Hello Mappers! After a long absence from mapping due to life and some medical issues, which I am still battling, I’ve just decided to push through and try to get back to something that always brought me joy. I’ve enjoyed the heck out of watching the amazing maps some of you are putting out there. Ricko here’s your shout out….I see you and am inspired, as well as so many others new and old in our ProFantasy family in the forums and Facebook posts.
So, we last left off finishing up the 2017 Annual. I’ve worked on the first four maps in the 2016 Annual, Here Be Monsters (Overland), Empire of the Sun (Overland), Temple of Bones (Perspectives), and 1800s Floorplan (Floorplans). Okay, so I’ll be honest, it’s been a looooooong while since I’ve been inspired in my own right to create anything, so it was super slow going getting back in the swing of things.
Here Be Monsters … not my typical style preference, but I must say, after working with it, I grew to adore it. My only adjustment was the water hue, as I wanted it to be a slightly more greenish blue shade. This was easily remedied by adjusting the Hue and the Lightness on the Sea Sheet, which was also showing as my Rivers Sheet. For the Rivers, I deleted that sheet and just placed them directly on the Land Sheet, added a Color Key, this way my Rivers and Sea were the same shade of greenish blue I was going for.
I based the map off of a story I wrote back in college for my Creative Writing course. The story was a bit rudimentary, but seeing the idea of it in the form of a map, especially Pär Lindström’s whimsical style, was a pretty satisfying way to get back in my favorite hobby.😊
About the author: Lorelei was my very first D&D character I created more years back than i’d like to remember. When I decided to venture into creating maps for my and others rpgs, I thought I owed it to her to name myself Lorelei Cartography, since it was her that led me to the wonderful world of tabletop gaming in the first place. Since then I have been honored to have worked with companies such as WizKids, Pelgrane Press, and ProFantasy.
Comments Off on All the Annuals: Here Be Monsters (January 2016)
In CC3+, we use polygons a lot. They are used when you draw a landmass, they are used when you draw the floor of your building, they are used for your terrain fills and so on. Basically, when you work with a CC3+ map, there are 3 main types of entities you deal with, your symbols (places, objects, markers and more), your polygons (for filled areas like landmass and floors) and your lines (for walls, roads and similar).
Now, for this article I am going to have a little look at how we can do things like split our polygon up into two pieces, for example if we only need part of it for another map. And, I am also going to look at how to properly join up two polygons into one, as due to various factors, just drawing two partially overlapping polys and leaving them at that doesn’t always work.
In truth, lines and polys are mostly the same thing, the main difference is that polygons are closed (i.e. the programs draws a closing segment between the end node and back to the start node) while lines do not have this closing segment. When we are splitting and joining out polygons, we’ll actually be temporarily turning them into lines, so it is worth noting already now that having the fill apparently disappear while doing this is completely normal, and it will return when we are done. This also means that the procedures described here are the same for both lines and polygons, except you don’t close up lines at the end.
Now, I use landmasses for my example here, but this works exactly the same way with floors in dungeon maps and all polys in all other map types as well.
I’ve always loved some interactivity in my maps, especially the dungeon ones. It is fun adding secret doors that can be opened, rotating sections, and other surprises. If you watched my latest live stream, you saw me build a hedge maze with a rotating central section, where the inner region was only reachable if you rotated the it first using a clickable hotspot in the map. (You’ll find both a link to the recording as well as my map in this forum conversation.)
I thought I could show you a couple of more examples of nice easy macros you can assign to your hotspots to accomplish interesting results, and hopefully come away with an expanded understanding of macros at the same time.
I’m excited to have another wonderful parade of user maps for you, this time from February of this year. If you like any of them (and I’m sure you will), head over to their respective posts on the forum or Facebook (click the image to do so), and comment and like their work. I’m sure they will appreciate that!
Daniel Pereda De Pablo‘s work is always amazing, so starting with The Icebox dungeon map was a no brainer for me. Continue reading »
When you make your own symbol catalogs, either from new symbols, or just to create a re-mix of existing symbols, one of the main issues is how to make them easily accessible. Sure, you can always click the open symbol catalog button and browse for it, but that means you need to remember where it is, and it is more complicated than just clicking one of the symbol catalog buttons in the top toolbar.
But, if all the official catalogs can be loaded from those buttons, why not our own? It’s actually quite simple, so let us have a look.
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When you make your own symbol catalogs, either from new symbols, or just to create a re-mix of existing symbols, one of the main issues is how to make them easily accessible. Sure, you can always click the open symbol catalog button and browse for it, but that means you need to remember where it is, and it is more complicated than just clicking one of the symbol catalog buttons in the top toolbar.
