There are lots of things you can do in CC3+, and often lots of ways you can do every thing. Today I am going to take a look at 10 quick things that are helpful to know for any mapper.
Note that the list is not presented in any particular order.
1. Autosave
If you are like me, you get annoyed by the popup every 5 minutes that reminds you to save, and many people probably hits that ‘Disable AutoSave’ button to have it stop bothering them. But if you pick ‘AutoSave…’ from the File menu in the program (or by right clicking the save button in the toolbar) you get a dialog that lets you configure autosave. From here, you can tell it how often to autosave, and you can also have it autosave silently in the background without prompting you every time.
Do remember that autosave always saves to a separate file, AUTOSAVE.FCW that lives in your CC3+ data directory, it never saves to your actual working file, no matter if you have the autosave prompt on or off. You can load this autosave file if needed from the File menu -> ‘Open Autosave Drawing’
2. The Screen
You’re probably aware of the white polygon that appears right outside the map border. The purpose of this is to simply hide entities that stick out beyond the border, because in CC3+ the drawing area isn’t actually limited, the area outside your map still exists and can be drawn on. The screen is designed to cover up anything extending outside the map border, making the map look cleaner. But sometimes the screen simply isn’t big enough, and you may see something sticking out beyond it, a little distance from the map border.
Well, you can easily extend the screen. Just type the command COLLARAUTO on CC3+’s command line and hit enter. This will cause CC3+ to generate a new screen for you large enough to cover everything. (Note that this command normally works fine, but it can fail if you have removed the entities that make up the map border. In this case, CC3+ won’t know where the edges of the actual map is, so the screen may not be placed correctly and may even be covering your map.)
3. Exporting in fewer passes
When exporting a map to a high resolution, CC3+ needs to divide the map into pieces and export one piece at a time. This is strictly necessary because exporting is a memory-intensive operation. However, most computers can handle larger pieces than the standard setting. Try typing EXPORTSETMPPP 40000000 on the CC3+ command line and hit enter. This will increase the max size of each piece to 40 million pixels. Assuming you were on the default setting before, exporting now should result in about one tenth of the number of passes.
If you get memory errors, try with a lower value. The default value is 4000000 (four million). Note that this setting is persistent between CC3+ restarts.
4. Don’t limit yourself to the fills (textures) of a single style
In CC3+, which fills are available on a map isn’t based on what you have actually installed, but what fills have been defined in the template of the map you are using. There are multiple reasons for this, among them the fact that displaying all of them would both result in a very long unwieldy list of fills, of which most would be incompatible with your map due to complete style clash. Instead, CC3+ keeps a list in each template containing references to the appropriate fills. But this doesn’t mean that you might not have other fills installed that may work well, even if they aren’t part of the current style.
To use fills from a different style, start by creating a new blank map in the style that contains the fills you are interested in. Now, go back to your actual map, and then use Draw -> Insert File. Pick that new blank map you just created, and hit open. The command line now indicates you can place the file in your map, but you don’t want to actually do that, simply hit Esc instead to finish inserting. What this did was copying all the fill style definitions from that new map, but without actually inserting the map itself. If you now look in the fill style dialog, you will have all the new fills. In my example here, I inserted SS2 fills into a Mike Schley Overland map.
Do note that this won’t automatically make things like drawing tools, it only makes the fills available for use, but you can now either use the basic tools in CC3+ with these fills, make your own drawing tools using them, or simply switch style in the drawing tools dialog to the style these fills came from, and the tools from that style should now work properly (If you hadn’t copied the fills first, they wouldn’t have).
5. Use the List command to inspect entities
Sometimes, you will experience that things don’t overlap the way you though. Maybe that road through the forest appeared on top of the trees instead of running under it, or that lake appeared under the landmass instead of on top of it.
Such ordering problems are almost exclusively related to sheets. Either your sheets are in the wrong order (remember, the bottom sheet in the list is the one that is drawn last, so the contents of that sheet will appear on top of everything), or your entities are on the wrong sheet, which is the most likely cause (Remember that the default sheet for an entity type might not always be the best in your map). The best way to check which sheet an entity is on is to use the List command from the Info menu. This should quickly help you determine if the entity is on the wrong sheet or not.
(Note that you can’t use the Change Properties dialog to inspect an entity. The Change Properties dialog always shows the current settings from the status bar, not the current settings of the selected entity.)
6. Remember that you can right-click buttons
Most buttons in CC3+ have a right click context menu with commands related to the main command on the button. Use this to quickly find similar commands.
7. Use Quick Move
If you need to adjust the position of multiple entities, but need to do them one at a time (because you don’t want to move them all the same distance/direction), Quick Move is nice and quick. Simply Hit Control+Q on your keyboard to start, and CC3+ will ask you on the command line to select an entity. Once you pick an entity, you immediately start moving it, and after placing it, you can immediately select the next. This is quite a bit quicker than restarting the move command every time and going through the normal selection procedure.
8. Use the Command Line
Almost every command in CC3+ can be activated using the command line. For example, the List command from tip 5 is simply LIST. It is usually far quicker to simply type a command on the command line than go finding it in a menu. And while it doesn’t make sense to memorize every command, knowing the ones your frequently use can speed up your workflow. Also remember than you can type arguments to commands as well, for example, when drawing lines/polys or placing symbols, you can just type the coordinate to place the next node or symbol on. Just keep an eye on the command line and see what it asks of you.
Additionally, if you can’t get a command working properly, looking at the command line to see what CC3+ wants is always a good idea. Maybe you’re not giving it the correct input or leaving out a step, but looking at the command line should tell you exactly what is expected next.
9. Use the Modifiers
CC3+ have multiple modifiers that help you do precise placement. My most commonly used one is the Endpoint modifier, that allow me to place something (node, symbol, etc..) at the exact endpoint of a line. For example, if I already have a line (like a wall) in my map, and I want another line to start exactly where the other line ends, I can start my command to draw the new line, then hit F5 on my keyboard. This will cause CC3+ to prompt you to select an entity. Now, just pick the existing line, and you’ll see that the first point for your new line has been set at the exact end of your existing one, and you can just go on with placing the rest of the nodes.
Note that most modifiers, like Endpoint here works on individual line segments, so the end in this case won’t be the extreme end of the line, but the end of the current segment, i.e. the nearest corner. And it will pick that end based on where on the line you clicked when you picked it, so make sure to click somewhat close to the end you want.
You’ll find all the different modifiers listed under Tools -> Snaps, and you can also find the most common one in the bottom of the right hand toolbars.
10. Show and Hide Layers and Sheets
All entities in CC3+ will always be on a single layer and a single sheet. Sheets determine drawing order, what appears on top of what, as well as the effects, while layers serve as logical groupings. For example, in a dungeon all traps can be on the SECRETS layer even if they are on multiple different sheets.
Hiding sheets and layers while you work can often make it easier to work on the parts you want, and you can also put things you don’t always want to show on a specific layer to easily toggle it off an on. For example, if you put all your secrets in your dungeon map on the SECRET layer, you can hide this layer and you have a player version of the map, and once you show it you have the GM version.
If you have questions regarding the content of this article, please use the ProFantasy forums. It can take a long time before comments on the blog gets noticed, especially for older articles. The forums on the other hand, I frequent daily.
