The February mapping competition, as announced back in January, has now officially started.

Hoping to see lots of people contribute to this event.

And remember, this is open all CC3+ users, new and old alike. You don’t have to be an expert or an artist, there are prizes both for best map, as well as randomly drawn among all participants.

Head over to the forum and read the forum post for the full details.

All maps will also be showcased in that thread as they are submitted, so keep an eye on it to follow the competition.

Big thanks to ProFantasy for sponsoring this contest.

It’s time to delve underground, but we want to make sure our dungeon walls are properly build and nicely decorated. Explore a new feature of the Symbols Along command in version 3.80 of CC3+ (see Update 14 here), that allows you to auto-generate walls built from individual symbols.

The February issue “Dungeon Walls” contains 60 new symbols for three different mapping styles, command and symbol settings to make quick and easy use of them, as well as a 4-mapping guide explaining the process. Check out the February style details on the Cartographer’s Annual 2018 website.

You can now subscribe to the Annual 2018 here. Once you have subscribed, the January issue will immediately become available for download on your registration page.

This time I tackle the issue of getting your lines to look the same when you export your map as they look inside CC3+. Why can grid lines sometimes almost disappear in the export? Why is the pattern of dashed lines so different?

All these issues relate to how you scale different things in CC3+. Sometimes the default options are fine, but sometimes they are not what you need for the current map. The intention with this article is to make you aware of these issues, and therefore being better able to both know what to do, but also to make more informed decisions in the first place.

This is tackled in the first Command Spotlight issue, found in the ProFantasy Community Forum.

So far, the community atlas has been a huge success, with over 110 maps added so far. These maps are available for anyone to use for personal use, and can be downloaded in either the native .fcw file format of CC3+, or in high resolution png image files for use without CC3+.

In February, it turns one year old, and in celebration of that occasion they will hold a mapping contest.

Put simply, all maps submitted in to the atlas during the month of February will be participating in the contest, where you can compete to win one of three $30 ProFantasy Store vouchers. You can check out the rules and conditions the announcement over at the forum, where you should find all the information needed to participate.

You do not need to be a forum member to participate, that post is open for everyone to read, and also contains contact information for participating via email. The forum post will contain the official copy of the rules however.

Note that while this competition is open to everyone, the community atlas is in Campaign Cartographer 3+ format, so you will need to use CC3+ to make your map. You are however welcome to use any of the official addons for CC3+, as well as the four community addons, so you should have a wide range of map styles to choose from in your map, and you can of course combine these as you choose.

Read the forum post for the full details.

Big thanks to ProFantasy for sponsoring this contest.

Welcome to 2018 and a new year of the Cartographer’s Annual with lots of mapping goodness! We hope you are as excited as us about delving into the twelfth year of our monthly subscription.

This January we start with a hex-mapping variant of Mike Schley’s wonderful overland mapping style from CC3+. We provide new templates, new versions of the style’s drawing tools, a bunch of hex symbols and take a tour through the creation process of hex-based maps. Check out the January style details on the Cartographer’s Annual 2018 website.

You can now subscribe to the Annual 2018 here. Once you have subscribed, the January issue will immediately become available for download on your registration page.

I just published command of the week number 52, Symbols in Area, over at the forum. This command details one of the new commands with CC3+ update 14. Symbols in Area is quite similar to Symbols Along, and allow you to fill an area with symbols with a lot of flexibility regarding scaling, positioning, angles and randomness. Check it out in the forum.

This is also the 52nd entry in the series. This series started on the first week in 2017, and I have published a command every single week for a complete year now. Should be quite a bit of interesting information for any CC3+ users in that list. I am now going to take a break, so this will be the end of season 1 of the series. I’ll probably do a season 2, but it will be a while into the future. For now, check out the index of commands, perhaps there is an entry you didn’t read, or an entry you may wish to re-read.

Another year is coming to a close, and we have a slew of Christmas present in store: A free extension Symbol Set 4, an update for CC3+, the Cartographer’s Annual 2018 is available for subscription and Remy finishes a one-year run of the “Command of the week”.

News

• Symbol Set 4 – Dungeons of Schley gets a free expansions with the Schleyscapes – Forlorn Cottage artwork.
• The Cartographer’s Annual 2018 is now available for subscription. Take a look at the upcoming content here.
• CC3+ Update 14 adds new functions, updates existing ones and fixes a long list of small issues.
• The final two Annual 2017 months are available with a set of Village Battle Maps (November) and the Cthulhu City style by Pär Lindström (December).

Resources

• The Cartographer’s Annual 2017 finishes with a free bonus issue by Sue Daniel.
• We take a look at the highlights of Remy Monsen’s “Command of the Week” series.

Articles

• Guest blogger Randy Ellefson takes a look at “How mountains affect rainfall” in his article on world-building.

Earlier this year Mike Schley kickstarted the first episode of his Schleyscapes series. Aimed at producing an ongoing series of quality gaming maps, in combination with bitmap artwork that could be used in any graphics editor.

As you may know Mike is also the artist behind our own Symbol Set 4 – Dungeons of Schley, and the Schleyscapes art naturally matches the art in that symbol set perfectly. Of course we wanted to make that additional material available for our users of the Dungeons of Schley, and Mike was happy to oblige!

