ralf | October 1, 2019 | Newsletter
Dear mappers, welcome to ProFantasy’s September newsletter! We have released an update for CC3+ including some beat new features and there is a two-part article on how to get the best of your FT3 map into Campaign Cartographer 3+.
News
Resources
Articles
3 Comments
ralf | October 1, 2019 | Annual, Gary Warburton, overland
The October Annual of 2019 is available now and we are glad to present a new contributor to our series of mapping styles. Gary Warburton – Dungeon Master Gaz on the ProFantasy forum – caught our eye with his wonderful “Legend” series of maps, depicting mythological Greece, and we were thrilled when he agreed to publish a similar one as an Annual issue.
He produced a neat new set of symbols for a Mesoamerican setting, a wonderful example map and here is the drawing style we created from that.
If you haven’t done so already, you can subscribe to the Annual 2019 here. If you are already subscribed, the October issue is available for download on your registration page now.
1 Comment
ralf | September 29, 2019 | ft3, Quenten Walker
This continues Quenten’s previous article about converting an FT3 world in CC3+.
CLIMATE
Turn on the climate layer, by pressing the C button on the key at the side of your map. You will see the following picture (I have hidden everything else, except coastline). This map has only 5 biomes, but yours will most certainly have more.
We must now add a sheet for each biome – again, so we can use various effects, bitmap fills and alteration. Here I have added a sheet for each biome: (see above), including one named CLIMATE ABOVE, which is the lowest of the Climate sheets.
Continue reading »
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ralf | September 26, 2019 | community, Maps of the Month, user maps
Summer is over, September is getting on and its time to collect another batch of beautiful user maps to highlight. Let’s see what the Profantasy community produced this month!
Maidhc O Casain over on the forum used the Annual’s watercolour style to produce a version of probably the most famous RPG village of all time: Hommlet:
Continue reading »
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Remy Monsen | September 20, 2019 | cc3plus, update
Update 22 for CC3+ was just released, and in addition to fixing a couple of issues, it also includes some improved commands, as well as a few brand new ones. Let us have a look at these and how you can use them.
Trace
A new command for tracing the outline of images (and other CC3+ entities) and turning them into CC3+ entities have been added. This new command, simply called Trace is an easier to use variant of the Contours command from Update 16, and it also support colors.
There are two new commands here, TRACED and TRACE. The former allows you to select entities for tracing, and then it will pop up a dialog where you can set various parameters, while the latter is the silent version which just executes the trace using the current parameters (either set by using the dialog version, otherwise it uses default ones). The options in the dialog are as follows: Continue reading »
2 Comments
ralf | September 20, 2019 | Campaign Cartographer, cc3plus, update
A new version of CC3+ is available now, adding full GUI access for more button sizes, as well as better custom palette handling, bitmap tracing, fractalizing and house symbol mirroring. Also a few smaller bugs where fixed.
Version Notes
CC3+ Version 3.91
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– Added PALLOAD and PALSAVE commands to load and save different custom palettes.
– Added GUI option (Screentools button) to allow user to pick any of the 4 available icon resolutions instead of just large/small.
– Added a TRACE and TRACED command to trace around a bitmap in a more general way than the CONTOURSM family of commands.
– Modified Fractalize (FRX) command to affect outlines even if they are separate entities.
– Modified roof shading code to flip angles by 180 degrees when specifying mirrored on bitmaps
– Fixed blur radius computation in effects when using Map Units.
– Fixed lighting direction on mirrored symbols (initial implementation in June was incorrect).
– When the system issues a “no matching drawing tool” message, will now show the tool name that it was looking for.
– Cosmographer 3 deckplan bitmap templates can now add new grids?
– Fixed bug in FastCAD core that was preventing higher-resolution icon sets from loading.
– Fixed crash on exit when writing XML file that was intermittently appearing as project changed.
Download this latest update from your registration page.
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ralf | September 3, 2019 | cc3plus, ft3, Quenten Walker, World Maps
Rationale
The method below is to accurately display your FT3 map at any projection as a CC3+ map, with all the climate zones, altitudes and major rivers in their correct places no matter what the projection, and also to allow fine tuning the map in a way designed to add extra detail without changing the original FT3 map to any great degree.
The method requires as much detail in creating the FT3 map as possible – see articles on designing FT3 maps. Especially, this requires attention to altitude, climate zones, islands and rivers.
Prior to export
The most popular projections are:
• Equirectangular – increasingly inaccurate as you travel away from the equator
• Hammer – distorted increasingly as you travel to the east and west borders
• Sinusoidal – accurate and not so distorted, but discontinuous. Can be used to make an actual globe, especially the 18-way Stereographic Gores.
