The Symbols in Area command was introduced in CC3+ long after most of the basic styles were created, meaning it is not used in those styles’ drawing tools. But since it is very useful for creating terrain features like scattered woodlands, why not set up some new tools to make use of it? In this little article I’ll take you through doing exactly that. As an example I’ll create a scattered deciduous woods for the Mike Schley overland style.

1. Setting up the Symbols In Area command

• First, load an existing or start a new Mike Schley overland and choose the Symbols in Area command from the Draw menu.
• Click Browse and load the Vegetation catalog from /Symbols/Maps/Mike Schley/
• Set the settings as shown in the screenshot on the right, then Save the setting under \System\Fillers\MS_WoodsDecid.symfill

If you want to test and possibly adjust the settings, draw a smooth polygon on the map and use the command on it after clicking OK in the Symbols in Area dialog.

2. Creating a new Drawing Tool

Now we need to set up the new drawing tool for this setting.

• Right-click the Terrain Drawing tools button and click the Advanced button.
• Select the tool Terrain Default, Forest Decid and click New.
• Name the new tool “Terrain Default, Woods Decid” and save it.
• Click Command to Execute and enter the following macro:

SYMFILLLOAD @system\fillers\MS_WoodsDecid.symfill
SELSAVE
SELBYP
SYMFILLM
SELREST

• Save the tool and you’re good to use it.

3. Creating a Drawing Tool Preview.

You’ll notice that the tool doesn’t have a preview at this point. That’s because a macro-using drawing tool needs a little FCW file (CC3+ map for the preview. Let’s create this as a bonus step – it’s not really necessary but useful.

• Load the foilowing FCW file in CC3+ from your Programdata folder (which might be different from the path show here): C:\ProgramData\Profanatsy\CC3Plus\System\Drawtools\Overland Mike Schley\Terrain Default, Forest Decid.FCW and save it in the same folder under the name Terrain Default, Woods Decid.FCW. This is the same file name as the drawing tool we created, only with a different file extension.
• Erase all trees from the file, but leave the gray background.
• Use the Symbols in Area command with the settings we’ve previously created, then Save the map.

And that’s all there is to creating a scattered woods drawing tool. You can do the same with pine or jungle trees, or any type of symbol you want. Here is an example created with the new drawing tool:

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

In this article, we’ll talk about how we can manipulate our drawing. In CC3+, a drawing is really a series of entities, so we are going to have a closer look at what an entity really is, how to create new entities in the map, and how to access and manipulate existing entities.

Entities

Everything in a CC3+ map is an entity; a symbol, a line, a landmass and so on. This term should be well known to all CC3+ mappers, as it is the term used in official documentation. However, it isn’t just these visible things that are entities, almost everything stored in a CC3+ drawing is an entity, such as a map note or an effect. We can view an entity as a data container for one specific thing or aspect of our map.

When working on an XP, you are almost always going to be handling entities. After all, manipulating entities is needed no matter what you want to do with the drawing, including extracting information from it, so understanding how to work with these is very important.

Continue reading »

The June issue of the Cartographer’s Annual is now ready for download and installation. The style pack “Ancient Tombs” is a set of Egyptian-themed artwork including a huge number of new symbols and bitmap fills and comes with a complete mapping written by Jean-Michel himself. In fact this style is only the first of a trilogy, where the future part will look at creating isometric versions of the floorplans and a set of advanced techniques.

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

Welcome cartographers to the May newsletter! We are busy with the travel preparations for the first convention of the year, but nevertheless have some goodies for you.

News

• ProFantasy will be exhibiting for the first time at UK Games Expo in Birmingham from May 31st to June 2nd.
• The May Annual with Sue Daniel’s “Beaumaris Castle” map pack has been available for download since the start of the month.
• What products are in the development queue? Find out where we stand with Cities of Schley and the second Token Set.

Resources

• We have a new selection of Maps of the Month for May.

Articles

• Remy Monsen explains the different options for units in the sheet effects settings.
• Ralf Schemmann starts a new series of articles on creating your own map styles, looking at basic considerations in the first installment.

I’m sure you all would like to know what is currently in development and when the next add-ons for CC3+ will arrive. Well, I can report that Cities of Schley is very close to completion now and that the next Token Treasury is chugging along nicely.

Cities of Schley

Mike has finished almost all the symbols for the set, and is now working on the bitmap textures that we need to go along with them, so the City Designer house tool can create matching buildings.

Sue Daniels has been helping us with creating the roof maps and as you can on the right, they look great. She’s also suggested a great way to give you more variety in the roof shapes without compromising the shadow’s on the city map (as mirroring a symbol within CC3+ would do).

Token Treasury 2

Seeing that there is still a vast army of fiends and critters lurking in the shadows to pounce on hapless heroes, we’ve decided to drag a few more into the light of the virtual tabletop.

Rich Longmore is creating another set of monster tokens and I’m always delighted when a new one charges through the doorway (or slithers through a crack in the wall).

We do have a few slots for new monster available in the list, so if you have something special that you would like to see as a token, let us know in the comments below!

While Campaign Cartographer offers a wide range of different drawing styles to use, sometimes you just want that special look that anybody else uses, and few things are more rewarding than creating your own unique mapping style. We have covered some of the process of doing this in the first Annual Volume, but quite a few features have been added to CC3+ since then and the Annual issue couldn’t cover all possible options in high detail.

So I thought that a publicly-available article series might be a good way to document the process step-by-step and in higher detail than an Annual issue can. It should also give everyone the opportunity to pitch in with questions along the way. So, let’s get started…

1. What map type to use?

The first decision to make is what type of map style we want to create. A city style? One for floorplans? I know what I’m going to do for this article, my favorite type of maps: an overland maps style.

