This is the third article in my series about XP development. To understand this article properly, you should be familiar with the contents of the previous articles.

When writing commands for CC3+, we frequently need to communicate with the user. This is often in the form of requesting some data from the user, such as where to place a node or which color to use, or we want to provide information to the user, such as instructions on the command line or the information the user requested. In this article, I’ll talk about the Text Formatting & Output Service (FormSt) used to prepare data to display to the user, and the data request format (ReqData). We have been touching both of these briefly in the two prior articles, but it is time to discuss these a bit more in depth.

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Unfortunately a little problem crept into the previous update to CC3+ and affected the display of sheet effects for some users. Thanks to prompt reports, we were able to fix this problem quickly and just released a new update (23) and full setup for CC3+ version 3.92. As usual you can download them from your registration page.

Version notes

CC3+ Version 3.92
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– Fixes bugs in effects system
– adds command EFFECTSDLLS (listing active sheet effects and their source) for future de-bugging

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

• Update 22 is available, bringing CC3+ up to version 3.91.
• The September Annual adds Hans Anders Bergström’s Watercolour style to your array of tools.

Resources

• Remy Monsen presents the new tools and features of Update 22.
• Explore the community’s Maps of the Month for September.

Articles

• In part 1 of his article, Quenten Walker sets up the basics for exporting a Fractal Terrains 3 world in detail to CC3+.
• Part 2 of Quenten’s article looks at the climate and mountain ranges to complete the process of going from FT3 to CC3+.

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.

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.
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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:

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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 »

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
=================
– 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.

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).

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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.