• Orthographic – allows you to centre on the landmass in question and see it most accurately of all in a continuous fashion. Used also to make maps centred on the North or South poles.
• AE Hemispheres – presents the map as 2 hemispheres (E and W). For best results, make your original draft map in FT3 as an AE Hemisphere projection, and then refine it at the equirectangular projection. This enables you to make sure there is not too much land overlapping each hemisphere – see below for preferred (left) and not preferred arrangements (right).
Continue reading »
2 Comments
ralf | September 1, 2019 | Annual, battle map, handdrawn, Hans Anders Bergström
For September we are happy to present a new contributor to the Cartographer’s Annual: Hans Anders Bergström. His maps caught our eye in the ProFantasy community with their unique watercolour look, which is very different from that is normally created with Campaign Cartographer 3 Plus. We approached Anders, and he agreed to let us create an Annual issue from his innovative work, even supplying a wonderful walkthrough of his process, which comprises the majority of the mapping guide.
At first glance it’s hard to believe Anders’ maps were actually created with Campaign Cartographer 3+, but his innovative work with sheets and sheet effects is really not that difficult once you know what he’s doing. And that’s exactly what this Annual issue does: it teaches you how to recreate Anders’ Techniques for your own beautiful watercolour-style maps.
If you haven’t done so already, you can subscribe to the Annual 2019 here. If you are already subscribed, the September issue is available for download on your registration page now.
2 Comments
ralf | August 29, 2019 | battle maps, guest article, Jason Payne, vtt
Campaign Cartographer 3+ is an outstanding tool that excels in helping cartographers, authors, artists, and hobbyists bring their ideas to life. I imagine we all know this well!
It’s also a fabulous tool for the well-prepared DM/GM, for creating homebrew maps or spawning maps for existing published content that better fit the needs of a particular gaming group. Drawing maps and exporting or printing them before a gaming session is a wonderful way to immerse your players in a tabletop roleplaying experience, whether you prefer “theatre of the mind” style combat or gridded battlemaps with miniatures.
But did you know that CC3+ is also an excellent tool during a gaming session? This article explores the many ways that DMs can use CC3+ as a “game-time”, not “design-time”, gaming aid.
Overview: CC3+ During Your Gaming Session
There are several advantages to using CC3+ to help power your next gaming session. Some of these require a bit of advance preparation; others can be used immediately no matter what maps you use.
1: Dynamic battlemaps for sprawling or unexpected encounters.
2: Easy-to-hide secrets.
3: In-person VTT capabilities.
Solution 1: Dynamic Battlemaps
If you’ve been a dungeon/game master for any length of time, you know that no matter how much you prepare, and how many different paths you predict and plan for, the players are going to do whatever they damned well please. While that element of surprise is arguably the best part of a tabletop RPG experience, it can also be very frustrating–not only for the GM who has to scramble madly to accommodate the unexpected, but for the players, who one minute are dealing with elaborately-drawn battlemaps and the next minute are using hastily-scribbled pencil drawings on a pizza box. (This latter example may sound extreme, but in middle school I resorted to drawing encounter maps on the lids of pizza boxes all the time. If my seventh-grade self could have seen what CC3+ made possible, he would have exploded in envy!)
Succinctly, then, the problem is, no matter how many different individual battlemaps you prepare ahead of time, PCs’ actual use of those in an encounter could very easily expand beyond the boundaries you drew. This is especially true in open-air or wide-space encounters: plains, wilderness, ocean, mountains, and expansive underground chambers and caverns.
How, then, can CC3+ help this phenomenon during a gaming session?
Simple: don’t export JPGs or print out battlemaps before a session. Use CC3+ to display the battlemap that applies, on-screen, DURING the gaming session.
I started using this approach during gaming sessions as an extension to my “Unified Battlemaps Approach” to drawing maps. You can check out a complete description , but essentially, instead of drawing individual battlemaps, you have a single, giant map file for an entire “level” or region of your game. Then, you zoom into pieces of it as areas of interest, and flesh them out with detail.
If you take this approach, you’ll end up with a massively-detailed regional map, and you can zoom into it for individual battlemaps. But even if you don’t take this approach, you can still use Dynamic Battlemaps during a gaming session using CC3+.
The approach involves the following steps:
1A: Create Named Views
1B: Use Named Views
1C: Zoom & Pan as Needed
1A: Create Named Views
Sure, you can use Zoom Window to get a close-up on a particular map region. But if you have certain areas of interest you know the PCs will have encounters in, you can save yourself some time by creating Named Views, so you don’t have to draw the zoom window precisely during a game session.
Continue reading »
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Dear mappers, welcome to ProFantasy’s September newsletter! We have released an update for CC3+ including some beat new features and there is a two-part article on how to get the best of your FT3 map into Campaign Cartographer 3+.
