The Continent of Dorina

A brief note about this article

The main reason I have never written about the special effects I use in my maps before now is because they have to be applied differently on each new map I draw. Differences in map style and the random variability of the way I chose to warp the colour scheme each time have made it very hard to nail down any particular method to the point of there being a right or a wrong way of doing it, and it’s nearly impossible to make a definitive set of instructions when nothing is set in concrete. I have often used similar combinations of effects on similar sheets in different maps once I discovered a useful result by experimentation, but I don’t think I have ever used exactly the same settings on any two maps. So what follows is more a train of thought and an explanation of my method as I develop two example maps of the same place in two different styles in tandem. However, and having said that, there are a few simple instructions on how to generate and process sea contours in the first of the special effects to be described.

This article focuses on two versions of the continent of Dorina shown above in the Mike Schley style (MS) and the Herwin Weilink style (HW). I have chosen these styles because they are available to all CC3 mappers, and because they are so different in nature that the special effects will have to be applied differently to each one. By describing this process and providing the finished FCW files for reference purposes, I hope that those of you who have requested tutorials about how to get similar special effects to mine in their own maps may at the very least gain some useful information and ideas.

The effects I will be working on in this article are oceanic contours, global colour shifts, contrast adjustments, snowfields and something I’ve called ‘midnight’, which entirely changes the nature of the map in a way that makes it vaguely reminiscent of a view seen under brilliant moonlight.

First off, then, I should probably start with the basic stuff – how much I have already warped the default styles to produce the initial maps before we get started on the special effects. Please note that for some reason I set the scale of these maps completely wrong, but it was too late to go back and start again by the time I got to the finishing touches. I didn’t realise until I was adding the scale bar and it was out by a very large factor.

Dorina – MS

The MS style is beautiful in its clean and radiant pastel colours. Unfortunately for me it is those very same pastel shades that make doing the kind of special effect I do quite difficult to achieve on an MS map. While I can appreciate the loveliness of many very different styles my personal taste tends more towards richer, darker colours. If you open the Dorina – Mike Schley.FCW file you will see that the sheets have been dramatically altered, so that while I tried very hard not to take it too far away from the intended appearance as to be unrecognisable as an MS map, I have used lots of Adjust Hue/Saturation and RGB Matrix effects. I have also swapped out some of the textures for others in the same set and changed their colours accordingly. I love the grassy texture of the Marsh_MS fill, and so I have abused it by using it for anything that is at all grassy in nature. There are other fills I’ve substituted, but even though I’ve bashed it about quite badly (and I cringe to think of what the purists would say) all the fills are MS fills and part of that style. There is nothing there that doesn’t come from the Mike Schley mapping style.

Dorina – HW

You might think the HW style is made for me, with my already stated preference for darker, richer colours, but my taste is less subtle and a couple of degrees lighter in tone. I have done exactly the same thing with the HW map as I’ve done with the MS style – lots of colour changing sheet effects aimed at making everything a little brighter than before. I haven’t swapped out so many of the fills, but I do very much like the grassland fill and I’ve used it in several shades on different sheets. There are couple of sheep and cows and a horse that remain from the MS version where there is no HW equivalent.

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The Master Mapper award has been on hiatus for a few years, but certainly not because of a lack of awesome cartographers out there! It’s our fault due to being busy with other things and not being able to make our mind up who among so many great Campaign Cartographer users we should single out. Well, we are certainly going to change that and start out by awarding the honor to not one, but two deserving mappers! For that we are going back a bit in time …

Master Mapper 2017: Joe Sweeney

Awarding Joe Sweeney the Master Mapper title for one specific year is like saying “D&D was the most popular role-playing game this year” – it’s true, but it doesn’t say much! Joe has been a great asset to the community for years, creating templates, maps, free resources and videos.

As Joe has been supporting the CC user community for ages and we felt it was high-time we properly recognized that contribution.

So we just picked a recent year and declared him Master Mapper of 2017 for:

• Helping oh so many mapper with his highly instructive video tutorials.
• Designing templates for highly re-usable dungeon and starship stiles.
• Drawing beautiful maps.
• Hosting and contributing to a tiled texture collection for anyone to use.
• And running a whole Master Mapping Class website.

We can’t thank Joe enough for the support he has provided to the Campaign Cartographer community over the years. You are a true Master Mapper in all meanings of the word!

Master Mapper 2018: Christina Trani

When looking at all the beautiful maps submitted to the community in 2018 we at first felt overwhelmed at all the material. How could we decide on a Master Mapper from among all those great cartographers? But one did indeed stand out when we looked a little closer. There are so many consistently beautiful maps created by Christina Trani (Lorelei on the forum), it became clear to us she is indeed the Master Mapper of 2018.

The Master Mapper award for 2018 goes to Christina for:

• Creating a large number of amazingly beautiful maps.
• Pushing the boundaries of what can be done in Campaign Cartographer, expanding the horizon of all its users.
• Being active in the Facebook user group and the community forum.
• And for supporting and contributing to the Community Atlas project.

Thank you Christina for being such a great part of the Profantasy user community. Please continue amazing us with your beautiful maps and pushing the boundaries of CC3+. Continue being a Master Mapper!

