We’ve decided to release six free issues of our Cartographer’s Annual to give non-subscribers a taste of what they are missing.  Three of these issues were previously released free, the others – only subscribers have seen them to date.

You can download the installation here.

All ProFantasy customers who haven’t opted out will have received a voucher valid until the end of the month with a discount from any single Annual purchase. If you haven’t received yours, email us.

Free Issues

April 2007

The style pack Sarah Wroot Overland gives you all the tools to create maps similar to the work of master illustrator and cartographer Sarah Wroot.

Mapping Guide: Sarah Wroot Style

September 2008

The map pack “Battle Maps” contains several examples, templates and instructions on how to create your own miniatures map for your gaming table.

Mapping Guide: Battle Maps

December 2009

The December special issue contains a tutorial pack on creating quick and easy geomorphic Battles Tiles, complete with video tutorials by Joseph Sweeney.

Watch Joseph Sweeney Online Tutorials on YouTube.

July 2010

The style pack Overland Hex Maps gives you the winning entry of the 2010 user suggestions vote.

Mapping Guide: Hex Overland Maps

June 2011

The style pack Jon Roberts’ Dungeons contains a new drawing style for dungeon floorplans and battlemaps.

Mapping Guide: Jon Roberts’ Dungeon

July 2012

The symbol and texture pack High Space SciFi Tiles contains hundreds of new textures and symbol, accompanied by video tutorials by Joseph Sweeney.

Watch Joseph Sweeney Online Tutorials on YouTube.

[Ed: Bill Roach is best known in the CC3 community for creating the free Terraformer enhancement to Fractal Terrains 3. Here he turns his attention to water courses; a features which is often added to maps without much thought.]

A PDF of this article is available

(Images in this article not created by the author are either courtesy of the EPA, FEMA, USGS, or NOAA, or are licensed as Public Domain, or under the GNU Open Document License by their respective authors.)

The rivers on your overland maps will be the life blood of your simulated world. Most of the plant and animal life on your maps will cluster next to them, near them, and around them. Settlements, towns, and cities will grow alongside them, and fishermen, hunters, trappers, farmers, and merchants will depend upon them for their livelihoods. They will act as major arteries of commerce, major zones of cooperation, and points of contentious, sometimes vicious geopolitical dispute. In peace they will be places of celebration – and in war, they will be places of intrigue. They will be signposts for travelers, and form the borders of nations. They may even be the focus of religious pilgrimage. They will be some of the most important and essential key elements of your maps.

When you design your overland maps, also remember that your riverways, lakes, and seas will influence weather.Agriculture depends upon rain – and farms are typically found in water rich places. Rivers and lakes mean farms, farms lead to hamlets, villages, and towns, towns give rise to cities, and cities give rise to nations.

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Six years ago we began the Cartographer’s Annual, a monthly series of style, maps, and other cartogrpahic contents for CC3 and we thought it was about time for a little retrospective. The Annual has brought an immense wealth of style options to the ProFantasy community and we have been thrilled by all the beautiful maps our users have created. What better way than to highlight the the full scope of the Annuals than with some of these works of art?

2007 – Volume 1

When we set out with the new concept of a subscription for Campaign Cartographer 3 users, we were really feeling our way around for what content was most popular. It quickly became apparent that new overland styles were the most popular type of Annual entry – but far from being the only thing people were looking for. We decided to strike a balance between generally popular topics like overland styles and more specific ones as seen in the “Parchment & Paper” June issue of 2007. The inaugural issue – the Mercator Historical style as shown on the right – represents the type of popular overland style that we strive to include in every volume of the Annual. The depicted map is by forum user Rogdor and was posted as a work-in-progress on the ProFantasy forum in March 2010, and there is another complete one here.

Another very popular and beautiful style from the first Annual is the John Speed City style, a black and white style emulating the city maps of famed British cartographer John Speed. Take a look at the map created by community member Modric.

Other highlights of the Annual 2007 include the multi-level floorplan of the “Tendril’s Oak Inn” complete with description and adventure ideas, an overland style based on the artwork of Sarah Wroot ( a user map here), and a tutorial on how to create your own drawing styles from scratch.

2008 – Volume 2

We received very positive feedback on the Annual 2007 – users were enthusiastic – which made the decision to continue the subscription model an easy one. And we were able to start the second year with a real bang as we got permission from one of the rpg industry’s cartography legends to emulate him: Pete Fenlon of Middle-earth roleplaying fame allowed us to recreate the style he used for those beautiful maps of Middle-earth.

The map here was created in the Pete Fenlon style (again by Modric) just recently, proving that the old style from the early days of the Annual are still used to great effect.

As a second overland style for 2008 we produced a black and white vector style which also proved very popular. So popular in fact, that we added a simiular – but distinct – b&w style to Campaign Cartographer 3 as a free download.