And here it is, the Forlorn Cottage extension to “Symbol Set 4 – Dungeons of Schley”. And the best part? It is completely free for the owners of SS4 – no additional purchase required. You can download it from your registration page as an extra install if you already have SS4 installed, or just use the full setup when you purchase SS4 fresh from the web store. All the new artwork is included.

The SS4 Forlorn Cottage Extension contains:

• 420 new symbols in the SS4 Dungeons of Schley color style
• 14 new bitmap textures for the same style
• 1 “Forlorn Cottage” example map
• 2 SS4 Forlorn Cottage template wizards (imperial & metric)
• Updated SS4 templates incorporating the new bitmap styles
• Updated SS4 symbol catalogs incorporating the new symbols

You can either start a SS4 Dungeons of Schley map and just use the additional symbols, or use the SS4 Forlorn Cottage template to limit yourself to the new symbols.

Ongoing development and bug-fixing for CC3+ has resulted in plenty of material that we are making available with Update 14 for CC3+. You can download it from your registration page. Try out the new Symbols in Area command and see the the long list of updates and changes:

CC3+ Version 3.80
=================
– Added SYMFILL, SYMFILLM, SYMFILLOPT, SYMFILLLOAD, and SYMFILLSAVE commands as analogs to the ESC* commands for 2D elements. This feature allows creation of map features analogous to those generated by the FOREST tool, but with frilled edges and sparsely-placed internal symbols.
– Added SYMSORT option to FOREST to provide an option to make the output a little cleaner-looking.
– Added ESCM, ESCOPT, ESCLOAD, and ESCSAVE commands to allow use of ESC in drawing tools in a manner similar to FOREST and to create libraries of ESC options.
– ESC can now use the width of symbols as the distance to place them apart.
– Added MKDIR command to allow creating a directory from a macro.
– Modified bitmap options dialog to support display of dpi and resolution information.
– Updated system so that all list boxes (including owner-draw ones) will use the operating system listbox drawing color rather than color 16 (which gets to be a light gray on Windows 10) or the previous value of color 20 (which can be modified by users).
– Added GETGXRETCODE command to support accepting default values in macros
– Added ZOOMSEL and ZOOMSELM commands to allow zooming to the currently-selected entities.
– Added SETFLATTOOLBARS command to allow setting flat toolbar styles from the command line.
– Added GETVIEWL, GETVIEWW, GETVIEWX, and GETVIEWY macro commands to allow getting the current view window from macros.
– Added GETSELL, GETSELW, GETSELX, and GETSELY macro commands to allow getting the current selection extents from macros.
– Added GETDISTFMT to allow saving the DISTFMT state. This command simplifies use of the GET family of commands by allowing the units formatting to be changed and restored.
– Added PSCALESETUP, PSCALEON, PSCALEOFF, and PSCALEX commands to allow for pseudo-perspective scaling of symbols and entities.
– Added SIMPLIFY command to allow simplifying paths to a specific feature size.
– Added support for mouse scroll wheel on symbol catalog and LIST (i.e. text) windows.
– Added “Save to clipboard” operation to text windows.

– Fixed bug that was preventing regular scrolling from using the thumbwheel in text windows.
– Fixed a memory leak in drawing filled multipoly with many nodes that was causing some complex FT drawings to crash CC3 in a matter of a few redraws (e.g. panning the screen for a few seconds).
– Fixed dpi issues in CCL and GLS dialogs as part of the perpetual dpi-related cleanup.
– Fixed system hang when window size reduced to zero height.
– Fixed system crash when drawing area window is minimized.
– Fixed problem where final partial row of symbol catalog would not draw.
– Fixed GOSHEET command to match behavior of SNEXT and SPREV commands.
– Fixed missing COASTLINE sheet in CC3 standard overland template.
– Changed CC3 standard overland style coastline to solid fill to avoid pixelation error
– Fixed Perspectives House Outlines not show on startup
– Fixed Floor fill style selection in PEROPTB (Advanced) not updating preview)
– Fixed problem with IPROJ not working with entities freshly-drawn from a drawing tool
– Fixed problem with EFFECTSCACHE showing wrong sizes on 64-bit Windows.
– Fixed problem where using a space character in FRX settings names would cause XML parser failure and CC3+ collapse at startup. System now correctly sanitizes FRX names so that they are valid XML tag names. – Fixed CC2 references in labels such as Open dialog filters to read CC3+.
– Fixed problem where IPROJ was changing entity color to unexpected value when shaded polygon option was used.

CC3+ Manual and Tome of Ultimate Mapping author Remy Monsen has been running his “Command of the Week” column all year over on the ProFantasy forum, and it has become one of the most popular topics. As the year is coming to an end, we thought to highlight some of the commands he has looked at, not least to make you aware of this wonderful resource in the first place. So let’s see what our five top picks of the year, which everybody should check out, would be:

1. As one of the basic tools at your fingertips in CC3+, I would say that Coordinates are also one of the most important.

2. The second is also a basic thing and equally important, as knowing how to use the various Selection methods will make you a much more powerful mapper.

3. Sort Symbols in Map is a little more obscure command, but no other can save you as much time and as many nerves as this one.

4. Using Trace is another command that separates the beginning cartographer from the more experienced user. It can be a little tricky to use, but Remy expertly explains it in his post.

5. Finally, Text along a Curve is a personal favorite of mine. Making nice, flowing text labels along rivers and mountain ranges can make the difference between a “normal” map and an outstanding one.

Check out the full list of commands in the index that Remy keeps with every weekly post on the community forum.