If you want to check out which user have been awarded the title of Master Mapper in the past, check out the Master Mapper page which lists them all.

A new update to the Tome of Ultimate Mapping have just been published. If you already own the Tome for Cartographer 3+, just go to your registration page and download the new and updated installer. It can be used both to update a previous install or for a new install. If you don’t own the Tome yet, check it out in the ProFantasy store >>>

The Tome is now 760 pages of descriptions, tutorials, helpful guides and technical information about CC3+, all it’s add-on products as well as Fractal Terrains 3, accompanied by a lot of support files, such as example maps, step-by-step maps for the tutorials, and other helpful files.

What’s New?

The old version already contained a considerable amount of material, but CC3+ and it’s add-ons have evolved since the previous Tome release, so I did find a bunch of new things to add to this version, in addition to some general improvements and issues fixed.

• 50 more pages of content
• Completely revamped the list of commands. It now contains every command in CC3+, both built-in commands as well as the macros shipped with the program. All commands are described, and all commands that can be used in a macro have their full macro syntax  The lists in the book itself contains all the commands you will ever use for CC3+, while a spreadsheet found among the support files also contains deprecated and outdated commands. The spreadsheet is of course fully sortable by command name, add-on or category.
• New commands added to CC3+ have been documented, these include; Symbols In Area, Contours, Exclusion Commands, Perspective Scaling, Simplify and more.
• Added a pdf file showing the graphics and names of all toolbar graphics, very useful if you customize the toolbars.
• Annual reference is up to date with the complete 2018 annual.
• The chapter on Dioramas (and the support files) have been updated to Dioramas 3 (From Dioramas Pro in the old version)
• The Source Maps series (Castles, Cities, Temples, World War 2) have been updated to be compatible with CC3+, so the corresponding chapters in the Tome have been updated to match.
• Added a mini-chapter on the new Token Treasury series
• And many more minor additions and fixes….

Campaign Cartographer 3+ is a a very configurable and extensible program. In addition to the core program, users can purchase official add-ons, providing not just new artwork, but also new tools. Users can easily add new artwork such as symbols and fills, and many users with an artistic talent create such resources themselves and import into CC3+ for use with their maps. It is also easy for users to create their own drawing tools and organize symbols into symbol catalogs. For the more advanced users, it is possible to customize the menus and toolbars, and write macro commands which can be used to add additional functionality or automate tasks.
But, the most powerful option is the possibility of writing your own add-ons, or XP’s. While you can do a lot with macros, you are still limited to the commands actually provided by CC3+. Clever combinations of these commands can yield interesting results, but sooner or later you will run into things you can’t do. And this is where XP development comes in. By writing your own add-ons for CC3+, you get direct access to the building blocks of your drawing, and can write your own commands for CC3+ to do all kinds of stuff.
In this series of articles I will teach you how to write these add-ons yourself. A word of warning here; these articles will teach you about XP development, but I’ll have to assume you actually know something about programming, and in particular, C++. If you don’t know that, I recommend you find yourself a free C++ tutorial on the internet and start there before coming back, as you will have problems following the tutorials otherwise.

In this first tutorial we’ll look at how to set up your programming environment, as well as making our first code.

Note that you can easily find all the articles published in this series so far by using this link.

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The April issue of the Cartographer’s Annual 2019 is available now. Between dusky bookshelves, rickety doors and moldy armchairs, Pär Lindström’s new style “Moody Mansions” is perfect for creating building floorplans for horror- or mystery-themed adventures and stories.

Whether your players are investigating that haunted house on the hill, or your story revolves around that last lonely occupant of a deteriorating home, the “Moody Mansions” style will create a matching map.

If you haven’t done so already, you can subscribe to the Annual 2019 here. If you are already subscribed, the April issue is available for download on your registration page now.

Dear map-makers! Here is the March newsletter with the latest from your favorite mapping software!

News

• Take a preview of the upcoming months of the Cartographer’s Annual 2019.
• The March Annual issue SciFi Bases is available.

Resources

• Check out these highlights of the community’s maps in the Maps of the Month.
• Remy Monsen considers the use of CC3+ at the gaming table in his monthly column.

Articles

• Ralf Schemmann takes a look at the resources for the Traveller rpg that are available in Cosmographer 3.
• And in a second article, Sue continues here tutorial on how to create new house symbols for City Designer 3, including dynamic roof shading..

The ProFantasy monthly newsletter typically features a map gallery, articles on map creation and development news. If you sign up to be notified by email, you’ll get exclusive offers, too.

We will only use this email address for sending newsletters from us and will not pass on your email address to any other organisation.

If ever you want to cancel your subscription, each email includes your link to unsubscribe.

You can read all past newsletters here.

We’ve added a few previews for the next months of the Cartographer’s Annual 2019.

For April we have a new floorplan style by Pär Lindström. The “Moody Mansions” style is perfect for modern horror games and similar mapping endeavors. Whether you are investigating a murder in Victorian London or hunting otherworldly horrors in Arkham, Massachusetts, the style provides the perfection location map.