The sample map on the left shows ever-prolific Modric using the style with a parchment filter to create a beautiful in-game artifact.

As a special highlight the 2008 Annual saw the first video tutorials for CC3 produced by Joseph Sweeney. His videos have become a staple of introducing new users to CC3 and by now he has created a whole range of them for various products and add-ons.

2009 – Volume 3

2009 started with a style created by Master Mapper Allyn Bowker. The Fantasy Realms style captures the look used in some Forgotten Realms maps and still produces pangs of sweet nostalgia in many people who see it. Originally the style was produced for CC2, but the lack of drawing tool functionality made it hard to use by anyone a little less meticulous (and may I say “brilliant”) than Allyn. CC3 allowed Allyn to make the look easier to use  and, with sheet effects, more attractive. Here you can see forum user Henrie61 applying the style to a custom world.

The 2009 Annual also saw another artist contributing his first style to the subscription: Pär Lindström. His beautiful world map caught our eye and although he did not use CC3 at the time, we came up with a way to transfer bitmap-based art into a CC3 drawing style. The artist supplies us with layered Photoshop files of his work and we extract the symbols and textures and convert them to assets in CC3.

The Fantasy Worlds style proved extremely easy to work with, so that first time users of CC3 managed to create very beautiful maps. The example here was done by Neilander as a first map!

2010 – Volume 4

As we had learned from the black and white overland style in 2008, monochrome maps where quite popular (in part certainly because they print easily), so we decided to add dungeon and city styles in b&w to the 2010 Annual. Especially the city style became a fan favorite. The example shown on the right was created by community member bearclaw and shows the beautiful layout of a riverside town.

Another option for quick and easy maps that’s popular with role-players is the hex-based map. Back with Cosmographer Pro hex map functionality was introduced to Campaign Cartographer, and with the Annual 2010 we added a new style for old-school fantasy overland maps. Here you can see forum member Skycast using the style to create the map of a wooded peninsula.

2011 – Volume 5

2011 was undoubtedly the year of fantasy cartographer Jonathan Roberts. We can across his beautiful work on the web and asked him whether he’d be willing to produce a couple of styles for us. He obliged and the Annual 2011 could boast both an overland and a dungeon style created by him. We even made the dungeon style available for free at the end of the year.

Community member Koth produced the gorgeous map called Kern’s End shown here, by exporting a coastline he liked from Fractal Terrains 3 and then build upon with the Jon Roberts Overland style.

Pär Lindström (who writes on this blog) used the matching dungeon style to create this little encounter map for a role-playing session with his children.

2012 – Volume 6

As 2011 was the year of Jon Roberts, 2012 will prove the year of another great fantasy cartographer: Herwin Wielink. His overland style (going by his DeviantArt handle “Djekspek”) was the single most popular style every created for the Annual, measured by the amount of maps shown on the forums. So popular in fact, we will be publishing an extension of the style with more symbols and textures in November. And his isometric dungeon style is just extremely clever and beautiful. We are thrilled that all new artwork from Herwin will also be included in the upcoming Perspectives 3.

The user map in Djekspek’s Overland style was done by Modric, and the isometric dungeon here by forum member Tommek, who even commissioned custom symbols for his map from another artist. There are other amazing maps in this style.

Conclusion

When we started with the Annual back in 2007 we hardly imagined that we would be able to fill six years of subscription with material and keep everyone’s interest. But now the Annual is still going strong and the new and amazing talent within and without the ProFantasy community means we can rely on a steady influx of new ideas for upcoming issues. We’ll keep it coming.

The Annuals website is here, and you can see the full range of styles and other content on the gallery pages.

Down in the code pit, the nuts and bolts of the CC3 engine are being disassembled and reassembled for future proofing – glue routines are being replaced and code recompiled with the latest compiler. We are as prepared for Windows 8 as we can be.

Character Artist 3

Our development work affects the order in which we release products, so we’ve moved Character Artist 3 to the top of the production line. The changes to Character Artist are primarily art – the interface is already straightforward and doesn’t need much work.

The art work is nearly finished – the squid faced gentleman is an example, but we’d like your input in deciding where to concentrate our final art efforts.  Please vote here.

Random City Generator

L. Lee Saunders has been working with our beta testers to get the RCG ready for public consumption, and now here it is – ready for your feedback.!

Perspectives 3

Perspectives has been rescheduled because we want to include a surprise additional style in it. Existing Annual fans might be able to guess who it’s by!

Source Maps 3

For the Source Maps series, we want to update the maps in new styles and create new maps, which will require additional cartographers. These will then be available as modestly priced updates to the existing Source Maps series.

Dioramas 3

The main work here, once more, is art; newer, better art. CC3’s art capabilities combined with the work of professional artists and cartographers have transformed the quality maps which users create, and we intend to repeat this with Dioramas, too. The main additional feature will be angled fill styles, enabling us to create nets with, say, a raster brick pattern in all directions.