Let’s take a look at what styles are already available in CC3+. To do this you need to open the CC3+ program data folder in Windows Explorer: C:\ProgramData\ProFantasy\CC3Plus. If you installed CC3+ in a custom location, you will need open that folder. If you don’t see the ProgramData folder at all, it may be “hidden” in Windows 10. Make sure to activate the option “Show hidden files/folders” in Windows Explorer and it should appear.

Now navigate to the Templates subfolder, then Overland Maps, then Wizard. Here you see all the different overland wizard templates listed. Each template consists of three files: The CC3+ template (FCT extension), a preview bitmap (the PNG file) and a short text info file (TXT). For most of the file you will see two sets of 3 files, one for metric units and one for imperial ones. As the template forms the basis for a map style, we will need to create a new set.

2. Creating a New Wizard Template

I find it easiest to start a new style based on an existing one. It might only be vaguely similar, but copying an existing style makes it easier to not forget necessary bits and pieces and gives you a set of styles to start from. That means we need to decide what style we want to create at this point. I am thinking January’s World’s of Wonder style would look good in black-and-white, so I decide to create such a style for this article. I locate the three files (for imperial units) in Explorer as shown on the right.

Select the three files and use the clipboard to copy them (ctrl-c, then ctrl-v). Windows will rename these copies by appending “- copy” to the filename. Rename all three to the name of your new style (e.g. Annual Worlds of Wonder BW.*). Make sure the file names are all exactly the same, except for the file extension. We won’t worry about the metric version of the template yet – we can create that much later when most of the work is done.

3. A New Drawing Tool folder

After the template, the next important part of a style is the set of drawing tools to go with it. Again, we can create a new one by copying an existing set. Navigate to the ProgramData\ProFantasy\CC3Plus folder again and then go to System\Drawtools\. You will see a folder for each drawing style. Again, create a copy of the folder “Annual Worlds of Wonder” and rename it to “Annual Worlds of Wonder BW”. We don’t need to worry about the files in the folder at this point.

4. Setting the Template to the new Drawing Tools

Now it’s time to open CC3+ for the first time. Navigate back to the Templates/Overland Maps/Wizard and double-click the template file Annual Worlds of Wonder BW.FCT to open it in CC3+. Naturally it still looks exactly like the Worlds of Wonder style, as it’s just a plain copy of it. Select File > Drawing Properties from menu to open the Drawing Presets dialog. In the Drawing Style section select the new “Annual Worlds of Wonder BW” from the list. Basically this tells CC3+ which folder to choose the drawing tools from when you click the drawing tools buttons on the left-hand toolbar. If we now make changes in this template on the its drawing tools, they won’t affect the original Worlds of Wonder style but be restricted to the new Worlds of Wonder BW style instead.

If you have your own ideas for creating a style you can already start tinkering with the template and the drawing tool. We will continue in the next article with changing the bitmap fills that the style uses. If you have any questions concerning this article and creating your own drawing style, feel free to do so in the comments below, or – for easier discussion and more help from other users – go to the forum thread I have created for this series of articles.

May is almost over and it’s time to check out some of the beautiful maps contributed by the community over the last month.

Let’s start with Mark Olsen‘s ingenious map of Xemmirrilth – City of the Dragonborn. The shadow work cleverly shows the vertical layout of the city, telling the viewer clearly that you’re looking at a town built inside crater.
Continue reading »

For the first time, ProFantasy will be exhibiting at UK Games Expo in Birmingham this coming weekend.

The show has been constantly growing in recent years and we are excited to see how the gaming community comes together for this event. You will find us in hall 1 at booth 1-697 as show in the hall map below. If you are visiting UK Games Expo, please stop by to say hello, check out our software and just chat a little about mapping!

Whenever you add a new effect to a map in Campaign Cartographer, you are presented with a small choice about which effect units to use. In these article, I’d like to talk a little bit about these choices, what they really mean, and which setting to pick in each situation.

In general, the effects units affect how you specify effect sizes, such as the width of an edge fade, the length of a shadow and so on. It does not affect the strength of the effect (although changing the size of an effect, such as a glow, will indirectly make it feel stronger as well).

The three available settings are

• Percent of View Width
  This setting makes all effect sizes depend on your current view. This means that effects will actually change as you zoom in and out of the map.
• Map Units
  This setting means that all effect sizes are absolute, and expressed in the same units as your map is in. For example, a (non-metric) dungeon map is expressed in feet, so this options means that the sizes of the effects is expressed in feet as well.
• Percent of Drawing Extents Width
  With this setting, the size of the effects depends on the size of your actual map. For example, if you set the length of a shadow effect to 1, and your map is 400 map units, than shadows will be 4 units long (1% of 400 is 4). As above, what a unit means is based upon your map type, for example feet in a dungeon or city map.

So, let us look into what the different settings are most appropriate for, along with some examples.

Continue reading »

The May issue of the Cartographer’s Annual is now ready for download and installation. The map pack “Beaumaris Castle” is a complete re-imagining of a classic fortification from Source Maps: Castles! Sue Daniel rebuild the Welsh castle with modern bitmap symbols and textures, and we’ve included all those resources in the issue for your use in other maps and drawings.

Explore the beautifully mapped four floorplan levels, the stunning 3d view of the whole castle and a surroundings maps. Over 100 floorplan symbols, 30 isometric buildings and walls sections, and 33 new bitmap textures can be leveraged for other projects.

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