May has another treat from the hand of Sue Daniel. She has created an updated and much improved version of one of the castles from Source Maps: Castles, the Welsh castle of Beaumaris. It includes floorplans for all the castle’s levels, an isometric view and individual parts to build your own fortification from.

In June we’ll be featuring an overland mapping style by a new contributor: Sebastian Breit of Foreign Worlds cartography. We love the maps he shows off on his site and look forward to seeing his work in CC3+!

As we are slowly heading into spring here in the northern hemisphere, it’s time to take another look at the wonderful maps the mapping community has produced. Here are five maps that caught our eye this month. Be sure to check out the forum and the Facebook group for lots more!

Thiatas Ashadarawesh produced this amazing world map in Fractal Terrains 3. Worthy of a “Best Coastline” prize.
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Many gamers use some kind of digital solution such as virtual table-top software to display maps on a projector or computer screen even when running a local game (as opposed to running a game over the internet, where such software is pretty much required). All of these software solutions have their advantages and disadvantages, but  CC3+ itself may actually be a very good solution, depending on your needs. Now, just to start with the limitations, CC3+ don’t have any kind of remote viewing/projecting options, so this do require that you share the screen you are actually working on (This can be a secondary screen/projector that is set up to mirror yours, or it can be done through screen sharing software, which allow others to see your screen even over the internet).

So, why would you use CC3+ for this? What advantages does it have over other VTT software? Well, the main reason CC3+ is good for this is that this is where you made your map in the first place. This means that the map is fully interactive, and you have all your regular CC3+ tools available to you to manipulate the map during play. If you export the map from CC3+ to an image file for use in a VTT program, then everything becomes static. In CC3+ you can hide or show sheets and layers, you can move symbols and edit whatever you need to do.

Of course, CC3+ isn’t optimized for use during play, while a VTT program is made just for that purpose, so some things are probably a bit more complicated to do in CC3+, so it is up to you if the flexibility CC3+ offer with regards to what you can do with your map during game play is worth it. For this article, I’ll showcase a few features of CC3+ that helps you during play.

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Traveller by Marc W. Miller was the among the first science-fiction role-playing games ever published and remains a popular game to this day. It’s sector maps and starship deckplans are iconic images of the rpg hobby and of course we had to include compatible material when we produced our science fiction add-on Cosmographer 3. Let’s have a look at what we included.

The Big Picture

One of the signature styles of Cosmographer 3 is the big “Galaxy Map” style, and you might be tempted to recreate Travller’s huge “Charted Space” map in its beautiful blue, white and black colors. But you’ll find that is not necessary – as were tempted just as much and included this map as an example among the drawings that come with Cosmographer 3. Edit it to your liking and print it as a huge poster map if you like. Of course the matching template is there for you, if you have your own galaxy to map!

All the Sector Maps You Need

Apart from containing normal templates for Traveller’s sector maps, Cosmographer 3 also contains a very powerful data import feature. It draws the numerical data of a selected sector from the web (www.travellermap.com) and generates a full sector map from it, including x-boat routes and allegiance codes. Watching the import and auto-generation process alone is just pure, unadulterated fun.

You can create such map in the bitmap style as shown on the left, or in the classical black and white print style of the published Traveller books.

Of course the smaller subsector maps are also available as templates, again both in traditional black and white (as on the left) or Cosmographer’s bitmap style. Wile they can’t be automatically generated like the sector maps, you can easily copy the necessary content of the sector map over into this smaller section.

Let’s Swing around the Sun Once More

One of the less iconic but no less useful type of maps used in Traveller are the system charts, showing the planetary orbits of a star system. These show the distances of the various planets and other celestial objects from their central star.

As usual the templates are available both in a black and white vector style and a full color bitmap version (depicted here). As they are much less setting-specific than the sector and subsector maps, these are useful for almost any science fiction setting beyond Traveller.

Zoom in Closer

What would Traveller be without its world maps? Well, at least a lot less iconic. Of course Cosmographer 3 includes templates of the classic icosahedral projection, subdivided into hexes. These come in a variety of sizes, scaled to the standard UWP (Universal World Profile) designations of the Imperial Scout Service.

One of the two versions of the style depicts the world as if shown in a satellite image (while keeping the hex map aspect) and the other as a clear and simple vector abstraction, ideal for planning and hex crawling. The symbols depicting the terrain features in this style were taken directly from the Traveller 5 draft document (Cosmographer 3 was released before T5).

And How Do We Get There?

Last but not least, Cosmographer 3 has the templates for the most important aspect of the Traveller setting: the starships. The classic black and white style is straightforward to use and shows everything clearly, but of course the Traveller ships can also be mapped in Cosmographer’s own more elaborate bitmap style. We’ve included templates for two of the most used ships in Cosmographer 3, the 100t Scout and the 200t Free Trader. The maps are outlines only, so any custom interior design can be added to the deckplan in minutes.

After Cosmographer 3’s release we ran a poll to see what other ships our users wanted to see and added the three most popular selections as extra downloads for free.

All of these maps and styles and much more non-Traveller specific resources are available as part of the Cosmographer 3 add-on for Campaign Cartographer 3+.