] data, int index, int length)
{
var result = new T[length];
Array.Copy(data, index, result, 0, length);
return result;
}
}
Then I feed the sub-array to my FILEID object. This object converts the bytes into the fields of the FILEID object. We can then check the Compressed property. If the file is compressed, the rest of the data is meaningless, so if the file is compressed, I set the background color of the textbox to a Rose color.
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.
Code Snippet
MACRO DIAMOND
GP TEMP ^DCenter:
SENDM 2 TEMP
ENDM
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.
Code Snippet
var strNumbers = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetString(bytMsg).Split(‘,’);
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.
