If you are already a ProFantasy Software customer, you now having something to put on your wish list – a ProFantasy Gift Voucher. You don’t need to be told what you can get – you already know!

This post is for people with roleplayers or map-makers in their lives other than themselves, so you’ve got an idea what your recipient can get with their gift voucher. And your recipient can combine vouchers, so that a game group can all chip in.

• For $45 they could get CC3 – the core of our line. It will enable the recipient to create maps for almost any genre.
• For $40 they could get any of our add-ons eg Dungeon Designer 3 or City Designer 3,or one of the Cartographer’s Annuals.
• Also for $40, as a stand-alone product, any of our collections of Source Maps or Fractal Terrains. You don’t even need to make maps to make use of these. Castles and Temples, Tombs have saved me hours of prep for D&D games.
• For $25 we have Symbol Sets for overland, floorplans and modern.
• Anything smaller, and it will take the edge of a purchase, or stack with other vouchers.

Because we like to be classy, our vouchers do not expire, unlike certain others. After all, we still offer downloads for ten-year-old orders.

As Simon mentioned in a  previous post here, I am working on an application, which I am developing under the code name “Map Invoker”. It will generate random towns, from small little hamlets to large walled cities. I’ve been concentrating on the algorithm side and am truely quite a ways towards a “feature complete” logic set.

So Simon was correct in stating that “He’s gone beyond proof of concept”. Soon I will be turning from generation to the interface so that all the parameters that I’ve included in the algorithms are exposed to the user so that the user can create an incredable range of different towns.

Once the parameter inputs are down and tested, then we will be looking into adding all the “garnish” that makes programs like this come alive.

So if you have any ideas, practical or “pie in the sky”, I’d love to here them. Either post your idea or email me at: SAUNDERL (at) HOTMAIL (dot) COM.

L Lee Saunders is working on a random city generator for CC3. Lee has worked with ProFantasy for many years, producing features such as the fractal path and text around a curve. He has an excellent development blog for people who want to create CC3 add-ons, which he will mirror here.

The Random City Generator will be included in a future version of Campaign Cartographer or City Designer, or be available as a separate product. He’s gone beyond proof of concept – here is a screen shot. It already does basic CC3 import using the House command, and we’ll be reporting on its progress regularly.

Each year in October a medium-sized city in Germany’s Ruhr area becomes the mecca of boardgamers around the world: The “Internationale Spieltage SPIEL 2010” or “Spiel” for short open its doors.

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Bill Roach, creator of the Terraformer add-on for Fractal Terrains, puts forward the rather contentious theory that there are only four types of planets in SF. These images, created using Fractal Terrains and Terraformer form the sturdiest pillar of his argument:

Terraformer is available from the Profantasy registration page, or here.

The October issue of the Annual 2010 was released on Friday, and we are very happy to publish the awesome new commands created by community member Joachim de Ravenbel for CC3. They make it extremely quick and easy to draw complex wall layouts, as you would see in an actual medieval castle, including doorways, alcoves, windows and arrow slits.

It is also a great example what users can contribute directly to CC3. If you are interested in programming your own commands for CC3, check out Lee Saunders’ CC3 development blog and the CC developers’ mailing list.

We are looking to add some more Traveller Deckplans to the Cosmographer 3 Release and couldn’t decide which ones to do. Can you help us? Which would you like us to do?

The poll is closed. Click “View” to see the results. The three most popular deckplans are now available here.

We’ve just released the September issue of the Annual 2010.  While also including a complete new style based on the work of fantasy cartographer Robert Altbauer, the accompanying tutorial focuses on how to convert Photoshop brushes into CC3 symbols catalogs. The quick and easy process opens up a whole lot of material to use in CC3, as there are many free-to-use brushes available on the web.

The included style uses a serial of brushes for mountains and hills, made available on the Cartographers’ Guild forum. Here is the example map created with the new style:

And here's a sample of the Mountain symbol catalog created from a Photoshop Brush:

Ravi Felicity starts making maps with two who?s

Take a look at Google Maps. Their satellite images give us stunning detail but are next to useless as road maps. To make a road map of the same area, Google removes extraneous information not concerned with roads and direction finding. They exaggerate the size of roads, colour-code road types for easy identification and label places of interest.

Google is an example of a good map-maker taking the information available to them and choosing what to include and, equally importantly, omit to make their map most useful for the reader.

So, when creating fantasy maps, the First Who? to ask yourself is Who drew this map?
It tells you how much the cartographer knows, what they would consider noteworthy, their map style and accuracy. Dragons may not consider lesser dragons to be noteworthy, but you probably would.

The Second Who? is Who for?
A miller wants to know about wheat fields, granaries, mills and markets; their map shows a skull to avoid but the dragon living under Scaremonger Hill is sadly omitted. A military map for a general shows terrain, fortifications, resources and enemies. Adventurers simply want rich pickings but are oh so easy to fool.

We’ve just released the August issue of the Cartographer’s Annual 2010: An overland style for creating physiographic maps based on the amazing work of American cartographer Erwin Raisz.

His maps take the bird’s eye view of the land and are works of art through and through. Accordingly, creating a CC3 drawing style that pays homage to his work and produces beautiful maps of its own was a real challenge.

We think the result speaks for itself:

Landform style example: The Great River Estuary

Check our the Cartographer’s Annuals for many more mapping styles, tutorials, and tool packs. They provide an amazing wealth of new tools for Campaign Cartographer. 3