ProFantasy's Map-Making Archive

We’ll shortly be crowdfunding a new version of Campaign Cartographer 4, along with new versions of Dungeon Designer and City Designer. If you are an existing user, we’ll send you a link to a secret backer level with a modest discount if you are signed up to our newsletter.

The latest version of our legendary map-making software, CC4, features:

• An updated interface with improved dialog boxes, icons and a shiny new sidebar which gives you access to settings and information to assist your work flow.
• Virtual Table Top support which includes major VTT platforms, with full support for light sources.
• Entirely new map styles with symbols and fill styles handcrafted for overland, dungeon and city maps.
• Automated creation of dungeons, villages and towns, so you can get started on your map-making in minutes – not based on generative AI.
• Automatic river creation with natural flows and tapering width,

Your backing will mean more and better features – and we have an extensive wish list! More symbols, more styles, more features.

Rivers

The new river tool of CC4 creates meandering waterways and sprawling river networks for a whole continent or island with a few mouse-clicks. Rivers get wider as they flow from their source, connect in believable ways and run into the sea where you would expect them too.

Rivers have always been a topic that could vex the amateur cartographer, and to draw them realistically can be challenging. The new river command that comes with CC4 gives you a shortcut that can create a single river or whole river systems with the push of a button. You still get full control over the output, from colour shading and texturing, through setting starting and ending width, to moving individual nodes about.

To the left is an example of an island river system created with the river too, where you can see the intricate and natural looking result. Creating the same by hand would be extremely time-consuming.
You can also draw your rivers individually, setting their starting and ending widths, connect them to existing rivers and add them to your river network.

Rivers are a new type of drawing entity that have varying width along their length and specific properties like colour and fill style for each of their spans between nodes. This makes them extremely versatile and open to expansion and additional use cases in the future.

The Sidebar

CC4 adds a sidebar to the interface that makes much more information directly accessible. You can see which entities are selected, modify that selection and do command operations directly from there.

The new sidebar, which is of course configurable and can be turned on and off, is a new area of the interface which lists information on the current command and all the entities that you have selected. You can see whether anything is not supposed to be there and remove it with a simple click.

Say you want to delete several tree symbols, but they are all mixed up with other entities like roads, rivers and background polygons. You are not sure which layers they are all on and checking that to select by layers would just be time-consuming. You can now just select everything in the general area and de-select entities by clicking on them in the list in the sidebar. See the example on the right for how this appears.

The sidebar also lists the options the current command would give you for selecting additional entities, making those options much more quickly accessible. In the example on the right, once you are happy with your selected entities, you can click on the Do It button to execute the Erase command.

If you are placing symbols, the sidebar will display all the symbol options you are usually getting by right-clicking, making them visible at a glance while the symbol itself is also still visible.

The sidebar can also display the colour palette for easy reference, and more options will be added in the future to expand its capabilities.