A common way to label maps is to place a number next to an important feature (building, room, prominent location, trap, etc). The advantage to just using a simple number is that it takes less space in the map, making it look less cluttered, something that is very helpful if you need lots of labels in a small space. Number labels also doesn’t betray any information by themselves, so it can be used on dungeon rooms without players knowing their meaning just from seeing the map.

These markers can of course be placed using the regular text commands, but one very easy way that are often overlooked is to use the Number Label command found in CC3+. This command is designed to make it extremely simple to quickly place multiple labels with automatically incrementing numbers.

Before we touch the number labels, it is worth remembering that these are still text. That means you can edit them after placing them the same way as you would with text, and to control the font and size, simply set it up using Text Specs before placing the labels (or just do a mass change after placing them). Since it is text, it will also default to the TEXT sheet for most maps (Depending on the map configuration) and use the effects defined on that sheet.

If you want the number labels to end up on their own sheet, I recommend making a sheet called TEXT NUMBER LABELS and just make this the active sheet before placing the labels.  By making sure our sheet starts with the word TEXT, we take advantage of how automatic sheet selection works in CC3+, rather than having it work against us (In short, assuming the default configuration used on most maps, CC3+ will place text on the currently active sheet IF it starts with the word TEXT, otherwise the text will be placed on the sheet names just TEXT).

Now, any use of number labels starts by clicking the Number Label button. This will cause CC3+ to ask for a number on the command line:

At this prompt, you can either

• Simply hit enter to continue the current sequence; it will then use the number in square brackets as the starting number. This lets you easily continue from where you left off, but do keep in mind that this number is just kept during the current CC3+ session, it won’t automatically know where to continue if you close and reopen CC3+
• Or type your preferred starting number and hit enter to start from that point. Remember, since the command do remember where you left off, the suggested number might not always be 1, so don’t blindly hit enter if you wish to start a new sequence from 1.

Once you’ve done this, you’ll see the first number on your cursor just like any piece of text. You can hold down shift and/or control to rotate/scale it, or hit any of the shortcut keys(L,C,R,K,D,B,M,T,F,N) to change justification. Now, just click somewhere in your map to place this number, and you’ll see that the number is placed in your map as text, and the number at your cursor increments, so if you started with 1, it will now read 2.

When you are done placing numbers, make sure to finish the command by hitting Esc, do NOT use right click. The reason for this is that right click is assigned a special function when placing text, namely to place it immediately below the prior piece of text. So if you place the number 1 in the map, then right click, the command will end, but you will also see that the number 2 was placed right below the number 1, probably not what you wanted.

As we just tested, placing plain numbers like this works very nicely, but there are a few more interesting features about this command that can be helpful:

• Only the number part is incremented, but you can add text and symbols:
  • Want a punctuation mark after each number? Just type 1. when the command asks for a number, and you will get labels that read 1., 2., 3. and so on.
  • And you can add text, both prefix or suffix. Try entering Room 6 at the prompt, and it will output Room 6, Room 7 and so on..
  • If the text contains multiple numbers (separated by text, symbols or spacing), say if you type 1_1 on the prompt, only the first number will be increased, leading to 1_1, 2_1, 3_1 and so on.
• You can change the number on the cursor on the fly by using the + and – keys on the numeric keypad. This allows you to do things like repeat a number or skip a number easily without exiting and restarting the command.
• Need to place the exact same text multiple times? While there are other ways to achieve the same result, you can actually use number labels for that, since it only increments numbers. So if you give it the text Secret instead of a number, you can just keep clicking to place down this text. Of course, this only works as long as you don’t actually have a number in there.
• You can use negative numbers. Probably not useful for labeling a map, but can be highly useful along the axes of a graph or similar. Note that CC3+ only counts up, so you need to start at the lowest number, for example if you start at -10, it will go -10, -9, -8 and so on.
• The highest possible number is 2147483647 and the lowest number is -2147483648. Trying to go above/below these will just wrap around. This is due to how computers store numbers internally. If you try to type anything larger than this when asked for a number, the first number will be whatever you type, but when CC3+ increments it for the next number, it will always end up inside the specified range.

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