As we’re closing in on the end of the year and looking back on the maps posted by the community in November, there is no sign of you map-makers letting up with the awesome maps. Check out just a few of the cartographic bonanza that the month has been:
Lizzy_Maracuja‘s post-apocalypse settlement of Hope looks wonderful in its two different lighting versions, one at day and one at night.
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For this year’s final month of free content by Mike Schley, we climb up the steep slopes of the mountains high up into the clouds. Mike has created new volcanoes, waterfalls, wooded mesas (tepui), strange rock formations, and the clouds themselves for the Mountain Symbols pack that adds 20 new symbols to the Mike Schley overland style of CC3+.
To download the free content go to your registration page and on the Downloads tab, click the download button for Campaign Cartographer 3 Plus. Mike’s new symbols are the last link in the list (see image on the right). All the content up to and including December 2021 is included in the one download.
You can always check the available monthly content on our dedicated page
Last time in the developer series I started our Dynamic Dungeons project with the intention to showcase how to make some simple tools for a more fluid dungeon editing experience. In this issue, I will continue on with that project, and add some improvements to it, such as taking care that our entities are placed on the right sheets, meaning we will need to dive into sublists, and I will also automatically generate walls to go along with our floors.
As last time, I prepared a short video to show the tools in action. At the end of the video, you’ll also see that I show the classic dungeon tools correctly interacting with my entities.
To be able to follow this article series, you should have read my earlier articles in the series.
Are you still looking for that treasure in the half-sunken temple on the shoreline? Getting bored by always the same seaweed slushing around your legs? Don’t worry, Sue Daniel has more maritime excitement for you with the second part of the Marine Dungeons style.
New ways to enhance your floors with metallic inlays, connecting walls, new flora and fauna for your shore and sea floor … more than 140 symbols, a dozen new textures and many drawing tools are included in the Marine Dungeon 2 style expansion pack.
The December issue is now available for all subscribers from their registration page. If you haven’t subscribed to the Annual 2021 yet, you can do so here.
Note: The re-subcription offer for the Annual 2022 will become available in mid-December, when we also make one of this year’s Annual issues available for free and release a bonus issue (Darklands City part 2).
One reason to import an image into your map is to use it as a guideline for your mapping. For example, maybe you want to import that scan of your old hand-drawn map, or importing a real world city map to re-map it in CC3+. Inserting the image is easy enough (Insert File from the Draw menu), but one of the important things when you want to use an image for reference (or using it as part of the final drawing) is to get it to scale. You could wing it, but that often comes back to bite you later, as a lot of the default sizes for effects, line widths and so on assume your map is to scale. I’ve talked about the importance of scale in an earlier article, but for this one, I’ll just focusing on scaling imported images.
Hello fellow map-makers! What’s up in November you ask? A lot, we say. Check out a new version of Fractal Terrains, a huge Humble Bundle and much more.
News
Resources
Articles
With this month’s free content by Mike Schley, we travel inland from the the shores of the ocean into the blasted vastness of the great deserts. You will find dunes, cacti, half-buried statues and of course giant worms in the Desert Symbols pack that adds 20 new symbols to the Mike Schley overland style of CC3+.
To download the free content go to your registration page and on the Downloads tab, click the download button for Campaign Cartographer 3 Plus. Mike’s new symbols are the last link in the list (see image on the right). All the content up to and including November 2021 is included in the one download.
You can always check the available monthly content on our dedicated page.
We are happy to announce a new version of Fractal Terrains: Fractal Terrains 3+.
Joe Slayton has been hard at work to update Fractal Terrains with a 64-bit core, greatly improving the speed and editing detail of his world building tool, while also adding more functionality and ironing out various kinks. This version is a free upgrade to Fractal Terrains and available from your registration page among the other Fractal Terrains 3 downloads. As it is a 64-bit software and uses a different setup architecture from FT3, it is a complete new install, meaning you can install it in addition to FT3 and uninstall that older version at your leisure.
Here are the release notes on 3.5.1, the version number of Fractal Terrains 3+:
FT3+ Verion 3.5.1
– Includes “The One-Day Worldbuilder” Annual issue by Sue Daniel (CC3+ required).
– Added export settings for common CC+3 styles (Mike Schley, Jon Roberts, Herwin Wielink).
– Added FT3-style CC3+ export setting “Jherion”
– Fixed river generation.
– Fixed CC3+ export settings save.
– Fixed CC3+ export setting advanced contours.
– Fixed crash with Expand Land in Offset.
– Fixed crash with climate painting toolbar.
– Fixed some visual elements in dialogs being offset from their ocrrect location.
– Color Key will now update correctly on changes.
– Explicit coastline map feature now available on Advanced export options.
– Fixed crash with odd-sized selection import.
– Prescale offset editing is now on by default.
– What once was large, now is small. World editing preselects are now 1024, 4096, and 8192 instead of 256, 512, 1024.
FT3+ Version 3.5.0
– 64-bit (higher resolutions possible).
– Faster calculation and rendering.
– Uses @FT3Cfg.xml for saving settings.
– Single application look, better matching the OS defaults.
– Better CC3 output (better geometry, better rivers).
– Handles FCW templates better, including sheets and reading compressed templates.
– Added ProFantasy-style normal map calculation.
– Added Equal Earth map projection.
– Color key should better fit its window.
– Globe bar can be resized.
We’ve also added four fast and easy CC3+ export settings that give you a beautiful base to work from in CC3+’s most poular drawing styles.
Looking back over the user contributions of last month I really had some hard decisions on what to include to keep this post manageable. So many beautiful maps posted! I hope you enjoy our users’ work of October.
Seeing so much of her work in the Annuals, we tend to take Sue Daniel‘s mapping work for granted. So take this amazing little dungeon floorplan as a reminder what outstanding maps she produces, especially when she has the time and opportunity to focus on one specific map over a complete style.
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Here is the list of live mapping sessions we have done since the last month. We hope you enjoy them and learn about using CC3+!