First buildings with effects on

Ok, we’re going to spend time today filling in a block section with houses.  We’re going to be using the House command from CD3 extensively, so you should be an expert in it once we’re done.

The house command is in the upper left corner of your toolbar and looks like a roof seen from  the top – a screen shot is to the right (you can see the “House” tooltip as well):

 
 
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We have another gorgeous new mapping style lined up for the Annual – I’m really excited about the great artists that draw the art for us this year. Take a look at this beautiful isometric dungeon by Herwin Wielink. How would you like being able to build something like this in CC3 from pre-drawn tiles and connecting room and corridor pieces? Well, you’ll be able to come June.

This post discusses business information which will probably not be of interest to most readers. Another article will cover our product development plans for 2012.

The Economy

It was a tough time for the world economy, including the Eurozone, the UK and the USA, our primary market. My view is that while the economy has a negative effect on sales for many businesses, the effect of the economy on individual businesses is less pronounced than other factors, some of which are under the control of the business owners. Other businesses (Domino’s Pizza for example) positively benefit from downturns. Psychology suggests that we are much more likely to attribute positive results with our own endeavours, and negative results with external factors. So, anything I say here is pretty much speculation. Take the salt provided.

Our Sales

So this year, our UK sales in pounds were within a gnat’s whisker of 2010 and 2009, when adjusted for inflation. This is pretty good. I’d like to say it’s all down to our business choices, despite the downturn, but I think there is an element of the Domino’s Pizza about the roleplaying hobby – it’s one of the best-value pastimes there is. People get hours and hours of use of our of software and their games, and it’s a lot cheaper than going out. I’ve said facetiously that the RPG industry slogan should be “There’s never been a better time to enter a world of fantasy.”

Only a neglible fraction of our sales are through distribution, and this hasn’t changed. However, retail sales are disproportionately CC3, so it’s still worthwhile continuing this. Another interesting phenomenon is that while annual sales of CC3 (our entry product) increased by 6%, the average sale declined slightly as if to compensate.

We did release a new product – FT3 – but the upgrade was modestly priced, reducing our potential revenue, and because it’s such a widely accepted product among CC3 users, it was mainly upgrades. 2012 will be different – we’ve got three products in the pipeline.

Ralf says that convention sales are down a bit, but that overall the quality of maps has increased. Ralf and I think that the size of the table top roleplaying game market is stable, or even shrinking, but that the existing participants are older, wealthier and more committed than before. I am hoping that market leader Wizards of the Coasts new version of Dungeons and Dragons will expand the market, as that helps everyone.

The Website

Site visits increased about 30% since 2009, as has the average time on the site, the number of pages per visit. We achieved more than 450,000 unique visitors in 2011. We did a lot of work earlier in the year using Google Analytics to increase our conversion rate; it definitely increased as result, but nonetheless the conversion rate was lower than in 2010.  I suspect that has more to do with the nature of the visitors, though I speculate that people are taking longer to decide and are spending their money more carefully. We updated our copy rather carefully, too, and have plans to revamp the website based on our recent poll.

 Other RPG Cartography Companies

It remains true that we are the only company producing cartography software for the RPG industry full time.

In our tiny industry, we think of other rpg map-makers as colleagues rather than rivals, so we were sad to see that, according to forum posts, Dundjinni has not been on sale for while. There has been no update since March last year. We’ve tried to reach the owner, Mindy, to no avail. It’s sad particularly because of the excellent community which built up around the software, creating new art which the CC3 community could also use. (This situation may change – I hope it does – so check their website to make sure.)

NBOS continues to produce Fractal Mapper, and Ed Diana released a new version of Astrosynthesis which he made compatible with the latest Fractal Terrains 3.

 Miscellany

• There is a definite seasonal sales trend over the years. The spikes for product releases just about even out, though the Annual subscription helps our December sales disproportionately. I’d be very interested to hear if this pattern is repeated in other related companies.

• The relative sales between the UK, USA and the rest of the world have remained unchanged now for at least three years.
• The proportion of download sales has increased from about 25% to 30% from 2010 to 2011
• We’ve sold to 92 countries in the past two years including Cameroon, Albania, and Reunion.

This is a follow-up to Creating a Fractal Terrains world with Terraformer Part 1.

You can download the whole tutorial as a PDF –  Steps to doing a barren world in Fractal Terrains.

Moving the drawing to Campaign Cartographer 3 / Cosmographer 3

Step 10 – From here on out, I will be using CC3. This is a great program that I have come to rely on to create all of my maps. I should note that the steps outlined here are taken directly from the “Terraformer for Fractal Terrains Pro Users Manual” created by Bill Roach. It’s an excellent guide, and I would recommend that anyone using Fractal Terrains pick this up as a reference source. The guide is available from the Registered User’s Area.

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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.

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.

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.

Here is a link to the entire Visual Studio 2010 project